Commons 1820-1832

Poole, a county of itself, was a vibrant seaport on a narrow isthmus of land to the north of a large harbour. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 288; Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), iii. 352-3; PP (1831), xvi. 91; (1831-2), xxxviii. 143; J. Hutchins, Dorset, i (1861), 1-2. The naturalist Philip Henry Gosse, who grew up there, later recollected the typical scene on ‘the quay, with its shipping and sailors; their songs, and cries of "Heave with a will, yo ho!", the busy merchants bustling to and fro’. E.

Monaghan, a largely undeveloped county of hills and lakes, contained an almost equal population of Protestants and Catholics, so that both communities had to be wooed at elections, which took place in the county town of the same name. None of the major landlords, who were mostly absentees and therefore usually exercised their influence through powerful agents, had a predominating interest and since the Union, when the borough of Monaghan was disfranchised, they had wrangled over the representation without coming to a contest. S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.

Chichester, a cathedral city, port and market town, situated in the south-west of the county near to the English Channel coast, was said in 1831 to be ‘active and prosperous’. Its economy depended almost entirely on the surrounding agricultural district: ‘great quantities of grain’ were shipped out from Dell Quay, one-and-a-half miles away, to London and elsewhere, and the cattle market was ‘very important’. Little manufacturing remained, but the presence of a sizeable genteel population ensured that there was a ‘considerable’ domestic trade. Pigot’s Commercial Dir.

Cornwall was ‘almost an island, being surrounded on all sides by the sea’, except for the border with Devon. Its geographical remoteness and cultural distinctiveness were reinforced by poor transport communications. A ‘ridge of bare rugged hills, intermixed with bleak moors’, ran through ‘the midst of its whole length’, and much of the county presented a ‘naked and almost desolate appearance’.

Leicestershire’s agriculture was dominated by corn and sheep production. As well as the thriving and expanding county town, where about 15 per cent of the freeholders lived, it contained a number of considerable settlements, some of which were centres of hosiery, cotton and worsted manufacturing, still largely conducted on a domestic basis: Loughborough (population in 1821 7,365); Hinckley (5,933); Ashby-de-la-Zouch (3,935); Melton Mowbray (2,815); Lutterworth (2,102); Market Harborough (1,873), and Market Bosworth (1,117).

‘I could not come through that villainous hole, Calne, without cursing corruption at every step; and, when I was coming by an ill-looking, broken-winded place, called the town hall, I suppose, I poured out a double dose of execration upon it’. This was how William Cobbett† described his ride through the ‘vile rotten borough’ in 1826.Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, ii.

Cambridgeshire was a variedly productive agricultural county, with no significant manufacturing industry. In 1824, the 5th Earl De La Warr, writing to the 3rd earl of Hardwicke, the lord lieutenant, wondered whether there was any point in backing a scheme to establish a horticultural society, as ‘our county is too thinly peopled with resident families to give such an institution any chance of success’.Add. 35691, f.

Midhurst, a small market town situated on the River Rother, 12 miles north of Chichester, in an ‘entirely agricultural’ district, consisted of ‘several streets, with many respectable buildings, spread over a considerable space’. Its market was by this period ‘only for corn’, and the other main economic activities were brewing and malting. Ibid. xl. 75; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 518; (1832-4), 1042. The borough was largely coextensive with the parish, but excluded the liberty of St. John’s.

Northallerton was an old market town situated in a valley by the River Wiske, ‘amidst lands highly cultivated’, in the North Riding of the county 32 miles north-west of York. Linen manufacturing was carried on ‘to a small extent’, but the town’s ‘main trade’ consisted of the provision of articles of consumption for the surrounding population. Pigot’s National Dir. (1828-9), 1032-3. The boundary was not clearly defined, but it covered only a small part of the parish; it was impossible in practice to distinguish the borough from the town.

A county palatine of four wards or deaneries (Chester, Darlington, Easington and Stockton) Durham was agriculturally diverse and had rich deposits of coal, iron and lead. Despite their repeated requests to be transferred to Northumberland, the detached rural districts of Bedlingtonshire, Islandshire and Norhamshire, south of Berwick-upon-Tweed, remained part of the representative county of Durham until 1832 and of the administrative county until 1834. The only parliamentary borough, the city of Durham, was the assize and election town.