County

Shropshire, bisected north-south by the navigable River Severn, was rich in coal, iron and other mineral formations and had industrialized early. Attempts to diversify the economy in this period were largely unsuccessful, and according to Charles Hulbert of Shrewsbury, writing in 1837, the 30 square miles from Newport to Brosley, Coalport, Dawley, Ironbridge and Madelely Wood resembled the neighbourhoods of Birmingham, Manchester and Stockport, where mines, canals, railways, foundries, smoke and populous towns ‘rush into existence as if by power of magic’. B.

A poor county of backward cultivation and limited manufactures, including the benighted Arigna iron works, Leitrim was sparsely populated and boasted few towns apart from Carrick-on-Shannon, where the elections were held, and Jamestown, the county’s other disfranchised borough, while Leitrim village was said to be a ‘miserable little place’.Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), vi. 238-9; H.D. Inglis, Ireland in 1834, ii. 144; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.

Rutland, the smallest English county, was entirely agrarian. It contained the small market towns of Oakham, the venue for elections, and Uppingham.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 350, 351. Since 1747 the Noels, earls of Gainsborough, of Exton Park, near Oakham had combined with the Cecils, earls of Exeter, of Burghley House, just over the Lincolnshire border, to exclude from a share in the representation the Finches, earls of Winchilsea. The county had last been contested in 1761.

Norfolk was an agriculturally diverse county remarkable for its large and independent yeoman squirearchy. Its principal ports were King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth and elections and county meetings were held in the city of Norwich.White, Norf. Dir.

Longford produced mainly oats, potatoes and butter and had ‘scarcely any manufactures’. There were ‘few resident noblemen or gentry of large estates’ and ‘few parts of Ireland in which persons of limited income’ could ‘live cheaper or better’. The principal market towns were Ballymahon, Colehill and Edgeworthstown, and the disfranchised boroughs of Granard, Lanesborough, St. Johnstown and Longford, the venue for county elections.S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii.

Dysart, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth, ten miles north of Leith and 16 miles south-south-east of Cupar, was dominated by Dysart House, the subsidiary seat of James St. Clair Erskine†, 2nd earl of Rosslyn, of Ravenscraig Castle, the owner of most of the properties and valuable coal seams nearby. The harbour and wet dock serving its coal and coarse linen trades, however, belonged to the town council, a self-elected body of 24, all resident in 1822, when 21 had property in the burgh.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), ii. 455-6; PP (1823), xv. 703; J.

Antrim, which had a population of over 300,000 by 1831, was a prosperous and mostly Protestant Ulster county on the north-east Ulster coast. There were several market towns, including the disfranchised boroughs of Antrim and Randalstown, and a number of ports, notably Ballycastle, Larne and Portrush, but Belfast was the economic epicentre of its flourishing cloth trades.S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i. 30-35. Except in the lively politics of its biggest borough, not much attention was attracted by elections for the county, which took place at Carrickfergus.

Huntingdonshire was almost entirely agricultural. In addition to the county town and parliamentary borough of Huntingdon, it contained the small market towns of Kimbolton, Ramsey, St. Ives and St.

Lincolnshire, England’s second largest county, was a premier area of wheat production and also had extensive grazing regions, with long wool a speciality. Only six towns (Boston, Lincoln, Louth, Gainsborough, Spalding and Stamford) had over 5,000 inhabitants and it was dominated by rural proprietors, concentrated in Holland (the south-eastern administrative division) and parts of Lindsey (the northern division).

Oxfordshire was a fertile agricultural county, with centres of manufacture at Bicester (leather slippers), Henley (silk) and Witney (blankets).Pigot’s Commercial Dir.(1823-4), 435, 437, 441, 451. The notorious and ruinous contest of 1754, which cost the protagonists over £40,000 each, discouraged further disturbances of the peace for three generations.