Staffordshire

The corporation of Lichfield consisted of 21 ‘brethren’ of the common council, who elected two bailiffs and a sheriff annually. However, the bishop claimed the right, if in residence, to nominate the senior bailiff. The sheriff acted as returning officer. Canvassing the ten city companies formed an important part of the electioneering process, which was further aided by the number and excellence of the inns derived from Lichfield’s prominence on the stage-coach routes to Ireland and the northwest.

Tamworth, partly in Warwickshire and partly in Staffordshire, had never returned Members to Parliament when it received a charter of incorporation in 1560. The charter itself made no mention of parliamentary burgesses. Nevertheless two men were sent up by the borough to the 1563 Parliament, probably at the suggestion of Simon Harcourt, who, a few months after the election, married the widow of William Robinson, owner of the manor of Drayton Bassett which bordered on Tamworth.CPR, 1560-3, pp.

The borough of Stafford, associated for a long time with the family of the same name, may not have had a clearly defined municipal organisation in the sixteenth century. Though the town was incorporated by Edward VI in 1550, it was not until 1605 that the composition of the common council was laid down by charter.J. Bradley, Stafford Charters, 79-132; CPR, 1550-53, p. 21; J.

The borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme was governed by a mayor, two bailiffs and 24 capital burgesses throughout this period, and was incorporated by a royal charter in 1590. MPs were elected by the bailiffs and capital burgesses, the mayor having a casting vote. In 1597 the borough minute book records that the MPs were made freemen of the borough on being returned and swore to be true ‘to the wealth and worship of the town’. The manor of Newcastle belonged to the duchy of Lancaster.

In 1547 Lichfield began once more to send burgesses to Parliament, as it had done on a few occasions in earlier times. The city was incorporated in the following year and in 1553 was granted the status of a county. The corporation leased the lordship and manor of Lichfield from the bishop, in whom remained the right to approve the city’s choice of its two bailiffs, who governed in conjunction with 24 assistants, a recorder and a steward.

Situated at the junction of several roads between London and the north, Stafford was a market town which had little industry of its own. By the 16th century it was in decline and in 1540 it was included in the Act for re-edification of towns (32 Hen. VIII, c.18). The castle and manor belonged to the 3rd Duke of Buckingham until his attainder in 1521, when they escheated to the crown, to be restored to Buckingham’s son, Henry Baron Stafford, in 1531.

Leland described Newcastle-under-Lyme as a market town, with a castle ‘all ... down save one great tower’. The castle, manor and borough formed part of the honor of Tutbury in the duchy of Lancaster, to which the borough paid a fee-farm of £20; the stewardship of the manor was held in the early 16th century by the earls of Shrewsbury as stewards of the honor. Government was by a mayor and 12 aldermen, known as the ‘council of the town’, assisted by 24 burgesses and several officers. The jurisdiction of the duchy was exercised by the mayor, who presided over the ‘great and small inquests’.

Before the Reformation the city of Lichfield, with its shrine to St. Chad and its other cults, was a place of pilgrimage. It had few crafts but provided a market for the district. Deprived in 1547 of the means of self-government by the abolition of the guild of St. Mary and St. John the Baptist, the city availed itself of the help of Secretary Paget to achieve incorporation by letters patent of July 1548 as the bailiffs and citizens, with a governing body consisting of two bailiffs and 24 burgesses.

During the Middle Ages Stafford occupied an important strategic position on the major route from London to Chester and the north-west. Standing at a crossing-place on the river Sow at the junction of several small valleys, it was chosen in 913 by Aethelflaeda of Mercia as the site of a ‘burh’, and by 1016 it had assumed the status of a county town with a royal mint.Eng. Med. Bors. ed. Beresford and Finberg, 163-4; W.H. Duignan, Notes on Staffs. Place Names, 141. The years immediately after the Norman Conquest proved a troubled period in its history.

Taking its name from the ‘new castle’ built by the Crown in the mid 12th century, the borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme began as a small settlement designed to serve the needs of the garrison, but because of its situation on the main route between London and Chester it soon became a flourishing market town. The burgesses obtained their first royal charter in about 1173, and although this document was later lost, it seems to have made provision for the holding of regular markets.