Dorset

Shaftesbury, ‘a great market toune stondinge on a highe hille’, occupies a prominent position with precipitous slopes on all but the north-eastern side. Its name suggests that it was a fortified settlement from its beginning, some time in the ninth century. Situated in the northern extremity of Dorset, close to the border with Wiltshire and on the great road from Cornwall to London, it attracted considerable traffic, which was augmented by pilgrims visiting the tenth-century shrine of King Edward the Martyr in the Benedictine abbey.

Melcombe Regis, which is situated on the north bank of the Wey estuary and in the parish of Radipole, was founded in the 13th century. Unlike Weymouth, which lies on the opposite bank, it became a crown borough, receiving its charter from Edward I in 1280. This entitled the inhabitants to all liberties enjoyed by the citizens of London. Other privileges followed: in 1314 the burgesses were granted a weekly market and a fair at the feast of the Translation of St.

The history of Lyme Regis in the later Middle Ages is one of decline and depopulation. The town had been fairly prosperous in the 13th and early 14th centuries, with an economy based on fishing and the sale of cloth and salt.

Despite its status as the county town of Dorset, Dorchester failed to keep abreast of other market towns in the shire not only in size and prosperity, but also in terms of progress towards administrative independence. Whereas in 1253 Bridport had received a royal charter of incorporation, and the men of Wareham had long held their town at farm, the royal borough of Dorchester appears to have gained little in the way of privilege from the Crown until the 14th century.

The size of the population of Bridport in this period is not recorded, but the town may have been bigger than Dorchester. Although it had but one parish church, and in 1319 there were living there only 180 burgesses, of whom the richest held possessions worth no more than £4 8s., Bridport seems to have grown in prosperity subsequently.

Originally a Roman settlement, Dorchester returned two Members to the Model Parliament, and received its first charter in 1337. It was described in 1610 as ‘an ancient and populous borough where the assizes for the county are usually holden, and whither the knights and gentlemen of the shire do often repair upon sundry occasions of service of the king’s majesty and the county’, including the Dorset elections. As the shire town, it housed the county gaol, rebuilt in 1624. It also boasted a free school, a bookseller, and, from around 1631, a municipal library. D.

Bridport received its first charter in 1253, and was represented in the Model Parliament. Cordage and linen thread formed the town’s staple products, and the Act of 1529 requiring local farmers to sell all their hemp there was among the statutes renewed in 1624 and 1628. Though Bridport hosted the Dorset quarter sessions until its incorporation in 1619, and was home to nearly 1,500 communicants, its houses were ‘more old than fair’, and its harbour ‘altogether choked with the sands’ by the early seventeenth century.Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 7; T.

Shaftesbury received its first charter in 1252, and sent two Members to the Model Parliament. A survey of 1615 described the borough as lying between ‘a deep country full of pasture, yielding plenty of well-fed beeves, muttons, and milch-kine, and … a high champion country, yielding store of corn, sheep, and wool; so the town is made a great vent for the commodities on either part’.

Christchurch, a small coastal town of no economic significance, had never received a royal charter. Its municipal officers were not far removed from manorial officials, and such self-government as it possessed rested on the tacit agreement of the lord of the manor.VCH Hants, v. 86-89. It first sent representatives to Parliament in 1571.

A substantial medieval town, Wareham was important enough to begin sending representatives to Parliament in 1302. However, by the early seventeenth century it had long been superseded as a port by Poole, and was noted chiefly for ‘fair houses inhabited as much by gentlemen almost as by tradesmen’. The continuing existence of five parishes attested to its former prosperity, but these benefices now provided only a meagre living for most of the incumbents. OR.; T. Gerard, Survey of Dorset, 57; Procs. Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc. lxxv.