1. I would like to thank Professors Seaver Paul and Dawson Philip for their encouragement and advice.

2. For the fifteenth century, see Tait, J., “The Common Council of the Borough,” English Historical Review, XLVI (1931), pp. 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jacob, E. F., The Fifteenth Century, 1399-1485 (Oxford, 1961), pp. 385–91Google Scholar; Wilkinson, B., Constitutional History of England in the Fifteenth Century (1399-1485) (London, 1964), pp. 328–30Google Scholar. For a contrary view see Bridbury, A. R., Economic Growth, England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1962), pp. 58–60Google Scholar. For Tudor England see Hoskins, W. G., “English Provincial Towns in the Early Sixteenth Century” in Provincial England (London, 1963, reprinted 1965), pp. 68–85Google Scholar, and by the same author, “The Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter” in Bindoff, S. T., et. al. (eds.), Elizabethan Government and Society (London, 1961), pp. 163–87Google Scholar.

3. Exeter serves as an outstanding and the best researched example. See MacCaffrey, Wallace T., Exeter, 1540-1640 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 21–22, 246–47Google Scholar, and Hoskins, , “Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter,” pp. 163–70Google Scholar.

4. Peter Clark and Paul Slack have suggested the continuous growth of oligarchic magistracy as the most obvious theme in English urban history from 1500 to 1700. Clark, and Slack, (eds.), Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500-1100 (London, 1972), p. 25Google Scholar. Alan Everitt tends to agree, but also stresses the urgent need for more investigation of the previously neglected trading dynasties of English towns. Everitt, , Changes in the Provinces: The Seventeenth Century (Leicester, 1969), pp. 28–29Google Scholar. Hoskins recently observed that the personnel of the urban governing classes is an “important and almost unfilled field of urban study” in Clark, and Slack, (eds.), Crisis and Order, p. viiGoogle Scholar.

5. On the basis of the 1523-27 subsidy and the number of hearths taxed in 1662, Hoskins has ranked Norwich the premier provincial town. Hoskins, , Local History in England (London, 1959), p. 177Google Scholar. The estimated population of Norwich rose from 20,000 in 1620 to 28,000 by 1690, although there were considerable fluctuations resulting from plague. See Evans, John T., “The Political Elite of Norwich, 1620-1690: Patterns of Recruitment and the Impact of National Affairs” (Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1971), pp. 359–60Google Scholar, and Corfield, Penelope, “A Provincial Capital in the Late Sixteenth Century: The Case of Norwich” in Clark, and Slacks, (eds.), Crisis and Order, pp. 236–69Google Scholar.

6. According to Clark and Slack, English towns between 1500 and 1700 may be separated into three categories, and the provincial centers which fall into “the first division of the urban league table” include Bristol, Exeter, York, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and possibly Hull in addition to Norwich. Ibid., p. 5. Hoskins makes a similar distinction in “An Elizabethan Provincial Town: Leicester” in Provincial England, pp. 86–88Google Scholar.

7. MacCaffrey, , Exeter, pp. 26–53Google Scholar. The freemen did elect the mayor, but their choice was confined to two nominees put forward by the “twenty-four” and both nominees were necessarily members of the “twenty-four” itself.

8. Latham, R. C. (ed.), Bristol Charters, 1509-1899 [Bristol Record Society, XII] (Bristol, 1947), pp. 1–19Google Scholar.

9. Howell, Roger Jr., Newcastle upon Tyne and the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1967)Google Scholar, Ch. ii. Valerie Pearl has also pointed out that in London “popular opinion … was only to a small extent reflected in the municipality” and the Lord Mayor and aldermen were “oligarchic and almost self-perpetuating,” Pearl, , London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (London, 1961), pp. 60, 67Google Scholar.

10. Tillott, P. M. (ed.), The Victoria History of Yorkshire: The City of York (London, 1961), pp. 137–38, 173–78Google Scholar.

11. The electoral procedures for selecting officeholders and the size of the freeman electorate, which grew from approximately 1,500 in 1620 to 2,100 in 1690, are discussed in Evans, , “Political Elite”, pp. 9–46, 354–59Google Scholar. From 1620 to 1628 the election of aldermen was based on seniority among ex-sheriffs and from 1620 to 1641 the nomination and election of mayors was based on seniority among aldermen who had not previously been mayor; thus these elections were merely pro forma.

12. Rev.Hudson, William and Tingey, J. C. (eds.), The Records of the City of Norwich (2 vols., Norwich, 1906–1910), I, lviii–lx, lxxi–lxxiiGoogle Scholar; Pound, John F., “The Elizabethan Corporation of Norwich, 1558-1603,” (M.A. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1962), p. 29Google Scholar; Hoskins, , “Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter,” p. 165Google Scholar.

13. Hoskins, , “Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter,” pp. 164–65Google Scholar; MacCaffrey, , Exeter, pp. 253–54Google Scholar. There was also a growing concentration of political power in the hands of a few related families in Newcastle by 1600. Howell, , Newcastle, p. 42Google Scholar. G. C. Forster has asserted that the York ruling oligarchy was largely recruited from a limited group of interrelated families, but offers no data in substantiation. V.C.H.: York, p. 181.

14. Allen, Bruce H., “The Administrative and Social Structure of the Norwich Merchant Class, 1485-1660,” (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1951), pp. 263–67Google Scholar. This supports Pound's contention that the city hierarchy married almost entirely among themselves. Pound, , “Elizabethan Corporation of Norwich,” p. 22Google Scholar.

15. In the analysis that follows, the dates 1620 and 1665 are believed to be representative; the latter date was chosen solely due to its proximity to an heraldic visitation of 1664.

16. The Norwich Assembly Books, presently in the Norfolk and Norwich Record Office, (hereafter, N.N.R.O.), list the officers of the corporation following the annual spring elections and are complete for the seventeenth century.

17. The major sources consulted to obtain genealogical data were parish registers, funeral monuments, wills, and heraldic visitations. The N.N.R.O. possesses microfilm copies of the registers of 25 of the 34 parishes; 18 of these are complete for the seventeenth century. For funeral monuments: Mackerell, Benjamin, The Monumental Inscriptions Fenestral and other Arms in the Parish Churches of Norwich (1723)Google Scholar located in BM, Add, MSS, 12,525; Rev.Farrer, Edmund, The Church Heraldry of Norfolk (3 vols., Norwich, 1887–1893)Google ScholarBlomefield, Francis, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk (11 vols., London, 1805–1810)Google Scholar. Wills of magistrates were proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (Somerset House, London), the Norwich Consistory Court, the Norfolk Archdeaconry Court, the Norwich Archdeaconry Court, and the Peculiar Court of the Dean and Chapter of Norwich (all in N.N.R.O.). Visitations were held in 1563, 1589, 1613, and 1664. See Rev.Dashwood, G. H., The Visitation of Norfolk in the Year 1563 (2 vols., Norwich, 1878)Google Scholar; Rye, Walter, The Visitations of Norfolk, 1563, 1589, and 1613 [Harleian Soc. Pub., 32] (London, 1891)Google Scholar; Campling, Arthur and Clark, A. W. Hughes (eds.), The Visitation of Norfolk, anno domini 1664 [Norfolk Rec. Soc. Pub., 4, 5] (Norwich, 1934)Google Scholar. Useful secondary works include Rye, Walter, Norfolk Families (Norwich, 1913)Google Scholar; Cozens-Hardy, Basil and Kent, Ernest A., The Mayors of Norwich, 1403-1835 (Norwich, 1938)Google Scholar; Campling, Arthur, East Anglian Pedigrees [Norfolk Rec. Soc. Pub., 13] (London, 1940)Google Scholar. Data concerning apprenticeship and freeman admissions has been taken from Millican, Percy and Rising, Winifred M. (eds.), An Index of Indentures of Norwich Apprentices Enrolled with the Norwich Assembly, Henry VII — George II [Norfolk Rec. Soc. Pub., 29] (Norwich, 1959)Google Scholar and Millican, Percy, (ed.), The Register of the Freeman of Norwich: A Transcript (Norwich, 1934)Google Scholar.

18. The same conclusion has been reached by Allen, , “Norwich Merchant Class,” pp. 267–68Google Scholar.

19. This breaks down to 72 men who served as mayor, 82 aldermen who were not elected mayor before 1690, and 37 sheriffs who were not elected to the Court of Alderman prior to 1690.

20. Of the seventeen positive ties, one was by grandfather-grandson, two were by uncle-nephew, four were by brother, and ten were by father-son.

21. Allen, , “Norwich Merchant Class”, pp. 263–64Google Scholar. Hoskins has computed that 47 Elizabethan mayors of Norwich were drawn from 29 different families. Hoskins, , “Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter,” p. 165Google Scholar.

22. N.N.R.O., A.B., 4 August, 1620. From 1546 to 1605 fourteen mayors were elected to second terms and five men served a third term. From 1620 to 1690 there was only one exception to the one-term rule: Mayor John Tooly was elected in both 1638 and 1644. In the 1640s one man held the office of deputy-mayor twice and another served once as mayor and once as deputy-mayor.

23. Hoskins and MacCaffrey provide numerous examples of this process in Exeter in Hoskins, , “Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter,” pp. 166–68Google Scholar and MacCaffrey, Exeter, pp. 257–60Google Scholar. For London see Dodd, A. H., “Mr. Myddelton the Merchant of Tower Street,” in Bindoff, S. T., et al. (eds.), Elizabethan Government, pp. 249–81Google Scholar.

24. Allen, , “Norwich Merchant Class,” pp. 272–73Google Scholar. Allen neglects to state how many mayors' fathers he could not discover, but he does conclude that from 1545 to 1605 there were more than twice as many native born as foreign born mayors.

25. Millican, Freemen of Norwich.

26. I have followed Hoskins, , “Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter,” p. 177Google Scholar in making this assumption.

27. Of the 42 mayors from 1620 to 1690 who secured their freedom by apprenticeship, 6 are known to have been born in the city, 20 were immigrants, and 16 are unknown.

28 Table II lists fourteen magistrates whose method of becoming freemen is unknown plus one magistrate granted freedom by order of the Assembly. This extrapolation concerning the magistrates of unknown origin favors the category of native born sons since there is a greater possibility of identifying the fathers of apprentices born in Norwich.

29. See Allen, , “Norwich Merchant Class”, pp. 61–70, 283–84Google Scholar for evidence of minimal vertical mobility into the merchant class from 1547 to 1660 and also Henderson, Edith, The Story of Norwich (London, 1917), pp. 203–04Google Scholar.

30. See for example, McGrath, Patrick (ed.), Merchants and Merchandise in Seventeenth-Century Bristol [Bristol Record Society, 19] (Bristol, 1955), pp. x-xi, 276–77Google Scholar, and Hoskins, , “English Provincial Towns,” pp. 74–76Google Scholar for Exeter and Leicester during the 1500s.

31. For the importance of apprenticeship for political promotion in Elizabethan Norwich, see Allen, , “Norwich Merchant Class”, pp. 264–65Google Scholar.

32. See also ibid., pp. 274-75.

33. Since the estimated average age of sheriffs and aldermen at time of election was forty-six and forty-eight respectively, the median age at death was greater than for the rest of the citizenry. Thus, few of the magistrates' families were cut short by death of husband. See Laslett, Peter, The World We Have Lost (New York, 1965), p. 100Google Scholar; and also, Laslett, and Wall, Richard, (eds.), Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 154–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Levels of fertility by social status have not yet been examined for this period.

34. Laslett suggests that there were five births for each marriage of two people in the seventeenth century and that not many more than two babies would survive to the age of twenty. World, p. 102. The number of children to survive to age twenty per father would be higher, of course, if second and third marriages were included; at least one-third of the mayors from 1620 to 1690 married more than once. Also, infant and youth mortality may well have been lower for children of magistrates than the average citizen since they were better fed, clothed, housed, cared for, and less likely to become victims of plague.

35. Allen has demonstrated that merchant movement from the city to the county was much greater in the seventeenth than in the sixteenth century. Allen, , “Norwich Merchant Class”, pp. 335–55Google Scholar. The wills of 127 of the magistrates from 1620 to 1690 have been found, and 86 mention specifically lands and tenements outside Norwich. A major problem for the Corporation was to enforce residence requirements on officeholders.

36. Additional research on the activities of the sons of magistrates is needed before an estimate of the percentage of older sons who left the city can be made. Evidence from wills and visitations, however, leaves the impression that the percentage would be significant. Allen has determined that for the period 1485 to 1660, 131 mayors had 168 sons living at the date of their death and only 113 of these (less than one per mayor) became city tradesmen. Ibid., p. 273. Hoskins, , in “English Provincial Towns,” p. 76Google Scholar, has suggested that successful families rarely remained in a town for more than three generations and Pound agrees that this was true of Elizabethan Norwich. Pound, , “Elizabethan Corporation of Norwich”, pp. 28–29Google Scholar.

37. The importance of marriage in establishing personal fortunes has already been stressed. Hoskins, , “Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter,” pp. 167, 177Google Scholar.

38. The “Composition of 1415” in Hudson, and Tingey, (eds.), Records of … Norwich, I, 93 ff.Google Scholar

39. For further discussion of constitutional requirements for office and modifications introduced during the seventeenth century, see Evans, “Political Elite”, ch. vi.

40. See ibid., pp. 381-84. The fixed fee farm rent was a remnant of medieval days; originally it was the sum owed by the sheriffs to the crown for the right to the proceeds of the royal demesne and the profits of justice.

41. These tax rolls or copies of them are currently in the N.N.R.O. The 1645 and 1660 subsidies are complete, but the 1665 rate for the repair of the walls excluded the suburbs with the exception of Pockthorpe. The act of Parliament authorizing the first assessment was passed on 15 February, 1644/45 and the second may be found in Statutes of the Realm (London, 1963), V, 207–25, 277–82Google Scholar: 12 Car. II, c. 9 and 28.

42. The accuracy of the sums assessed in 1645 cannot be verified, and it is assumed that the Norwich assessors complied with the instructions specified in the 1660 statute to review rates carefully and tax individuals and estates to their full value.

43. This is based on a comparison of partial parochial returns for a 1665 militia tax, which list separate assessments on personal and real estate for 22 of the 34 parishes, with the 1665 tax for the repair of the walls. N.N.R.O., Militia Assessments, 1665. Corresponding data concerning the two assessments may be found in Evans, , “Political Elite”, pp. 417–18Google Scholar.

44. Some women were taxed, but are omitted from this analysis. The compiler of the rolls in 1660 omitted from his copy all individuals assessed less than 2 shillings, and at the end of the list of names for each parish is the item “in single polls” followed by the amount collected on this basis. More than £245 of the total of £1495 19s 10d was attributed to “single polls.” A complete breakdown of these assessments and the rate for the repair of the walls may be found in Evans, ibid., pp. 534-50 or supplied by the author.

45. The statute authorizing the 1660 subsidy ordered the compilers to be very careful about titles of status and to provide the occupations of professional men. The tax rolls of 1645 were much less discriminating in the use of “Mr.” and included many townsmen and councilmen in this category. Adjustments have been made for this by checking all men listed as “Mr.” or “Esq.” with lists of office-holders and with the Solemn League and Covenant subscriptions and a rate for the river and streets in 1649, which did not title townsmen and councilmen as “Mr.”. These lists are located in the N.N.R.O.

46. The determination that the freeman constituted about 30 per cent of the male population over the age of 25 is based on the known total population of 28,876 in 1693, Laslett's estimate of around twenty-five as the median age of townsmen in the late 1600, and an estimated freeman populace of 2,100 in 1690. Laslett, , World, p. 103Google Scholar. Estimates of the size of the freeman populace at ten year intervals may be found in Evans, , “Political Elite,” pp. 355–59Google Scholar. This ratio of freemen to non-freemen may have varied for earlier periods, but this cannot be verified. MacCaffrey has also determined that in Exeter between 1620 and 1640 the freemen constituted only a substantial minority of the population. MacCaffrey, , Exeter, pp. 73, 164Google Scholar.

47. The 1660 statute required knights, esquires, present or past aldermen who were not esquires, doctors, lawyers, and wealthy vicars to contribute £20, £10, £5, £10, £5, and £2 respectively. In the 1660s all aldermen who had held the office of mayor were automatically elevated to the status of esquire.

48. Rye, Walter (ed.), The Norwich Rate Book, Easter 1633 to Easter 1634 (n.p., 1903)Google Scholar. It should also be pointed out that Alderman Richard Harman was taxed only 3 shillings for personal estate in 1645, but he apparently had moved most of his belongings to London after sitting in the Long Parliament for five years and his will, dated in 1646, exhibits considerable wealth. London, Somerset House, Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Wills Proved, 49 Fines.

49. 116 citizens were taxed 8 shillings or more for personal estate in 1645 and 22 of them were either aldermen or ex-sheriffs who, consequently, were not eligible for a second term as sheriff. In 1660, 148 citizens were taxed £1 or more and 32 of them had already been sheriffs. Adjustments in these figures must be made for the wealthy townsmen who had compounded from the shrievalty, a practice which increased after 1660. See Evans, , “Political Elite”, pp. 384–89Google Scholar.

50. Only 7 of the 61 sheriffs elected from 1620 to 1650 had no experience in the Common Council; 51 of the sheriffs were councilmen on the date of their election.

51. Both sheriffs of 1645 were assessed 12 shillings for personal estate; 15 councilmen were taxed this amount or more for personal estate in this subsidy.

52. This is determined by counting the number of councilmen in 1660 and 1665 who were taxed the same as or more than the sums assessed sheriffs (Tables VI and VII).

53. As will be shown in a forthcoming work, the issues that divided Puritan and Anglican, Roundhead and Cavalier, Presbyterian and Independent, and Whig and Tory in matters of national politics also split the Norwich community into rival groups and had a strong impact on local elections. In addition, from 1649 to 1653 officeholders were required to subscribe the Engagement and the Corporation Act of 1661 required all officeholders to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, subscribe against the Covenant, and accept the Anglican sacrament. In 1682/83, when Norwich received a new charter from Charles II, the Crown reserved the first appointment of officeholders and the power to nullify the election of any man it disapproved of.

54. N.N.R.O., A.B., 4 August 1620. In the 21 aldermanic elections from 1628 to 1639, for example, the number of available past and present sheriffs varied from 12 to 18; the number of available sheriffs for aldermanic elections dwindled in the 1640s with the higher rate of aldermanic turnover.

55. All of these aldermen were among the wealthier half of the councilmen on the basis of tax on personal estate in 1645.

56. N.N.R.O., Norwich Charter of 1663.

57. Of the eleven aldermen who had not been sheriff, nine were councilmen on the date of their election.

58. Pound, J. F., “The Social and Trade Structure of Norwich 1525-1575,” Past and Present, 34 (July, 1966), pp. 49–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. MacCaffrey, , Exeter, pp. 247–52Google Scholar.

60. Howell, , Newcastle, pp. 14–18Google Scholar; V.C.H.: York, p. 180.

61. Hoskins, , Local History in England, pp. 94–95Google Scholar.

62. McGrath, , Merchants and Merchandise, pp. ix, xxv–xxviGoogle Scholar. Of 105 mayors from 1600 to 1700, at least 69 were merchant venturers; of 116 aldermen, 65 were merchant venturers. Of the Bristol Common Council of 1643, which consisted of forty members, twenty-eight were merchant venturers and included the mayor, both sheriffs, and nine of eleven aldermen. McGrath, Patrick (ed.), Records Relating to the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol in the Seven-teenth Century [Bristol Record Society, XVII], (Bristol, 1952), p. xxviiiGoogle Scholar.

63. Hoskins, , “Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter,” p. 165Google Scholar. Almost all of Exeter's mayors and sheriffs were merchants and only one family in twenty was a merchant family.

64. V.C.H.: York, p. 179.

65. Howell, , Newcastle, pp. 46–47Google Scholar.

66. Hoskins, , “Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter,” pp. 165–66Google Scholar. Over 90 per cent of the Elizabethan mayors of Exeter were merchants, whereas at Norwich around 70 per cent of the mayors were chosen from the merchant ranks, and diverse other trades were represented.

67. Pound, , “Social and Trade Structure of Norwich,” pp. 49–69Google Scholar.

68. H.M.C., Portland MSS, 13th R., ii, 270.

69. Resident gentry, doctors, lawyers, and clerics have been omitted from these calculations.

70. Pound, , “Elizabethan Corporation of Norwich,” p. 128Google Scholar.

71. This implies that the grocers, merchants, mercers, drapers, and hosiers maintained their prestige in the face of a stagnant or perhaps decreasing market by admitting fewer and fewer freemen.

72. The determination of magistrates' occupations is based mostly on Millican, Freemen, and the wills of the magistrates. They have been checked with data from miscellaneous original sources and an anonymous, apparently early eighteenth-century listing of Norwich sheriffs and mayors in Bodleian, Tanner MSS, 396, fols. 17-40. This list includes the occupations of only a few magistrates before 1650, but it is more reliable than the more complete list of sheriffs and mayors and their occupations compiled by Mackerell in the eighteenth century. N.N.R.O., MSS. 78, 79: Mackerell, Benjamin, “History of Norwich,” (1737)Google Scholar. Cozens-Hardy and Kent, Mayors of Norwich, is also useful but is limited to mayors and contains a number of errors. A listing of the occupations of recruited magistrates by decade 1620 to 1690 may be found in Evans, , “Political Elite,” p. 563Google Scholar.

73. For these determinations, the beerbrewers and brewers, woolen drapers and drapers, and haberdashers of small wares and haberdashers have been combined. York and Norwich reveal similarities: the mayoralty of York from 1603 to 1701 was filled by men of 15 different trades and the shrievalty by men of 27 trades. V.C.H.: York, pp. 179-80. Nevertheless, over 50 per cent of York's mayors and almost 50 per cent of its sheriffs were merchants, whereas no trade in Norwich accounted for more than 30 per cent of the mayoralty or more than 20 per cent of the shrievalty.

74. Pound, , “Elizabethan Corporation of Norwich,” pp. 12, 138–48Google Scholar. There were 44 mayoral terms and 31 men held the office of mayor; the remaining 13 terms were held by men serving a second or third term.

75. Ibid., p. 128. The grocers alone accounted for one-third of the Common Council, 40 per cent of both the sheriffs and aldermen, and 43 per cent of the mayors.

76. Of the thirteen trades in which at least three men were taxed 6 shillings or more for personal estate in 1645, ten had at least one member who entered the magistracy between 1630 and 1660. Of the sixteen trades in which at least three men were taxed 10 shillings or more in 1665, twelve had at least one member who entered the magistracy between 1650 and 1680.

77. Two percentages are given to allow for 14 of the 95 wealthiest men in 1645 whose trades are unknown. The trades with the largest number of wealthy men were the grocers (16), worsted weavers (13), hosiers (11), mercers (8), drapers (6), and merchants (5). They provided 14, 13, 6, 5, 3, and 8 recruits respectively.

78. The trades with the largest number of wealthy men in 1665 were the worsted weavers (18), grocers (11), hosiers (9), merchants (6), drapers (4), mercers (3), and brewers (3), and they provided 21, 13, 6, 8, 2, 3, and 4 recruits respectively.

79. Hoskins is correct that the occupations of the mayors reveal the dominant trades in terms of incomes produced, at least as far as Norwich is concerned. But if a cursus honorum existed, as in both Norwich and Exeter, then the occupations of magisterial recruits give a better indication chronologically of the changing economic trends than the occupations of mayors.

80. In 1645, between 40 and 47 per cent of the 95 wealthiest men were in distributive trades whereas in 1665 between 36 and 41 per cent of the 74 wealthiest men were members of distributive trades.

81. The decline of the grocers is especially marked if the occupations of the new magistrates and mayors from 1660 to 1690 is compared with Pound's figures for the Elizabethan period: only 20 per cent of the mayors and 14 per cent of the new magistrates from 1660 to 1690 were grocers in contrast to 40 per cent a century before.

82. Four sheriffs between 1675 and 1680 were brewers, three aldermen elected in 1678 and 1679 were brewers, and the mayors of 1676 and 1678 were brewers.

83. Humphrey Prideaux wrote: “The truth is, this town swarms with alehouses, every other house is almost one, and every one of them they tell is also a bawdy house. The brewers of late, having several of them succeeded in the mayor's office, have increased the numbers of these houses for their own advantage; which proving of very mischievous consequence to the place, this Mayor has set himself to redress it, and, as becomes an honest and good magistrate, hath reduced them to a more tolerable number.” Letter of Humphrey Prideaux to John Ellis, 19 December, 1681 in Thompson, Edmund Maunde (ed.), Letters of Humphrey Prideaux, [Camden Society] (London, 1875), pp. 120–1Google Scholar. The brewers took their complaint against Bokenham to the Commissioners of the Excise, and Mayor Bokenham had to travel to London to defend his actions before the Privy Council.

84. See Howell, , Newcastle, pp. 337–43Google Scholar and Clark, and Slack, , Crisis and Order, p. 25Google Scholar. The Civil War in Newcastle brought to an end one oligarchy based on trade only to have another established.

85. Evans, “Political Elite”, passim. The nature of this political and religious controversy and its impact on Norwich civic life will be the subject of a forthcoming work.

86. Ibid., pp. 475-82.

87. Clark, and Slack, , Crisis and Order, pp. 21–22Google Scholar.

88. Cf. Plumb, J. H., “The Growth of the Electorate in England from 1600 to 1715,” Past and Present 45 (November, 1969), p. 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89. In Bristol, it appears that the Society of Merchant Venturers regulated the city government rather than vice versa. McGrath, (ed.), Merchant Venturers of Bristol, pp. xxviii–xxxGoogle Scholar.