By the second half of the sixteenth century Southampton, once the chief port in England after London, was in serious, albeit not terminal, decline. Trade built around wool and wine, particularly with Venice, and in Newfoundland fish had given it considerable affluence and led to impressive buildings and other manifestations of conspicuous consumption. VCH Hants, iii. 490; R. Douch, Visitors’ Descriptions of Southampton: 1540-1956 (1961), 9; A.A.
On the western edge of Hampshire at the confluence of the rivers Stour and Avon, Christchurch was a small and impoverished coastal town of very limited importance. In 1538 one commentator noted that it was ‘set in a desolate place, in a very barren country, out and far from all highways, in an angle or a corner, having no woods nor commodious country about it ... and slenderly inhabited’. VCH Hants, v.
Situated on the roads from London to both Portsmouth and Winchester, Petersfield was a posting town; it had an important market and was the focal point for local industrial activity. Its growth under the Tudors was due to the presence of cloth and leather manufacturing, and although these industries were in decline by the mid-seventeenth century, they may still have employed as many as 1,000 people in the locality. VCH Hants, iii.
Lymington was a minor coastal port on the edge of the New Forest and on the west bank of the River Lymington, some two miles from the Solent and opposite Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. Its harbour was relatively unimportant, but it was used to transport the produce of the local salterns, which were among the most significant in southern England. VCH Hants, iv. 639-40, 643; R. Warner, Colls. Hist. Hants, iv.
Andover’s importance in the early modern period stemmed largely from its location on one of the main routes from London to the West, at the point where it crossed the River Anton, and to a lesser extent from its role as a centre of cloth manufacture. VCH Hants, iv.
Whitchurch, described by one visitor in 1679 as a ‘poor thoroughfare town’, lay at the junction of the roads between London and Andover, and between Newbury and Winchester, at a crossing of the River Test. HMC 13th Rep. ii. 286; VCH Hants, iv.
Portsmouth, located at the south-west corner of Portsea Island, lay at the mouth of a large natural harbour. The town’s strategic significance was reflected in the fact that it was walled, and contained Portchester Castle, situated across the bay from the equally important Southsea Castle. To the north of Portsmouth lay the vital royal dockyard. J.
The Isle of Wight, with an economy dominated by pastoral agriculture, was traditionally and administratively a part of Hampshire, although it possessed a somewhat distinct community with a clearly-defined group of gentry families, many of whom inclined towards royalism in the 1640s. This probably helps explain why Charles I sought sanctuary there on his escape from parliamentarian captivity. The island held its own sessions of the peace with its own justices, and operated its own house of correction.
Winchester, located in the valley of the River Itchen amid chalk down lands, could claim to be one of the country’s most ancient and important towns. Anglo-Saxon royal capital and centre of administration, and still the county town, it boasted a cathedral which was the seat of England’s richest bishopric, a royal palace which was used until the sixteenth century, a castle, and the prestigious college founded by William of Wykeham. It had also been the seat of the earliest Parliaments.
Under Tudor legislation, Monmouthshire was treated idiosyncratically as a parliamentary entity. It was given two shire Members, putting the county on a par with the English shires and bestowing on it better representation than that given other Welsh counties, which returned one knight. However, the boroughs were given a single Member, in the dispensation that applied in Wales. Monmouth was designated the county town, and six other boroughs were required to contribute to the fees settled on elected Members to meet their expenses.
