Abingdon, situated on the Thames in the north of Berkshire, and six miles from Oxford, was the county town and polling place for county elections, though it was soon to be supplanted by the substantially larger and faster expanding borough of Reading. While it was essentially a market town for the surrounding agricultural region, it had become in the eighteenth century a centre for the weaving and spinning of hemp and flax and the production of sacking, sheeting and carpets.
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.
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.
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.
Westminster, the most prestigious borough constituency in the United Kingdom, was, in the words of its most recent historians, ‘the hegemonic centre of political, professional, consumerist and cultural life’. Harvey, Green and Corfield, ‘Continuity, change and specialization within metropolitan London: the economy of Westminster, 1775-1820’, EcHR (ser. 2), lii (1999), 490. Its northern boundary was Oxford Street and its southern the Thames.
By convention, Members and candidates neither addressed nor canvassed the university, and indeed were forbidden to approach within ten miles of it during elections. Aspirants to what was regarded as a great honour were therefore dependent on the exertions of influential friends and supporters in the constituent 19 colleges and five halls. Once elected, Members could in normal circumstances count on retaining their seats for as long as they wished.
By the early nineteenth century the corporation of Devizes had established the practice of returning Tory, mostly local, landed gentlemen, who, by invitation, inheritance or purchase, had displaced the wealthy clothier representatives.HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 418; VCH Wilts. v. 227-9. Comprising the parishes of St. John the Baptist and St. Mary the Virgin, and (by convention) the area known as Old Park, the borough was the principal town in the county’s northern division. PP (1831-2), xl.
