Defining a borough’s modern town

Defining the modern town or city associated with a parliamentary borough was a core requirement of Drummond’s disinterested technique for defining English borough boundaries. For the commissioners this process began as a map-based exercise that utilised their updated town plans for each borough. As discussed in the previous chapter, these plans had been completed in conjunction with the commissioners’ surveyors during their initial work in each constituency. The commissioners were advised to use their town plans to identify every grouping of houses within one mile of a borough’s ancient boundaries – an arbitrary limit that had been agreed in cross-party talks over the reform legislation.⁷ In order to decide whether a grouping of houses formed part of the modern borough the commissioners were asked to evaluate the legal, economic and social connections between an ancient borough and its nearby houses.⁸ Each borough provided the commissioners with an array of particular conditions to consider, and all but two pairs of commissioners were consistent in terms of fulfilling this brief.

Drummond advised his commissioners that legal conventions binding a borough with a nearby population should take precedent over any economic or social connections. The discovery that a small part of Strood formed part of the liberties of Rochester meant commissioners Drinkwater and Saunders were compelled to add the entire town to the borough, even though they were not connected by trade or custom. Once the commissioners had concluded that Strood was required to form part of Rochester, they had to define the modern limits of Strood and identify its likely direction of future expansion.⁹ Similarly, commissioner Ker was compelled to include the Herefordshire township of Ludford in the parliamentary borough of Ludlow (located in Shropshire), because a person living in Ludford had been allowed to bring a case to the King’s Bench as a resident of Ludlow.¹⁰

Economic links between a borough and a nearby settlement presented the most convincing reason for redefining the extent of a borough. Drinkwater and Saunders recommended the addition of Fordington to the borough of Dorchester on this basis. Although they found Fordington to be ‘extremely wretched’, at least 700 of the village’s 2,000 inhabitants were employed in Dorchester.¹¹ By contrast, the conflicting economic circumstances of two nearby towns could present as a justification for not extending an ancient borough. After surveying the area surrounding the ancient borough of Leominster, commissioners Ellis and Wylde reported that the only settlement within close proximity was the town of Kingsland. Kingsland, however, was deemed unsuitable for boundary extension as Leominster’s inhabitants were primarily ‘tradesmen and handicraftsmen’, while Kingsland’s population was ‘entirely agricultural’.¹²

Social connections between boroughs and their nearby settlements were more difficult to evaluate. Despite initially opposing such an expansion, commissioners Birch and Brandreth were convinced by Drummond to recommend that the village of Heavitree form part of Exeter. Drummond persuaded the commissioners that Heavitree’s social connection with Exeter, as a resort for its retired and wealthy inhabitants, meant that it was legitimate to consider it as part of the modern borough.¹³ The expansive boundary that Birch and Brandreth then recommended was justified on the basis of the ‘connections in trade, interests … [and] … intercourse’ between Exeter, its inner suburbs and Heavitree (Map 5.1).¹⁴

Attempting to define a modern borough by judging its economic, social and legal circumstances was a complex task. The alternative method was to quiz local inhabitants. As discussed in the previous chapter, this was a method that Drummond and the government had been wary of utilising for fear that politicised local opinion might influence boundary proposals. Nevertheless, Drummond accepted that defining a modern borough was challenging, and in his informal discussions with the commissioners he agreed that while proposals could not be led by local opinion, cautious questioning of inhabitants when difficulties arose could take place. Such guidance was provided to commissioners Allen and Romilly when they could not decide whether the township of Fishwick should be considered as part of the modern borough of Preston. Drummond advised them that it would be beneficial in such borderline cases to embark on a guarded survey of local inhabitants in order that the sitting committee of the commission could be fully informed on the matter when they made their final decision over the borough. If the commissioners deemed it necessary to survey inhabitants, Drummond informed them that they had to ‘record minutely the information received – the names of the persons – their occupation and respectability’. He explained that local opinion should only be used as a springboard for further careful investigation, stating that when proposing a boundary:

We may not follow the wish of the inhabitants but we ought to know it. Where that wish is to extend and include it is entitled to great attention. Where it is to retain and exclude it should be rigidly and jealously examined, and that examination will furnish us with the means of justification if required.¹⁵

Two pairs of commissioners, less confident in their investigative abilities, relied heavily on this method. Commissioners Ansley and Gawler advised Drummond that they had relied upon the opinion of local inhabitants when trying to settle whether the village of St. Cross was part of Winchester. Although conscious that local political leanings might have influenced their report, they informed Drummond that discussing the issue with locals had been the only way to decide.¹⁶ While Ansley and Gawler generally managed to keep such discussions discreet, commissioners Tancred and Wrottesley’s eagerness to gauge local opinion realised the fears of those who had earlier warned that doing so would compromise the commission’s impartiality. When visiting Durham, Wrottesley became embroiled in hostile correspondence with local officials after it was discovered that he had relied heavily on information provided by a town clerk. The town clerk, it transpired, had sought to play on Durham’s peculiar elastic boundary (see Chapter 4) to convince the commissioners to include certain areas that would have been favourable to local Tory electoral interests in Durham’s reformed boundary.¹⁷ If Wrottesley had simply taken the town clerk’s information in Durham as a starting point for further investigation, as the commissioners had been instructed to do, it is unlikely he would have become involved in such a dispute.

In their published reports, Tancred and Wrottesley also exhibited no caution in terms of referring to the fact that they had based their recommendations on the wishes of local inhabitants. In their report on Berwick-upon-Tweed (in which they had recommended the addition of Tweedmouth and Spittal townships to the borough) they qualified their recommendation by stating that the ‘respectable classes’ of both townships and Berwick’s corporation agreed with their recommendation. During debate over the boundary bill, the discovery of this statement allowed John Wilson Croker, one of parliament’s most vehement anti-reformers, to accuse the commission of failing to consistently base their recommendations on disinterested principles. Instead, Croker argued, Berwick’s proposal demonstrated that the commission had been poorly supervised and that individual commissioners had been more than willing to defer to the politically motivated wishes of local inhabitants when they saw fit.¹⁸

The examples of Durham and Berwick revealed the dangers of resorting to local opinion, and the case of Berwick caused particular embarrassment to the commission when discussed in parliament.¹⁹ However, given the extent of the commissioners’ investigations in each borough, and the inescapable fact that they had to converse with local inhabitants to gather even basic information, it seems unlikely that they would have been able to avoid forming an idea as to the potential reception of their proposed boundaries. The commissioners were well aware that they had to distance themselves from their knowledge of local opinion when attempting to define a modern town, by focusing primarily on the legal, economic and social connections that existed between an ancient borough and its surrounding population. The inability of Ansley and Gawler, and Tancred and Wrottesley, to fully adhere to this approach was the exception, rather than the rule. Given the experience of Durham as well as Croker’s later criticism, it was prudent that the commissioners, in the main, were discreet about any questioning of local inhabitants and avoided making any reference to the potential public response to their boundary proposals in their published reports. Doing so ensured that the commission could complete its work within a short timescale, and helped to maintain the public appearance, if not always the actual realisation, of bureaucratic impartiality.

Proposing boundaries to last for a century?

As well as ensuring that their boundaries encompassed the modern extent of a borough, Drummond had instructed the commissioners to provide a ‘liberal allowance’ for each borough’s likely future growth in order that the ‘boundary determined today may not require alteration tomorrow’.²⁰ He clarified the timescale implied by ‘tomorrow’, as well as the rationale for this instruction in correspondence with commissioners Sheepshanks and Tallents, informing them that:

the work we [the commissioners] are engaged in is intended to last for a century … if we draw our lines too close [to a borough] we shall presently have houses extending beyond them – and then petitions to parliament to send commissioners to draw new boundaries.²¹

The commissioners had been entrusted with the complex task of designing boundaries that allowed for the long-term future growth of a parliamentary borough, primarily in order that the question of parliamentary boundaries did not burden the legislature over the following century. Most of the commissioners embraced this instruction, and in many cases a comprehensive survey of each borough’s geography and economy was completed in order to identify planned and likely sites for future development. The accuracy with which this work was completed was dependent on the engineering and surveying skill available to each set of commissioners. Furthermore, the contrast between most southern boroughs and northern England’s rapidly expanding manufacturing towns and cities meant that the room allowed for a century of population growth varied considerably from borough to borough, and region to region.

Commissioners Birch and Brandreth in District C, with the assistance of their primary surveyors George Dobson and Edward Harris, completed some of the most detailed predictive work in the twenty-four boroughs that they visited in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset.²² In Bridgwater they proposed a fairly wide boundary on the basis of the town’s position as a well-connected inland commercial port, and its high current and future capacity to manufacture a particular type of brick based on silt deposits left by the tides of the River Parrett. They discovered that the river deposited this silt for a mile either side of the developed town and that a number of brick building yards and housing developments had been built or were in the process of being established for a mile to the north and south of the borough. They also found that the land to the west and east of the borough was liable to flooding and thus unsuitable for building.²³ Accordingly they proposed a boundary that extended the borough to the north and south but remained close to the existing town settlement to the east and west. As Bridgwater was not surrounded by many rivers or canals, and contained very few roads or high objects such as trees and windmills, the commissioners utilised the drains and hedges that separated the various plots of land surrounding Bridgwater, details of which had been obtained from an enclosure map of the area acquired by their surveyors, to mark out a new boundary for the borough (Map 5.2).²⁴ A similarly comprehensive approach to surveying a borough’s local conditions could also prompt commissioners to recommend that ancient boundaries be retained when it was discovered that no building land was available near to a town’s limits. In Maidstone, for instance, commissioners Drinkwater and Saunders recommended that there should be no extension to the borough’s eastern boundary as an expanse of land adjacent to the borough’s boundary had been purchased by a local paper-manufacturing proprietor, James Whatman, to ensure greater privacy for his family’s grounds in the nearby Vinters Park estate.²⁵

The extent to which the commissioners could complete such predictive work was often contingent on their surveying team. Although assigned primarily to Wales, commissioners Ker and Barrett-Lennard visited four ancient boroughs in England, and highly detailed maps marking out all identified areas for future building accompanied their original reports.²⁶ Their town plan for Liverpool included houses that were in the process of being constructed as well as individually marked plots of land that had been sold for building. Given the extent of the townships that comprised Liverpool’s suburbs this must have been a sizeable surveying task, and if Ker and Barrett-Lennard had not been able to make use of the expertise of Manchester-based surveyors Robert Thornton and Thomas Smith, it is doubtful that they would have been able to present such a compelling proposal for Liverpool’s extension.²⁷ By contrast, a lack of expertise in District B meant that commissioners Ansley and Gawler found it challenging to get to grips with predicting future growth – even with the assistance of their primary surveyor George Carrington.²⁸ This made their work particularly difficult in the larger boroughs they visited, where they only paid lip service to issues such as land suitable, or already set aside, for building.²⁹ In their initial correspondence with Drummond over Bristol and Bath, Ansley and Gawler reported ‘difficulty’ in terms of knowing how far to extend both boroughs, initially opting to extend both into nearby parishes that contained a considerable amount of countryside unsuited for building.³⁰ With the support of Drummond reviewing and amending their reports in London, however, they were eventually able to propose boundaries that met the minimum standard expected of the commissioners.³¹

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the commissioners who visited England’s northern boroughs allowed much more space for a borough’s future expansion, particularly if a borough they visited showed any signs of industry and manufacturing. In District H, commissioners Allen and Romilly visited seven ancient boroughs and eleven new boroughs, including Manchester and Sheffield. As a mark of their confidence in the north-west of England’s capacity for manufacturing growth, even though they saw fit to describe the borough of Lancaster as a ‘decaying place’, the discovery that a large factory had been built in the adjacent township of Bulk was felt to be a sufficient reason to propose a large extension to the borough (even though in its present state Bulk only contained five houses worth £10 a year). While Allen and Romilly disagreed as to how far this extension should be carried (Allen proposed to allow over one square mile for future developments, Romilly about half a square mile), even Romilly’s conservative estimation as to the likely future urban growth based around a single factory was unprecedented in comparison to elsewhere. Ultimately, Allen’s wider boundary was adopted, suggesting that Drummond and the sitting committee shared the same expectations for the future growth of England’s northern manufacturing towns.³² Similarly, Tancred and Wrottesley, who visited the north-east of England, allowed considerable room for population growth in Hull and Newcastle upon Tyne, whose local manufacturing and commercial economies were found to be flourishing.³³

Not every large borough in northern England was found to be thriving, however, and when signs of economic prosperity were not present, Drummond had to remind the commissioners to limit their boundary extensions. Following discussions with Drummond, Tancred and Wrottesley’s initial boundary for Durham (a large and respectable city, but due to its economic state ‘unlikely according to all accounts to increase’³⁴) was reduced towards the west, and additional geographic reasons were provided to justify its extension to the east.³⁵ Tancred and Wrottesley took on board Drummond’s advice with regard to Durham in future reports, and as a result recommended a conservative extension to York’s boundary that accommodated the modern town, but allowed less space for future development than elsewhere. The decision was based on their prediction that although York was not in decline, it was unlikely to expand. York’s status as ‘a northern metropolis’, they reported, had been supplanted by cities such as Newcastle upon Tyne, Manchester and Leeds due to a transformation in the ‘habits and manners which have taken place throughout the kingdom in the last half century’.³⁶ The general propensity for wider boundaries in the northern manufacturing towns was reflected in the fact that on average, northern boroughs extended to include their modern town tended to experience a greater increase in area than their southern counterparts – the median increase of these boroughs in the north being 2.34 square miles, in the midlands 1.77 square miles, and in the south of England 1.22 square miles.³⁷

Rebellion and standardisation

Despite some challenges in the implementation of their guidance, seven of the nine teams of commissioners consistently applied the methods outlined above. Two pairs of commissioners, for differing reasons, proved less co-operative. A consideration of their dissent reveals that Drummond’s method for disinterestedly defining an electoral community was contested even within the commission. It also provides an insight into the processes by which the sitting committee of the boundary commission (consisting of Drummond, the Whig MP for Staffordshire, Edward Littleton, and the hydrographer of the navy, Francis Beaufort) standardised the commissioners’ work from late October 1831. Although the committee ensured the vast majority of boundary proposals were consistent with Drummond’s ‘scientific’ principles, a handful of inconsistent proposals were published. This was due to the influence of Littleton, who like one pair of commissioners feared the electoral impact of too rigid an application of Drummond’s principles on large borough electorates in the midlands.

To Drummond’s exasperation, throughout their visits to boroughs in the east of England, commissioners Sheepshanks and Tallents proved reluctant to revise ancient boundaries to allow room for future growth. This was prompted in part by their personal and professional backgrounds, which were distinct from those of the majority of their colleagues associated with the SDUK and the ordnance survey (see Chapter 3). Sheepshanks had a tempestuous character and his willingness to challenge authority while in official positions (particularly as secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1829) has been well documented by historians.³⁸ Furthermore, his close personal ties with Drummond (he had been Drummond’s personal nomination for the commission), gave him little impetus to temper this brazen attitude.³⁹ Tallents was a prominent election agent in the east midlands and the east of England, and was well known for his role supporting candidates on behalf of the Tory Duke of Newcastle in Newark and the Whig Lord Yarborough in Great Grimsby.⁴⁰ Aside from the clear conflict of interests presented by the fact that he had been assigned to define boundaries for both boroughs, Tallents’s experience as an election agent in the unreformed electoral system meant that he, better than any other commissioner, understood the subtle historic interplay between parliamentary and local jurisdictions.⁴¹ On one level he was aware that maintaining ancient boundaries provided one less change of electoral circumstances for him to deal with in post-reform politics. On another, he was wary of provoking unforeseen changes in a borough’s future local administration by altering its parliamentary boundaries. Sheepshanks’s outspoken nature proved the perfect conduit for Tallents’s conservatism.

Sheepshanks and Tallents legitimised their stance by ascribing considerable importance to a statement in their preliminary instructions of 8 August 1831, that ‘little or no portion of country’ should be added to boroughs that contained over 300 £10 householders – an instruction that was invalidated by a secondary instruction of 23 August granting them permission to extend boroughs for up to one mile into their surrounding countryside to allow for population growth.⁴² They also used their personal interpretation of the government’s conservative intentions for the reform bill to challenge what they perceived to be Drummond’s zealousness for redrawing ancient boundaries. After being questioned over several proposals that failed to allow for a borough’s future growth, Sheepshanks explained:

We differ certainly a good deal from you [Drummond] and probably the rest of the commissioners as to the value of legal boundaries … where an old rule is broken … the public feeling, especially in England, demands a strong case. I do not read the [reform] bill as you do, if it be thought to encourage change, it only permits change for sufficient cause and … gives large powers [to the commissioners] to be used discreetly and even timidly.

He acknowledged that their choice as to whether to propose new boundaries, or not, ‘depend[ed] upon a sort of tact and feeling made up of a number of unaccording principles’ – namely, the geographic, legal, economic and social circumstances that existed between a borough and its surrounding population. It was only when a consideration of all of these factors provided an overwhelming case for extension, he continued, that he and Tallents would consider altering ancient boundaries.⁴³

In Stamford, this led to a proposal that only allowed a slight extension of the borough so that it included a few houses in an adjoining parish, but no room for the town’s future growth in that direction. On reading this report Drummond expressed ‘great regret’ that a wider boundary had not been proposed, prompting his reminder to both commissioners that ‘the work we are engaged in is intended to last for a century’.⁴⁴ Even following a subsequent warning from Drummond that they demonstrated ‘a great disposition to cut close to the town’, they continued to defy his advice.⁴⁵ In some cases, Sheepshanks and Tallents’s conservatism had merit. For example, they identified several reasons for not extending the boundary of Cambridge, despite discovering that the city was expanding and that six houses, which backed onto Magdalene College, stood outside the borough’s ancient limits.⁴⁶ These houses, they reported, stood on the other side of a turnpike from the rest of Cambridge, and had been purposefully built outside Cambridge’s parliamentary boundary due to a peculiarity in local jurisdictions. Furthermore, they were reluctant to alter a well-known legal boundary just to add six voters to a constituency that already contained 1,600 £10 householders.⁴⁷ Differing legal jurisdictions, as well as Cambridge’s already ample constituency, also led to their refusal to consider whether the nearby village of Chesterton should form part of the future borough. For Sheepshanks and Tallents, their work required an acute knowledge of local circumstances, and although parliamentary boundary changes would formally have no technical impact on existing local legal frameworks, they believed that informally they would. For instance, if in the future the inhabitants of Chesterton were to share the privilege of electing MPs with Cambridge, they contended it was not unreasonable that the inhabitants of the latter might demand the inhabitants of the former also shared their legal burdens. Such thinking also provided the basis for their recommendations that Northampton, Peterborough, Boston and King’s Lynn should not be extended. This was despite the fact that each borough contained a population grouping outside its existing parliamentary limits, which in Drummond’s view had a tenable association with the existing borough and was likely to experience future expansion.⁴⁸

Rather than amending these boundaries to suit Drummond’s wishes, Sheepshanks and Tallents insisted on defending their proposals in front of the sitting committee. Ultimately, the committee accepted their arguments for not extending Cambridge and Northampton, but overruled their initial proposals for Stamford, Peterborough, Boston and Great Yarmouth. Accordingly, Drummond redesigned Stamford’s boundary, to ensure it conformed with the commissioners’ recommendations elsewhere.⁴⁹ Likewise, their proposed arbitrary boundary for Great Yarmouth, which cut very close to the town, was overruled in favour of a more expansive boundary.⁵⁰ The sitting committee utilised their 20 December instructions for boroughs with fewer than, or near to, 300 £10 householders (discussed in the following chapter) to extend Peterborough (which contained 348 £10 householders) into an adjoining parish. This avoided sending another commissioner to the borough to draw an arbitrary boundary that included the entire town.⁵¹ Finally, Sheepshanks was sent back to Boston in January 1832, at the behest of the sitting committee as well as the chancellor of the exchequer, Viscount Althorp, who had received a petition from the inhabitants of the parish of Skirbeck requesting they be included in the borough.⁵² This prompted a revised proposal for Boston that added some houses not previously included, which the sitting committee expanded to include the entire parish of Skirbeck.⁵³

Commissioners Ord and Chapman in District E (west England/midlands) offered a different, more overtly partisan, challenge to their instructions. When reporting on large boroughs they were reluctant to propose boundary extensions that removed town voters from the counties. Ord was a member of a prominent Whig family in Northumberland. His father had been a long-standing Whig MP, and Ord, himself a self-professed radical, would become an MP in 1832.⁵⁴ While Ord and Chapman’s correspondence never demonstrated directly that party bias lay behind their reluctance to extend large borough boundaries, it was certainly the case that a growing number of reformers and Whigs had come to the realisation during 1831 that it would enhance their own electoral prospects if reformed counties retained an influential urban electorate.⁵⁵ This notion had become particularly apparent following the passage of the Chandos clause as part of the reform bill in August 1831, enfranchising £50 tenants at will in the counties, which threatened to reduce the influence of borough freeholders by providing rural, agricultural voters with a preponderating influence over England’s reformed counties.⁵⁶ When Ord and Chapman were presented with a borough that contained a small voting population, such as Tewkesbury (318 £10 householders under ancient boundaries), they showed no hesitancy in proposing boundaries that encompassed the modern borough and allowed for its future growth.⁵⁷ However, when presented with a more densely populated borough, such as Worcester, they proposed a boundary which appeared to cut off a considerable number of houses in the city and provided very limited room for future expansion (Figure 5.3).⁵⁸

When questioned by Drummond over their contradictory recommendations, Ord explained that he and Chapman had proposed their boundaries after evaluating their likely impact on county electorates. In Tewkesbury, he explained, the transference of around fifty to one hundred county voters to this small borough from the county was not only important in terms of increasing the borough’s respectability, but also because in relative terms this redistribution of voters was unlikely to make much difference to Gloucestershire’s electorate of 10,000. Furthermore, the £10 householders transferred to Tewkesbury from the county, he reasoned, were likely to welcome the increased weight of their two votes in a small borough electorate of 400, in comparison to their previously minimal influence in Gloucestershire. By contrast, they felt that in Worcester the extension of the borough to encompass every house associated with the city was likely to have a detrimental impact on Worcestershire’s electorate. The ancient limits of Worcester contained between 1,300 and 1,400 £10 householders and the entire city was thought to include around 2,000 £10 householders – potentially removing 700 voters from a county of 8,000 that was also due to be divided. Ord explained that he and Chapman had sought to reduce the number of transferred voters by excluding particular suburbs from Worcester’s borough boundary. These suburbs, they had discovered, contained primarily long-term freehold properties that either conferred the county franchise, or were the county residences of voters who also owned a property in the borough. Their proposed boundary, they contended, would be welcomed by these voters as their houses ‘properly belonged’ to the county, and because no-one would be deprived of the franchise. Furthermore, they argued, residents with two properties would be allowed to keep their county and borough votes.⁵⁹

Such considerations were clearly outside the commissioners’ remit, as they had not been asked to consider the redistributive impact of their boundary changes. Accordingly, Drummond ensured a redesigned boundary for Worcester in line with the commissioners’ instructions (Map 5.3).⁶⁰ Despite this, Ord and Chapman continued to allow the redistributive impact of boundary reform to influence their work. Their proposals for Gloucester and Derby purposefully avoided the addition of a number of houses associated with both cities, and in Coventry and Nottingham they explicitly avoided boundary expansion on the basis that it would remove town-based voters from the counties of Warwickshire and Nottinghamshire respectively.⁶¹ Drummond’s ability to amend Ord and Chapman’s final reports was compromised by the presence on the sitting committee of Littleton, who shared their reluctance to remove town influence from county electorates. When considering their proposal for Coventry, which had mooted adding the village of Stoke to the borough, Littleton expressed a wish that if the Chandos clause was to stand in the third reform bill, the electoral influence of Stoke’s weavers might be more useful to Whig interests if they voted in Warwickshire. In a note on the borough, Littleton stated that the addition of Stoke to Coventry ‘should depend very much on the question [of] whether £50 tenants at will should be admitted to the franchise in the new bill. If they shall be admitted, will it be prudent to take manufacturing influence … out of the counties?’⁶² Littleton got his way and Coventry’s boundary was not extended. Furthermore, no amendment was made to Ord and Chapman’s boundary proposals for Derby or Gloucester. And, while a slight amendment was initially proposed to Nottingham, Littleton ensured the recommendation was overturned ahead of the Commons committee stage of the boundary bill. This decision was aided by a deputation of local inhabitants who had contacted Littleton separately, calling for no change to take place to the borough’s boundaries.⁶³

To justify these decisions, the commissioners’ published reports were amended to minimise any social connections that existed between populations that lived in, or owned second residences on, the outskirts of these midland cities, instead emphasising the more natural connection they shared with the county franchise.⁶⁴ These four boroughs provided the only instances among the existing boroughs where the sitting committee actively sidestepped Drummond’s disinterested principles. Unsurprisingly, these inconsistencies were seized on by anti-reformers in parliament, and Derby and Nottingham, in particular, prompted charges of gerrymandering against the government and the commission. Littleton shamelessly, but successfully, defended these cases, arguing that they were anomalous in comparison to other large boroughs such as Exeter, which had been extended to include its nearby associated population.⁶⁵

Parliamentary approval and political impact

The consistency with which the boundary commission redrew England’s electoral map meant that only nine of the ninety-one proposals discussed in this chapter underwent any amendment between their publication in February 1832 and the passage of the Boundary Act in July 1832.⁶⁶ Of these, Boston and Nottingham have already been discussed, and Arundel, which the commission initially proposed to extend into its surrounding parishes, is discussed in the following chapter. Two cases, Bridport and Pontefract, were amended by the government to demonstrate to parliamentarians that they were willing to address any slight inconsistencies in the commissioners’ proposals if identified. Bridport’s boundary, for instance, was amended following Tory complaints that the commissioners had been too quick to dismiss the inclusion of the town’s harbour in their proposal.⁶⁷ The commissioners’ recommendations for the remaining four boroughs were amended following local petitioning and lobbying. In Barnstaple local inhabitants from two neighbouring villages made the successful case for their inclusion in the reformed borough on the basis that the commissioners had underappreciated their socio-economic connection with the borough.⁶⁸ The government agreed to amend Stamford and Poole following complaints that the commission’s proposals would inadvertently turn both into closed boroughs under the influence of Tory and Whig patrons respectively.⁶⁹ Amending Stamford also served to appease the borough’s radical MP, Charles Tennyson, and the electoral agent, Joseph Parkes, who the government had been unwilling to conciliate over their demands for a reduced borough franchise qualification.⁷⁰ And in Abingdon fierce local reaction against a very minor boundary change prompted the government to maintain the borough’s ancient boundary to avoid any further controversy.⁷¹

This pragmatic approach to the management of the boundary bill ensured its passage through parliament after only a few hours of debate – a remarkable feat given the level of parliamentary and public dissent over the government’s boundary reform plans since March 1831. The speed with which local dissent was mobilised in a few cases reveals how difficult the recommendations of a poorly managed commission might have been to enact. That so few complaints were made about the boroughs discussed here attests to the wisdom of the government’s decision to revise England’s electoral communities via Drummond’s ‘scientific’ framework. In addition, the government’s ability to address specific local complaints as the boundary bill proceeded through parliament helped to ensure that boundaries remained one of the most enduring aspects of the 1832 reform settlement at Westminster, and in the localities. Although Drummond’s ambition that the commission’s proposals should last for a century was overly ambitious, the long-term legacy of the commission’s work was striking. Within a year of the 1832 Boundary Act reformers in Hertford and Warwick sought to negate the Conservative advantage of the 1832 boundary settlement in their constituencies by extending the limits of their respective boroughs.⁷² Both efforts were rejected by Parliament, meaning that every parliamentary boundary enacted by the 1832 Boundary Act remained in place until the 1868 Boundary Act. Two thirds (sixty-one) of the ninety-one boundaries discussed in this chapter remained in place until the 1885 Redistribution of Seats Act, and of these, eighteen remained in place until 1918.⁷³

Of the ninety-one boroughs discussed in this chapter, eighty-five eventually became municipal boroughs under the terms of the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act, and a remarkably high number of these, sixty-seven (79 per cent), were assigned their 1832 parliamentary boundaries. In one sense, this is not surprising, given that the 1833–5 municipal corporations commission shared many of the same personnel and approaches as the boundary commission.⁷⁴ However, the fact that the geographic definitions provided to many boroughs by the commissioners during the winter of 1831 were adopted at municipal level for most of the nineteenth century is significant on three levels. First, shared boundaries in parliamentary and municipal politics helped to cement the levels of shared political partisanship among constituents that flourished in parliamentary and local elections after 1832.⁷⁵ Second, the limits identified by the commissioners in 1832 provided the future physical boundaries within which many Victorian urban planners developed their modern towns and cities.⁷⁶ And third, during the 1830s the leadership and organisation of constituency politics became part of an increasingly enmeshed web of local administrative geographies overseeing parish, municipal, poor law, improvement and police administration. As ‘training ground[s] for political talents’ these interconnected polities were integral to the operation of reformed constituency politics, ensuring that electoral organisation continued to be defined as much by the local, as it was the national.⁷⁷

When considered as a voting block at Westminster between 1832 and 1868 the ninety-one boroughs discussed in this chapter usually provided moderate levels of support to Whig-Liberal governments and became increasingly supportive of free trade, the abolition of church rates and the ballot by the 1850s (Graphs C.9–C.10 and Tables C.11–C.12). Unlike in the new boroughs and multiple parish boroughs, the boroughs under consideration here demonstrated higher levels of fluctuation in terms of party and government support across parliaments and were remarkably consistent in tracking the average voting behaviour of English borough MPs throughout the period (Graphs C.1, C.3, C.5 and C.7 and Tables C.3, C.5, C.7 and C.9). Both types of borough provided a small, but declining, Whig-Liberal majority in major confidence divisions in the Commons between 1832 and 1841, and aside from the radical-led rebellions of 1851 and 1855, continued to provide a reliable source of support for Whig-Liberal governments between the 1847 election and the passage of the 1867–8 reform legislation. The 1841 parliament proved the exception, when MPs representing boroughs with unchanged boundaries, in particular, swung markedly behind the Conservatives – specifically at Bedford, Cambridge, Harwich, London, Newark, Reading, Thetford, Westminster and Wigan.

On policy matters, modern town and unchanged borough MPs tracked each other quite consistently across the entire period, both switching to support for free trade in 1846, the ballot by 1852 and the abolition of church rates by 1854. However, the 1859 election led to a notable decline in the willingness of MPs who represented boroughs extended to include their modern town to support Whig-Liberal administrations, the ballot and the abolition of church rates. This was due primarily to an influx of candidates using the Liberal Conservative label, such as the MP for Truro, Montagu Smith, who had been able to use the ambiguity inherent in the label to capitalise on divisions within local Liberal ranks and secure moderate Liberal and Conservative votes.⁷⁸ Boroughs whose boundaries had remained unchanged witnessed a similar swing towards the Conservatives at the 1865 election, particularly in Lichfield, Derby, Coventry, Thetford, Bury St. Edmunds, Tiverton and Hastings. However, even with this gradual shift in parliamentary and constituency opinion towards the Conservatives from 1859, by the end of the 1865 parliament 60 per cent of MPs representing the boroughs discussed in this chapter proved willing to support Gladstone’s Irish Church resolutions in April 1868. As had been the case throughout the period Whig and Liberal MPs generally fared better than Conservatives in ancient boroughs whose boundaries were extended, or clarified, in order that they encompassed their modern electoral community and space for its future growth.

While there is an observable correlation in the voting patterns of MPs representing these constituencies, the extent to which boundary reform in 1832 can be said to have caused these patterns should not be overstated. In contrast to the constituencies considered in subsequent chapters, where a particular type of boundary change caused clearer partisan shifts at Westminster, the impact of boundary changes in these boroughs evades any neat description and needs to be evaluated subtly, on a case-by-case basis. In reality, the electoral and political legacy of defining ancient boroughs according to their modern geographic communities was contingent on the continuation of ancient franchise rights after 1832, the operation of the £10 householder franchise, electorate sizes, voter registration and the evolution of localised political culture in each constituency.⁷⁹

The decision to extend a borough’s boundaries to include its modern town, or the clarification of existing boundaries, had its clearest impact in the twenty-one boroughs discussed here that had operated under a restricted corporation, burgage or freeman franchise prior to 1832. While these boroughs had technically had boundaries prior to 1832, the politics of those living within these limits had never been put through the political scrutiny of canvassing and voter registration, or publicised via poll books following elections. Whether it was a small town like Andover – whose electorate was extended from 24 to 246 – or a large city such as Bath – whose electorate expanded from 30 to 2,853 – the politics of the parishes, streets and individuals that constituted these boroughs became public knowledge for the first time after 1832, a process of politicisation that was consolidated by the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act.⁸⁰

The political impact of this opening up of restricted boroughs into new spaces was far from straightforward. In some boroughs – such as Dartmouth and Tiverton – the pre-1832 hopes of reformers were confirmed as either government or Tory influence shifted almost immediately to local reforming landowners or manufacturers previously excluded from the representation.⁸¹ But in other boroughs – such as Devizes, Winchester, Portsmouth or Ripon – established networks of Whig, Tory or government patronage were able to retain influence so long as they spent time and resources cultivating the new electorates within their borough’s boundaries. Such cultivation was usually achieved via attention to registration, developing local party structures, the creation of votes or the generous funding of electioneering.⁸² However, if established patrons did not adapt, or were unwilling to provide financial backing for the new types of local party organisation that were required to thrive in the registration courts after 1832 – as happened at Knaresborough or Scarborough – very new electoral dynamics and spaces for influence within a borough’s existing, or new, geographic limits quickly developed.⁸³

In the seventy boroughs discussed in this chapter that had previously enjoyed either a more extensive freeman, ratepayer or householder franchise prior to 1832 the impact of boundary extension, or clarification, was equally varied. In some cases, boundary reform proved largely inconsequential. It is difficult to suggest that the legal identification of borough boundaries, or their minor extension, via the 1832 Boundary Act caused any significant shift in political dynamics in the old inhabitant ratepayer electorates of Abingdon, Reading, Westminster, Windsor or the freeman borough of York.⁸⁴ That said, cases where boundary reform had no meaningful observable impact after 1832 are in the minority. This was because the extension of ancient boundaries into new areas of a town or city frequently led to the growth of new pockets of political influence in individual constituencies, particularly as the influence of ancient franchise voters declined in the decades after 1832, and urban (and suburban) growth extended borough settlements to the edge of their revised limits. By the 1860s, Conservatives in Exeter had derived real electoral benefit from the extension of the borough’s boundaries into its surrounding suburbs in 1832, and a similarly prototypical ‘villa-Toryism’ was detectable in Liverpool’s reformed boundary throughout the period.⁸⁵ The opposite proved to be the case in Leicester, where the borough’s extended boundaries proved beneficial to local Liberals, who by the 1850s outnumbered the predominantly Anglican Conservative voter base in the centre of the city.⁸⁶ Similarly, in Northampton the shift from a potwalloper to a more elite £10 franchise within the borough’s unchanged boundaries proved crucial in cementing Liberal control over the borough by the 1860s.⁸⁷

As well as the creation of new pockets of electoral power, one of the most intriguing effects of the 1832 Boundary Act was its unforeseen impact on the evolution of electoral corruption. The extension and clarification of boundaries in 1832 combined with the enfranchisement of £10 householders and the disfranchisement of non-resident freeman ‘out-voters’ (those who lived more than seven miles from a borough’s boundaries) to allow new cultures of electoral corruption to develop in many of England’s ancient boroughs. In the freeman borough of Gloucester, for example, the resources that local parties had previously spent on transporting out-voters from London were transferred to new and existing voters within the borough’s more formalised post-1832 geography. By 1849 this had led to a massive expansion in the ‘agencies, bands, banners, open houses, ribbons, and all the tawdry paraphernalia of corruption’ at election time, and the rise of a group of 200 ‘notoriously corrupt’ voters who charged up to £10 for their votes.⁸⁸ In other boroughs the electoral traditions and practices of the unreformed system simply expanded, or were adapted, within new borough boundaries. In Totnes, with its previously exclusive franchise, the new £10 voters within the borough’s extended boundaries quickly embraced cultures of treating and bribery, and local parties made use of the borough’s extended boundaries to create fictitious voters.⁸⁹ And where thriving cultures of bribery and treating had been prevalent prior to 1832, election agents spared little resources (and faced little resistance) in extending the benefits of flagrant corrupt practices to the newly expanded areas and voters of reformed Great Yarmouth, Stafford, Sudbury and St. Albans – the details of which were widely publicised by successive election committees at Westminster and led to the disfranchisement of the latter two boroughs in 1844 and 1852.⁹⁰ That boundary extensions intended to revitalise electoral politics around a constituency’s legitimate community encouraged the illegitimate aspects of electoral politics to flourish in the reformed political landscape had not been foreseen by Drummond or the Grey ministry in 1832. Their fears over the continuation of the more corrupt elements of the unreformed electoral system, as discussed in the next chapter, had instead focused on a set of boroughs whose unreformed boundaries contained far fewer electors.

Notes

1. 1. TNA, T72/11/25, ‘Stamford’, Drummond to Tallents and Sheepshanks, 6 Sept. 1831.

2. 2. The Clause 5 boroughs of Aylesbury, Cricklade, East Retford and New Shoreham, whose boundaries were reformed prior to 1832, are considered in Chapter 6.

3. 3. N. Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel: A Study in the Technique of Parliamentary Representation (London, 1971), 69; P. Salmon, ‘The English Reform Legislation, 1831–32’, in D. Fisher (ed.), The House of Commons, 1820–32, i. (Cambridge, 2009), 395–401.

4. 4. D. C. Moore, ‘Concession or Cure: The Sociological Premises of the First Reform Act’, Historical Journal, 9, 1 (1966), 52–5; D. C. Moore, The Politics of Deference: A Study of the Mid-Nineteenth Century Political System (New York, 1976), 173–83.

5. 5. A. Hawkins, Victorian Political Culture: Habits of Heart and Mind (Oxford, 2015), 163.

6. 6. K. Navickas, Protest and the Politics of Space and Place 1789–1848 (Manchester, 2016), 154–76.

7. 7. Hansard, 3, vi. (1 Sept. 1831), 1010–17.

8. 8. PP1831–2 (141), xxxxviii. 7.

9. 9. TNA, T72/11/9, ‘Rochester’; PP1831–2 (141), xl. 29.

10. 10. PP1831–32 (141), xl. 207; TNA, T72/10/19, ‘Ludlow’, pencil marking on Charles Evans’s map.

11. 11. TNA, T72/9/5, ‘Dorchester’; PP1831–2 (141), xxxxviii. 194.

12. 12. TNA, T72/10/5, ‘Leominster’; Leominster was subsequently extended into its parish, Hansard, 3, xiii. (7 June 1832), 513–33; HCJ, lxxxvii. (8 June 1832), 390.

13. 13. TNA, T72/9/15, ‘Exeter’; Morning Post, 1 Dec. 1831.

14. 14. PP1831–2 (141), xxxxviii. 122.

15. 15. TNA, T72/10/68, ‘Preston’, Drummond to Allen and Romilly, 24 Sept. 1831.

16. 16. TNA, T72/11/66, ‘Winchester’, Ansley and Gawler to Drummond, 16 Sept.1831.

17. 17. M. Escott, ‘Durham City’, Fisher, Commons, ii. 369; TNA, T72/9/11, ‘Durham’, Drummond to Tancred and Wrottesley, 17 Oct. 1831.

18. 18. Hansard, 3, xiii. (7 June 1832), 519–20.

19. 19. SRO, Hatherton, D260/M/F/5/27/8, Sheepshanks to Littleton, undated (early June 1832).

20. 20. PP1831–2 (141), xxxxviii. 7.

21. 21. TNA, T72/11/25, ‘Stamford’, Drummond to Tallents and Sheepshanks, 6 Sept. 1831.

22. 22. TNA, T72/43, ‘Ledger of the Commissioners’, 44, 142, 148. Four other surveyors (Rendel, Thomas, Smith and Vicars) supported this work.

23. 23. TNA, T72/8/33, ‘Bridgwater’, ‘Report on Bridgwater’, by Birch and Brandreth.

24. 24. TNA, T72/8/33, ‘Bridgwater’, ‘Reference to the names and fields in the Bridgwater Plan’; PP1831–2 (141), xl. 230–31; Probably the 1802 enclosure map of Bridgwater, R. Kain et al., The Enclosure Maps of England and Wales 1595–1918 (Cambridge, 2004), 313.

25. 25. TNA, T72/10/25, ‘Maidstone’, Drinkwater and Saunders, Initial report on Maidstone, undated.

26. 26. TNA, T72/11/22 ‘Shrewsbury’; TNA, T72/10/10, ‘Liverpool’; TNA, T72/10/19, TNA, ‘Ludlow’; PP1831–2 (141), xl. 207.

27. 27. TNA, T72/10/10, ‘Liverpool’, Thornton to Drummond, 6 Jan. 1832, 15 Jan. 1832.

28. 28. TNA, T72/43, ‘Ledger of the Commissioners’, 136.

29. 29. TNA, T72/10/46, ‘Newport’; TNA, T72/11/66, ‘Winchester’ and TNA, T72/8/18, ‘Bath’.

30. 30. TNA, T72/8/18, ‘Bath’; TNA, T72/8/35, ‘Bristol’.

31. 31. TNA, T72/8/35, ‘Bristol’; TNA, T72/11/66, ‘Winchester’; TNA, T72/9/4, ‘Devizes’, Drummond to Ansley, undated (likely 13 Nov. 1831), Ansley to Drummond, 14 Nov. 1831.

32. 32. TNA, T72/10/2, ‘Lancaster’.

33. 33. TNA, T72/9/40, ‘Hull’, Report on Hull by Tancred and Wrottesley, 24 Sept. 1831; TNA, T72/10/45, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’, Report on Newcastle-upon-Tyne by Tancred and Wrottesley, 6 Oct. 1831.

34. 34. TNA, T72/9/11, ‘Durham’, Drummond to Tancred and Wrottesley, 17 Oct. 1831.

35. 35. TNA, T72/9/11, ‘Durham’, Drummond to Tancred and Wrottesley, 17 Oct. 1831; PP1831–2 (141), xxxxviii. 161–2.

36. 36. PP1831–2 (141), xl. 171–2.

37. 37. The median has been used instead of the mean to exclude outliers and account for the smaller sample set in the north and the midlands.

38. 38. A. M. Clarke, rev. M. Hoskin, ‘Sheepshanks, Richard (1794–1855)’, ODNB, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25290 [accessed 9 Dec. 2022]; M. Hoskin, ‘Astronomers at War: South v. Sheepshanks’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 20 (1989), 175–212; M. Hoskin et al., ‘More on “South v. Sheepshanks”’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 22, 2 (1991), 174–9.

39. 39. TNA, T72/8/42, ‘Cambridge’, Sheepshanks to Drummond, numbered D.32; TNA, T72/11/76, ‘Great Yarmouth’, Sheepshanks to Drummond ending ‘Great Yarmouth, Friday night’.

40. 40. R. Gaunt and P. O’Malley, ‘Tallents, William Edwards’, ODNB, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/68173 [accessed 6 Aug. 2022]; R. Gaunt, Politics, Law and Society in Nottinghamshire: The Diaries of Godfrey Tallents of Newark 1829–1839 (Nottingham, 2010), 26; R. Gaunt, Unhappy Reactionary: The Diaries of the Fourth Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne (Nottingham, 2003), 64, 80, 83–4.

41. 41. On local jurisdictions see, P. Salmon, ‘ “Reform Should Begin at Home”: English Municipal and Parliamentary Reform, 1818–32’, in C. Jones, P. Salmon and R. Davis (eds.), Partisan Politics, Principles and Reform in Parliament and the Constituencies, 1689–1880 (Edinburgh, 2004), 93–113.

42. 42. PP1831–2 (141), xxxxviii. 5–7.

43. 43. TNA, T72/8/42, ‘Cambridge’, Sheepshanks to Drummond, received 30 Sept. 1831.

44. 44. TNA, T72/11/25, ‘Stamford’, numbered ‘D.3’, ‘Observations on Stamford Report’, Drummond to Tallents and Sheepshanks, 6 Sept. 1831.

45. 45. TNA, T72/10/61, ‘Peterborough’, Drummond to Sheepshanks and Tallents, 8 Sept. 1831.

46. 46. TNA, T72/8/42, ‘Cambridge’, Report on Cambridge received 23 Sept. 1831.

47. 47. TNA, T72/8/42, Sheepshanks to Drummond, received 30 Sept. 1831.

48. 48. TNA, T72/8/42, Sheepshanks to Drummond, received 30 Sept. 1831; TNA, T72/10/52, ‘Northampton’; TNA, T72/10/61, ‘Peterborough’; TNA, T72/10/52, ‘Northampton’; TNA, T72/8/27, ‘Boston’; TNA, T72/10/22, ‘Lynn Regis’.

49. 49. TNA, T72/11/25, ‘Stamford’, Drummond to Tallents and Sheepshanks, 6 Sept. 1831; PP1831–2 (141), xxxxix. 105–8.

50. 50. TNA, T72/11/75, ‘Great Yarmouth’.

51. 51. TNA, T72/10/61, ‘Peterborough’, Tallents to Drummond, 9 Sept. 1831.

52. 52. Stamford Mercury, 13 Jan. 1832, 4.

53. 53. TNA, T72/8/27, ‘Boston’; PP1831–2 (488), iii. 52; Hansard, 3, lxxxvii. (25 May 1832), 343.

54. 54. M. Escott, ‘Ord, William’, in D. Fisher (ed.), The House of Commons, 1820–1832 (Cambridge, 2009), vi. 570–82; S. Lees, ‘Ord, William. H’, in P. Salmon and K. Rix, The House of Commons, 1832–1868, (forthcoming).

55. 55. The Times, 12 Aug. 1831; Moore, ‘Concession or Cure’, 53–4.

56. 56. After 1832 a person could not qualify for the county franchise in respect of any property they owned, rented or leased that would qualify them to vote as a resident £10 borough householder: P. Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work: Local Politics and National Parties, 1832–1841 (Woodbridge, 2002), 134–5, 174–5; Salmon, ‘English Reform Legislation’, 401–4; 2 & 3 Wm. IV, c. 45.

57. 57. TNA, T72/11/41, ‘Tewkesbury’. Tewkesbury was later thrown into its parish, see Chapter 6.

58. 58. TNA, T72/11/72, ‘Worcester’.

59. 59. TNA, T72/11/72, ‘Worcester’, Report on Worcester, received 20 Sept. 1831, Ord and Chapman to Drummond, 25 Sept. 1831.

60. 60. PP1831 (141), xl. 143.

61. 61. TNA T72/8/62, ‘Coventry’, Chapman to Drummond, 1 Oct. 1831; T72/9/3, ‘Derby’; T72/9/20, ‘Gloucester’; T72/10/52, ‘Nottingham’.

62. 62. TNA, T72/8/62, ‘Coventry’, undated note by Littleton.

63. 63. PP1831 (141), xxxix. 184; PP1831–2 (488), iii. 56; TNA, T72/10/52, ‘Nottingham’, B. Fryman to Littleton, 20 Dec. 1831.

64. 64. TNA, T72/9/3, ‘Derby’; PP1831 (141), xxxviii. 105.

65. 65. Hansard, 3, xiii. (7 June 1832), 519–21, 526, 534–5, (3 July 1832), 1264, xiv. (9 July 1832), 170–2; HLJ, lxiv. (3 July 1832), 347–8.

66. 66. The text of three cases (Hertford, St. Albans and Hastings) was amended due to slight descriptive errors.

67. 67. Hansard, 3, xiii. (7 June 1832), 518–19, 531.

68. 68. North Devon Journal, 14 June 1832; D. Fisher, ‘Barnstaple’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 261–2.

69. 69. Hampshire Advertiser, 3 Mar. 1832; HCJ, lxxxvii. (8 Mar. 1832), 176; S. Farrell, ‘Poole’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 329; Examiner, 24 June 1832; Stamford Mercury, 24 Feb. 1832; M. Casey and P. Salmon, ‘Stamford’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 660–61.

70. 70. History of Parliament, Unpublished Parkes Transcripts, Parkes to Northouse, 23 June 1832; Hansard, 3, xi. (19 Mar. 1832), 406–12.

71. 71. Berkshire Chronicle, 3 Mar., 14, 28 July 1832; Oxford Journal, 16 June 1832; D. Fisher, ‘Abingdon’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 34.

72. 72. Hansard, 3, xxii. (21 Apr. 1834), 1060–77; H. Miller, ‘Warwick’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868.

73. 73. 2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 64 (11 July 1832); 30 & 31 Vict. c.46 (13 July 1868); 48 & 49 Vict. c.23 (25 June 1885); 8 Geo. V. c.64 (6 Feb. 1918).

74. 74. Compiled from PP1867–8 (3972), xx. i.

75. 75. P. Salmon, ‘Local Politics and Partisanship: The Electoral Impact of Municipal Reform, 1835’, Parliamentary History, 19, 3 (2000), 357–76.

76. 76. A. Briggs, Victorian Cities (London, 1990); D. Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England (Leicester, 1976), 154–75; S. Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class (Manchester, 2000), 36–59; P. Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, 2003), 144–82.

77. 77. Navickas, Politics of Space, 165.

78. 78. M. Spychal, ‘Smith, Montagu Edward (1806–1891)’, and J. Owen, ‘Thetford’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868.

79. 79. Salmon, Electoral Reform, 254–5.

80. 80. Salmon, Electoral Reform, 185–237; J. Phillips, The Great Reform Bill in the Boroughs: English Electoral Behaviour 1818–1841 (Oxford, 1992), 211–39; Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England, 115–236.

81. 81. Daily News, 8 Sept. 1868; T. Jenkins, ‘Dartmouth’, and ‘Tiverton’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 267–8, 299–300.

82. 82. Daily News, 17 Sept. 1849, 16 May 1857, 31 Aug., 3 Sept. 1868; The Times, 13, 18 Feb. 1852; P. Salmon and H. Spencer, ‘Portsmouth’, and ‘Winchester’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 446, 460–61; S. Farrell, ‘Wiltshire’, in Fisher, Commons, iii. 184–5; M. Casey, ‘Ripon’, in Fisher, Commons, iii. 284; K. Rix, ‘Ripon’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868; Gash, Age of Peel, 220–23, 327, 336.

83. 83. Daily News, 7 Feb., 29 Mar. 1849; M. Casey, ‘Knaresborough’, and ‘Scarborough’, in Fisher, Commons, iii. 272–3, 284; K. Rix, ‘Knaresborough’, and ‘Scarborough’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868; Gash, Age of Peel, 209–11.

84. 84. Daily News, 21 Apr. 1849; D. Fisher, ‘Abingdon’, ‘New Windsor’, ‘Reading’, and ‘Westminster’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 34, 38, 48, 694; M. Casey, ‘York’, in Fisher, Commons, iii. 294; K. Rix, ‘York’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868; Gash, Age of Peel, 284–300, 376–84; P. Tillott (ed.), A History of the County of York: The City of York (London), 268–9.

85. 85. M. Spychal, ‘The power of returning our members will henceforth be in our own hands’: parliamentary reform and its impact on Exeter, 1820–1868’, Victorian Commons, http://victoriancommons.wordpress.com [accessed 1 Aug. 2022]; Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England, 214–33; T. Jenkins, ‘Exeter’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 267; M. Escott, ‘Liverpool’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 592; C. Harvie, and H. C. G. Matthew, ‘ “Villa Tories”: The Conservative Resurgence’, Nineteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2008), 107–17.

86. 86. Leicestershire Mercury, 7 May 1859; H. Miller, ‘Leicester’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868; Fraser, Urban Politics, 49–51.

87. 87. M. Spychal, ‘Northampton’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868.

88. 88. Daily News, 3 Aug. 1849; T. Jenkins, ‘Gloucester’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 413.

89. 89. The Times, 13 Feb. 1868; T. Jenkins, ‘Totnes’, in Fisher, Commons, ii., 302–3; Gash, Age of Peel, 164.

90. 90. Norfolk News, 29 April 1848; Manchester Times, 20 October 1866; The Times, 20 Aug. 1866; Tavistock Gazette, 24 Aug. 1866; M. Escott, ‘Sudbury’, and ‘Great Yarmouth’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 66–7, 726–7; D. Fisher, ‘St. Albans’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 508; P. Salmon, ‘Stafford’, in Fisher, Commons, iii. 25; H. Miller, ‘Stafford’, M. Spychal, ‘Grote, George (1794–1871), in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868; M. Baer, The Rise and Fall of Radical Westminster, 1780–1890 (Basingstoke, 2012), 30, 34–9; Gash, Age of Peel, 159–60.