Commons 1820-1832

Dorchester, Thomas Hardy’s essentially agricultural Casterbridge, was the county town of Dorset, in which its quarter sessions (exclusively so from 1825) and county and election meetings were held. Dismissed as a ‘dreary melancholy town’ by Lady William Russell, whose husband was stationed there in the mid-1820s, another visitor at that time, Sir Stephen Glynne*, described it as ‘surrounded by beautiful avenues of trees’ and ‘small, but neat and regularly built’. Walk round Dorchester (1820), 2-3; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 282; J.

Gatton, which was situated two miles north of Reigate in the east of the county, had once been ‘a considerable town’, but by the 1830s it was ‘an insignificant village’. The borough was coextensive with the parish. Political control was firmly in the hands of Sir Mark Wood† of Gatton Park, the lord of the manor since 1801, who appointed the constable, the returning officer for parliamentary elections.

Rye was situated on a hill about three miles from the east Sussex coast and surrounded by the Tillingham, Brede and Rother rivers. At their confluence was its harbour, south-east of the town. It was in ‘an indifferent state’ in this period, but vessels of up to 200 tons could use it and sail to the quay on the north side of the borough. Rye’s trade was ‘very trifling’, and fishing and shipbuilding were its principal sources of employment.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 520; VCH Suss. ix.

Coastal erosion had reduced Dunwich to a small village coextensive with the parish of All Saints (1,340 acres). After the last contest in 1764, it had been agreed by the Barne and Vanneck families, as joint patrons and co-owners of many borough properties, to limit the electorate to 32:16 freemen appointed by themselves (eight each) and a further 16 appointed by the burgesses, among whom John Robinson of Cliff House, a former captain in the East Indian navy, was prominent.

The political compromise of 1812 remained undisturbed in 1820 when the sitting Members, Lord Palmerston, secretary at war and a Johnian, and the Whig John Smyth of Trinity, nephew of the 4th duke of Grafton, a former Member, were unopposed. Reports that Palmerston was to be called to the Lords and replaced by either Charles Manners Sutton, Speaker of the Commons, or Charles John Shore, son of the 1st Lord Teignmouth, were soon discounted. Smyth was ‘not well enough to come down in person’.Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 19, 26 Feb., 11 Mar.; Cambridge Chron.

Dundalk, the ‘oldest borough in Ireland’, had little of the ‘spectacle of poverty’ that ‘all through the county of Louth stares one in the face’. A ‘respectable looking town’, its increasing prosperity was attributed to its role as ‘a mart for agricultural produce and a shipping port for cattle’, and to the patronage of the Jocelyns of Dundalk House, earls of Roden.PP (1831-2), xliii. 57; H.D. Inglis, Ireland in 1834, ii.

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.

Penryn, a port and market town in the south-west of the county, was situated on the ‘declivity of a low hill, projecting ... into one of the creeks of Falmouth harbour’, where there was ample space for a quay and ‘wharves of every description’. Its principal trade was in granite, quarried from the surrounding hills and shipped in ‘vast quantities’ to London and elsewhere for public works such as the new Waterloo Bridge.

Truro, a port and market town, was situated almost in the centre of the county, in a valley at the confluence of two rivers which formed a large navigable creek, ‘one of the numerous branches of Falmouth harbour’; there were ‘several quays and wharves on its margin’. The town was ‘increasing rapidly in wealth and population’ in this period and had strong claims to be regarded as ‘the metropolis’ of Cornwall. Its prosperity was derived chiefly from the extensive mining operations in the neighbourhood.

Portsmouth was styled the ‘key of England’ in a contemporary gazetteer, while Henry Alford, the future dean of Canterbury, referred to the port in 1829 as ‘the rendezvous of British naval preparation and strength’. He added: