In 1642, had it not been for the national political convulsions, a local annalist might have noted the passing of a century since Bristol had become a city. Bristol Charters 1509-1899 ed. Latham (Bristol Rec. Soc. xii), 5. It had grown enormously since the 1540s. When the diarist John Evelyn visited Bristol in 1654, he described it as ‘emulating London, not for its large extent, but manner of building, shops, bridge, traffic, exchange, market place etc’. Evelyn Diary ed. de Beer, iii.
Cirencester was an important wool town, situated on the southern slopes of the Cotswolds. Its glory was the Friday wool market, in this period still counted the greatest in England. A Monday market in provisions, cattle and grain provided an important focus for trade with the rich agricultural hinterland. Glos. RO, P86/1/IN6/3, f. 80. It was not an incorporated borough. Instead, the town was a hundred of Gloucestershire of itself, and was divided into seven wards, with two high constables and 14 wardsmen appointed at the court leet.
Despite its name, Buckingham was not the major town of Buckinghamshire. That was Aylesbury. Like its old rival, Buckingham had been granted a charter of incorporation in 1554 as a reward for its loyalty to Queen Mary. That corporation, consisting of the bailiff and the 12 capital burgesses, had since then formed the electorate for the parliamentary elections.
Great Marlow was a borough by prescription which had sent MPs to Parliament for a brief period under Edward I and Edward II but whose right to do so had only been revived in 1623. The town had never been incorporated and the right of election was assumed to rest with the inhabitants. Many of them were Thames bargemen, for the town stood on the Thames at one of the major crossing points between Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. The bailiff, who was also known as the constable, acted as returning officer.
In the seventeenth century, as now, Buckinghamshire was a prosperous rural county whose economy was inevitably overshadowed by its proximity to London. Thomas Fuller would pick up on this.
Chipping Wycombe, also known as High Wycombe, was one of the larger and more important Buckinghamshire towns, rivalling even Aylesbury. Located on the London-Oxford road, it had long benefited from the extensive commercial traffic along that most important of routes from the capital to the west. Its other source of wealth was the cloth trade, although for much of this period that was stagnating, with adverse consequences for the general prosperity of the town. This would be the root cause of much of the discord that divided the town in the 1650s.
Wendover was the third of the Buckinghamshire towns to have been re-enfranchised in 1624 as a result of archival discoveries by the local resident, William Hakewill†. As with Amersham and Great Marlow, it was a borough by prescription and had never been incorporated. The right of election was thus held by the inhabitants, although, as the town was small, this still did not make for a large electorate. The two constables acted as the returning officers. T. Carew, An hist. acct. of the rights of elections (1754), ii.
In 1642 Nehemiah Wharton, a Londoner, thought that the area around Amersham was ‘the sweetest country that ever I saw’. H. Ellis, ‘Lttrs. from a subaltern officer in the earl of Essex’s army’, Archaeologia, xxxv. 313. It was one of three Buckinghamshire towns whose right to elect MPs had been revived in 1624. Research by William Hakewill† established that Amersham, Great Marlow and Wendover had been represented in several of the Parliaments of Edward I and Edward II and, on that basis, that right was restored to them.
Aylesbury was the largest town in Buckinghamshire and by the seventeenth century was, in effect, the county town. Its size and its central location made it a more convenient site than Buckingham for the assizes and for the elections of the knights of the shire. Historically Aylesbury had been governed by its hereditary lord and, even though the town had been incorporated in the reign of Mary I, that lord retained some formal and much informal power within its boundaries. This was true even in this period when the lord, Sir John Pakington*, was an absentee.
Situated at the head of the Dee estuary, 11 miles from the Irish Sea, early-Stuart Chester was the main point in southern Britain for embarkation to Ireland and overland passage into north Wales. VCH Cheshire, v. pt. 1, p. 3; A.M. Johnson, ‘Some Aspects of the Political, Constitutional, Social and Economic History of the City of Chester 1550-1662’ (Oxford Univ. DPhil.
