| Summary: | The progress of the English Revolution at a local level has already been charted in the case of several counties; events in London have been and are being subjected to close scrutiny. The provincial towns have received less attention from historians. To contemporaries, however, not merely the capital but towns in general, and especially boroughs entitled to return members to the House of Commons, were factious, refractory and potentially revolutionary. It is the aim of thi8 study to examine the reactions of a group of eight parliamentary boroughs to the issues of the period, to determine the effects of the political upheaval upon their ruling bodies and upon their relationship with the central authority, and to indicate some of the pressures and tensions to which they were subjected. Something of the extent and character of the revolution that took place in English government and society during the 1640's and 1650's can be seen from the history of these towns: so can the limits both of that revolution and. of its attempted reversal at the end of our period. Control of these boroughs was important to successive governments and some determined attempts were made to ensure co-operation from their rulers. Yet, despite some surface conformity, the Corporations remained essentially independent in their attitudes to and application of government policy. Their local governors acted empirically and were conscious of interests shared with those whom they ruled: directives from the centre, even the laws themselves, were modified in application according to local circumstances • efficient and uniform admiri1atration was hampered by such behaviour, but so was tyranny. Moreover in their determined pursuit of local privilege and local interests, the townsmen mastered sophisticated political and legal techniques with which to defend themselves in an age when their walls no longer protected them from attack.
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