Haslemere was a ‘tithing’ in the manor of Godalming, which came into the hands of the Crown in Edward VI’s reign. Anthony Browne Viscount Montagu was its steward from 1553 until his death in 1592. Though a Catholic, Montagu was trusted and rewarded by the Queen, being one of the commissioners for the trial of Mary Stuart in 1586, serving against the Armada in 1588, and entertaining the Queen at Cowdray in 1591.
Guildford had been incorporated in the middle ages and was governed by a mayor, ‘approved men’, and the guild of merchants. In 1559 Henry, 12th Earl of Arundel, held the office of high steward. On his death in 1580, Edward Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln, was elected but died within five years. The corporation then chose Charles Howard I, Lord Howard of Effingham.
At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign the borough of Gatton was owned by the Copley family and patronage there was in the hands of Sir Roger Copley’s widow. Thomas Copley, her son, who had already represented Gatton in 1554 and 1558, returned himself in 1559 and 1563. It is not known how Thomas Farnham, a Leicestershire country gentleman and a court of wards official, came to be returned for Gatton in 1559. Sir Robert Lane (1563) was Thomas Copley’s brother-in-law from Northamptonshire.
Bletchingley formed part of the possessions of Sir Thomas Cawarden, who died in 1559. It was sold by his executors in 1560 to William Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Effingham, in whose family it remained for the rest of this period.CPR, 1558-60, p. 364.
To prevent criminals evading arrest and trial in London merely by flight across the Thames to Southwark, Edward III had given the bailiwick to the City in 1327. Although the City’s jurisdiction was repeatedly challenged, it obtained a confirmation in 1406 from Henry IV who empowered its officials to make arrests within the borough and to try the arrested: he also conceded the return of writs, precepts and mandates to its agents
The market town of Reigate was a mesne borough controlled by successive lords of the manor. The burgesses had no court of their own but attended the court leet of the manor where their bailiffs, constables and fishtasters were elected. On the death of Lady Anne Mowbray in 1481 the manor was divided between her four coheirs. The 1st Duke of Norfolk’s share escheated to the crown in 1485 but those of the Berkeleys and the Wingfields and that of Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, were acquired by his descendants early in the 16th century.
Guildford owed its commercial pre-eminence in Surrey to its position on the Great Way, at a gap in the chalk ridge traversing the county where there was a fording place across the river Wey. It was the county town and its castle served as the gaol for both Surrey and Sussex. The medieval palace was repaired by Henry VIII who was a frequent visitor, and it was there that in 1545 the Duke of Suffolk died.
In 1539 the 3rd Duke of Norfolk included Gatton in a list of boroughs where ‘in times past I could have made burgesses of Parliament’, but in this he was mistaken. One of his Mowbray predecessors had let the manor during Henry VI’s reign to John Timperley, whose son conveyed the remainder of the lease to the Copley family; the Copleys later bought the manor.
The manor of Bletchingley belonged to the 3rd Duke of Buckingham until his attainder in 1521 when it escheated to the crown. In July 1522 Henry VIII granted it to his master of the horse Sir Nicholas Carew, who in 1539 was himself executed for treason. In 1540 the King settled it on Anne of Cleves, who made Thomas Cawarden keeper, and six years later he granted the reversion to Cawarden. Cawarden took up residence at once and paid rent for his occupancy to Anne of Cleves until her death in 1557.
Although Southwark cannot properly be described as a suburb of London until 1550, its earlier history was inseparably bound up with that of the City. It owed its very existence as a bridgehead settlement, founded by the Romans during the first century AD, to the establishment of a military and trading centre on the other bank of the Thames; and London’s subsequent expansion was reflected in the rapid development of Southwark as a residential area and market town.
