Northampton, one of the largest potwalloper boroughs, was ‘a flourishing town’ whose prosperity was on the increase. Ibid. (1835), xxv. 557. The opening of the branch canal in 1815, which linked the town with the main artery of the Grand Junction Canal four miles away at Blisworth, was the catalyst for its rapid expansion. The waterway gave Northampton’s traditional footwear manufacturers ready access to London, Birmingham and the fast developing industrial regions in the north.
Evesham, with the ‘exception of a ribbon manufactory in a declining state’, was a prosperous market town ‘most famed for the excellency’ of its vegetables and gardening.PP (1835), xxiii. 192; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1828-9), 865; Bentley’s Worcs. Dir. 14. Electoral corruption, asserted a petition presented by Lord John Russell, 17 Feb. 1831, ‘infected it like a leprosy’. C.R. Dod, Electoral Facts (1853), 113; CJ, lxxxvi.
Grampound, an insignificant village situated on the River Fal in the south of the county, 40 miles north-east of Penzance, was governed by a corporation, consisting of a mayor and eight aldermen, which, as the municipal corporations commissioners noted in 1833, ‘existed but for the purpose of enabling the freemen to derive a revenue from their votes’. The freemen, whose numbers were unlimited, were nominated by a jury of existing freemen empanelled by the corporation. D. and S. Lysons, Magna Britannia (1814), iii. 71;Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), iii.
Between 1754 and 1805 Hertfordshire, a fecund agricultural county, experienced a period of electoral turbulence which made it the most frequently contested county in England: eight of the 11 elections which occurred between those years went to a poll, and there were five successive contests between 1784 and 1805. Thereafter the county was comparatively tranquil, and there were no further contested elections before the passage of the Reform Act.
Elginshire’s arable farming was progressive and it contained many whisky distilleries. Small-scale woollen manufacturing and herring and salmon fishing were its other staples. Its royal burghs were Elgin and Forres. The other principal settlements were Findhorn, Fochabers, Grantown and Rothes and the ports of Burghead, Hopeman and Lossiemouth.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), ii. 540-4. It had not gone to a poll since 1784.
When the municipal corporations commissioners took evidence in public at Cambridge in the autumn of 1833, The Times commented, 16 Nov:
Bramber, a ‘mean village’ situated about eight miles north-west of Brighton, consisted of two intersections of a street, the northern part of which adjoined the borough of Steyning. The boundary was wholly contained within but not entirely coextensive with the parish, covering some 20 acres of built-upon land and 825 acres of open land. It was reported in 1831 that there were 35 cottages, of which 29 were occupied; 12 of the total were actually situated ‘in the town and parish of Steyning’.
The Border town and county of Berwick-upon-Tweed, known for its salmon, smacks and agricultural produce, was an open and venal borough, which as ‘a town by itself’ had to be specifically mentioned in treaties and all national legislation. N. McCord, North East England, 33-34; Berwick in Parliament ed. Sir L. Airey, A. Beith, D. Brenchley, J. Marlow and T. Skelly, 24-25; Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), i.
The dominant electoral interest at Woodstock, one of the smallest of the Oxfordshire market towns, was that of the Spencer Churchills, dukes of Marlborough, whose imposing residence at Blenheim Palace adjoined it. The original crown gift of Woodstock manor had included no borough property, but successive dukes, who were major benefactors to the town and employers of its inhabitants, had subsequently acquired substantial holdings within it. By the start of this period Woodstock, though neat and handsomely built, was in economic decline, with a falling population and soaring poor rates.
