County

John Leland’s enumeration of the ‘commodities’ of Kent as ‘fertility ... rivers, havens with ships ... royal castles and towns’, to which he added ‘the faith of Christ there first restored’, touched on features which helped to shape the county’s history in the Tudor period. Besides prosperous farming and fisheries, the county had a flourishing cloth industry based on its native sheep, while its long coastline and many harbours, nodal points of traffic with the Continent, made it of first importance in maritime affairs. Defence by sea and land loomed large during the period.

Indentures of election for Huntingdonshire survive for all Parliaments from 1542 save those of 1545 and 1558: they are in Latin and several are in poor condition. The elections were held at Huntingdon castle and the indentures are in the usual form between the sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire and named electors varying in number between 13 and 29.

The Hertfordshire elections were generally held at Hertford, but at least one seems to have taken place at Waltham Cross. Of the 14 knights of the shire identified, all held land in the county and most had inherited it; among the four newcomers, Sir Henry Parker and John Purvey (whose parentage is unknown) acquired their Hertfordshire estates by marriage, Sir Ralph Sadler and Francis Southwell through public service.

The Herefordshire elections were held at Hereford castle by the sheriff. No individual or family was powerful enough to dominate the shire and the only magnate who might have done so, Walter Devereux, 3rd Lord Ferrers, created Viscount Hereford in 1550, was too preoccupied with his interests elsewhere; his grandfather and great-grandfather had sat for Herefordshire but his own sons entered the Commons for other counties.

Until the middle years of Henry VIII’s reign Hampshire was a relatively wealthy county. The trade of the two chief ports was flourishing and in 1513 the entire royal navy of 25 ships was based at Portsmouth. The Portsmouth dockyard, however, declined in importance with the growth of other yards less vulnerable to attack, while Southampton decayed with the diminution of the wool trade and also lost much of its subsidiary source of income, the victualling of the royal ships. A major cause of the decline was the difficulty of fortifying such a long and indented coastline.

A wealthy county with a flourishing cloth industry, one of the largest ports in the kingdom and plentiful timber, iron, clay and building stone, Gloucestershire had gentlemen, merchants and entrepreneurs prosperous enough to show considerable independence of the central government or to influence its decisions. The Dissolution elicited almost no opposition in the county, many of the inhabitants profiting from the dispersal of monastic lands.

Most of the Essex knights of the shire whose names survive were leading figures at court or in government. This is not surprising in a county adjacent to London, although its self-sufficiency in the matter is shown by the fact that only three of the eight—or, if Sir Henry Marney sat for his native shire in 1523, nine—were not of Essex birth. Two of the newcomers, Thomas Bonham of unknown but perhaps Wiltshire origin, and William Petre, of a Devon family, married into their adopted county, and Richard Rich first established himself there as a servant of John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford.

Under the early Tudors Dorset was a more peaceable county than Devon or Cornwall although there was some slight trouble at the dissolution of the monasteries and rumours (apparently unfounded) circulated about disaffection in 1554 and 1557.

Devon remained largely a county of prosperous freeholders farming their own lands, although speculation following the Dissolution brought considerable estates to the Denys, Edgecombe, Pollard and Russell families. The influence of the most important noble family, the Courtenays, continued paramount despite the attainder of the Marquess of Exeter, the lengthy imprisonment of his son and the failure of direct male heirs in 1556.

During the greater part of the period Derbyshire had no resident Privy Councillor who was not a peer, while of the leading noblemen with lands there the 4th and 5th Earls of Shrewsbury were often at court or in the North and the 2nd Earl of Huntingdon, lord lieutenant from 1552 to 1560, wielded no discernible influence on elections in the county. The knighthood of the shire seems generally to have been shared among men of local wealth and standing, but with official connexions playing some part in the choice.