<p>Callington, a nondescript market town in the south-east of the county, seven miles from Liskeard, consisted of ‘one broad street’ with ‘sadly neglected’ buildings. It served as a trading centre for arable and livestock farmers from ‘a wide area’, and a Pannier market was built in 1832 as the old corn market and shambles were ‘in such a dangerous state’.

<p>Devon became increasingly dependent on agriculture, pastoral farming and fishing during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the industries for which it had previously been renowned went into terminal decline. In 1700 the manufacture of serges and other coarse woollen cloths had been widely distributed in the county and formed ‘the most important branch of England’s export trade in woollens’.

<p>East Grinstead, a small market town in the east of the county close to the border with Surrey, was said in 1823 to possess ‘no considerable trade’, what there was being ‘chiefly domestic’.<fn> <em>Pigot’s Commercial Dir</em>. (1823-4), 510.</fn> According to the commissioners’ report in 1831 the borough boundary was ‘entirely unknown’, but ‘certainly not coextensive with the parish or with the town division of the parish’; it was thought ‘probable’ that it did not extend beyond the town in any direction except to the north.

<p>Leicester, the county town, was a centre of cotton and worsted stocking manufacture: in 1831 it contained about 7,000 knitting frames giving employment to some 1,200 persons, but the trade was in general decline in this period, which was marked by severe spells of distress among the framework knitters.<fn><em>Pigot’s Commercial Dir</em>. (1822-3), 212-13; <em>VCH Leics</em>. iv.

<p>After the turbulence, intrigue and corruption of the period 1784-1812 Seaford, an insignificant resort on the Sussex coast, 13 miles east of Brighton, was comparatively though not entirely tranquil.<fn><em>Pigot’s Commercial Dir</em>. (1832-4), 1049.</fn> From 1812 at least one seat was under the control of Charles Rose Ellis, a wealthy Jamaican plantation owner and the close friend of George Canning.

<p>Okehampton, a small market town situated in the valley of the River Oke, close to the northern edge of Dartmoor, had been a ‘great centre’ for the manufacture of serges and other coarse woollens, but this had declined by the 1790s. Many of the inhabitants were engaged in agriculture, particularly sheep farming, and the town’s economy was otherwise ‘dependent on its markets and fairs’.

<p>The pocket borough of Heytesbury, in the parish and hundred of the same name, was, as William Cobbett† wrote in 1826, ‘formerly a considerable town’, but had become ‘a very miserable affair’, especially in comparison with its prosperous and unfranchised neighbour, Warminster.<fn><em>Cobbett’s Rural Rides</em> ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, i. 381, 388, 389, 391, 396; <em>Devizes Gazette</em>, 26 July 1821; <em>Keenes’ Bath Jnl</em>. 24 Oct. 1825; <em>Pigot’s Commercial Dir</em>.

<p>Wigtownshire was the western division of Galloway. It had several harbours, including Stranraer (on Loch Ryan in the north-west), Port Patrick (on the west coast) and Wigtown (on Wigtown Bay in the east). Stranraer and Wigtown were royal burghs, as was Whithorn; while Port Patrick was a burgh of barony, along with Glenluce and Newton Stewart.<fn><em>Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland</em> (1895), vi.

<p>Stirlingshire comprised a ‘finely wooded [and] well cultivated’ lowland district in the east, which boasted ‘some of the finest land in Scotland’ for cereal crops, and a highland district in the west with ‘highly fertile loam’ on its lower slopes, suited for potatoes and turnips, and ‘some of the best grazing ground’ in the country. There were several whisky distilleries.