Worcestershire

Situated on the Severn, with its stone bridge the focal point of four main roads, Worcester prospered during the early 16th century but was then seriously affected by the depression in the cloth industry. Between 1532 and 1558 Acts were passed to regulate the trade and to keep up standards of manufacture, and the city made payments to, among others, its Members for what they had done in this connexion. Next to cloth Worcester relied on its general trade at several weekly markets and four annual fairs.

Droitwich, or as it was more frequently called at this time Wich, had lived by salt-making from at least the early middle ages and possibly from Roman times. Situated in the Salwarpe valley, six miles north-east of Worcester, it was on the road from that city to Birmingham and could send its salt and cloth, its other main product, to Worcester with comparative ease; much of the salt was then sent down the Severn to Bristol.

Worcester’s population in 1377 has been estimated at 2,336, a figure comparable with other cathedral cities such as Exeter and Winchester. The city appears to have been fairly prosperous at this time, thanks to its importance as a distributing centre for the west midlands, which depended largely upon its bridge. At the beginning of the 14th century there had been no other place to cross the Severn between Gloucester and Bridgnorth, and by then Worcester was already the converging point of many roads, including the direct route from London to mid Wales.

Lying 15 miles south-east of Worcester, close to the borders with Gloucestershire and Warwickshire, Evesham grew up around Evesham Abbey. Though it sent representatives to Parliament in 1295 and 1337, it did not do so subsequently. VCH Worcs. ii. 371-7. Lewis Bayly, the vicar of All Saints, Evesham, since 1600, was appointed chaplain to Henry, prince of Wales soon after James’s accession, O.G. Knapp ‘Evesham Parsons’, N and Q Concerning Evesham and Four Shires ed. E.A.B. Barnard, ii. 79; T.

Droitwich, six miles north-east of Worcester, had a population of about 760 in the 1560s, rising to over 1,000 a century later. P. Clark and J. Hosking, Population Estimates of English Small Towns (Cent. for Urban Hist. Working Ppr. v), 165 It had been famous since Anglo-Saxon times for the production of salt, a trade which continued to dominate the town in the early seventeenth century, although only one brine-pit at Upwich and two in Netherwich remained in operation. Nash, i.

An inland port, Worcester benefited from trade along the Severn between Shrewsbury and Bristol, and also acted as an entrepot for the pastoral Marcher counties and the arable west Midlands. It was also a centre of the cloth industry, producing high quality broadcloth, mostly for export, and as a cathedral city and county capital it was a significant administrative centre. Between the 1560s and 1640s the population rose from around 4,000 to about 8,000.

Bewdley is situated where the River Severn meets the Forest of Wyre as it enters north-western Worcestershire. ‘Not anciently famous’, as a contemporary remarked, the town owed its rise to prominence to the construction of the bridge over the Severn in the mid-fifteenth century. The bridge wardens, who were responsible for the upkeep of bridge, managed the finances of the borough. Survey of Worcs. by Thomas Habington ed. J. Amphlett (Worcs. Hist Soc. 1893-5), i. 530-2; P. Styles, ‘Corporation of Bewdley under the later Stuarts’, in P. Styles, Studies in Seventeenth-Cent.

Bewdley, a market town situated on the Severn with a large carpet manufactory, carried on a ‘considerable trade’ in salt, glass, ironware and ‘Manchester goods’, but ‘changes in the internal navigation of the country’ increasingly deprived it of its former commercial importance.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 568; PP (1831-2), xl. 137. The representation had not been contested since 1768, when 45 freemen had polled.

Evesham, with the ‘exception of a ribbon manufactory in a declining state’, was a prosperous market town ‘most famed for the excellency’ of its vegetables and gardening.PP (1835), xxiii. 192; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1828-9), 865; Bentley’s Worcs. Dir. 14. Electoral corruption, asserted a petition presented by Lord John Russell, 17 Feb. 1831, ‘infected it like a leprosy’. C.R. Dod, Electoral Facts (1853), 113; CJ, lxxxvi.

Droitwich, an ancient market town ‘celebrated from the earliest times for its salt springs’ or ‘wiches’, produced ‘the finest and whitest salt in the kingdom’; but the municipal corporation commissioners reported that although trade had ‘very much increased’ since the repeal of the salt duty, the town ‘did not appear to be much increasing in wealth or extent’, it ‘requiring but few hands to manage the process’.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1828-9), 860; Lascelles’ Worcs. Dir. (1851), 135; PP (1831-2), xl. 127; (1835) xxiii.