6 - Towns

Summary

IN THE LATE MIDDLE Ages, towns contained nearly a fifth of England's population and were important economically to the wealth of the realm. These settlements varied considerably in size, from York, for instance, which had a population of 10,000 at the beginning of the fifteenth century, to much smaller places, such as Lydd in Kent, with only 1,000 inhabitants. The economic development of these urban centres also differed markedly, with settlements such as York, which had traditionally been considered the second most important city in the country, in decline by the fifteenth century. By contrast, towns such as Norwich and Exeter were growing in size and wealth during the same period. English towns had long been in receipt of important privileges from the crown, which provided them with limited independence from royal interference in their internal affairs. The fifteenth century saw an increase in the process of incorporation, whereby a select number of towns were able to successfully petition for important legal rights. These towns thereby acquired a legal status that allowed them a degree of self-governance, as can be seen with Southampton's charter of 1445, which stated that the settlement should henceforth have a mayor, two bailiffs and the burgesses. The Cinque Ports, a confederation of ports in the south and east of England, had long enjoyed special privileges from the crown in return for supplying fifty-seven ships for fifteen days each year at their own expense.

The rights acquired by the towns were balanced by responsibilities, notably the obligation to provide adequately for their own defence. This was an important task which could have serious consequences for civic authorities if they were thought by the king to be negligent, as occurred at Southampton in 1338 in the aftermath of a French raid, when Edward III temporarily rescinded the privileges of the town and placed it under the control of a royally appointed keeper. Security often took the form of ‘watch and ward’, which was a system whereby towns were divided into wards whose inhabitants were responsible for providing manpower for service as watchmen, guards and patrols, as well as expenditure on military equipment, such as guns. In addition a sizeable minority of English towns in the later Middle Ages possessed walls; for instance by 1520, 108 of the 249 towns with charters were walled.