Brecon

<p>Brecon remained a pocket borough of the Morgan family of Tredegar, who controlled the self-elected corporation of 15, which in turn had the sole right to create freemen. The number of freemen was kept low.<a class='fnlink' id='t1' href='#fn1'>1<span>R. D. Rees, ‘Parl. Rep. S. Wales 1790-1830’ (Reading Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1962), i. 130.</span></a> This arrangement was challenged for the first time since 1740 in 1818, by which time the population had grown to nearly 4,000. <a href="/landingpage/" title="Walter Wilkins" class="crossvolume">Walter Wilkins</a>, son of the Radnorshire Member, stood on behalf of the inhabitant householders. The bailiff rejected his candidature because he had not been nominated by a freeman and the seven corporators present all voted for Morgan. Both candidates were chaired and feasted their friends and there was no disturbance.<a class='fnlink' id='t2' href='#fn2'>2<span><em>Gloucester Jnl.</em> 29 June; <em>Cambrian</em>, 7 July 1818.</span></a> After the election, Wilkins’s supporters began legal proceedings to establish the inhabitant householders’ right to vote, with a view to ‘opening the borough, and emancipating it as they say they have done the county’.<a class='fnlink' id='t3' href='#fn3'>3<span>NLW, Tredegar mss 121/829, Bold to Sir C. Morgan, 9 Aug. 1818.</span></a></p>