For an English county town, Stafford in the early seventeenth century was surprisingly small. In 1622 its entire population was just 1,550, having increased perhaps by as little as 50 per cent over the previous 250 years, VCH Staffs. vi. 186; HP Commons 1386-1422, i. 610. whereas that of contemporary Worcester was four times greater, while Exeter in 1638 boasted more than 10,000 souls. Moreover, Stafford was quite eclipsed by the cathedral city of Lichfield, which lay 15 miles distant.
Lichfield lies in south-east Staffordshire, between the high ground of Cannock Chase to the west and the Tame valley to the east. The origins of its name are obscure. Once thought to signify ‘a field of corpses’, after the massacre of early Christians by the Romans, a more likely meaning is ‘a common pasture in (or beside) a grey wood’.T. Harwood, Hist. and Antiqs. of Lichfield, 2; VCH Staffs. xiv.
Situated at the confluence of the rivers Tame and Anker, Tamworth was a Saxon foundation once favoured as a residence by the monarchs of Mercia. It was fairly small, even by early modern standards: by 1640 around 300 households clustered around its privately owned castle.C.F. Palmer, Hist. Tamworth, app. p. xxvii. Little is known of its economy, but by 1589 several inhabitants had erected corn mills to compete with those already there belonging to the queen. H. Wood, Tamworth Bor. Recs.
Situated in north-west Staffordshire, close to the borders with Cheshire and Shropshire, Newcastle-under-Lyme grew up around a castle built in the 1140s in a lake fed by Lyme Brook, a tributary of the Trent. The town, which lay on the main road from London to the north-west, hosted a weekly market, three annual fairs, and perhaps also a separate corn market. VCH Staffs. viii. 2, 45, 47; Pape, 1. In the seventeenth century the dominant industry was the making of felt hats, but iron-working and tanning were also important. VCH Staffs. viii.
Lichfield, a cathedral city and county of itself, possessed ‘a large manufactory of carpets’, but was otherwise ‘not remarkable for its variety of manufactures’, although it carried on ‘an excellent local trade’ in agricultural produce. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1828-9), 714. The representation, which had not been contested since 1799, was jointly controlled by the Trentham interest of George Granville Leveson Gower†, 2nd marquess of Stafford, and the Shugborough interest, headed since 1818 by Thomas William, 2nd Viscount Anson.
Newcastle-under-Lyme, long ‘famous for the manufacture of hats’ under an incorporated company of felt makers, had a flourishing clothing industry employing some 1,587 families, but the ‘welfare or adversity’ of the surrounding Potteries also affected its ‘trade and prosperity’. Staffs. Dir. (1834), 652; Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), iv. 508; PP (1833), xxxvii. 600; Pigot’s Commercial Dir.
Lying ‘in a low but pleasant situation’, on a fertile plain near the northern bank of the River Sow, Stafford enjoyed ‘fine romantic scenery’ and ‘highly salubrious’ air. The town produced hats and cutlery, but its traditional industry was leather, most notably the manufacture of shoes, which ‘at one time was so extensive that a single manufacturer has been able to give employment to 800 persons’, although this had recently ‘much declined’.
Tamworth, which lay partly in Staffordshire and partly in Warwickshire, had ‘extensive wharfs and warehouses on the canal’, two large wool stapling establishments and numerous corn and cotton mills, including that of the Peel family on the River Tame. PP (1831-2), xl. 13; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1828-9), 736; Staffs. Dir.
