Commons 1820-1832

Middlesex, whose ‘independent’ freeholders had famously returned John Wilkes in 1769 and Sir Francis Burdett* in 1802, was an increasingly urban metropolitan county, bounded by the Rivers Thames, Lea and Colne. Described by William Cobbett† in 1822 as an ‘ugly county’, characterized by the ‘tax eaters’ showy tea-garden-like boxes’ and the ‘shabby dwellings of [the] labouring poor’, its only hunt, the ‘Old’ Berkeley, ceased to advertise its meets in 1820, ‘in order to avoid the pressure of a swarm of nondescripts starting from every suburb in London’. Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed.

Tyrone, a county of mountains and bogs intermixed with fertile agricultural areas, collieries and bleach fields, had a population of about 300,000 in 1831. The predominance of its Protestant inhabitants, who formed the bulk of the large electorate, was especially marked in Omagh, the county town, as well as in the disfranchised boroughs of Augher, Clogher and Strabane.Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), vi. 254; PP (1824), xxi. 696; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.

Wendover, an ‘inconsiderable place’ with only a remnant of its lace-making industry in this period, was an unincorporated borough picturesquely situated at the entrance of the Vale of Aylesbury. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 158; (1830), 93; VCH Bucks. iii. 22-23. It was the largely docile pocket borough of Robert Smith†,1st Baron Carrington, head of the Nottingham and London banking family, whose Buckinghamshire seat at Wycombe Abbey lay ten miles to the south. Oldfield, Key (1820), 43; Key to Both Houses (1832), 414; R.W.

Arundel, a small market town situated on the River Arun in the south-west of the county, about four miles from the English Channel coast, was said in 1833 to be in an ‘average state of prosperity’. Its principal trade was in coal which, assisted by the recent canal link with Chichester, was ‘sent up the river to Guildford, Horsham and Petworth’. The corn and cattle markets were ‘tolerably well attended’, but there was ‘no manufacture of any kind’. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 494; PP (1835), xxiv.

Hythe, a decayed port, was ‘pleasantly situated’ on the Kent coast. It did ‘considerable business’ in corn and hops.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 397. After the turbulence of seven contested elections in 17 years the borough enjoyed a tranquil interlude until 1830. Once the preserve of local country gentlemen, it had fallen prey by 1812 to wealthy strangers from the London commercial world.

Lichfield, a cathedral city and county of itself, possessed ‘a large manufactory of carpets’, but was otherwise ‘not remarkable for its variety of manufactures’, although it carried on ‘an excellent local trade’ in agricultural produce. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1828-9), 714. The representation, which had not been contested since 1799, was jointly controlled by the Trentham interest of George Granville Leveson Gower†, 2nd marquess of Stafford, and the Shugborough interest, headed since 1818 by Thomas William, 2nd Viscount Anson.

The smallest Welsh county, Flintshire had industrialized early and had an admirably diversified economy. The boundaries of four of its five hundreds (Coleshill, Mold, Prestatyn and Rhuddlan) were defined by the River Dee, which separated the county from Cheshire to the north-east and east. To the south lay the hundred of Maelor (Maelor Sais), a detached part of the county adjoining Denbighshire and Shropshire.

Beaumaris, Anglesey’s county and assize town, was a seaport, resort and castellated borough situated at the northern entrance to the Menai Straits almost five miles east of Porthaethwy (later Menai Bridge) and three miles north across the Straits from Bangor in Caernarvonshire. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), i. 139. Its decaying port had lost trade to Amlwch and Holyhead, but neither could equal its 190 entries in Pigot’s National and Commercial Directory for 1828-9.

The coastal borough of Flint (Y Fflint) was increasingly overshadowed by its unfranchised industrial neighbour Holywell (Treffynnon, population c. 9,000) and shared its assizes and functions as a county town with Mold (Yr Wyddgrug), six-and-a-half miles to the south. Flint was the polling town and its annually elected bailiffs were the returning officers for a contributory boroughs constituency where the franchise was confined to the inhabitant ratepayers and no single interest prevailed. P.D.G. Thomas, Politics in 18th Cent.