Camden described Lewes as ‘for largeness and populousness one of the chief towns’ of Sussex, and it has been estimated that its population at this period may have substantially exceeded 2,000. This considerable figure was due less to commerce than to its functions as a sessions’ town and as the social centre for the three rapes of East Sussex: the appalling local roads almost required even minor gentry families to maintain houses in Lewes for winter use.
Situated on the River Arun and the edge of St. Leonard’s forest in the west Sussex rape of Bramber, Horsham prospered in Elizabethan times as a centre of the Wealden iron industry. It was also the seat of the county gaol and sometimes hosted the summer assizes and quarter sessions. VCH Suss. vi. pt. 2, pp. 129-35, 178. The manor and borough of Horsham descended with the barony of Bramber in the Howard family until it passed to the Crown on the attainder of the 4th duke of Norfolk in 1572.
East Grinstead, situated close to the Surrey border, was only 30 miles from London. Thanks to the notoriously impassable Sussex roads it accordingly shared the assizes with Horsham (and occasionally, in dry summers, with Lewes). In addition the town lay on the edge of Ashdown forest, a centre of the Wealden iron industry.A. Fletcher, County Community in Peace and War, 136; E. Straker, Wealden Iron, 238-41. An unincorporated borough, East Grinstead had returned Members since 1301, the right of election being in the inhabitant burgage-holders.
Described in 1635 as a ‘pleasant and sweet little city … in a pleasant, fertile level and not far from the main sea’, Chichester, situated in the extreme west of Sussex, had a population of about 2,500.‘Relation of a Short Survey of the Western Counties’ ed. L.G. Wickham Legg Cam. Misc. xvi. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. lii), pt. 3, pp. 33, 35; A.
Situated close to the River Adur on the boundary between the downland and wealden regions of Sussex, Steyning remained an important market town in this period, with a significant tanning and leather industry. However, as a port it, like Bramber, had long been eclipsed by New Shoreham, situated at the mouth of the river. The population grew from about 300 in 1565 to roughly 1,000 by the early 1640s. VCH Suss. vi. pt. 1, pp. 220-1, 234; J. Pennington and J. Sleight, ‘Steyning Town and its Trades 1559-1787’, Suss. Arch. Colls. cxxx.
Situated four miles from the sea on the west bank of the River Adur, Bramber gave its name to one of the six rapes of Sussex, at a time when it was presumably the principal settlement in the Adur valley. Its prosperity was not of long duration as a port: New Shoreham, situated at the mouth of the river, replaced it and by 1595 it had ceased even to be a market town.
The market town of Arundel, in west Sussex, grew up at the lowest point that the river Arun could be bridged. According to a visitor in the 1630s it was ‘relieved with a convenient pretty haven, and graced with an ancient, strong and stately castle’. VCH Suss. v. pt. 1, p. 10; ‘Relation of a Short Survey of the Western Counties’ ed. L.G. Wickham Legg Cam. Misc. xvi (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. lii), pt. 3, p. 30. Despite a lack of social amenities, relatively good communications made it the regular venue for the West Sussex Epiphany sessions. A.
The West Sussex market town of Midhurst, situated 11 miles north of Chichester, was an ancient but unincorporated borough, ownership of which was attached to the adjacent manor of Cowdray. It was governed by a bailiff, who was elected by the burgage-holders, seven of whom also enjoyed the right to collect the market tolls and appoint the steward of the borough’s manorial court. The borough first returned Members of Parliament in 1301, but was only consistently represented from 1382.
Founded at the mouth of the River Adur in the eleventh century, New Shoreham soon became one of the most important of the Channel ports, though it suffered a severe decline in the fourteenth century. In the late sixteenth century Camden reported that ‘the greatest part’ of it was ‘ruined and under water, and the commodiousness of its port … wholly taken away’, and one of its own Jacobean Members called it ‘a town as poor and poorer than any in the realm’. It was nonetheless then entering upon a new period of prosperity.
Arundel, a small market town situated on the River Arun in the south-west of the county, about four miles from the English Channel coast, was said in 1833 to be in an ‘average state of prosperity’. Its principal trade was in coal which, assisted by the recent canal link with Chichester, was ‘sent up the river to Guildford, Horsham and Petworth’. The corn and cattle markets were ‘tolerably well attended’, but there was ‘no manufacture of any kind’. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 494; PP (1835), xxiv.
