Situated at the confluence of the rivers Thet and Little Ouse, and straddling the Norfolk/Suffolk border, Thetford existed as a market town before Roman times, when it was known as Sitomagus. During the early Middle Ages it flourished, but by the late sixteenth century, having ceased to be an important staging post, it was chronically poor and ‘ruinated’, its income barely exceeding £60 p.a. F. Blomefield, Hist. Thetford, 2, 61; F. Blomefield, Hist. Norf. 42-3; Norf. RO, T/C1/3, p.
Situated on the south-east corner of the Wash, King’s Lynn is ‘flanked to the east by the dry sandy loams of Norfolk, and bounded to the south and west by marsh and fen’. V. Parker, Making of King’s Lynn, 3. Lynn derives the second part of its name from ‘Lun’ or ‘Lena’, an ancient British word meaning lake. F. Blomefield, Hist. Norf. viii. 476. The town was principally founded by the bishop of Norwich in the eleventh century, Parker, 1. when it was known as Bishop’s Lynn.
Four miles north-east of King’s Lynn, Rising had during the Middle Ages been an important and prosperous coastal town, dominated by an enormous castle (from which it took its name).J.M. Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of Eng. and Wales, i. 380; National Gazetteer of Eng. and Wales, iii. 514-15. However, it fell into decay as gradual silting caused the sea to retreat. By the mid-sixteenth century the castle was in ruins and the town had been eclipsed by King’s Lynn. W. Camden, Britannia, i.
The representation of Norwich was dictated by long-established rivalries in municipal politics, fluctuations in party funds and commercial considerations, notably the demise after 1825 of its textile industry, whose productivity consistently failed to match that of the Yorkshire manufactories. Norwich in 19th Cent. ed. C. Barringer, 119-60; PP (1835), xxvi. 379-430. As the banker Hudson Gurney* commented in 1832, Norwich voters were ‘not counted in ones or twos’. Norf.
Great Yarmouth, Norfolk’s second largest town and principal port, 19 miles south-east of Norwich and nine miles north of its rival, the Suffolk port of Lowestoft, had been ‘irregularly built’ on a narrow five-mile strip of land that created a haven between the North Sea and the estuaries of the Rivers Bure and Yare.
The 1st marquess of Cholmondeley had abandoned his attempt to sell the Houghton estate by 1820, and the representation of the pocket borough of Castle Rising, three miles from King’s Lynn, remained exclusive to his sons and Fulke Howard, younger son of the 1st Baron Templemore, who was by marriage the manorial lord and largest burgage holder. Wellington mss WP1/634/10; Hickling’s Almanac (1880), 67, 72; Norf.
Through the acquiescence of the Bagge, Blencowe, Bowker, Everard and Hogge families - the interrelated merchant oligarchy of ship owners, shipbuilders, chandlers, coal dealers, bankers and brewers who dominated the corporation of 12 aldermen and 18 common councillors - the commercial town of King’s Lynn or Lynn Regis had been represented since 1790 by its long-established patrons, the Walpoles, earls of Orford, now anti-Catholic ministerialists, and the Foxite Whig Sir Martin Browne Ffolkes, who, in the right of his wife, represented the interest of the Turners of Warham.
Costly litigation after the general election of 1790 had ensured that the representation of the Norfolk assize town of Thetford, straddling the Suffolk border, was controlled by the two largest local landowners, the 4th duke of Grafton, who was also the recorder, and the Catholic 11th Baron Petre. By arrangement with the mayor, ten aldermen and 20 common councilmen of the corporation, dominated by the Best, Bidwell, Burrell and Faux families prominent in the town’s brewing, coal, iron, paper and wool trades, they nominated a Member each.
