Plymouth, ‘one of the largest seaports in England’, was the easternmost of three adjoining towns situated on a peninsula between the Plym and Tamar estuaries, where they entered the English Channel. On the west bank was Plymouth Dock, renamed Devonport in 1824, the site of a major naval base and dockyard, which had grown spectacularly during the eighteenth century so that by 1801 its population exceeded that of Plymouth.
Ludlow, the former seat of the council of the Marches, was a castellated town overlooking the confluence of the Rivers Corve and Teme, 24 miles north of Hereford and 25 south of Shrewsbury on the Herefordshire-Shropshire border. Its principal industry, glove making, was in decline. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), iii. 312, 313. The borough had not polled since the Oakly Park interest, held by the Herberts and Clives, began its long ascendancy in 1727, and representation was generally reserved for their family members and close connections.
The brick-built cathedral city and county town of Hereford on the north bank of the River Wye, to which the radical John Thelwall retreated in 1798, had a strong libertarian tradition counterbalanced by the Tory-Anglican influence of the chapter clergy. E.P. Thompson, ‘Hunting the Jacobin Fox’, P and P, cxlii (1994), 112-40. The city, or liberties, encompassed six parishes, parts of two others, and extended ‘far beyond the mass of the town’, which in 1831 was described as ‘a place neither advancing nor receding’, with respectable shops and a well-clad population.
Great Marlow was ‘a respectable and well-built’ unincorporated borough on the southern border of Buckinghamshire, situated on the north bank of the Thames opposite the Berkshire parish of Bisham, which contained the Temple House home and copper mills of Owen Williams, Member since 1796 and possessor of the dominant electoral interest. There was some paper and lace making in the town. Municipal government was in the parish, which extended beyond the parliamentary borough; the two constables were the returning officers. Pigot’s Commercial Dir.
Newton was a small manufacturing town with one main street, five miles from Warrington and seven from Wigan. It had no corporation and was governed by the borough steward and the bailiff of the manor, who held a court baron and court leet three times a year and were the returning officers.E. Baines, Hist. Lancs.(1824), ii. 433; J.P. Earwacker, E. Cheshire, ii. 161-3; PP (1831-2), xxxvi.
The 1st marquess of Cholmondeley had abandoned his attempt to sell the Houghton estate by 1820, and the representation of the pocket borough of Castle Rising, three miles from King’s Lynn, remained exclusive to his sons and Fulke Howard, younger son of the 1st Baron Templemore, who was by marriage the manorial lord and largest burgage holder. Wellington mss WP1/634/10; Hickling’s Almanac (1880), 67, 72; Norf.
Grantham, a town with a ‘very neat and clean appearance’, lay on the Great North road, within easy reach of London.White, Lincs. Dir. (1826), 127. Some of the county’s leading families, the Cholmeleys of Easton, Thorolds of Syston Park and Welbys of Denton, as well as the 1st Earl Brownlow of Belton (lord lieutenant of Lincolnshire) lived in its immediate vicinity and took an active interest in its affairs.
Wenlock, a collection of scattered settlements seven miles north-west of Bridgnorth and ten miles south-east of Shrewsbury, was an ancient liberty, manor and parliamentary borough formerly dominated by St. Milburga’s priory. It extended over 71 square miles and comprised 17 parishes: Badger, Barrow, Beckbury, Benthall, Broseley, Deuxhill, Ditton Prior, Hughley, Linley, Madeley, Monkhopton, Shipton, Stoke Saint Milliborough, Wenlock Little, Wenlock Much, Willey, and Eaton (with extra-parochial Posenhall).
Honiton, a market town situated beside the River Otter, in the east of the county on the Exeter to London road, consisted ‘principally of one street, nearly a mile in length, containing many good houses’, which had mostly been built since the fires of 1747 and 1765. It had ‘long been celebrated’ as a centre for the manufacture of fine lace, which was also carried on in the surrounding villages, but though still quite prosperous and benefiting from royal patronage the industry had passed its peak and faced competition from the rise of factory-based production elsewhere.
The borough of Tralee, which extended into the neighbouring parish of Ratass, was a busy though backward market town and seaport, whose fortunes were limited by its shallow harbour. Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), vi.
