County

Dunbartonshire, bordered on the west and east by Lochs Long and Lomond respectively, comprised a ‘main body’ to the north-west of Glasgow and a ‘detached district’ to the north-east. The northern part of the main body was mountainous, but the remainder was a mixture of highland and lowland where there was much arable and livestock farming; a ‘great extension’ of sheep rearing occurred after 1800 to supply the Glasgow market. Whisky distilling and the salmon and herring fisheries were economically important.

Nairnshire was a small agricultural county (193 square miles).Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), v. 93-94. Its only significant settlement was Nairn, one of the Inverness district of burghs.

Warwickshire’s population increased by 23 per cent from 274,392 in 1821 to 336,610 in 1831, when almost 60 per cent of its 72,357 families were employed in trade, manufacture and handicraft, and 22 per cent in agriculture. Census Enumeration Abstract (1831), ii.

Clackmannanshire was the smallest Scottish county (55 square miles). The county town, Clackmannan, had long been eclipsed in importance by the small port of Alloa, two miles away, which had a population of 3,482 in 1831. Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), i. 42-43, 262-4. The electoral influence of the Abercrombys of Tullibody, near Alloa, who had occupied the seat since 1788, was not challenged in this period.

Ireland’s largest county of Cork, with an overwhelmingly Catholic population, had a valuable copper and mineral mining industry and extensive farms producing wheat, oats and barley, much of which was exported, but the condition of its numerous peasantry, who subsisted mainly on potatoes, was ‘very wretched’. There were several market towns, including the disfranchised boroughs of Baltimore, Castlemartyr, Charleville, Clonakilty, Doneraile, Midleton, and Rathcormack, and the parliamentary boroughs of Bandon Bridge, Cork, the venue for county elections, Kinsale, Mallow and Youghal.

Gloucestershire, a mixed agricultural, pastoral and industrial county straddling the River Severn, was broadly divided into three areas running parallel from north-east to south-west. To the east lay the Cotswold hills, where sheep farming supplied the raw material for cloth manufacturing in the unfranchised town of Stroud and a cluster of smaller settlements, including Dursley, Minchinhampton, Nailsworth, Painswick, Rodborough, Stonehouse and Wotton-under-Edge.

Dorset, a predominantly rural county, had long been politically moribund, but it was notable for staging, during the reform crisis of 1831, one of the most nationally significant by-elections in this period. Administratively, it was split into nine divisions, while Poole, the most prosperous borough, was technically a county in its own right, although its freeholders were allowed to vote in county elections.

Haddingtonshire was in the process of becoming one of the richest grain producing areas of Scotland, with numerous landlords keen to implement advanced farming techniques. It had a number of farmers’ clubs. Sheep were reared on the pastures of the Lammermuir hills, and there was some small-scale textile manufacturing. The royal burghs were Haddington, Dunbar and North Berwick. The other principal settlements were Cockenzie, East Linton, Prestonpans and Tranent.Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), ii.

Among the boroughs, the City of London, the financial and commercial centre of the kingdom, was second only to neighbouring Westminster in the size of its electorate, which consisted of freemen (resident and non-resident) attached to the livery companies. They were predominantly smaller merchants, shopkeepers and artisans. Had the franchise been in the freemen at large the electorate would have been probably ten times greater; and a householder qualification would have quadrupled it.HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 264; Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), iv.

Bedfordshire was a chiefly agricultural county, with centres of lace, straw and thread manufacture in Bedford, Dunstable, Luton and Market Street.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 111-22. County politics were notable for their marked party divisions, which originated in the contests of 1774 and 1784 and were sustained throughout this period.F.