Westmorland

Although of considerable importance as a defensive site during the early Middle Ages, Appleby played a less vital strategic role after it was destroyed by the Scots in the 1170s; and by our period the combined effects of disease, depopulation, economic recession and war had taken a heavy toll.Later Recs. N. Westmld. ed.

Situated in the north of Westmorland, Appleby received its first royal charter in the late twelfth century, and sent two Members to the Model Parliament.M. Weinbaum, Brit. Bor. Charters, 118; M.W. Holdgate, Hist. Appleby, 22-3, 26. Geographically and politically dominated by its castle, one of the many homes of the Clifford earls of Cumberland and hereditary sheriffs of Westmorland, the town had, by the early Stuart period, been outstripped by Kendal, both as an economic and administrative centre.Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. xi.

Appleby, Westmorland’s assize and county town, was a castellated pocket borough on the River Eden, in the parishes of St. Lawrence and St. Michael, 13 miles south-east of Penrith. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), i.