Clackmannanshire was the smallest Scottish county (55 square miles). The county town, Clackmannan, had long been eclipsed in importance by the small port of Alloa, two miles away, which had a population of 3,482 in 1831. Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), i. 42-43, 262-4. The electoral influence of the Abercrombys of Tullibody, near Alloa, who had occupied the seat since 1788, was not challenged in this period.
Ireland’s largest county of Cork, with an overwhelmingly Catholic population, had a valuable copper and mineral mining industry and extensive farms producing wheat, oats and barley, much of which was exported, but the condition of its numerous peasantry, who subsisted mainly on potatoes, was ‘very wretched’. There were several market towns, including the disfranchised boroughs of Baltimore, Castlemartyr, Charleville, Clonakilty, Doneraile, Midleton, and Rathcormack, and the parliamentary boroughs of Bandon Bridge, Cork, the venue for county elections, Kinsale, Mallow and Youghal.
Gloucestershire, a mixed agricultural, pastoral and industrial county straddling the River Severn, was broadly divided into three areas running parallel from north-east to south-west. To the east lay the Cotswold hills, where sheep farming supplied the raw material for cloth manufacturing in the unfranchised town of Stroud and a cluster of smaller settlements, including Dursley, Minchinhampton, Nailsworth, Painswick, Rodborough, Stonehouse and Wotton-under-Edge.
Dorset, a predominantly rural county, had long been politically moribund, but it was notable for staging, during the reform crisis of 1831, one of the most nationally significant by-elections in this period. Administratively, it was split into nine divisions, while Poole, the most prosperous borough, was technically a county in its own right, although its freeholders were allowed to vote in county elections.
Haddingtonshire was in the process of becoming one of the richest grain producing areas of Scotland, with numerous landlords keen to implement advanced farming techniques. It had a number of farmers’ clubs. Sheep were reared on the pastures of the Lammermuir hills, and there was some small-scale textile manufacturing. The royal burghs were Haddington, Dunbar and North Berwick. The other principal settlements were Cockenzie, East Linton, Prestonpans and Tranent.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), ii.
Among the boroughs, the City of London, the financial and commercial centre of the kingdom, was second only to neighbouring Westminster in the size of its electorate, which consisted of freemen (resident and non-resident) attached to the livery companies. They were predominantly smaller merchants, shopkeepers and artisans. Had the franchise been in the freemen at large the electorate would have been probably ten times greater; and a householder qualification would have quadrupled it.HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 264; Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), iv.
Bedfordshire was a chiefly agricultural county, with centres of lace, straw and thread manufacture in Bedford, Dunstable, Luton and Market Street.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 111-22. County politics were notable for their marked party divisions, which originated in the contests of 1774 and 1784 and were sustained throughout this period.F.
County Armagh, which, despite being the home of the Catholic church in Ireland, prided itself on being the ‘Protestant Queen of the North’, suffered the indignity of seeing its representation monopolized by pro-Catholics between 1826 and 1832. An increasingly populous county of about 200,000 inhabitants, who mostly farmed small holdings, its prosperity was based on agricultural improvements, a thriving linen trade and the presence of several market towns, including Omagh, Portadown and the disfranchised borough of Charlemont.S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i.
Essex was a rich agricultural and maritime county, with only one substantial urban centre, Colchester, whose population of 14,000 rising to 16,000 was almost three times that of the county town, Chelmsford. The once thriving woollen industry was virtually extinct by 1820, but this period saw a considerable growth in silk weaving as flourishing London manufacturers set up mills in most of the larger Essex towns. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 282; VCH Essex, ii.
The Orkneys, a group of almost 70 islands and islets, lay about eight miles off the eastern end of the northern coast of the Scottish mainland, separated from Caithness by the Pentland Firth. There were three main groups of islands: the South Isles, which included Hoy and South Ronaldsay; Pomona, or the Mainland, on which was situated the capital Kirkwall, a royal burgh; and the North Isles of Shapinsay, Eday, Stronsay, Sandray, Westray and North Ronaldsay, among others. Stromness, which was also on the Mainland, was a burgh of barony.
