Borough

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.

Liskeard, a stannary and market town irregularly situated on ‘two rocky hills’ and in the valley dividing them in the south-east of the county, ranked ‘among the first towns’ in Cornwall. Its ‘principal business’ was connected with the tin, lead and copper mines in the neighbourhood, but serges and blankets were still manufactured ‘to a small extent’, there were ‘several tanneries and rope walks’ and the wool trade was ‘an improving branch’.

Wells, a cathedral city situated at the southern foot of the Mendips near the source of the River Ax, was described in 1830 as ‘small and compact, for the most part well built and the streets ... well paved’. Its prosperity depended heavily on the retail trade, which was sustained by ‘the respectable inhabitants and the rural population in the vicinity’. Little significant industrial activity remained, as silk manufacturing had entirely decayed and only one large stocking factory still operated; there were paper mills at nearby Wookey.

Fowey, a port and market town situated on the western bank of the river of that name, on the southern coast of the county midway between Plymouth and Falmouth, consisted essentially of ‘one street ... narrow and irregular’, which extended for ‘nearly a mile’ alongside the harbour. The mainstay of its economy had traditionally been the pilchard fishery, which was ‘still carried on to a considerable extent’ but was prone to fluctuations; in some seasons it ‘failed nearly altogether’.

Banbury, situated on the Cherwell in north Oxfordshire, close to the Northamptonshire border, was a thriving market town and centre of communications. By this period its only significant industry, the weaving of plush and horses’ harness and trappings, still largely a domestic concern, was in relative decline: in 1831, there were 125 plush and girth-weavers in the town, but in the surrounding villages about 550 men, plus women and children, produced goods for Banbury employers.PP (1835), xxiii. 151; VCH Oxon. x. 5, 12, 64-66; W. Potts, Hist.

Winchester, a ‘venerable and interesting’ cathedral city in the centre of Hampshire, stood ‘on the east declivity of a hill, gradually sloping to the River Itchen, navigable for barges’. Although it was the county town, it had been eclipsed by Southampton and Portsmouth in economic importance by the 1820s, when it was said to have ‘very little trade’. An attempt to establish a small silk manufacturing industry had apparently foundered by 1831. T.W. Wilks, Hist. Hants, i. 9; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 345; (1830), 477; PP (1831-2), xxxviii.

The borough of Great Bedwyn, ‘a group of shabby houses upon a hill’ which together were ‘not intrinsically worth a thousand pounds’, was composed of a small and wholly agricultural town and the two tithings of Bedwyn Prebend and Stock and Ford, and lay in the hundred of Kinwardstone on the eastern edge of Wiltshire. Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, i. 13; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 790, 791; PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 112; (1833), xxxvii. 700; VCH Wilts. xvi.

Maldon was a market town and port in eastern Essex, situated at the influx of the River Chelmer into the Blackwater estuary. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 297-8. By the new charter of 1810 almost 1,500 freemen, mostly non-resident, and qualified by birth, apprenticeship, marriage, purchase or gift, had been added to the moribund and dwindling electorate of less than 70.

Carlow, a county town situated on the River Barrow at a point ‘navigable for barges’, was a ‘considerable mart for agricultural produce’, from which ‘vast quantities of corn and butter’ were ‘transmitted to Waterford for exportation’. Charles William Bury, 1st earl of Charleville, retained complete control over the representation and management of its self-elected Protestant corporation of 13 burgesses, in whom the right of voting had been ‘exclusively vested’ by royal charter, 24 Dec. 1674.

The representation of Norwich was dictated by long-established rivalries in municipal politics, fluctuations in party funds and commercial considerations, notably the demise after 1825 of its textile industry, whose productivity consistently failed to match that of the Yorkshire manufactories. Norwich in 19th Cent. ed. C. Barringer, 119-60; PP (1835), xxvi. 379-430. As the banker Hudson Gurney* commented in 1832, Norwich voters were ‘not counted in ones or twos’. Norf.