Somerset

Minehead was dominated by the Luttrells of Dunster castle, who no doubt were responsible for obtaining the 1559 charter and the enfranchisement of the borough. The government of the borough was placed in the hands of a common council consisting of a portreeve and 12 principal burgesses. Although the charter made no reference to Parliament, Minehead returned Members in 1563, the first possible occasion after the charter had been granted. Along with other boroughs sending MPs for the first time in 1563, Minehead’s right to return was challenged in the House of Commons.

Bridgwater’s charter, confirmed in 1554, placed the town in the hands of a mayor, recorder and two bailiffs. By a charter of 1587 it was re-incorporated as the mayor, aldermen and burgesses of Bridgwater. During Elizabeth’s reign the principal landowner in Bridgwater was the Crown.Weinbaum, Charters, 102; Collinson, Som. iii. 75, 81.

Returns were made by the ‘mayor and citizens’ of Bath, but the constitution of the borough was not clearly defined until the charter granted by Elizabeth in 1590, which set up a corporation of a mayor, alderman and council of 20. With one known exception, the country gentleman Edward St. Loe (1559), and one possible exception (John Gwynne III, 1566), all the Bath Members in this period were townsmen and/or borough officials.

Wells was made a free borough by royal charter in 1201 and returned Members from 1295, but its liberties and privileges were severely limited by the power of the bishop of Bath and Wells, who was lord of the manor of Wells and of the hundred of Wells Forum: as late as 1492 Bishop Fox unsuccessfully claimed the sole right to admit burgesses. In 1548 Bishop Barlow surrendered his interests in Wells to the crown and to the Duke of Somerset but they were soon restored to the see.

An important centre of the cloth industry, Taunton suffered, like Bridgwater, from the competition of country clothiers; both boroughs were included in the Act for the re-edifying of towns westward (32 Hen. VIII, c.19) and another for the viewing and selling of cloths called Bridgwaters (2 and 3 Phil. and Mary, c.12). A bill for Taunton failed after a single reading in the Lords in 1510.

Bridgwater had been a flourishing seaport and clothing town, but when Leland visited it at about the time of its inclusion in the Act for the re-edifying of towns westward (32 Hen. VIII, c.19) the inhabitants claimed that within living memory over 200 houses had fallen into decay. A later Act for the viewing and selling of cloths called Bridgwaters (2 and 3 Phil. and Mary, c.12) was intended to protect cloth manufacture in Bridgwater, Taunton and Chard from the competition of country clothiers.

As lords of the manor of Wells the bishops of Bath and Wells exercised considerable authority within that city, but by the 16th century all that they retained in Bath (where their palace was let out) was the fee-farm, amounting in 1535 to £8 10 s.2 d., and even this was surrendered to the crown by Bishop Barlow in 1548.

By the late 14th century Wells was one of the largest of Somerset towns: its population in 1377 was estimated to be about 1,352. The main cathedral town of a large diocese, it was under the lordship of the bishop of Bath and Wells, to whom, no communal fee farm having ever been established, its people still individually paid their fixed rents. The borough owed its privileges originally to a series of episcopal grants, these, however, being subsequently confirmed and extended by royal charters.

In 1377 Taunton’s taxable population of those over 14 years of age was estimated to be 539. This indicates a smaller town than the nearby port of Bridgwater or than the cathedral city of Wells. However, Taunton still seems to have been commercially prosperous in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The charter exempting its burgesses from tolls throughout England, originally granted by Stephen, was confirmed to Taunton’s lord, Bishop Wykeham of Winchester, in 1381, and regulations affecting trade were prominent in the town’s custumal which dates from about the same time.

Bridgwater was a thriving port situated a few miles up the navigable Parrett. In 1377 it had an adult population of over 850, comparable with that of Bath, but the lay subsidy returns of the earlier 14th century suggest that it had then been the wealthiest of the Somerset towns, higher in the list than Bath, Wells and Taunton, and perhaps this was still the case. ‘Bridgwater’ was the name given to a kind of broadcloth manufactured locally, and the port had trading connexions with Bayonne, Bordeaux and Ireland as well as a share in the coastal traffic.