Kent

By the late 14th century Rochester’s population was less than a quarter the size of Canterbury’s, being estimated at 855 on the basis of the poll tax returns of 1377. Yet the city rivalled Canterbury in antiquity, having been developed in Roman times as a station at the point where Watling Street crossed the Medway. Within a very few years of his conversion to Christianity at the close of the sixth century, King Ethelbert of Kent built a church in Rochester, which soon shared with London the distinction of being the earliest bishop’s see, as created by Augustine in 604.

By this stage in its already long history, Canterbury had grown into a sizeable city containing 12 parishes and an estimated population of nearly 4,000. The Roman settlement had been adapted in Anglo-Saxon times to serve as capital of the kingdom of Kent, and the grant made to Augustine by King Ethelbert of his palace there at the end of the sixth century ensured the city’s place as the first and long unrivalled centre of Christianity in England.

Dominated by its Norman castle and cathedral, Rochester was linked to neighbouring Strood by an 11-arch stone bridge, described by one visitor in 1635 as ‘fair, stately, long and strong’ and ‘not much inferior’ to that of London.‘Relation of a short survey of the western counties, 1635’ ed. L.G. Wickham Legg, in Cam. Misc. xvi. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. lii), 8. The bridge and its estates were administered by two wardens and 12 assistants, who enjoyed parliamentary authority to raise taxes within a seven-mile radius of the city to help cover the costs of maintenance.

Situated on the western side of the Isle of Sheppey, Queenborough was named after Philippa of Hainault, Edward III’s consort, and received its first charter in 1368, which entrusted its government to a mayor, two bailiffs, and an unspecified number of freemen. M. Weinbaum, English Bor. Charters 1307-1660, p. 63; C. Eveleigh Woodruff, ‘Notes on the Municipal Recs. of Queenborough’, Arch. Cant. xxii. 172. It owed this privilege to its castle, which however failed to generate any significant urban growth.

Though challenged for pre-eminence in east Kent by Canterbury,P. Clark, Eng. Prov. Soc. 311. Maidstone remained the official county town of Kent. A royal manor, it was also the county’s principal market town, LR2/219, f. 63; P. Clark and L. Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 44. and both quarter sessions and parliamentary elections were held at nearby Penenden Heath.

Once the heart of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent, by the early seventeenth century Canterbury was the unofficial capital of East Kent and a staging post for princes and ambassadors travelling between London and Dover. It also boasted more lawyers than any other part of the county. P. Clark, Eng. Prov. Soc. 275, 287. Successive archbishops of Canterbury preferred to reside at Lambeth, and it was five years before Archbishop Abbot even visited the city. CSP Dom. 1611-18, p.

The largest town in east Kent, the county borough of Canterbury, on the road from Dover to London, was a semi-urban community, in which hop farming had long since replaced silk weaving as the principal form of enterprise. As the city was the ecclesiastical centre of England, the Anglican establishment had an influence in local affairs, but the Dissenting interest was also strong, with the existence of several well- established chapels.

Queenborough was a decayed market town of 270 acres on the Isle of Sheppey, off the north Kent coast. Its already much reduced defensive role was further undermined in this period by the rise of neighbouring Sheerness, where the royal dockyard was greatly expanded. The population was almost entirely dependent on local fisheries, but trade was not prosperous and about a quarter of the 200 houses in the town were unoccupied. PP (1831-2), xxxvii. 313; (1835), xxiv. 163; (1844), xxxi. 296-7; G. Bosworth, Kent, 6-7; VCH Kent, ii. 385-6; A. Daly, Hist.

Rochester, which had long been a significant strategic and commercial port, was part of one continuous settlement that included the much larger Chatham, the site of the expanding naval dockyards, directly to the east, and the smaller Strood across the Medway to the north. The three towns were generally regarded as one entity and, despite mutual rivalries, their inhabitants often petitioned Parliament together. In the absence of any manufactures, most inhabitants were engaged in crafts, retailing or the local fisheries.PP (1831-2), xxxix. 19-21, 29-31; (1835), xxiv.

Maidstone, a large and venal borough, was one of the most highly politicized constituencies in Britain: it had witnessed contests at every general election (and all but one by-election) since 1715, resulting in a plethora of printed pollbooks.Peep at the Commons (1820), 11; HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii.