The original settlement of Wyke or Wyke upon Hull was probably established by the Cistercian monastery of Meaux a few miles further up the River Hull to provide a port for the distribution of the abbey's wool. The strategic need for a Northern port sufficiently south of the Scottish border to be secure caused Edward I of England, fighting his campaigns in Scotland, to plant a new planned town on the site. This was the King's town upon Hull or Kingston upon Hull. The associated royal charter, dated April 1, 1299 remains preserved in Hull's Guildhall Archives. 

The charter of 1440 constituted Kingston upon Hull a corporate town and granted that instead of a Mayor and Baliffs there should be a Mayor, Sheriff and twelve Aldermen who should be Justices of the Peace within the town and county.

Hull was a major port during the Later Middle Ages and its merchants traded widely to ports in Northern Germany and the Baltic region and the Low Countries. Wool, cloth and hides were exported and timber, wine, furs and dyestuffs imported. Sir William de la Pole, a leading merchant helped establish a family prominent in government. Bishop John Alcock, founder of Jesus College, Cambridge and patron of the grammar school in Hull, hailed from another Hull mercantile family. Hull seems to have grown in prosperity and importance during the course of the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries. This is reflected in the construction of a number of fine, distinctively decorated brick buildings of which Wilberforce House (now a museum dedicated to the life of William Wilberforce) is a rare survival.

In 1642 Hull's governor Sir John Hotham declared for the Parliamentarian cause and later refused Charles I entry into the City and access to its large arsenal. He was declared a traitor and despite a parliamentarian pardon was later executed. (He was actually executed by the parliamentarians, not the royalists, when he tried to change sides.) This series of events was to precipitate the English Civil War since Charles I felt obliged to respond to the 'insult' by besieging the City; an event that played a critical role in triggering open conflict between the Parliamentarian and Royalist causes.

Hull developed as a British trade port with mainland Europe, Whaling until the mid 19th Century and deep sea fishing until the Anglo-Icelandic Cod War 1975-1976, which resolution led to a major decline in Hull's economic fortune. It remains a major port dealing mostly with bulk commodities and commercial road traffic by RORO ferry to Rotterdam and Zeebrugge on mainland Europe. The city remains a UK centre of food processing.

Hull's administrative status has changed several times. It had been a county borough within the East Riding for many decades, but from 1974 to 1996 it was part of Humberside, and upon the abolition of that county, it was made a unitary authority.

This page was last updated: 20 September 2005

Town history extracts are taken from Wikipedia and are licensed under GFDL