Penrith

Penrith is a market town in the Eden valley, on routes between England and Scotland and the Cumbrian mountains. Its position brought trade but also exposed it to armies and raiders. Plague struck the town severely in 1597–98, adding to the hardships already familiar from earlier outbreaks and Scottish incursions. By the late seventeenth century its merchants, tanners, shoemakers and skinners had organised themselves into guilds.