Sussex

Elizabethan Chichester, a city of about 2,000 people, was still governed by a body formed around the medieval merchants’ guild. This was made up of the mayor, the aldermen, and the free citizens. The guild nominated the bailiff, recorder, customer and portreeve and conducted the city’s affairs. The rest of the inhabitants, the commoners, were occasionally summoned to general meetings in the guildhall, including those for mayoral and parliamentary elections, but their influence appears to have been slight.

The borough of Bramber, never incorporated, was owned by the dukes of Norfolk. A constable was chosen at the court leet, and he, with a few burgesses, made the return. Nine of these wrote to the sheriff on 26 Jan. 1559:

The borough of Arundel was controlled by the earls of Arundel. Its officers, including the mayor and coroner, were elected at an annual court leet. Election returns were made in the name of the mayor, burgesses and commonalty. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, elections were in the hands of Henry Fitz Alan, the 12th Earl of Arundel, who brought in two fellow-courtiers, Sir Francis Knollys and Thomas Heneage, in 1559; Michael Heneage, a brother of Thomas, in 1571; a civil lawyer, William Aubrey, recommended by the 1st Earl of Pembroke, in 1563; and three relatives, Sir John St.

Until the Dissolution the manor and borough of Steyning belonged to Syon abbey: after 1539 they were annexed to the royal honor of Petworth. Some 18 or 20 gardens or houses in the town formed part of the barony of Bramber, thus giving the Howard family control over the borough: in 1539 the 3rd Duke of Norfolk listed it among the Sussex boroughs where ‘in times past I could have made burgesses of Parliament’. During the duke’s imprisonment under Edward VI his property in Steyning was conferred upon Admiral Seymour: on Seymour’s fall it reverted to the crown.This survey rests on R. J. W.

The port, manor and borough of New Shoreham formed part of the barony of Bramber which belonged to the dukes of Norfolk: Old Shoreham was owned by the duchy of Cornwall. On the death of the dowager Duchess of Norfolk in the spring of 1545 New Shoreham passed into the possession of the crown. In 1547 Edward VI granted it to Sir Thomas Seymour II, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, upon whose attainder two years later it reverted to the crown.

Midhurst provided a market for the district, and its inhabitants lived by weaving, dying, tanning and other crafts required in a predominantly agricultural area. The manor of Midhurst, sometimes called Cowdray, had passed into the ownership of Sir David Owen on the death of his father-in-law in 1492.

The castle, manor and mesne borough of Lewes formed part of the honor or barony of that name, which at the opening of Henry VIII’s reign was divided between the 2nd Duke of Norfolk, the 2nd Earl of Derby, the 5th Baron Bergavenny and the Wingfield family.

Situated at the centre of the Weald, Horsham was a small yet prosperous town. Stone and slate were quarried nearby but its wealth rested on the iron produced in the locality. A bill to curtail the growth of the iron industry there failed in the Parliament of 1547. The manor of the borough formed part of the larger manor of Horsham within the barony of Bramber owned by the dukes of Norfolk.

East Grinstead was a market town and the meeting place of the Lent assizes for east Sussex. The manor and borough belonged to the duchy of Lancaster. In 1559 it was described in a duchy survey as ‘a liberty of itself without any intermeddling of the hundred. or vice versa’, with 48 burgages; ‘the burgage holders and cottagers are all the Queen’s tenants and hold their tenements of her majesty as of the manor of East Grinstead by fealty only and suit of court’.

Situated on the coastal plain of western Sussex, Chichester was a moderately prosperous city of perhaps 2,000 inhabitants. Its foreign trade, although not nearly as extensive as that of other Sussex ports, was at least until the fall of Calais fairly lucrative, and during the 1550s the corporation tried unsuccessfully to remove weirs from the harbour. The small group of aliens resident there seems to have engaged more in Continental trade than industry.