East Retford did not receive a charter of incorporation until 1607, being governed during Elizabeth’s reign, as for many years past, by two bailiffs. The borough began to send Members to Parliament in this period in 1571. Elections were held in the moot hall in the presence of the bailiffs and an unknown number of burgesses. None of the Elizabethan MPs lived in the town.
Described by Leland as a ‘great market town’, Nottingham was a centre for the wool and cloth trade and celebrated for its alabaster carving. It lay not far from the Fosse Way and commanded the river Trent which provided a waterway to the Humber and the port of Kingston-upon-Hull. The castle, owned by the crown, was the meeting-place of the county court and the assizes, and housed the shire gaol: it was outside the jurisdiction of the town, which since 1449 had been a county of itself.
With an estimated population of 2,170, in 1377 Nottingham was similar in size to Northampton, larger than Derby and Newark, but smaller than Leicester. The town’s geographical position, within easy reach of the Fosse Way and commanding the waterway of Trent, which provided easy access to the Humber and the port of Kingston-upon-Hull, gave impetus to its growth as an important commercial centre. From the 13th century two fairs were regularly held there, one lasting eight days around the feast of St. Matthew, the other 15 days around that of St.
Situated on the River Idle in the north-eastern Nottinghamshire hundred of Bassetlaw, 32 miles from Nottingham, East Retford was an important market town and administrative centre, whose suburbs stretched into the neighbouring parishes of West Retford, Clarborough and Ordsall, though these lay outside the corporation’s jurisdiction.
Situated in south Nottinghamshire, a mile north of the river Trent, Nottingham was dominated by its castle perched on a rock. A. Henstock, ‘Changing Fabric of the Town, 1550-1750’, in Centenary Hist. of Nottingham ed. J. Beckett, 107. During the late Elizabethan period the borough grew rapidly, so that by the beginning of the seventeenth century it was a medium-sized town of about 3,500 people, but thereafter successive outbreaks of plague served to halt the population increase. S.
East Retford, a thriving and genteel market town in the hundred of Bassetlaw, on the border with Yorkshire, boasted hat and sailcloth manufacturing, but had been superseded by Worksop in the barley trade. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 344; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of England (1844), iii. 632; J.S.
Nottingham, the county town, was a notable centre of the expanding hosiery industry, especially in silk, cotton, bobbin-net and lace manufacturing, and benefited from several municipal improvements in the early nineteenth century. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 330-1; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of England (1844), iii.
Newark was a thriving market town on the Trent, 18 miles north-east of Nottingham and close to the border with Lincolnshire. Its staple industries of brewing and malting were supplemented in this period by recently introduced cotton manufacturing.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 327; R. Vernon, Newark before Victoria, 42-45. The corporation consisted of a mayor (the returning officer) and 12 other aldermen, chosen by themselves from the inhabitants; there were no freemen.
