AD 1500-1750 Early modern

Much of south-west England was agricultural, but during this period its many small ports meant that it benefited from England’s development as a maritime nation. Ports like Bristol and Exeter took advantage of new trade routes opened up to the southern Mediterranean, Africa and the New World. Cornish ports prospered from fishing and exporting tin, still a major industry.

The famous seafarers of Elizabeth’s reign, Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh, came from a group of Devon families whose privateering as far as South America made fortunes for them. Ships and men were regularly recruited for England’s wars with France and Spain in south-western ports, and ‘ship money’ was levied, a tax ports paid for protection by the navy. In the 17th century AD, Plymouth became a major naval base under Charles II.

The South West had a tradition of independence which showed itself in the religious conflicts of the period. Thousands of ordinary people from Devon and Cornwall died in the Western Rising of 1549, against the imposition of Edward VI’s Protestant Prayer Book, evangelic ‘gentry rule’ and economic hardship. In the Civil Wars of the 17th century, most of the South West was for the king, but Plymouth was a Puritan stronghold that held out for Parliament.