Surrey, a mixed agricultural and commercial county which bordered on London to the north-east, was the fifth most populous English county, according to the 1831 census. Agricultural production in the southern and western areas was apparently ‘by no means of the first order’, but the farmers and market gardeners benefited from their close proximity to the London market. Census returns show that households engaged in trade outnumbered those dependent on agriculture by around three to one.

Guildford, a market town situated near the River Wey, in the west of the county on the main London to Southampton road, was described in 1832 as a ‘well conditioned, wealthy place’. Seven years earlier William Cobbett† had declared it to be ‘the prettiest, and taken altogether, the most agreeable and happy looking’ of all the towns he had visited during his extensive travels. There were two ‘large coach manufactories’ and an iron foundry in the town, corn and paper mills were located nearby on the river and the retail trade was ‘very extensive’. Ibid. xl.

Dungannon, in the parish of Drumglass, just south of Lough Neagh, may have been ‘spacious, handsome and well built’, but with declining linen and grain trades it was not reckoned to be particularly prosperous. The whole was the property of the head of the Knox family of Northland House, situated to the east of the town, who was also the lord of the manor. This, since he had succeeded his father in 1818, was the 2nd Viscount Northland, one of the handful of freemen of the borough.

There had been five contests in Kent between 1790 and 1818, and, although no further elections were pushed to a poll before the passage of the Reform Act, it nevertheless experienced a high degree of political agitation over national issues, partly because of its proximity to the capital. F. O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons, and Parties, 298. Predominantly agricultural in character, the county felt the full weight of the economic depressions of the early and late 1820s, and had a higher level of per capita expenditure on poor relief than its neighbours. D.A.

The largely Protestant county of Londonderry, which had about 200,000 inhabitants and was notable for its linen manufactures, derived its name from the English plantation of the early seventeenth century.S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii. 291-7. The prefix London had then been added to the existing name in recognition of the dominance of the 12 livery companies who had divided the available lands between them.

Amersham, an unincorporated borough, was a thriving market town in the south-east of the county. There was a silk manufactory, chairs were made for export and lace and straw plait making employed mainly women and children. R.W. Davis, Political Change and Continuity, 25; Pigot’s Commercial Dir (1823-4), 147; (1830), 69-70. It remained entirely under the electoral control of the Tory Tyrwhitt Drake family of nearby Shardeloes, who owned most of the property in and around the borough.

West Looe, otherwise known by its older Cornish names of Portighan, Portpigham and Portuan, lay on the west side of the mouth of the River Looe in the south-east of the county. It was linked to East Looe by a narrow stone bridge, and of the two settlements (‘the twins’, in Cornish borough parlance), it was the less significant in terms of population and trade. The only industry was a pilchard fishery and the market had long been discontinued, although inland transport links were improved by the opening of a new road and canal to Liskeard in 1829. Pigot’s Commercial Dir.

Lancashire, whose industries and population continued to grow rapidly, was noted for its textiles, large unfranchised manufacturing towns, commerce and Fylde coast ‘granary’. Administratively it comprised six hundreds: Amoundness, Blackburn, Leyland, Lonsdale to the north, and West Derby and Salford to the south, where the great towns of Liverpool and Manchester lay and 74 per cent of the population of 1,335,600 resided in 1821. There were six represented boroughs and 21 market towns, most of which were industrializing rapidly.

The open and venal burgh of Sudbury, where the freemen had been polled at every opportunity since 1747, was situated on the Suffolk bank of the River Stour, which separated it from its suburb of Ballingdon in Essex. Famous for centuries for its woollens and bunting, it benefited in the early nineteenth century from the high labour costs in Spitalfields, whose silk manufacturers took advantage of its pool of skilled labour and good communications with London and the east coast to establish velvet, silk and satin factories in the town.

Described by William Cobbett† as a ‘rotten-hole’ and a ‘mean, vile place’, Wootton Bassett was a predominantly agricultural town with a declining market and virtually no trade. It consisted of one street, on the Cricklade to Chippenham road, made up of plots of a burgage character, which were occasionally advertised for sale as conferring the right of election for the borough, Cricklade and the county. In 1821, when no population figure was ascertained for the borough, the parish in which it lay contained 379 houses and 1,701 residents. Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M.