Monmouth

The county town of Monmouth was situated on the Rivers Monnow and Wye between the ironworks of Wales and the coalfield of the Forest of Dean. It gave its name to, and was the polling town for, a contributory boroughs constituency of the Welsh type which, as the Commons had determined in 1680, included rapidly industrializing Newport and the small agricultural borough of Usk, 25 and 12 miles to its south-west, and excluded Abergavenny, Caerleon, Chepstow and Trellech. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 407-9; CJ, ix. 663. The 1680 ruling vested the right of election in the ‘burgesses, inhabitants’, so imposing a residence qualification which was disputed and largely ignored. Despite frequent litigation it remained undetermined when parliamentary reform was enacted in 1832. Admission to the freedom of Monmouth and Usk was solely by election, but at Newport it was also conferred by right, and voting by the burgesses at large was clearly sanctioned. PP (1831-2), xxxix, 209-11, 215-18, 221; P.D.G. Thomas, Politics in 18th Cent. Wales, 38.

The constituency was administered from Troy House and Badminton by the Somerset family, dukes of Beaufort, borough lords of Monmouth and Usk, where they had contrived to close the corporations and reduce the combined electorate of 2,166 at the last contest in 1715, when 1,972 had polled, to 250 by December 1831. Thomas, 38. Factions excluded from the corporations made the Boroughs difficult and costly to manage and the Somersets found it expedient to return family members and acquiesce in the ascendancy in Newport of the Morgan family of Tredegar, with whom they shared the representation of Monmouthshire. HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 283-4. The transfer of the Boroughs representation to the 6th duke of Beaufort’s heir Lord Worcester in December 1813 had coincided with a revival of the anti-Beaufort movement in Bristol, Gloucestershire and Monmouth, where, after the 1818 general election, and with the Whig lawyer Henry Brougham* as counsel, the ‘independent burgesses’ or ‘radical’ party, led by the attorney Herbert Harris, the printer and historian Charles Heath, and the timber merchant Hezekiah Swift, brought a successful quo warranto action against the mayor and returning officer Edward Lucas and instigated mandamus proceedings. The courts upheld their claim that under the neglected charter of Edward VI all Monmouth burgesses had the right to participate in mayoral elections, which the common council of 15, a self-perpetuating oligarchy of magistrates, clergymen and select burgesses vetted by Beaufort, had habitually reserved for themselves, having also enshrined (in a by-law of 24 Sept. 1811) the custom of holding the key posts of mayor and bailiffs in rotation. The judgment failed to ‘open up’ the borough and constituency as expected. Beaufort’s local agent Arthur Wyatt, the Monmouth attorneys James Powles and Charles Tyler, the physician Dr. Robert Bevan and ‘the governor’ Joseph Price of Little Castle House, who dominated the True Blue Club and the Overmonnow Boys, persuaded the common council, who claimed the exclusive right to nominate burgesses, to admit 19 and reject Heath’s nomination as mayor in favour of the Beaufort nominee, the surgeon Edmund Bond Prosser, whose election they sanctioned by by-law. The duke’s tenants who complained were threatened with eviction. The Monmouth attorney Thomas Griffin Phillpotts and the Bristol Mercury encouraged the ‘independent burgesses’ to open a subscription fund to defray their costs (already in excess of £1,000) and to persist with their case against Prosser, which remained sub judice at the dissolution in 1820. K. Kissack, Monmouth, 56-60; NLW, Badminton mss II/9855, 9856, 12428, 14489; NLW, Sir Leonard Twiston Davies mss (Twiston Davies mss) 40445, 4418, 4419; Gwent RO, Rolls (Llangattock) mss F/P3/35; E.E. Havill, ‘Parl. Rep. Mon. and Monmouth Boroughs, 1536-1832’ (Univ. of Wales M.A. thesis, 1949), 41-44, 111-19; PP (1835), xxiii. 458, 478-80, 551-2; Cambrian, 16 Oct. 1819.

Reports that Worcester would be opposed by Morgan’s heir Charles Morgan Robinson Morgan*, who remained out of Parliament following his defeat in Breconshire in 1818, were soon discounted. However, in early March 1820 the radical Gloucestershire wool and iron merchant John Hodder Moggridge, who had purchased the Woodfield estate, Mynyddislwyn and was expected to contest the county, switched his campaign to the Boroughs. D.A. Wager, ‘Welsh Politics and Parl. Reform, 1780-1832’, WHR, vii (1974-5), 434; D. Williams, John Frost (1939), 31-32; Bristol Mercury, 1 Mar. 1819; Seren Gomer, ii (1819), 348; NLW, Tredegar mss 45/1478, 1506; Keene’s Bath Jnl. 14 Feb. 1820. At Monmouth, 10 Mar., he was proposed by Phillpotts and seconded by the Newport radical and future Chartist John Frost. Price and William Addams Williams of Llangibby Castle, the father of the 1831-41 county Member, sponsored Worcester, who claimed that he sought re-election on merit. Gloucester Jnl. 6, 13 Mar.; Bristol Mercury, 13 Mar.; The Times, 15 Mar.; Hereford Jnl. 15 Mar. 1820. In a speech later printed by Heath, Moggridge countered Price’s claim that Worcester’s status as the son of a peer, former admiralty lord and aide-de-camp to the duke of Wellington equipped him to represent the Boroughs, and criticized his support for the Liverpool ministry’s corn laws, high taxes and the coercive legislation enacted after Peterloo, ‘which, with the exception of the trial by juries, have nearly reduced what remained of the constitution of our country to a dead letter’. Moggridge declared for the ‘genuine threefold principle of the constitution of king, Lords and Commons’, advocated triennial parliaments and Catholic emancipation, and denounced

the combination of interests which has deprived me of much and valuable support [and] the extraordinary means from other and various quarters, which have been resorted to to induce desertions among my friends, and some still more culpable and disgraceful exertions of petty power, meanness and oppression which have been adopted for the purpose of compelling many of you to vote against me. Bristol Mercury, 20 Mar. 1820; Havill, 120-1.

Worcester, who said little, won the show of hands and the borough treasurer William Addams Williams, the namesake nephew of Worcester’s seconder, took the poll. Phillpotts promised to challenge each vote, and 52 special constables were sworn in to quell rioting. Worcester was only 19-15 ahead after the first day, but when Phillpotts’s complaints against the Wyseham yeoman Thomas Green and his fellow non-residents were disallowed on the second, it was all over. Moggridge’s supporters refused to call any Usk voters, claiming that their legality could not be established because the charter was missing, and polling ceased at 94-40, after the first vote was cast on the third day. Worcester, who had four votes disallowed, took the entire Usk vote (40), carried Monmouth 31-21 and had 19 to Moggridge’s 20 from Newport. His addresses described his majority as ‘highly gratifying’ and he promised to represent ‘the opposite side ... however we may differ in any political opinions’. Gloucester Jnl. 20 Mar. 1820; Havill, 122-4. The Catholic attorney Francis McDonnell of Usk expressed the vain hope that the ‘gentlemanly contest ... will have the good effect of inducing the duke’s party to withdraw their opposition to the claims of the Monmouth burgesses’. Gwent RO, Hanbury of Pontypool mss JCH 1271.

There was bell ringing and music throughout the night when the Monmouth burgesses, represented by Thomas Jervis, Thomas Peake and John Campbell* as special pleaders, won their case at the assizes, 29 Mar. 1820. Prosser’s legal team was headed by William Taunton, Beaufort’s agent, the recorder of Bristol and Swansea Ebenezer Ludlow, and William Bathurst, whose father Charles Bragge Bathurst* had refused, as recorder of Monmouth, to allow Heath to become mayor without a full election. Bristol Mercury, 3, 24 Apr.; The Times, 4 Apr.; Hereford Jnl. 5 Apr.; Cambrian, 8 Apr. 1820; Twiston Davies mss 4048. King’s bench rejected the common council’s pleas to have the verdict set aside and a new trial. Tredegar mss 135/783; Hereford Jnl. 19, 26 Apr., 10 May, 21, 28 June; Cambrian, 13 May 1820. James Hardwick, as the last legally elected mayor, presided at the corporation by-elections, 30 June. Prosser, whom Beaufort promised to indemnify ‘against all costs and expenses which you have incurred or may incur, or which you may be liable to pay on account of any proceedings already commenced, or which may be instituted against you for having acted as mayor in the course of last year’, lost the mayoralty to Heath by 45-42 and Harris and Swift became bailiffs. The ‘independent burgesses’ celebrated with a banquet, 9 Aug., proclaimed and admitted 38 resident burgesses in open court, 17 July-11 Sept., and secured Phillpotts’s election as mayor at Michaelmas. Gwent RO, Monmouth borough recs. D.10/1/181; Cambrian, 4 July; Hereford Jnl. 13 Sept., 11 Oct. 1820; Havill, 126-7; Kissack, Monmouth, 75-77. In October 1820, a Newport meeting chaired by the borough recorder and county Member Sir Charles Morgan protested against the appropriation of wharf money by the Monmouthshire Canal Company and his Tredegar estate. This inspired Frost’s libellous pamphleteering campaign against Morgan and his agent Thomas Prothero, which, following appearances at Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire assizes and in king’s bench, led to his imprisonment in Monmouth gaol and Cold Bath Fields, Middlesex, 1822-3. D. Williams, 36-49; Frost, Letter to Sir Charles Morgan; Letter to Farmers of Mon.; Letter to Mayor and Aldermen of Newport; The Times, 2 Mar.; Bristol Gazette, 7 Mar.; Bristol Mercury, 9 Mar.; Newport Review, 24 Aug. 1822.

The Monmouth radicals identified closely with Queen Caroline’s cause, and the abandonment of her prosecution was celebrated publicly there and at Newport with bell ringing and the ritual burning in effigy of prosecution witnesses. ‘The mayor, bailiffs, coroner and 81 others, BUT NONE OF THE COMMON COUNCIL’ of Monmouth signed and entrusted an address to Joseph Hume* expressing sorrow at the death of the princess of Wales, support for the queen and horror at ‘that depraved spirit of malignity and hypocrisy, which could, in glaring opposition to every Christian feeling ... expunge Your Majesty’s name from the established liturgy of the church’. Replying, the queen congratulated the Monmouth burgesses on setting an example for others with their ‘recent victory’ over the ‘corrupt influence so long prominent’. Bristol Mercury, 6, 20, 27 Nov.; Hereford Jnl. 15, 22 Nov.; The Times, 15 Nov.; Cambrian, 25 Nov. 1820; Kissack, Monmouth, 78-80. Moggridge, the Herefordshire Whig John Lucy Scudamore of Kentchurch Court, the Staffordshire squire Thomas Swinnerton of Wonastow and his new son-in-law Charles Kemeys Kemeys Tynte* of Cefn Mabli, whose ancestors had formerly represented Monmouthshire, were among the ‘local’ landowners nominated for election as freemen of Monmouth by the ‘independent burgesses’ in December 1820. Capel Hanbury Leigh of Pontypool Park, the county’s leading Whig, had no property in the town and initially refused the honour because of ‘ill health’. Hereford Jnl. 13 Dec.; Cambrian, 18 Dec. 1820; Havill, 129; Hanbury of Pontypool mss 0387. On 9 Jan. 1821 ‘the young men of Monmouth’ adopted a petition for restoration of the queen’s name to the liturgy, which Worcester refused to present. The Oddfellows also petitioned the Commons criticizing her treatment. Hereford Jnl. 3 Jan.; Cambrian, 19 Jan.; Bristol Mercury, 27 Jan. 1821; CJ, lxxvi. 13, 22. Meanwhile Beaufort and his agents Lucas and Tyler procured an ‘ultra loyal’ address from Usk, and the anti-Catholic Tory industrialist Richard Blakemore† of The Leyes, Herefordshire, chaired a dinner in the king’s honour at Monmouth. Cambrian, 29 Jan.; Hereford Jnl. 7 Feb. 1821. Party dinners continued at Monmouth, where the independent burgesses retained control of admissions and corporation elections, and in December 1821 Hume, who had been similarly honoured in Hereford, took his freedom, accompanied by Scudamore, the Herefordshire Member Robert Price and the banker Kedgwin Hoskins* of Strickstenning. Hereford Jnl. 7 Feb., 28 Mar., 15 Aug., 17, 31 Oct.; Bristol Mercury, 19 May, 7 July, 6, 20 Oct., 15 Dec. 1821. The ‘mayor, bailiffs and commonalty’ of Monmouth petitioned the Commons for parliamentary reform, 28 Mar. 1822, and afterwards formally criticized Worcester’s brother, the Monmouthshire Member Lord Granville Somerset, for disputing Hume’s claim that their petition was respectably signed. Bristol Mercury, 23 Mar., 6, 13, 20 Apr.; The Times, 9 Apr. 1822; CJ, lxxvii. 150. In May they contributed to the subscription for the Irish poor. The Times, 18 May 1822. The Commons received petitions from the bankers, merchants and traders of Monmouth and Newport for repeal of the Insolvent Debtors Act, 10 Mar., 17 May 1823, and from the inhabitants of Newport condemning the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 31 May 1824. CJ, lxxviii. 102, 304; lxxix. 436. Problems concerning the validity of Worcester’s second marriage in July 1822 to his late wife’s half-sister and Beaufort’s hostility to the match prior to the birth of a male heir kept Worcester abroad until the summer of 1824 and from Parliament until 1825. Oxford DNB. The inhabitants of Newport petitioned the Commons for repeal of the assessed taxes, 28 Feb., and the Roman Catholics of Monmouth petitioned the Lords for relief (which the Somersets opposed), 17 May 1825. CJ, lxxx. 133; LJ, lvii. 836-7. The borough and tradesmen of Newport petitioned for a new canal bill to finance the enlargement of their port, 16 Feb., and the Newport improvement bill, promoted by Beaufort and Morgan’s agents and allies promoted and Frost opposed, was enacted, 23 Mar. 1826. CJ, lxxix. 34; lxxxi. 10, 17, 39, 52, 92, 118, 198; D. Williams, 56; C. Williams, ‘The Great Hero of the Newport Rising: Thomas Philips, Reform and Chartism’, WHR, xxi (2003), 481-511. Newport and Monmouth petitioned against West Indian slavery before the 1826 dissolution.CJ, lxxxi. 27, 124.

The 2nd marquess of Bute, whose interest rivalled Beaufort’s in the Cardiff Boroughs, had taken property at Usk to acquire a counterinfluence in Monmouth Boroughs, but on counsel’s advice, the recorder of Usk Alexander Jones refused to admit pro-Bute burgesses in October 1821 without the prior consent of Beaufort, who had hitherto purchased all the stamps. Hanbury of Pontypool mss 1271; Gwent RO, Usk borough recs. D.156/31; Bristol Mercury, 20 Oct.; Hereford Jnl. 31 Oct.; Cambrian, 3 Nov. 1821. The Rev. Thomas Addams Williams, the Beaufort nominee, was installed as portreeve of Usk in October 1822, despite losing the election (24-9) to James Blyth, ‘blacklisted by Beaufort for selling goods to Moggridge’. Bristol Mercury, 14, 28 Oct., 9 Dec. 1822; The Times, 16 Oct. 1822. Wyatt had been warned in May to expect about 20 hostile votes and, informing Beaufort of the ‘satisfactory’ outcome, he added:

I hope the insignificant appearance the radicals made will curb their courage and prevent them from making another attempt at mischief, although, if Moggridge is at the bottom of this, I can hardly flatter myself he will allow them to be quiet. Usk borough recs. D.156/31.

The attorney William Addams Williams succeeded his father as portreeve without incident in 1823; but speculation persisted that Beaufort would relinquish Monmouth in order to oppose the return of Bute’s brother, the pro-emancipation Whig Lord James Crichton Stuart*, for Cardiff Boroughs at the next election. Glam. RO D/DA11/8, 11. Bute and Crichton Stuart sought Beaufort and the Liverpool ministry’s co-operation when, possibly influenced by John Josiah Guest*, Wyndham Lewis* announced in March 1824 that he would not make way for Crichton Stuart in Cardiff as expected. Christ Church, Oxf. Phillimore mss, Crichton Stuart to Phillimore, 17 Oct. 1824. Bute’s London attorney Vizard had prepared a dossier on Usk, and he reassessed Moggridge’s prospects and the strength of the Newport banks, when a general election was anticipated in July 1825; and Bute now cautioned Beaufort that he would try his strength in Monmouth should Crichton Stuart be opposed. Glam RO D/DA11/2, 10; DA12/94 (i and ii); NLW, Bute mss L67/11, 22, 23, 50. See CARDIFF BOROUGHS. Speculation linking the constituencies continued until Lewis announced his retirement at the dissolution in 1826. Cambrian, 24 Dec. 1825, 3, 10, 17 June; Gloucester Jnl. 29 May; Bristol Mercury 29 May 1826.

Voters unacknowledged by Beaufort had been polled at Monmouth in 1823 to enable Phillpotts to defeat Bevan at the mayoral election, and the weakness of the independents was evident despite their grand dinners at Wonastow. By refraining from appointing ‘new burgesses’ to fill vacancies in the common council to avoid litigation costs, they had facilitated the appointment to it of Beaufort’s ‘friends’, James Bevan, Price, Tyler, the surgeon Thomas Tudor and schoolmaster Edward Gosling, who contrived to make the borough virtually ungovernable by refusing to pay rates (they were the principal ratepayers) and insisting, amid a flurry of writs, that corporation meetings held publicly in the town hall, instead of privately in the jury room, were illegally constituted and their decisions invalid. Twiston Davies mss 4071-5; Havill, 129-33; Kissack, Monmouth, 80-84; Bristol Mercury, 6 Oct., 15 Dec. 1821, 7 Oct. 1822; Bristol Gazette, 9, 16 Oct. 1823. On 5 Apr. 1824 a special jury at Gloucester upheld a test case against the ‘independent’ linen draper Benjamin Yates, admitted a Monmouth freeman, 17 July 1820. The question turned on the ‘usual mode of summoning the court of record’, and ringing the bell was ruled not to be ‘sufficient notice’. Sixty ‘independent’ voters were thus disfranchised, restoring the likely majority of legal votes to the Beaufort party. Twiston Davies mss 4052-9; Bristol Mercury, 22 Mar., 5, 12 Apr.; Hereford Jnl. 7 Apr. 1824. The pollbooks show that there was no cross-party voting during the severe 12-hour struggle at the 1824 Michaelmas elections. The wharfinger Henry Hughes, known to his friends as ‘Agamemnon’ and his enemies as ‘the Bargeman’, defeated Bevan by 70-34 to become mayor, having polled 31 ‘new voters’ and about 19 non-residents. His common council colleagues put Bevan’s tally at 98, including 48 non-residents, and claimed that Hughes had only 37 legitimate resident votes. The gentry and farmers voted predominantly for Bevan, and the craftsmen, merchants and traders for Hughes. Monmouth borough recs. D.10/1/184; Hereford Jnl. 6 Oct.; Cambrian, 9 Oct. 1824; Kissack, Monmouth, 67, 88-89. According to a memorandum in the borough records:

There were at charter day of 1824 I should think about 100 non-resident voters, about 55 appeared to have rendered their votes for Dr. Bevan on that occasion, about 25 for Henry Hughes, and probably about 20 did not come to the election; but of these, several are known to be dead and some have become resident and a few who were then resident have become non-resident. I should think that 80 would be about the number of burgesses non-resident. It is impossible to ascertain it to a certainty without many inquiries of persons at a distance. Monmouth borough recs. D.10/1/181.

When the weaver James Jenkins, the victor in a similar contest in 1825, ‘betrayed’ the ‘independent burgesses’ by resigning in a drunken stupor in favour of Bevan, who immediately created 60 burgesses, the demise of the independent party seemed inevitable. It was accelerated by the collapse during the December 1825 crisis of Bromage and Company’s Monmouth bank, lack of assistance from Hereford and Gloucester, and further quo warranto proceedings against Jenkins and others in king’s bench and at Gloucester assizes, where a judgment of ouster in a test case in March 1826 deprived a further 36 Monmouth burgesses of their votes at the borough by-elections in April. Twiston Davies mss 4092; Monmouth borough recs. D.10/1/184; Hereford Jnl. 12 Oct.; Cambrian, 15 Oct., 9 Dec.; Worcester Herald, 10 Dec. 1825; Kissack, Monmouth, 93-97; PP (1831-2), xxvi. 554. The Cambrian commented: ‘this case does not decide the question as to right of election, but disqualifies the defendant[s] as not being legally sworn in’. Cambrian, 15 Apr. 1826. With the former mayors Swift and William Probyn as rival returning officers, the innkeeper and former bailiff John Hughes was elected mayor in the town hall with Heath and William Davies as bailiffs; while in the nisi prius court Bevan became mayor and Powles and the naval captain James Burton were selected as bailiffs. Matters remained unresolved and ‘in a disagreeable state’ at the dissolution, when, citing case law from Carmarthen, Liverpool and Tiverton, Ebenezer Ludlow advised Beaufort, who spent over £8,000 on Monmouth, 1824-7, to initiate mandamus proceedings with a view to acquiring possession of the corporation records. Tredegar mss 57/44-45; Bristol Mercury, 1, 8 May; Cambrian, 6 May 1826; Twiston Davies mss 4058-96; Badminton mss II/9860; Kissack, Monmouth, 99-103. King’s bench issued the necessary writs, 14 June 1826, two days after Worcester’s unopposed return at the general election, when Moggridge and Benjamin Hall*, who as county sheriff had recently returned to Abercarn and purchased Park Lettice, had been mentioned as likely challengers. Editorials in The Times and the Morning Chronicle deplored the situation, noted the lack of support for Beaufort’s sons, and claimed that ‘only a sincere conviction of the illegality of the [election] court ... dissuaded a Whig from standing’. Bevan presided as returning officer, his rival Hughes having been safely removed to Brecon gaol, where he was imprisoned for debts arising from bankruptcy proceedings brought by the Brecon and Abergavenny Canal Company against a relative for whom he provided surety. M. Fraser, ‘Benjamin Hall of Llanover’, NLWJ, xiii (1963-4), 32; Courier, 5, 15 June; The Times, 10, 15, 17 June; Morning Chron. 10 June 1826; Twiston Davies mss 8874-8875.

James Scarlett* and Ludlow warned that Monmouth common council’s case against Henry Hughes and the burgesses was ‘far from free of doubt’, but no opposition was raised to Beaufort’s nominees at the 1826 Michaelmas elections. Twiston Davies mss 4086-8; Cambrian, 7 Oct., Bristol Mercury, 9 Oct. 1826. Left languishing in gaol and deserted by his party, Hughes turned to Beaufort’s Brecon attorneys John Jones and John Powell for assistance, and on 6 Nov. the insignia and ‘all the corporation documents held by him’ were delivered to Powles and Tyler, who negotiated his release (probably with financial assistance from Bevan), despite continued opposition from the canal company and the future Chartist Zepheniah Williams. Twiston Davies mss 8876-82. One-hundred-and-fifty-six burgesses, 63 of them resident, were named on the deputy town clerk Thomas Addams Williams’s canvassing list of Monmouth in February 1827. Estimating that their party needed a further 12-15 burgesses to retain control, they took legal advice and enrolled a further 14, 23 June 1827. All were reluctant to appear in open court. Monmouth borough recs. D.10/1/10, 38; Twiston Davies mss 4088-9, 4094-5. Tyler afterwards informed Ludlow:

There was no opposition or protest whatsoever, nor did it create the excitement we anticipated. Party feeling has certainly been subsiding of late, and, as to our opponents, was still further dampened last week. For, by a coincidence not expected, on Wednesday, the very day the common council met to nominate the new burgesses, Mr. Swinnerton caused ten of his friends to be served with writs enforcing payment of the £1,000 which he advanced to the party to carry on the late contests. It seems that these ten persons gave him their notes at the time for £100 each, and then took from about 45 of their poorer brethren £18 each. Both sets of the instalments upon them are now becoming due. As Mr. Swinnerton has proceeded against the ten, the ten have proceeded against the 45, so that there is a strange commotion among them. They say that when they gave their notes they thought they would never be called for the money. Indignation is now vented against Mr. Swinnerton, whom they call ‘an old hypocrite’ and a great many worse names. Twiston Davies mss 4096.

Beaufort’s nominees were not opposed at the 1827 Michaelmas elections, and they retained control of the common council of Monmouth until after the reform bill was passed, without creating more burgesses. Havill, 134-6; Monmouth borough recs. D.10/1/94 (iii).

The Nonconformist chapels and inhabitants of Newport and Monmouth petitioned in 1827-8 for repeal of the Test Acts, and against Catholic relief, which Morgan and Beaufort then opposed; CJ, lxxxii. 510, 594; lxxxiii. 79, 105, 181, 319; LJ, lx. 52. and in April 1828 the Commons received petitions opposing the friendly societies bill from at least a dozen of the smaller societies and benefit clubs of both boroughs. CJ, lxxxiii. 242, 245, 254, 259, 271, 319. Anti-Catholic petitioning was confined to Newport and the Monmouth clergy when emancipation was conceded in 1829. Controversy surrounding renovations to the town halls of Usk and Monmouth, whose hall also served the county, was largely dispelled by the Beaufort-sponsored Monmouth County Hall Act of 13 Apr. 1829. Badminton mss II/9877, 9878,10718; CJ, lxxxiv. 220. Suspension of borough tolls briefly dominated Monmouth borough politics in what, despite William Cobbett’s† visit in June, proved to be a quiet period before the 1830 general election. At Usk, where there were three burgess admissions in 1826, two in 1827, three in 1829, and the attorney William Woodhouse Secretan became an honorary freeman, 12 May 1830, borough officers were appointed to administer the letting of waste land in the borough, 4 Nov. 1829. Mon. Merlin, 23 May 1829; Usk borough recs. D.156/16 (2). The ironmasters Joseph and Crawshay Bailey of Nant-y-glo and Moggridge and his son Matthew were among the burgesses created at Newport in 1829, and Morgan presided at the election of Edmund Jones, Joseph Latch and John Owen as aldermen, 8 Jan. 1830. Mon. Merlin, 26 Sept. 1829, 16 Jan. 1830. Both Houses received petitions for criminal law reform and abolition of the death penalty for forgery from Newport that session. CJ, lxxxv. 352, 463; LJ, lxii. 752 Members associated with Monmouthshire strenuously opposed attempts to end the exemption from coal duties they had secured in 1818 for Bristol Channel ports east of Cardiff, which Bute, who planned to develop that port, and the Glamorgan industrialists complained had enabled Newport and the Monmouthshire Canal Company to prosper at their expense. Bute mss L73/20, 29, 36, 66. William IV was proclaimed with great pomp in each borough in July 1830, and Prothero and Phillips, who organized the event in Newport, ensured that the indolent Lord Worcester’s ‘votes for religious freedom’ in 1829 were highly acclaimed. Mon. Merlin, 10, 17 July 1830. His return, proposed by Price and Prothero’s brother-in-law William Brewer, was unopposed, but rioting broke out during the chairing and disrupted the election dinner at the Beaufort Arms, Monmouth. Ibid. 7 Aug.; D. Williams, 58.

At Michaelmas 1830 the common council and town clerk of Monmouth rejected an application for burgess admission from the Oddfellow John Rennie, a burgage holder and freeman’s son, and they boycotted a public meeting reluctantly chaired by Thomas Addams Williams in November to petition for repeal of the assessed taxes. Worcester, whose relations left office with the duke of Wellington following their defeat on the civil list, 15 Nov., presented the petition as requested, 23 Nov. Mon. Merlin, 9, 30 Oct., 6 Nov. 1830; CJ, lxxxvi. 131. The Wesleyan Methodists of Monmouth and Usk and the inhabitants of Newport contributed to the 1830-1 petitioning campaign against colonial slavery. CJ, lxxxvi. 246, 348, 454; LJ, lxiii. 62, 68, 70, 279. Monmouth petitioned the Commons against the truck system, which Moggridge detested, 14 Dec. 1830, CJ, lxxxvi. 172. and amid worsening ‘Scotch cattle’ riots, a specially convened borough meeting at Usk, 13 Dec., requested by Hall’s brother-in-law, the county sheriff Iltyd Nicholl, appointed 107 special constables financed through a subscription fund managed by Secretan, as a measure of municipal expediency. D.J.V. Jones, Before Rebecca, 93-98; Usk borough recs. D.156/28 (i); NLW ms 18541 B, jnl. of Iltyd Nicholl, 6-12 Dec. 1830; Mon. Merlin, 9, 16 Dec. 1830, 1, 8 Jan. 1831. Newport, where Morgan chaired a meeting at the King’s Head, 6 Dec., when Prothero and Brewer were the main speakers, acted similarly, having rejected (by 37-17, with 26 abstentions) Frost’s alternative resolutions attributing the disturbances to high rents and tithes. Mon. Merlin, 25 Dec. 1830. A second Newport meeting petitioned for repeal of the assessed taxes (received 7 Mar. 1831), and a third, 20 Dec. 1830, at which Thomas Phillips clashed with Frost (who advocated the ballot), for parliamentary reform, including shorter parliaments, ‘votes to all classes without hope of gain or fear of punishment (possibly by ballot), retrenchment, and revision of the tax system to end undue pressure on productive industry’. D. Williams, 60-61; Mon. Merlin, 9, 16, 25 Dec.; Bristol Mercury, 28 Dec. 1830; CJ, lxxxvi. 348. Frost’s Christmas Box to Charles Morgan urged him to promote reform at Newport, like his estranged agent Prothero.

Worcester refused to present the Newport reform petition and the town, which had taken further steps to assist its poor, met at the King’s Head under the chairmanship of Joseph Crosbie, 5 Feb. 1831, and resolved to oppose Worcester at the next election, if he failed to endorse their petition for reform, retrenchment and the ballot, which was forwarded to Lord John Russell for presentation to the Commons. Mon. Merlin, 5, 12 Feb.; The Times, 11 Feb. 1831. Worcester refused to support the petition, 17 Feb., or others for reform and the ballot, received from Monmouth on the 26th. CJ, lxxxvi. 246, 264, 309. A Newport meeting on 7 Mar. petitioned in favour of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, which, as the Monmouthshire Merlin lamented, left the constituency unchanged, making no separate provision for the growing towns of Abergavenny, Caerleon and Chespstow. Ibid. 348, 454; PP (1830-31), iii. 425-6; Mon. Merlin, 12 Mar. 1831; Wager, 437, 442. At Monmouth, 17 Mar., when Burton as mayor chaired the meeting, disaffected burgesses and others who had failed to prosper carried a petition for the reform bill and the £10 householder vote and rejected a proposal to forward it to Worcester rather than Sir Thomas Denman for presentation, ‘there being insufficient time’ should he refuse. It was received by the Lords, 21 Mar., and the Commons on the 22nd. Mon. Merlin, 19 Mar.; Hereford Jnl. 23 Mar. 1831; LJ, lxiii. 346; CJ, lxxxvi. 415, 419. Moggridge was abroad, and Hanbury Leigh, and William Addams Williams of Llangibby Castle (a cousin of Thomas and William Addams Williams) were the main speakers at the county reform meeting in Usk, 17 Mar., when, as at Monmouth earlier, Hall called for the Boroughs to be thrown open and criticized the absent Morgans and Somersets for failing to support reform. Mon. Merlin, 26 Mar., 2, 9 Apr.; The Times, 30 Mar.; Cambrian, 2 Apr. 1831. Angry exchanges between Hall and Morgan’s son Charles Augustus were printed in the Monmouthshire Merlin, and by 15 Apr. Hall, who now referred openly to his ‘support of the burgesses of Monmouth six years ago’, was canvassing the Boroughs in opposition to Worcester. Mon. Merlin, 16 Apr. 1831. Newport had resolved to back Hall and also passed a vote of thanks to Sir Charles Morgan for voting for the bill’s second reading. Ibid. 26 Mar. 1831. Morgan’s vote to wreck it, 19 Apr. 1831, increased the reformers’ sense of betrayal and precipitated his retirement at the dissolution that month. This ensured that the reformer William Addams Williams of Llangibby and anti-reformer Somerset would be unopposed in the county and intensified the struggle for the Boroughs. D. Williams, 65-66; Mon. Merlin, 9, 16, 23, 30 Apr.; The Times, 21 Apr. 1831; Bute mss L74/34; W.T. Morgan, ‘Co. Elections Mon. 1705-1847’, NLWJ, x (1957-8), 176-7.

On 20 Apr., the day Morgan announced his retirement and sacked Prothero, Hall entered Newport in triumph to entertain his friends at his headquarters, the King’s Head, accompanied by the Catholic squire of Llanarth, Philip Jones. The electorate in the three towns was estimated at 300, the increase being mainly in Newport, where the campaign focused. Mon. Merlin, 23 Apr. 1831; D. Williams, 66-67. At Monmouth, where the writ arrived, 26 Apr., Powles and Tyler had by the 29th secured details of recent Newport burgess admissions and obtained Frederick Robinson’s advice as counsel on securing their disfranchisement. A Newport mob brandishing widely publicized placards denouncing Beaufort and his family as the recipients of £48,000 a year from public funds cornered Worcester that day, and he was spared only through prompt intervention by Frost, who, with the town clerk Prothero, now acted for Hall. On the 30th Newport admitted 23 freemen: 18 for Hall and five for Worcester. Gwent RO, Llewellin and Co. (Usk) mss D.749/256; Twiston Davies mss 4111-15; Cambrian, 30 Apr. 1831. Both parties professed themselves confident of success. Hall arrived at Monmouth on the eve of the election accompanied by Sir Thomas Salusbury of Llanwern, Edmund Jones, the mayor of Newport, Prothero and an entourage bearing red banners. He promised to liberate the Boroughs and stressed Worcester’s fickleness and opposition to parliamentary reform. The Tory press reported that Worcester was escorted to the hustings from Troy by ‘a large party of the most respectable burgesses of the three boroughs, on horseback and in carriages, preceded by a band of music, with flags and banners’ proclaiming the ‘true Blues’ and his prowess at Waterloo, and sponsored by the portreeve of Usk, the Rev. James Ashe Gabb, and the Newport attorney Thomas Jones Phillips. Proposing Hall, Phillpotts stressed his support for reform and retrenchment and promises to abolish sinecures and unmerited pensions and to protect local and general interests. He insisted that only Worcester’s merits as a Member, not a soldier, now mattered, and that if he had ever said or done anything remarkable in Parliament, he had yet to hear of it. Hall’s seconder was the vicar of Newport, alderman John Williams. Frost criticized Worcester’s conduct as a Member and placeman and his refusal to present reform petitions. This riled Blakemore and Worcester, who, after Rennie intervened to secure him a hearing, stressed his part in procuring the coal duty exemption, criticized the Grey ministry’s policies and ‘subversive’ reform bill, and challenged Hall to confirm or deny responsibility for the scurrilous anti-Beaufort handbills to which he attributed his own near lynching. Hall denied their authorship. Prothero and Phillips asserted that their support for Worcester in 1830 represented no more than approbation of his votes for religious liberty, and Hall explained that these (Test Acts repeal and Catholic emancipation) had been measures forced on government ‘which they dared not refuse’ and criticized Worcester for voting contrary to his constituents’ interests on the civil list and reform. Urging the latter, Hall said nothing of Newport, but referred to the ‘corrupt’ corporation boroughs of Bath and Brecon and added:

The borough of Monmouth contains about 70 voters, instead of 300, which is now about the total number of the electors; and I am perfectly certain, that so soon as the reform bill is carried, when the right of voting is conferred upon inhabitant householders, that instead of being in a minority in this borough, I shall have a majority of nearly 120. In the borough of Usk, I can assure you, I met several persons anxious to vote for me - men who wished success to the cause I am now advocating, but who openly and avowedly declared that they dared not assist me. Hereford Jnl. 4, 11 May; Morning Chron. 6, 7 May; Mon. Merlin, 7 May 1831.

Burton oversaw an orderly poll, which Hall led by seven votes on the first day and 19 when Worcester retired on the second. Worcester carried Monmouth, 57-19, and Usk, where Beaufort’s agents admitted a further 33 freemen for future use, 31-8; but Hall was 141-61 ahead in Newport. Worcester was expected to petition alleging that the new Newport electors were not qualified to vote, but Prothero and the assessor W.H. Maule (who according to McDonnell had erroneously rejected non-resident voters) argued that because they had qualified for admission by birth, marriage or servitude, they were exempt from the 12-month delay imposed by the Durham Act. At Hall’s chairing in Newport, 5 May 1831, when 120 dined at the King’s Head, Prothero justified his pre-election advice to the mayor ‘to admit those persons who brought themselves within the custom of the borough’. The Loyal and Patriotic Fund promised Hall £500 to contest the petition. Twiston Davies mss 4131-6; PP (1835), xxiii. 552; Usk borough recs. D.156/27 (2); Hanbury of Pontypool mss 1238; Mon. Merlin, 14 May; Cambrian, 14 May 1831.

Beaufort refused to be rushed and a brief and petition were only prepared after a thorough scrutiny of burgess admissions. Jennings and Bolton in London and Powles and Tyler in Monmouth obtained legal advice from W.G. Adam, Ludlow, F.N. Rogers, Scarlett and William Whateley as counsel, and also from the local attorneys Thomas Jones Phillips of Newport and Francis McDonnell and Gabb and Secretan of Usk. Twiston Davies mss 4137-88, 4205-19, 5914, 5924. McDonnell, an Usk freeman since 1821, was among the 38 voters objected to by Hall, as were the Addams Williams brothers and eight others who had temporarily ‘resigned their freedom [of Monmouth] in 1819 during legal proceedings’. Ibid. 4149, 4161. McDonnell advised Powles not to use the cases of Catholics like himself, and cautioned:

As to the new freemen at Newport, I know so little on the subject, that I have not been able to direct my attention to the facts of the case. As one of the judges said in the Monmouth case, a by-law will not render lawful any custom contrary to the law or [as I understand it] unaccountable. A by-law must be conformable to the charter, and I believe for the benefit of the corporation. How far the one in question may be so, will depend upon it, when it is produced. If, however, the course adopted by Mr. Prothero is valid, then our boroughs are anything but clear and I fear if Mr. Hall be eligible, all our exertions shall be fruitless. Ibid. 5915, 5948, 5949.

Whateley suggested testing opinion by bringing attorney’s cases, preferably in Middlesex, against two Newport voters admitted a week before the poll, one by birth, the other by marriage to a freeman’s daughter; but Jennings and Bolton thought it impossible to obtain a verdict in time to meet the deadline for submitting petitions. Ibid. 4206-8, 5916. Somerset and Beaufort favoured using quo warranto actions ‘in aid of a petition’ and drew encouragement from Thomas Jones Phillips’s submission, backed by sworn affidavits, that owing to procedural errors at Newport municipal elections, no mayor had been legally appointed, and thereby no burgesses legally enrolled for the last 20 years. Ibid. 4214, 4215, 5925-9. After further advice from Ludlow, on 22 June Somerset presented a petition in which Worcester alleged bribery, corruption and treating by Hall and his agents to obtain ‘a colourable majority’. Ibid. 5930-4. A ruling on non-resident voters was sought and it was maintained that

at the said election divers persons admitted burgesses of Newport within 12 months before the said election and after the teste of the writ for the same, and without being legally entitled to be so admitted by birth, marriage, servitude or otherwise, and divers other persons who claimed to be burgesses of Newport, but who had not been duly elected and were not entitled to be elected burgesses, and also divers other persons who had no legal right to vote at the said election were allowed to vote for the said Benjamin Hall, and divers other persons, who had a legal right to vote at the same election, and who tendered their votes on behalf of the petitioner, were not allowed to vote. CJ, lxxxvi. 537.

Minor problems with sureties and the summons to Prothero were soon overcome, and the petition was referred to a committee chaired by Lord Belgrave, 12 July, with the future law lord Alexander Cockburn as counsel for Hall, and William Harrison for Worcester. Twiston Davies mss 4229-35, 5937, 5950, 5956-5957; Mon. Merlin, 16 July 1831; CJ, lxxxvi. 643, 645. On 18 July 1831 they unseated Hall, whose witnesses included Frost, Edward Frost and the senior alderman of Newport John Williams, in favour of Worcester. As the local press pointed out, the question of voters’ residence had been avoided, and the rejection of the new Newport freemen reduced the electorate by approximately 70, making further resistance to Worcester futile. CJ, lxxxvi. 665; Twiston Davies mss 4236; The Times, 19 July, Cambrian, 23 July; Mon. Merlin, 23 July 1831; PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 554. Beaufort was charged £2,839 12s. for counsel, attorneys and costs in London, and £2,341 12s. 3d. in Monmouthshire. Powles and Tyler also invoiced him for £2,471 16s. 2d. including £733 16s. for Worcester’s election and £839 1s. 8d. for the petition and general business. Twiston Davies mss 4192, 4222, 4226-4227, 4237-45. Jennings and Somerset surmised afterwards that ‘it would be well to waive the rule obtained’ and try to eradicate factional politics in the boroughs. Ibid. 5954.

Before he was unseated, Hall had attended the House regularly, presented petitions from the three boroughs calling for the disqualification of honorary burgesses, 4 July 1831, and divided steadily for the reintroduced reform bill. CJ, lxxxvi. 613. A favourable petition from the Newport Patriotic Society received in the name of its chairman Thomas Emery, also protested at delays to the bill, 2 Aug. A similar petition received by the Commons from the borough of Newport, 27 July, sought the same polling town status under the bill as a Welsh contributory borough - a detail that had been overlooked. Ibid. 716-17, 781; The Times, 3 Aug. 1831. That month, styling themselves ‘Conservatives’, the Beaufort party launched their canvass of the county and Boroughs at a grand fête at Raglan Castle. Mon. Merlin, 13 Aug. 1831. Support for the separate enfranchisement of Merthyr Tydfil was bipartisan and Somerset ordered detailed property, population and tax returns for the boroughs, parishes and townships of Abergavenny, Chepstow, Monmouth, Pontypool, Sowhill, Trefeithin, Trosnant and St. Woolos, 4 Aug., with a view to dividing and enlarging the Monmouth Boroughs constituency. He proposed making Abergavenny and Pontypool (with Sawhill and Trosnant) contributories of Newport and St. Woolos (producing a constituency of 14,502 inhabitants and approximately 1,022 £10 voters) and adding Chepstow to Monmouth and Usk (a constituency of 9,959 inhabitants and 668 £10 voters), and when the Commons rejected this, he vainly proposed adding Abergavenny, Chespstow and Pontypool to the existing Boroughs, 7 Sept. CJ, lxxxvi. 788; Mon. Merlin, 6 Aug, 10 Sept. 1831, 10 Mar. 1832; PP (1831-2), xxvi. 596. At Newport, where the bishop of Llandaff dismissed the curate of St. Woolos for supporting reform, a public meeting in September petitioned alleging that delay in the bill’s passage ‘had paralysed trade and industry’, and a committee to ‘watch the progress of reform, support reformers at all costs, and to refuse to pay taxes in the event of an anti-reform ministry being established’ was formed that month at Monmouth, where Beaufort’s kinsman by marriage, Lord Tenterden’s son Henry Abbott, succeeded the deceased Bragge Bathurst as recorder. The Times, 27 Sept.; Hereford Jnl. 28 Sept.; Mon. Merlin, 1 Oct. 1831. One-hundred-and-fifteen signed the requisition for the reform meeting in Monmouth town court, 30 Sept., which urged the Lords to pass the bill. Mon. Merlin, 8 Oct. 1831; Wager, 446-7. Wyatt afterwards suggested to Powles and Tyler:

Might you not insert a remark in the next Merlin to the effect that the most respectable and rational reformists of Monmouth were most commendably employed in promoting the institutions of the church at Overmonnow on Friday last, whilst the rest were attacking that of the laws of the constitution at the town hall. Twiston Davies mss 5962.

Lord Dacre presented it on 4 Oct. to the Lords, who had received a similar one from Newport Patriotic Society, 3 Oct. LJ, lxiii. 1034, 1046. Addresses regretting the reform bill’s defeat in the Lords and expressing confidence in the government were adopted at Newport, 14 Oct., and Monmouth, where 175 had signed the requisition to the mayor, Edward Lucas, 19 Oct. However, the pro-reform consensus in Newport was breached that month by Frost’s opposition to the corporation’s improvement bill promoted by Phillips and Prothero. Mon. Merlin, 8, 15, 22 Oct; The Times, 1 Nov. 1831. Owen and Latch were appointed rival mayors and the political union encouraged the adoption of petitions including tithe reform, church disestablishment and a return to a paper currency in their demands. Cambrian, 15 Oct.; Mon. Merlin, 29 Oct., 12 Nov. 1831; Frost, Letter to the Reformers; D. Williams, 67-70. Beaufort considered financing quo warranto proceedings to procure a compliant corporation at Newport after the 1831 municipal election, and Powles informed Wyatt, 19 Oct.:

I went to Usk on Monday and had a good deal of conversation with Prothero and Phillips as well as with T. J[ones] Phillips. The former contend that you should elect either Owen or Latch, as the choice has been made by a mayor and alderman de facto and that you cannot as steward of the borough go into the titles of such mayor and aldermen. T.J. Phillips on the other hand is desirous that the proceedings against the present mayor should be continued and that proceedings should also be taken against the new made aldermen in November term next, so as to oust the present mayor and new made aldermen and then get an unquestionable majority of the court on our side ... No inconvenience can arise to the corporation from the delay in the election of the new mayor (there being a power in the charter for the old one to hold over) and, as ... T.J. Phillips says he will consult Sir Charles Morgan when he arrives at Tredegar, which will not be until the first week in November, there does not appear to be the least necessity for you putting yourself to any inconvenience in order to go to Newport with a view to the election of mayor. Indeed, Lord Granville [Somerset], when he passed through Monmouth on Sunday, said he thought you ought not to act without taking legal advice as to the course you should under the circumstances pursue. Twiston Davies mss 5962, 5963.

Owen was sworn in as mayor in December, and Jones Philips, rightly fearing that his credibility as an agent was at risk, repeatedly urged Beaufort to initiate further quo warranto proceedings to assist the Newport Blues. Cambrian, 17 Dec. 1831; Twiston Davies mss 6039, 6077. With the next election in mind, long-neglected plans to improve Monmouth, reform the management of its free grammar school charity, and restore power to decide debt cases to its borough courts were revived. An editorial in the Monmouthshire Merlin proclaimed: ‘political dissension among its inhabitants has hitherto acted as a bar to all public improvements: let such dissension, if it must continue to exist, be applied only to national objects.’ Mon. Merlin, 21 Jan., 4, 18, 25 Feb., 3 Mar. 1832. The revised reform bill confirmed Newport and Usk’s status as polling towns. When a ministry headed by the duke of Wellington was contemplated in May 1832, hazarding the measure, Newport Patriotic Society passed a resolution thanking the earl of Shrewsbury for supporting the reform bill in the Lords, 2 May, and Monmouth and Newport adopted addresses deploring Grey’s resignation and petitions urging the withdrawal of supplies pending its passage. The Grey ministry’s reinstatement rendered their presentation unnecessary. Ibid. 5, 12, 19 May 1832. A reform festival was held at Newport, but as John Bull commented, the ‘mayor of Monmouth very properly declined to call a meeting of the inhabitants’ to organize celebrations. John Bull, 7 Oct. 1832.

As the commissioners had recommended, by the Boundary Act Newport gained St. Woolos and a small part of Christchurch parish. Usk was enlarged to include the whole parish and the parish boundary was also applied at Monmouth, which thereby acquired Dixton. Monmouth borough recs. D.10/1/38/7, 10-13; Usk borough recs. D.156/31. Predictably, voter registration was tightly fought, and much legal advice was sought on the residential qualification of freemen. Twiston Davies mss. 4326-30, 4332, 4339-42, 4405-9, 4413-19, 5987, 5997, 6005, 6022, 6025, 6026, 6029, 6035, 6037, 6039-43, 6045-70; Mon. Merlin, 1, 8, 29 Sept., 6 Oct., 10, 17, 24 Nov. 1832. The revising barrister’s decision to apply the seven-mile rule retrospectively produced few disenfranchisements, and the new registered electorate of 899 (over three times the pre-reform estimate) comprised 280 freemen (83 from Monmouth, 123 from Newport and 74 from Usk) and 619 £10 voters (277 from Monmouth, 309 from Newport with St. Woolos and Christchurch, and 33 from Usk). PP (1835), xxiii. 460, 465, 479-80. Canvassing on behalf of the Liberal Hall and the Conservative Worcester commenced in June 1832, and at the general election in December Hall, who made little headway in Monmmouth and Usk, was returned by 393-355. Mon. Merlin, 23, 30 June, 7, 14 July, 1, 15, 22 Dec. 1832; Twiston Davies mss 4293, 4320, 4323, 4347-64, 5991-6, 6002-8, 6021, 6053, 6071-4; Bodl. Dep. Hughenden D/I/D/173; Cardiff Pub. Lib. Bute Estate letterbks. iii. 71. Tyler was disappointed:

Not but that I anticipated it, considering the unfortunate state of public excitement as well as the fatal and mischievous policy which the duke of Beaufort was advised to pursue at Monmouth, and which converted a large portion of the inhabitants who originally entertained no hostile feeling against his Grace into active and decided enemies. Twiston Davies mss 6074.

The Somersets declined personal involvement in the constituency following their defeat, but rivalry between Monmouth Conservatives and Newport Liberals, costly contests and petitioning persisted. The electorate increased by 132 per cent between 1832 and 1865 and was polled a further four times before 1868. The representation was dominated by the Liberals until 1852 and subsequently by the Conservatives, but remained vested in party nominees closely connected with the county’s industrial and landed families. Kissack, Victorian Monmouth, 32; I.W.R. David, ‘Political and Electioneering Activity in S.E. Wales, 1820-52’ (Univ. of Wales M.A. thesis, 1959), 94.