Meath and Louth, immediately to the north of County Dublin, were traditionally included in the English Pale. Meath was one of the biggest and most prosperous of the Irish counties, and, as a result, was double-rated in the taxes of the late sixteenth century. Description of Ire. 1598 ed. E.
The three counties of Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan made up the south-western part of Ulster, bordering on the mountains of Connaught and the lowlands of Leinster and the Pale. They formed an important strategic area which was, until the end of the sixteenth century, controlled by Gaelic Irish families of McGuire or Maguire (in County Fermanagh), O’Reilly (in County Cavan) and McMahon (in County Monaghan).
Tipperary, a large county stretching from the River Shannon in the north to the River Suir in the south, was an important agricultural district, containing some of the best pasture land in Ireland. Waterford, between the Suir and the sea, was more mountainous, but still prospered thanks to the prominence of its ports, especially the city of Waterford in the east and the town of Dungarvan in the west. Close economic links had developed between the two counties, with produce from Tipperary being transported down the Suir from Clonmel to Waterford, for export to Britain and Europe.
The county of Cork, in the south west of Ireland, was one of the most fertile and populous in the province of Munster. Three major rivers (the Lee, Bandon and Blackwater) watered the county, and where they met the Atlantic they formed three harbours, where Cork City and the towns of Kinsale and Youghal were situated. These ports enjoyed commercial prosperity in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, exporting fish, timber, cloth, beef, iron and other local commodities.
The city of Londonderry and the town of Coleraine – situated respectively on the Rivers Foyle and Bann in northern Ulster – owed their seventeenth century form to the London companies’ plantation established in 1610. Existing settlements at both sites were swept away as new walls, roads and houses were laid out; but after this initial burst of activity, the building of both towns slowed considerably. J.S. Curl, The Londonderry Plantation (Chichester, 1986), 26-7, 43-53; A. Thomas, Derry-Londonderry (Irish Historic Towns Atlas no.
Counties Antrim, Down and Armagh made up the whole eastern seaboard of Ulster, from the Giant’s Causeway in the north, to the Mountains of Mourne in the south. The three counties differed geographically and politically. County Antrim, to the north, had large stretches of ‘barren mountainous’ country but also ‘good and fertile’ soil along the coast and in the southern baronies of Massereene and Antrim. Civil Survey, x.
The list of MPs for the three counties of Kerry, Limerick and Clare speaks for itself. Throughout the 1650s, the New English soldier, Sir Hardress Waller, and his son-in-law, Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, were able to dominate the civil and military government of the south-west corner of Ireland, and to monopolise its electoral patronage. This was only possible because of the devastation created by the Irish wars and Cromwellian conquest, which left a tabula rasa, with each county bereft of its distinctive social, political and constitutional characteristics.
Set on the confluence of two major navigable rivers, the Severn and the Warwickshire Avon, Tewkesbury should have been a prosperous place. Goods imported at Bristol found their way up-river to Tewkesbury from Gloucester; and carried down in the characteristic river boats, the trows, was the agricultural produce of the vales of Evesham and Tewkesbury. The town served as an entrepôt for grain supplies, sent as far as west Wales. CSP Dom. 1629-31, p.
Gloucestershire was a county of very marked physical divisions, the most obvious of which was the River Severn. West of the Severn below Gloucester lay the Forest of Dean, an important source of naval timber. In the Vale of Gloucestershire, further east, were Gloucester itself and above it, Tewkesbury, both parliamentary boroughs. The hinterland of Gloucester was incorporated into the city government as the ‘Inshire’.
As the ‘principal grain port on the River Severn’, Gloucester was an important city, albeit one with an economy in transition. VCH Glos. iv. 77. Its previous mainstay had been the weaving of heavy broadcloth, but this industry had collapsed. A weaver in 1634 marvelled at how over 100 looms had been reduced to just six or seven, and other clothing trades were badly affected.
