HISTORY OF THE BOROUGH AND LIBERTY OF IPSWICH. IPSWICH, the capital of Suffolk, and the largest market-town and port in the county, is an ancient borough and liberty, holding a pleasant and salubrious situation, mostly on the north-east side of the Gipping, at the point where that navigable river assumes the name of Orwell, and begins to expand into a broad estuary, which terminates in the German Ocean, at Harwich, about 13 miles S.E. of the town, which is distant 69 miles N.E. of London, 20 miles N.E. of Colchester, 25 miles S.E. by E. of Bury St. Edmunds, 54 miles S.S.W. of Yarmouth, 8 miles W.S.W. of Woodbridge, and 43 miles S. of Norwich; being in 52 deg. 3 min. north latitude, and in 1 deg. 9 min. east longitude. It is in the line of the Eastern Counties Railway, which is completed from London to Colchester, and is to be extended to Norwich. It suffered considerably during the greater part of last century, from the loss of its ancient staple manufacture of woollen cloth and canvass; but being favourably seated for commerce, it has risen rapidly in wealth, population, and importance, during the present century, in which it has increased its population from 10,402, to upwards of 25,000 souls. In 1793, the Gipping was made navigable for barges to Stowmarket, and the commerce of Ipswich has since been facilitated by various improvements in the navigation of the Orwell, and in 1842, by the completion of a Wet Dock, formed in the old channel of the river, and presenting a floating surface of 32 acres, with a depth of 14 feet of water; a Lock, 140 feet in length, and 45 feet in breadth; and a line of Quay, 2780 feet long, and 30 broad. The Borough of Ipswich, anciently called Gyppeswic, from its situation at the confluence of the river Gipping with the Orwell, sends two representatives to Parliament, and is a polling place, and the principal place of election for the Eastern Division of Suffolk. It forms an Union under the new poor law, and gives name to a Deanery in the Archdeaconry of Suffolk and Diocese of Norwich. It has a separate commission of the peace, a recorder, courts of record, requests, &c., quarter and petty sessions, and a gaol for felons, misdemeanors, and debtors, distinct from those of the county and hundreds; and it also claims an admiralty jurisdiction over the whole extent of the Orwell, from the town to Pollshead, on the Andrews Sand, in the Ocean, beyond the cliffs of Walton and Felixstow. Though Ipswich has always been considered the capital of the county of Suffolk, the Assizes were held at Bury St. Edmunds, till 1839, since which year the Summer Assize has been held here, and the Spring Assize at Bury. Except Stoke, and some other small suburbs on the opposite banks, Ipswich is situated on a declivity, with a southern aspect, declining by an easy descent E to the Orwell and the Gipping, and sheltered on the north-east by gently-rising grounds and verdant hills, picturesquely studded with neat villas, gardens, and pleasure grounds, among which, close to the north side of the town, is Christ Church Park, well clothed with wood and stocked with deer. The sub-soil being sand, crag, or gravel, the town is dry and healthy, but it is well supplied with water, from about 50 copious springs, in the neighbouring hills. It contains twelve parish churches; and within the limits of the borough are the villages and churches of Whitton and Westerfield, distant about two miles north of the town. The Liberty of Ipswich is co-extensive with the Borough, and comprises about 8450 acres, bounded by the Hundreds of Bosmere-and-Claydon, Samford, Colneis, and Carlford, and extending about five miles in length, and four in breadth; with the town nearly in the centre. Besides the twelve parishes into which the town extends, the borough comprises nearly the whole of Whitton and Westerfield, some small portions of four other parishes, and five extraparochial places, as will be seen in the following Table and Notes, shewing the annual value of the lands and buildings in each parish, as assessed to the property tax in 1815, and the population of each at the five decennial periods of the parliamentary census :— The annual value of the town, in 1837, was £55,979. 10s. St. Clement's includes Fore Hamlet, Back Hamlet, Wykes Bishop, and Warren House. The latter is EXTRA-PAROCHIAL; as also are, Cold Dunghills and Felaw's Houses, in St. Margaret's; the Shire Hall yard, in St. Mary's at Quay; and several houses in Globe lane, included with St. Mary at Tower. S St. Matthew's population, in 1841, included 308 in the Queen's Barracks ; St. Peter's, 191 in the Union Workhouse; and Whitton, 116 in the County Gaol; but the latter is mostly in St. Helen's, St. Margaret's, and St, Stephen's parishes. Westerfield and Whitton parishes are in the country, but mostly within the liberty of the borough, which also includes some small portions of the parishes of Sproughton, Bramford, Rushmere, and Belstead. The number of houses in the borough, in 1841, was 5776; of which 322 were uninhabited, and 241 were building, when the census was taken. The number of males was 11,824, and females, 13,430. IPSWICH UNION comprises the fourteen parishes_enumerated in the foregoing table, and forms a REGISTRATION DISTRICT, of which Mr. Thos. Grimsey is superintendent registrar; Mr. Jas. O. Francis, registrar of marriages; and Messrs. Wm. Hutchinson, Henry Watson, and Geo. J. Harmer, are registrars of births and deaths. Mr. Grimsey is also clerk to the Board of Guardians. The UNION WORKHOUSE, on the Wherstead road, near the west bank of the Orwell, is an extensive brick building, erected about five years ago, on the radiating plan, with the governor's house in the centre, commanding a view of all the wards. It cost upwards of £6000, and has accommodations for 400 paupers. Mr. Robert Clamp is the governor, and Mrs. Clamp the matron. The total expenditure of the fourteen parishes, for the relief of the poor, during the three years before they were united, averaged about £13,000 per annum, but it has since averaged only about £10,000 per annum. In March, 1843, there were 330 paupers in the workhouse, who were fed and clothed at the average weekly cost of 2s. 94d. per head; and during the preceding three months, no fewer than 2090 out-door paupers were relieved, at the cost of £1675. 16s. ld. The Borough Rates paid by the fourteen parishes, in the same quarter of the year 1843, amounted to £1215. 12s. 7d. ANCIENT HISTORY.-As already noticed, Ipswich derives its name from its situation at the point where the river Gipping discharges itself into the Orwell. It is variously written in Domesday Book Gyppeswik, Gyppeswiz, Gyppewicus, and, Gyppewic, which mode of spelling was gradually changed into Yppyswyche and Ipswich. It was of small extent in the Saxon era, and was encompassed by a rampart or wall, which was defended on the outside by a ditch, and was broken down by the Danes when they pillaged the town, in the years 991 and 1000. This fortification was afterwards renewed and repaired in the fifth of King John. A castle is said to have been erected here by William the Conqueror, and to have been destroyed in the reign of Henry II. In the rampart or wall which encompassed the town, were four gates, called from their situation after the four cardinal points of the compass; and we also read of a fifth, called Losegate, which stood on the bank of the Orwell, at the spot where there once was a ford. All vestiges of the wall, gates, and castle disappeared many years ago; but there are still some traces of the ditch and the earthen rampart on which the wall stood, from which it appears that the parishes of St. Clement, St. Helen, and St. Mary Stoke, with part of those of St. Margaret and St. Matthew, were not included within the gates, and are, accordingly, in old writings, denominated the suburbs of Ipswich. The castle was perhaps merely a bastion tower, which stood in the place still called the Tower Ditches. As early as A.D. 964, money was coined here, and specimens are extant of coins struck at a mint here, from that period to the reign of Henry III. Being remotely situated from the great lines of communication through the kingdom, Ipswich did not suffer much from the intestine wars which so frequently ravaged England from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. The town, in conjunction with the neighbouring country, espoused the cause of the sons of Henry II.; and during the contest between these rebels and their royal father, a large army of Flemings, in 1173, headed by Robert de Bellomont, Earl of Leicester, sailed up the Orwell, and landed at this port, whence they passed to Framlingham castle, the stronghold of Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who had joined the rebel princes. The feeble garrison of Ipswich vainly opposed the entrance of the Flemings, who demolished the fortifications. They afterwards attacked the castle of Haughley, near Stowmarket, then commanded by Ralph Broc, for the king, and razed it to the earth. Flushed with victory, they passed westward to Fornham St. Genevieve, where they were completely routed by the king's forces, under Henry de Bohun, and ten thousand of them slain. This battle completely destroyed the hopes of the rebels, and it has been conjectured that some of the Flemings, spared from the wreck of Leicester's army, purchased their lives and subsistence by locating in this part of the kingdom, and instructing the inhabitants in the manufacture of jersey, or worsted stuffs, which had been introduced at Norwich, by some of their countrymen, in the preceding reign. Before, and for many years after the Norman Conquest, Ipswich was in the same condition as all other boroughs that were in the demense of the crown. For some time anterior to the Domesday survey, it appears to have been rapidly declining. "In the time of King Edward," (the Confessor,) says that document, "there were 538 burgesses who paid custom to the king, and they had forty acres of land. But now there are 110 burgesses who pay custom, and 100 poor burgesses, who can pay no more than one penny a head to the king's geld. Thus, upon the whole, they have forty acres of land, and 328 houses now empty, and which, in the time of King Edward, scotted to the king's geld. Roger, the vice-earl, let the whole for £40; afterwards he could could not have that rent, and abated sixty shillings of it, so that it now pays £37, and the earl always hath the third part." We are also informed by the same ancient record, that during the reign of Edward the Confessor, his queen Edith, the daughter of Earl Godwin, had two-thirds of this borough, and Earl Guert, the sixth son of the same nobleman, possessed the remaining third. The queen had a grange, to which belonged four carucates of land, and the earl another, valued at one hundred shillings, besides the third penny of the borough. In the reign of Richard I., the inhabitants had so much increased in numbers and wealth, that they purchased their freedom from that monarch. The first charter obtained by the town, was granted by King John, in 1190, and conferred on the inhabitants important privileges, some of which strikingly illustrate the oppressions under which the mass of the people must, in those early ages, have groaned. By this charter, the king granted to the burgesses, the borough of Ipswich, with all its appurtenances, liberties, &c., to be held of him and his heirs, by the payment of the usual annual farm of £35, and one hundred shillings more at the exchequer. He exempted them from the payment of all taxes, under the denominations of tholl, lestage, stallage, passage, pontage, and all other customs throughout his land and sea-ports. The other privileges granted to the people of Ipswich by this charter were as follows:-That they should have a merchants' guild and hanse of their own; that no person should be quartered upon them without their consent, or take anything from them by force; that they might hold their lands, and recover their just dues, from whomsoever they were owing; that none of them should be fined or amerced but according to the laws of the free borough; and that they might choose two bailiffs and four coroners out of the principal men of the town. As early as 1254, a court of pleas was esta blished here for the trial of disputed debts, without the king's writ. Ipswich was not the theatre of any of the violent commotions which arose from the quarrels between King John and his barons; but it passively contributed about £300 to the tax or "quinzieme," which he levied in the seventh year of his reign. In 1215, the duty levied on woad, (used in dyeing,) amounted in Suffolk, to £50; Yorkshire, hood. £40 to £60 per annum. it appears that Ipswich then enjoyed a considerable share of the woollen to £96; Lincolnshire, to £47; and Southamptonshire, to £79: thus royal charters, and the monasteries founded in the town and neighbour. manufacture, which was introduced by the Flemings, and fostered by Edward I., in 1285, for some offence committed by the burgesses, seized the borough into his own hands, and kept it till 1291, when, being pleased with the service performed by some ships from Ipswich, liberties to the burgesses, and confirmed the charters of his predecesin his expedition against Scotland, he re-granted the borough and its sors, John and Henry III.; but he advanced the fee farm rent from firming the former privileges of the borough, but reducing the number 11. to assist him in his wars against Scotland, and in the defence of of coroners from four to two. The oppressive levies made by Edward his favourites, the De Spencers, caused much dissension in the kingdom; and, in 1324, a great riot broke out in Ipswich, headed by the representatives of the borough, and many of the principal inhabitants. In 1328, a powerful fleet was collected on the coast of Suffolk, to assist Edward III. in his designs upon France, for which kingdom Sir John on a visit at Walton, in 1339, confirmed the charters of Ipswich, and Howard embarked 500 men, at Ipswich, in 1337. Edward III. being granted further immunities; but, in 1345, for some time disfranchised the borough, on account of an insult received here, at the assizes, by a judge named Sharford, from some sailors, who thinking his lordship staid too long at dinner, one of them, in a frolic, took his seat upon the bench, and caused another to make proclamation, requiring Willia:n Sharford to come into court and save his fine; and as he did not appear, ordered him to be fined. The judge, who was a morose man, so prehend the sailors, he prevailed upon the king to seize the borough, highly resented this joke, that because the magistrates refused to apand to place it under the government of the sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk; but before the end of the year, it was again under the conHenry VI., by a charter in the 24th year of his reign, (1445,) in In 1317, Edward II. granted a charter, con trol of the bailiffs. corporated the authorised them and ale. town by the style of the burgesses of Ipswich. He annually to elect two burgesses as bailiffs, at the ac He customed time and place, to hold that office for one whole year. narch granted and additions: all the privileges mentioned in it, with these alterations -He incorporated the town by the name of the bailiffs, burgesses, and commonalty, of the town of Ipswich; he confined the election of bailiffs expressly to the 8th of September, in the Guildhall, to serve for One year; and he expressly exempted the burgesses from |