Lovely town - rotton borough?

Number one in the Curious Cumbria series.

I don't actually know is Cockermouth was a rotton borough, the date seems a bit late but perhaps it commemorates Waugh's death rather than when Cockermouth ceased to have its own MP.
Rotton boroughs were places which only had a few people entitled to vote. These voters were often 'in the pocket' of powerful local landowners and felt obliged to vote as they were instructed. (Think the Dowger Countess of Grantham 'explaining' to the clergyman that he WOULD be marrying William and Daisy, if you are a Downton fan.) They were also called Pocket Boroughs for that reason. An act in the 1830's started to abolish them.