Glamorgan

In all the Parliaments of this reign except two, Glamorganshire was represented by members of its leading county families, the Herberts, the Mathews, the Bassetts, the ManseIls and the Carnes. 1584, however, Robert Sidney of Penshurst, Kent, aged only el, was returned as Glamorgan’s knight of the shire. There were certain general reasons for this, particularly his father’s position as president of the council in the marches of Wales; his own marriage into a leading Glamorganshire family and his willingness to serve without the wages that could be demanded by Welsh county MPs. An additional reason was the county’s dissatisfaction with their last knight of the shire, William Mathew, who had been returned at a by-election in 1577. In the 1581 session of Parliament, Mathew and David Roberts, MP for Cardiff, had introduced a bill for the repair and maintenance of a bridge over the river Taf near Cardiff, in which it was suggested that the cost of repair should be borne by the county families and the borough in the proportion of five to one in the borough’s favour. This outraged the county families, since in their eyes Mathew, as their elected representative, should have been protecting their interests in the House. Mathew, however, had shown himself more concerned with staying on the right side of his relatives the Herberts and the 2nd Earl of Pembroke, lord of Cardiff borough, by supporting the interests of the town. In the row which followed, the county families aligned themselves according to traditional county feuds: the Mansells of Margam, the Bassetts of Beaupré and the Carnes of Ewenny against the combined branches of the Herbert family, including the Earl of Pembroke and Mathew. Sir Edward Mansell, champion of the shire interests, asked Sir Henry Sidney, president of the council, and the Earl of Leicester to intercede with Pembroke, but Mathew’s bill became law at the end of the 1581 session and the borough of Cardiff faction had won. In the event, however, Mathew found himself at odds both with the county families and the Earl of Pembroke, and in the next election, that of 1584, the county imported Robert Sidney, son of Sir Henry Sidney and brother-in-law of the Earl of Pembroke, as knight of the shire. Sidney sat again in 1593.