County

The constituent burghs of this volatile district were widely scattered over four counties. Linlithgow, the most northerly, was 16 miles west of Edinburgh. Once a royal residence (Mary Queen of Scots was born there), it had declined in importance since the Union. Its chief industry was tanning and the preparation of leather. The burgh had a population of 3,112 in 1821 and 3,187 in 1831, and the self-electing council had 27 mostly resident members.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), iv. 515-21; PP (1823), xv. 709; (1830-1), x. 182; (1831-2), xlii. 127; (1836), xxiii.

County Dublin, the small area of mostly coastal plain enclosing the metropolis, had a population of only about 150,000 (excluding the city) in 1821. Apart from Dublin itself, which naturally dominated local affairs, and its suburb of Kilmainham, where county elections were held, the main towns were the disfranchised boroughs of Newcastle and Swords, the ports of Dunleary and Howth, and the fishing villages of Rush and Skerries, near Balbriggan in the north-east.S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i.

Lanarkshire had developed rapidly since the mid-eighteenth century to become the most populous and economically important county in Scotland. The northern part was rich in mineral deposits, and numerous collieries and iron works were concentrated around Airdrie, Coatbridge, Hamilton, Motherwell and Wishaw. Textile manufacturing, though increasingly centred on Glasgow and its immediate vicinity, was also ‘carried on to a considerable extent’ in towns and villages such as Airdrie, Lanark, New Lanark and Strathaven.

Sussex was broadly divided into a northern strip, an extension of the Kentish Weald, which was ‘thickly wooded’ and yielded large quantities of timber, and the South Downs, a ‘range of green open hills’ which ‘afforded excellent pasture for sheep’ and was ‘in some parts ... fertile in corn’. Manufacturing was ‘neither various nor extensive’.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 494; (1832-4), 1002; VCH Suss. ii.

Inverness, the chief town of the Highlands, situated near the mouth of the River Ness, had a population (burgh and parish) of 12,264 in 1821 and 14,304 in 1831. A ‘very thriving place’, it had woollen, hemp and leather manufactures and a commodious harbour. The completion of the Caledonian Canal in October 1822 brought considerable commercial benefits to the town, which was provided with gas and water in this period.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), iv. 301, 304, 307-9; Hist. Inverness (1847), 46, 48; N.S.

Rothesay, the chief town of Buteshire, was a port at the head of Rothesay Bay on the eastern side of the island, with a population of 4,107 in 1821. A cotton-spinning factory, established in 1779, supplemented fishing and boat building as sources of employment. Its council numbered 21, of whom all but two were resident.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), v. 274, 276, 277; PP (1823), xv. 714; (1830-1), x.

Buteshire was a small, sparsely cultivated county, surrounded by the Firth of Clyde and consisting of the islands of Bute, Arran, Big and Little Cumbrae, Holy Isle, Inchmarnuck and Pladda. There were cotton mills at Rothesay (Bute), the only royal burgh.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), i.

Although livestock farming and transport communications improved during this period, agricultural distress was endemic in Roscommon, and in 1829 Skeffington Gibbon wrote that in ‘Roscommon, of which I have a local knowledge, there is not in Europe a more poor and wretched peasantry’. The county was mostly populated by Catholics, who exercised a strong, if usually unspectacular, influence on the county’s representation; their cause was supported by the liberal Roscommon Journal, while its rival, the Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, was a moderate Protestant newspaper. S.

Queen’s (later Laoighis) produced mainly wheat and barley. There were several market towns, including the disfranchised boroughs of Ballinakill and Maryborough, the venue for county elections, the post towns of Abbeyleix, Mountrath, Rathdowney and Stradbally, whose combined mills were capable of producing 12,000 barrels of flour a year, and the parliamentary borough of Portarlington, which lay partly in King’s County to the north.S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.