Commons 1820-1832

Droitwich, an ancient market town ‘celebrated from the earliest times for its salt springs’ or ‘wiches’, produced ‘the finest and whitest salt in the kingdom’; but the municipal corporation commissioners reported that although trade had ‘very much increased’ since the repeal of the salt duty, the town ‘did not appear to be much increasing in wealth or extent’, it ‘requiring but few hands to manage the process’.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1828-9), 860; Lascelles’ Worcs. Dir. (1851), 135; PP (1831-2), xl. 127; (1835) xxiii.

The 1832 Reform Act split Yorkshire into its constituent Ridings for elections, thereby ending the united representation of Britain’s largest county. By this time its interests had become so diverse as to make it virtually impossible that any one Member could adequately address them all. The predominantly agricultural North Riding, which also encompassed shipping at Scarborough and Whitby, contained 14 per cent of the county’s total population of 1.4 million in 1831 and was home to much of the county’s aristocracy and gentry.

Lewes, a market town situated on the banks of the River Ouse, on the edge of the South Downs in the east of the county, several miles north-east of Brighton, ‘increased considerably in size and importance’ during the early-nineteenth century and laid claim to be the county town. It was described in 1823 as being ‘well built’, with ‘handsome streets and two fair suburbs’. Trade in agricultural products continued to be the mainstay of the local economy and there was little manufacturing, apart from several breweries and one paper mill. Pigot’s Commercial Dir.

Saltash, a small port and market town on the south-eastern border of the county, about five miles from Plymouth, was situated on a ‘bold and commanding headland’ at the junction of the Rivers Lynher and Tamar. It consisted of three ‘narrow’ streets and the houses, though many bore ‘marks of great antiquity’, were ‘indifferently built’. Most of the inhabitants were fishermen or employees of the Devonport dockyard.

Glamorgan, where, partly on account of rapid industrialization, the population increased from 71,525 in 1801 to 126,200 in 1831, was a county of large estates extending from the barren uplands and unfranchised iron town of Merthyr Tydfil in the north, to the corn-growing Vale, with its high concentration of freeholders, and the coastal boroughs of Cardiff, Neath and Swansea in the south. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), ii.

Bury, the assize town and commercial and social centre for west Suffolk, was considered ‘entirely dependent on its residents and the nobility, gentry and agriculturists of the neighbourhood’ for its prosperity. S. Tymms, Handbk. of Bury St. Edmunds (1854), pp. vii-x. Their largesse and the Members’ generosity facilitated the construction of assembly rooms (1804), a theatre (1819), a refurbished corn exchange (1820), botanic gardens (1821, 1831), gas works (1824), Suffolk General Hospital (1825) and improvements to churches and Nonconformist chapels.

Kildare produced mainly oats, wheat and potatoes. There were several market towns, including Maynooth, home to the Catholic seminary, and Rathangan, and the disfranchised boroughs of Athy, Kildare, Naas and Harristown. The venue for county elections was that of the assizes, held at Athy in winter and Naas in spring and summer. S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.

Fermanagh, ‘hilly, rugged and uneven’, was a small agricultural county in which the dominant Protestants clashed regularly with the equally numerous Catholic population.Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), vi. 232; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i. 618-22; P. Livingstone, Fermanagh Story, 158-61, 169. The representation was effectively controlled by a handful of prominent Orange families, who invariably provided the Members from among their own number throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lord Belmore, Parl. Mems.

Enniskillen, the county town of Fermanagh, was located on an island in a narrow section of Lough Erne, ‘Ireland’s Windermere’, and extended into suburbs on the eastern and western banks, which lay in the parishes of Enniskillen and Rossory respectively.

Clare mostly belonged to a large number of ‘absentees and needy proprietors’, whose conflicting electoral ambitions provoked frequent contests both before and after the Union. NLI, Smith O’Brien mss 427/141; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i. 329-35; Hist. Irish Parl. ii.