County

Tipperary, noted for its ‘depressed and turbulent peasantry’, had an ‘extensive’ export trade in agricultural produce, particularly butter and other dairy products, but apart from one cotton factory was ‘wholly devoid of manufactures’. There were several market towns, including the disfranchised borough of Fethard, the parliamentary seats of Cashel and Clonmel, the venue for county elections, and Cahir, Carrick-on-Suir, Thurles and Tipperary. Dod’s Electoral Facts ed. H. J. Hanham, 313; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.

Buckinghamshire was predominantly agricultural, with an emphasis on dairy farming, but was noted for the manufacture of lace, straw plait (both declining in this period), paper and furniture. It contained six parliamentary boroughs and nine other market towns. A 50 per cent increase in population between 1801 and 1831 and the post-war slump created much distress at the lower end of the social scale. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 147; (1830), 69; PP (1833), xxxvi. 34-35; R.W.

Ross-shire, a large and sparsely populated Highland county, extended across the width of Scotland from its east coast, between Dornoch and Moray Firths, to the Atlantic in the west, between Loch Enard and Loch Alsh. The Outer Hebridean island of Lewis belonged to it. Only a small portion was under cultivation, but its eastern glens contained some fine agricultural land, which was exploited with improved techniques from the late eighteenth century. Whisky distilling and salmon and sea fishing were its other principal sources of employment.

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.

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.

Northumberland was noted for its coastal coalfield, shipping trade, corn and lead. Its six wards (Bamburgh, Castle, Coquetdale, Glendale, Morpeth and Tynedale), from which the detached districts of county Durham, Bedlingtonshire, Norhamshire and Islandshire, remained distinct, comprised 97 parishes and 646 constabularies.

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.

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’.