This involved the run up to an election after the first Reform Act and the rioting on election day. Interestingly the rector's response to the unrest is literally to "read the Riot Act".

Some of the chapters about Mr Lyon, the dissenting minister were a bit tiresome although the storyline about his proposed debate with the curate who ran away was funny. Mrs Holt was good value. I understand Mrs Transome's character is generally thought to be interesting, but I found her a bit one-dimensional: all her storyline was in the distant past. Harold's character could have been developed a bit more: he was a mixture of compromise and principle. Esther and Felix were mildly sympathetic, but Eliot's idea that a woman should marry a man she feels to be her superior is not one I echo and the exact nature of Felix's politics was hard for me to grasp. Esther's turning out to be the heir to the Transome estate is of course a bit of a coincidence, to say the least.