Borough

Situated at the point where the River Ouse flows into the Wash, King’s Lynn was a seaport of antiquity and the capital of the west Norfolk marshland. Its prosperity depended on its position at the head of a river network which reached far into Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. This enabled it to supply the northern ports of the east coast with corn from the surrounding countryside and ten counties with coal and salt. Fishing was another source of prosperity.

Located where the main London-Norwich road crossed the Little Ouse, Thetford straddled the county boundary between Norfolk and Suffolk. The Little Ouse flowed westwards, joining the Great Ouse between Ely and Downham Market. Navigable to Thetford, it could be used for the trade in goods to and from King’s Lynn and those parts of Norfolk and Suffolk that were furthest from the sea. But by the seventeenth century the town had decreased in importance. The main reminder of its former status was that the Norfolk Lent assizes were usually held there.

Twenty miles east of Norwich, Yarmouth was an important trading post and the centre of a vast fishing trade based on herring. Writing during the reign of James I, the former town clerk, Henry Manship, claimed that it had 1,200 householders. Manship, Gt. Yarmouth, 24. Manship’s local pride prompted him to write a history of the town, which repeatedly stressed its natural and man-made advantages.

By the seventeenth century the castle that gave this borough its name was a ruin and what remained of the settlement around it had been cut off from the sea. Enfranchised in 1558, the borough was dominated by the Howards whose dependents and nominees held most of the burgage tenements which carried the franchise, but during this period, probably owing to the family’s financial embarrassment, some of the burgages were sold to neighbouring gentry and villagers. A borough by prescription, the mayor, who acted as returning officer, was chosen at the court leet.

St Albans survived the dissolution of the monasteries without apparent loss of prosperity, largely because it remained an important staging-post on a major route from London to the north. Its right to parliamentary representation was revived in 1553, when it was incorporated by charter, with a mayor, who acted as returning officer, and ten ‘principal burgesses’. There was also a common council of 24 assistants and a steward.

Ill-served with roads, Hertford stood at the head of navigation of the River Lea and served as the administrative centre of a county rather lacking in natural boundaries. Having failed to return Members since the fourteenth century, its right to be represented in Parliament had been revived recently as 1624, mostly as a favour to the prince of Wales, who held the castle. The lease on the castle had since been sold to Sir William Cowper, the collector of the imposts for the port of London, most of whose other estates were located in Kent. Chauncy, Herts. i.

Yarmouth, situated on the north-western extreme of the Isle of Wight, was the smallest parish on the island, yet one of its oldest boroughs. It received a seigneurial charter in the twelfth century, which was confirmed by Edward III in the thirteenth century, although it remained a mesne borough until 1440. Despite its coastal location, it was a decayed port and boasted little or no local trade or industry.

Stockbridge’s limited importance rested on its location on the main route from Winchester to Salisbury, at the point where it crossed the River Test. A parish of some 600 adults in 1676, it was not a significant centre for industrial activity and had been granted its market only in 1593. VCH Hants, iv. 483-4; Compton Census, 95. James Young described it as a ‘small pitiful place, whose great advantage of late is choosing burgesses’. Journal of James Yonge, ed. F.N.L.

By the end of the sixteenth century Newtown, on the north east coast of the Isle of Wight, opposite Lymington, was a very minor settlement, although it did have an oyster fishery and engaged in the manufacture of salt. VCH Hants, v. 265. Never incorporated, it was a borough by prescription, having been granted a seigneurial charter in 1393. This was said to have been confirmed in 1598, although documentation was subsequently lost. The chief burgesses chose a mayor annually from among their number and replenished their ranks from the burgage holders.

Newport, located at the head of the River Medina estuary, was the principal administrative town in the Isle of Wight. Part of the parish of Carisbrooke, and in the shadow of its castle, Newport provided the residence for the captain, or governor, of the island. VCH Hants, v. 253; Worsley, Isle of Wight, 147-55. In 1648 it would assume a position of national importance, and its most famous moment, when it provided the location for the Newport treaty between Parliament and the king. CSP Dom. 1648-9, p.