Hampshire

Leland admired the appearance of Southampton, with its ‘fair and right strong wall’ and ‘fair square quay’; he also remarked on the number of large houses, mainly belonging to merchants. Yet the town was already encountering serious difficulties. Although Hampshire was one of the pioneers in producing the ‘new draperies’ to offset the falling demand for broadcloths, the wool and cloth trades were finding other ports, such as Poole in Dorset, more convenient than the Hampshire coastal towns.

Portsmouth, a dockyard town and naval station, was a ‘member’ of the older port of Southampton, which in 1447 was erected into the county of Southampton and Portsmouth, but Portsmouth made its returns to Parliament through the sheriff of Hampshire. The town was the object of much official concern during the reign of Henry VIII, when large sums were spent on the dockyard, and it was included in the Act of 1540 for urban renewal (32 Hen. VIII, c.18).

Lying on the high road between London and Portsmouth, Petersfield was a prosperous market town whose clothiers and merchants specialized in serges and other ‘new draperies’: in 1534 it was not listed in a report on decayed towns which included Portsmouth, Southampton and Winchester. At the beginning of the 16th century the 3rd Duke of Buckingham was lord of the borough and manor of Petersfield.

The dominant theme in the history of Winchester in the Middle Ages is one of continuous decline. The population fell, the built-up area contracted, and the city successively lost its status as a national administrative centre, a royal residence, and an international, and even a regional, market. The city had achieved its greatest eminence in the tenth and 11th centuries as the political and economic centre of Wessex, then dominant over England as a whole. At that time the city was among the dozen most prosperous English towns.

Although it was one of the busiest ports of later medieval England, Southampton was not populous even by contemporary standards. Its population in 1377 has been estimated at 1,728, some 400 fewer than that of Winchester, and it was probably less than half the size of Salisbury and under a fifth that of Bristol. Established by Saxon times, the town was favoured with a long sheltered harbour, double tides and easy communications inland.

The size of the population of Portsmouth during this period is not recorded, but the town was evidently small and somewhat impoverished. Originally ‘Portsmouth’ had been simply the name of the anchorage in the estuary of the river Wallington, used from the 11th century for naval and military expeditions. Richard I, the founder of the town, landed there on his return to England in 1189, and the foundation charter of 1194 was granted during a week’s stay by the King at Portsmouth, on the eve of what was to be his final departure from the country.

Winchester, the county capital of Hampshire and seat of England’s richest bishopric, received a charter in 1290 and first sent Members to Parliament seven years later. The city’s clothing and leather industries, and annual fair, fell into a prolonged period of economic decline after the Black Death, and throughout the Tudor period the corporation repeatedly applied for remission of its fee farm, and for royal subsidies to repair the walls. VCH Hants, v.

Stockbridge, a small town situated where the road from Winchester to Salisbury crosses the Test, had been part of the duchy of Lancaster since the fourteenth century. VCH Hants, iv. 484; R. Somerville, Hist. Duchy of Lancaster, i. 18, 37, 313n. Though enfranchised at the instigation of the chancellor of the duchy in 1563, it was never incorporated, and consequently its municipal institutions remained primitive.

Lying on the Hampshire coast opposite the Isle of Wight and almost surrounded by the New Forest, Lymington was known chiefly for its salterns, which in this period supplied nearly all the west of England. R. Warner, Colls. for Hist. of Hants, iv. 16. Although granted a seigneurial charter before 1216, the borough was never incorporated, and first sent Members to Parliament in 1584. It was governed by a mayor, who was assisted by a town clerk, serjeant, and recorder. VCH Hants, iv.

Yarmouth, a fortified town and harbour near the western end of the Isle of Wight, was granted a seigneurial charter about the middle of the thirteenth century, vesting town government in the mayor. Newport and Yarmouth each sent one Member to the Model Parliament of 1295, but their representation thereafter lapsed until 1584, when both towns were fully enfranchised at the instance of the captain of the Isle, Sir George Carey†. R. Warner, Hist. I.o.W. 129; VCH Hants, v. 286-90. He nominated both Members at Yarmouth in subsequent Elizabethan elections.