By 1820 St. Albans, a stagnant market town and centre of coaching traffic, had become a largely unmanageable borough: of the 16 elections which occurred between 1784 and 1832, only three were uncontested.PP (1835), xxvi. 2930; W. Page, St. Albans, 100. The strongest natural interest belonged to James Walter Grimston†, 1st earl of Verulam, an anti-Catholic Tory and brother-in-law of the prime minister Lord Liverpool, whose residence at Gorhambury lay two miles west of the town. His ancestors had supplied several Members for St.

Hertford, a prosperous market town and centre of the corn and malt trades, had a reputation in the early nineteenth century for electoral independence.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 354; Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), iv. 31. The corporation, which consisted of a mayor and nine aldermen, could make no more than three honorary freemen, and was therefore unable to impose itself on the inhabitants. The freedom was obtainable by purchase, apprenticeship or gift, and recipients were required to have been resident for 40 days before their admission.

The borough of Malmesbury, ‘very pleasantly situated on an eminence’ in the hundred of the same name, comprised the parish of the Abbey and parts (known as ‘in-parishes’) of St. Paul, Malmesbury and St. Mary, Westport. According to the boundary commissioners, it was

Cobbett remarked of ‘that villainous hole’ Cricklade, a market town on Wiltshire’s northern border, that ‘certainly, a more rascally place I never set my eyes on’. The countryside around he found pleasant enough, but the people were in a wretched condition, and ‘everything had the air of the most deplorable want’.Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, i. 15; ii. 414; Pigot’s Commercial Dir.

Ireland’s ‘second city’ of Cork, a county of itself, boasted an ‘almost matchless’ natural harbour, in which a vast shipbuilding and naval supply industry had developed during the Napoleonic wars, situated around the victualling yards at Cobh (Cove) on Great Island, providing local contractors with large fortunes. The impact of the navy’s gradual withdrawal during this period was countered by the growth of an ‘extensive trade in corn and flour’ and the establishment of cutlery, glass and glove manufactories. S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.

The borough of Carrickfergus, the county town of Antrim, was coextensive with the parish of the same name and formed a county of itself. A seaport eight miles north-west of Belfast, it was largely dependent on its fisheries. By the 1830s it was ‘of no importance whatsoever’ and it was remarked that ‘it is the situation, more than anything within the town, that renders the place interesting’.PP (1831-2), xliii. 21; H.D. Inglis, Ireland in 1834, ii. 270, 271; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i.

The county corporate of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the county and assize town of Northumberland, was an important port, commercial, cultural and manufacturing centre on the north bank of the River Tyne. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), iii.

Warwickshire’s population increased by 23 per cent from 274,392 in 1821 to 336,610 in 1831, when almost 60 per cent of its 72,357 families were employed in trade, manufacture and handicraft, and 22 per cent in agriculture. Census Enumeration Abstract (1831), ii.

The small and nondescript town of Wareham, which had a ‘particularly neat appearance’, sent clay to the Potteries, but its port was too shallow for it to compete with its larger neighbour Poole. The inhabitants consisted of ‘persons of middling circumstances, and a few retired officers and independent persons, retail tradesmen and those deriving a subsistence from the small craft’.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 297-8; PP (1831-2), xxxviii. 151-2; (1835), xxiv. 699, 702; J. Hutchins, Dorset, i (1861), 77-78; Procs. Dorset Natural Hist. and Antiq.

Clackmannanshire was the smallest Scottish county (55 square miles). The county town, Clackmannan, had long been eclipsed in importance by the small port of Alloa, two miles away, which had a population of 3,482 in 1831. Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), i. 42-43, 262-4. The electoral influence of the Abercrombys of Tullibody, near Alloa, who had occupied the seat since 1788, was not challenged in this period.