Shropshire

Shrewsbury was governed throughout Elizabeth’s reign by two bailiffs, 12 aldermen and 25 common councilmen. The borough possessed a comparatively large electorate: in the contested election of 1584, Thomas Owen polled 366 votes, Richard Barker 299, and Thomas Harris II 176. The election of 1601 was again contested, though nothing is known of the circumstances save that it caused ‘much ado’. It was probably to avoid disorderly elections that the town council had, in 1558, forbidden any preliminary canvassing.HMC 15th Rep.

After the dissolution of the monasteries, the lordship and site of Wenlock priory were granted to Thomas Lawley, a Calais merchant, who died in 1559 leaving infant sons. Control of the borough seats then passed into the hands of the neighbouring gentry.

The borough was incorporated as the bailiff, burgesses and commonalty, and the right to vote at parliamentary elections was vested in the burgesses.

Bishop’s Castle, which formed part of the honour of Lydbury North, was for centuries parcel of the possessions of the bishopric of Hereford until sequestered by the Crown in 1559.

Throughout Elizabeth’s reign, Bridgnorth was governed by two bailiffs and 24 aldermen. Elections were made by the bailiffs and aldermen ‘with consent’ of the commonalty.

Ludlow was the headquarters of the council in the marches of Wales. It was governed by two bailiffs, 12 principal burgesses and 25 common councilmen. There was also a recorder. The 1572 return states that the choice of MPs was made by the bailiffs ‘by assent and consent of all the burgesses of the said town to whom the said election doth appertain’. Similarly the 1588 return was made ‘with the consent of all the burgesses’.

A minor inland port on the Severn, Shrewsbury was the county town, regularly visited by the council in the marches of Wales, but was none the less declining in prosperity with the loss of its strategic importance. Still a centre for fulling and other finishing processes of the cloth trade, its two chief companies being the drapers and the mercers, it was included in the Acts for urban renewal of 1536 and 1544 (27 Hen. VIII, c.1 and 35 Hen.

Wenlock, a market town ‘environed with hills’, was the trading centre of a predominantly agricultural district, with a weekly market and a three-day fair in June. The town had grown up under the lordship of a Cluniac priory, and at least until the mid 14th century it paid a fee-farm to the crown on the ground that the priory was ‘still in the King’s hand’. In 1468, at the instance of John Wenlock, Lord Wenlock, ‘the parish of the Holy Trinity of Wenlock’ was incorporated as the bailiff, burgesses and community.

Ludlow was the headquarters of the council in the marches of Wales and both Prince Arthur and Princess Mary held court there. Apart from some clothmaking, the town depended for its livelihood on the presence of the council, and the most prominent craft guild seems to have been that of the ‘hammermen’, an amalgamation of smiths, armourers, masons, ironmongers, saddlemakers and others. The London merchant Rowland Hill gave the money for a new bridge over the Teme, and the annual St.

Bridgnorth had long been the leading borough in Shropshire after Shrewsbury, but by 1536 so many houses in the town centre were becoming ‘ruinous’ that it was included in the Act for urban renewal (27 Hen. VIII, c.1) and by 1540 the town walls were ‘all in ruin’. An important factor in its prosperity had been trade by the river Severn, navigable from Bristol to Pool Quay in Montgomeryshire, and by the main road linking Bristol, Chester and Shrewsbury.

In 1377 the inhabitants of Shrewsbury aged 14 years or more (including 100 persons discovered moving from street to street to evade the collectors of the poll tax), numbered 2,083, indicating a probable total population of more than 3,000 and a town comparable in size with Gloucester and larger than any other strictly within the Welsh march.J.C. Russell, Brit. Med. Pop. 142; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 2), ii.