Yorkshire

Under the Tudors much of the Yorkshire woollen industry migrated to the Pennines, a source of abundant water power. Pontefract – frequently pronounced Pomfret – lay just outside the principal industrial area, ‘in a very pleasant place that bringeth forth liquorice and skirrets [parsnips] in great plenty’. It contained ‘fair buildings, and hath to show a stately castle as a man shall see, situated upon a rock no less goodly to the eye than safe for the defence’. The honour of Pontefract, consisting of 18 manors reaching to the Lancashire border, was a fiefdom of the duchy of Lancaster.

Hedon was founded in the twelfth century on a haven two miles from the Humber, as a convenient point for the export of produce from Holderness. The town boasted an imposing chapel known as the ‘King of Holderness’, but in 1540 Leland noted ‘the haven is very sorely decayed’, and by the 1620s the town’s modest remaining trade was being unloaded a mile downstream at Paull.

An ecclesiastical peculiar founded by St. Wilfrid in the seventh century, Ripon returned MPs to three Parliaments under Edward I. The Crown offered representation to Ripon and five other northern boroughs in negotiations with the Pilgrims of Grace in 1536, but Ripon was only re-enfranchised in 1553, by which time the Minster estates had passed to the duchy of Lancaster; control of the liberty returned to the archbishop of York in 1556. Borough government, under a prescriptive charter only codified in 1598, was consigned to a wakeman [mayor] and around 30 aldermen.

The thriving market town of Knaresborough was subject to the manorial government of the duchy of Lancaster’s honour of Knaresborough, which covered one-third of Claro wapentake. There was ‘great resort to it in summer time by reason of the wells’ at nearby Harrogate, discovered by the Slingsby family in about 1570.

Aldborough enjoyed its heyday as the residence of Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes, and then as a Roman town, but declined after the main bridge over the river Ure was re-sited a mile upstream, at Boroughbridge, in the twelfth century.

Thirsk had returned Members to the Parliament of 1295, but was not permanently enfranchised until the reign of Edward VI, shortly after the Crown acquired former monastic property within the town.

Site of the shrine of St. John of Beverley, a former archbishop of York, Beverley had been a national centre of pilgrimage before the Reformation, and remained the chief market for wool and agricultural produce in the East Riding thereafter, while its Cross Fair attracted merchants from London and across the north of England. Its population, estimated at about 5,000 in 1600, still almost equalled that of Hull.VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), vi.

The largest port on Yorkshire’s North Sea coast, numbering about 450 households, Scarborough was governed by two bailiffs, two coroners (by convention, the retiring bailiffs), four chamberlains and 36 common councillors. VCH N. Riding, ii. 551; J.B. Baker, Hist. Scarbrough, 28, 45, 195. The corporation was dominated by merchants and shopkeepers, the most prominent of which, the Thompson family, provided one of the bailiffs at least 18 times between 1603-40; only two non-residents held municipal office during this period. From corp.

Situated on a strategic promontory where the River Swale emerges from the Pennines, Richmond was founded in 1071 as the administrative centre of the vast honour of Richmond. The town became the focal point for the distribution of corn from the Vale of York to the Dales, and for the collection of Pennine wool for export through Newcastle, Hartlepool and Hull. The town’s population reached 1,600 in 1563, but was thereafter affected by repeated plague epidemics, the worst of which, in 1597-8, carried off at least 1,050 victims.R.T. Fieldhouse and B. Jennings, Hist.

Established in the eleventh century when the bridge at Aldborough was re-sited upstream, Boroughbridge returned two Members to Parliament in 1300, and was re-enfranchised in 1553. The town was part of the duchy of Lancaster honour of Knaresborough, which was granted to Anne of Denmark and later Prince Charles, though the government interest was usually exercised by the Council in the North.Sir T. Lawson-Tancred, Recs. Yorks. Manor 3-14, 141, 174-5; A.D.K. Hawkyard, ‘Enfranchisement of constituencies, 1508-1558’, PH, x.