Cardigan Boroughs

The county town, seaport and borough of Cardigan (Aberteifi), the polling town for this constituency, was an administrative centre with a considerable coastal trade, built on the northern bank of the River Teifi which separated it from St. Dogmel’s in Pembrokeshire. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), i. 371-2. Its corporation comprised a co-optive common council of 13 from among whom the burgesses elected a mayor (the returning officer) annually, and there was a town clerk, two bailiffs and an elected coroner. The mayor chose the juries of 24 that created new burgesses, admitted on payment of 13s. 6d. plus stamp duty. Strategically the most important and potentially the most open of the boroughs, patronal control was exercised as the manorial lord by the proprietor of the Cardigan Priory estate, but Cardigan could also be influenced by the Pryse family of Gogerddan through their Abernantbychan estate, the Bowen family of Llwyngwair, Pembrokeshire, as proprietors of Troedyraur, and the Brigstoke family of Blaenpant. PP (1835), xxiii. 334-8; P.D.G. Thomas, Politics in 18th Cent. Wales, 48. Aberystwyth, almost 40 miles north-east of Cardigan, was a castellated borough, fashionable watering place and seaport (the principal export was lead ore) in the parish of Llanbadarn Fawr, close to the confluence of the Rivers Rheidol and Ystwyth. It was administered as a presentment borough and charged 10s. 6d. plus stamp duty for burgess admission. The Scottish entrepreneur and banker Job Sheldon (d. 1844), an ally of the manorial lord, the Member for Cardiganshire William Edward Powell of Nanteos, generally alternated as mayor, 1809-33, with agents and supporters, many of them non-residents, of the other major landowner, Pryse Pryse of Gogerddan. In 1833 the municipal commissioners noted that ‘all persons entertaining opinions opposed to those of the ruling party are systematically excluded from local government’. Commenting, the Carmarthen Journal added that Aberystwyth’s ‘inherent rottenness and obliquity contrasts sharply with the soundness and symmetry of its exterior’. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales, i. 6-7; G.E. Evans, Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, 14-16; Carmarthen Jnl. 23 Nov., 6 Dec. 1833; PP (1835), xxiii. 307-12. Adpar (Atpar), a prescriptive borough in the parish of Llandyfriog on the northern bank of the Teifi, ten miles south-east of Cardigan, was linked by bridge to Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthenshire, and was known for its cattle fairs and as an important collection point for drovers bound for English markets. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales, i. 14. It had ceased to function as a corporate borough in 1742 and, although not formally disfranchised, there were no surviving freemen in this period. Thomas, Ceredigion, v. 402-23. Lampeter (Llanbedr-Pont-Stephan), a market town on the northern bank of the Teifi, 28 miles east-by-north of Cardigan, was administered through the former Lloyd estate of Peterwell, purchased in 1807 by the Bristol banker Richard Hart Davis* with a view to creating a political interest. A charter obtained by Davis in 1814 confirmed the borough’s management in a portreeve, town clerk, beadle (bailiff) and an indefinite number of burgesses. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales, iii. 160; PP (1835), xxiii. 489-92. The 1815-16 portreeve, Griffith Jenkins of Cilbronnau, a brother of Jonathan Jenkins, the Peterwell agent, made over 600 of Davis’s tenantry and acquaintances freemen, and in 1818 Davis provided Lampeter with a town hall. G.E. Evans, Lampeter, 44-45. He also purchased the Cardigan Priory estate from the trustees of the former Cardiganshire Member Thomas Johnes, leasing it to Captain William Henry Webley Parry of Noyadd Trefawr, who in 1819 became mayor of Cardigan. HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 310-11; NLW, Noyadd Trefawr mss 1054; W.J. Lewis, The Gateway to Wales: A History of Cardigan, 8. However, after speculating disastrously in the currency that year Davis had to sell Cardigan Priory to his creditor, the banker Philip John Miles* of Leigh Court, Bristol. His son-in-law and partner John Scandrett Harford of Blaise Castle, Gloucestershire, and his brother A.G. Harford Battersby purchased Peterwell. Few Lampeter burgesses were created after 1820. Scandrett Harford built a new mansion, Falcondale, nearby, served as sheriff of Cardiganshire, 1825-6, and was the defeated candidate in the Boroughs in 1841 and 1849. A. Harford, Annals of Harford Fam. (1909 edn.), 85-86.

The less prestigious, less secure and the first to poll of Cardiganshire’s two seats, the Boroughs had been frequently contested by local squires and had remained open to comparative strangers and newcomers in the eighteenth century. However, since the return in 1780, on the Hafod, Nanteos and his own small Glanfraed (Pryse) interest, of John Campbell of Stackpole Court, who as Baron Cawdor was the acknowledged leader of the West Wales Whigs or Blues, the representation had been determined by the struggle for tenure of the county seat between the largest landowners (Johnes of Hafod, the Pryses of Gogerddan, the Powells of Nanteos and the Vaughans of Crosswood (Trawsgoed), earls of Lisburne[I]), and putative candidates who tested the ground independently had been passed over. HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 487-8. For example, Thomas Bowen of Llwyngwair’s abortive candidature in 1807. Edward Loveden Loveden† had failed to secure the Boroughs for himself or his son Pryse Pryse when Campbell became a peer in 1796 and John Vaughan, who had then been returned with the approval of Johnes and acquiescence of the Powells, had in 1812 defeated Herbert Evans of Highmead, the candidate of Gogerddan and ‘the interloper’ Hart Davis, to retain the seat. At the dissolution in 1818 Vaughan had reluctantly stood down to avoid the humiliation and expense of likely defeat by the pro-Catholic Whig Pryse Pryse, who, by not proceeding to a poll in the county in 1816 against the Tory Powell, had secured the Nanteos interest in the Boroughs. D. Howell, ‘Crosswood Estate, 1547-1947’, Ceredigion, iii (1956-9), 78-80; HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 486-7. Nothing came of speculation at the dissolution in 1820 that Pryse was ‘determined to have the county’ and make Powell, who lacked money, fall back on the Boroughs. NLW, Nanteos mss L367-70, 929, 930; R.J. Colyer, ‘Nanteos: A Landed Estate in Decline’, Ceredigion, ix (1980-4), 60-68. Pryse had displayed the usual largesse in Aberystwyth, Cardigan and Lampeter, Cambrian, 22 Jan.; Carmarthen Jnl. 4 Feb. 1820. and he chaired Aberystwyth’s celebrations at the proclamation of George IV, when glasses were raised to Queen Caroline, 16 Feb. His return, 10 Mar., proposed by William Lewes of Llysnewydd and Llanllyr and seconded by John Lloyd Williams of Gwernant (anglicized later to Alderbrooke), was unopposed. Carmarthen Jnl. 18 Feb., 17 Mar. 1820. Evans of Highmead, though critical of Pryse’s inattention to Cardiganshire business, refused to oppose him and there is no evidence of recent mass burgess creations at Aberystwyth or Cardigan. NLW, Glanpaith mss F164; NLW, Lucas mss 625; Evans, Aberystwyth, 154-6; Ceredigion Archives CDM/39, 40. Signatures on the indenture indicate that Pryse had corporation support in the three boroughs, yet the Vaughans and some of their former supporters were conspicuously absent. Ceredigion Archives CDM/SE6/34. The main party celebrated at the Black Lion at a cost of £76 0s. 6d. A further 143 supporters were dined at seven other inns in the town at 5s. a head. Blue favours, his chair and bellringers cost Pryse £38 5s. Evan Davies’s invoice for the £200 he paid for the erection of a gallery at St. Mary’s church in 1821, a ‘lasting memento of your liberality to this place’, was treated as an election bill. NLW, Gogerddan mss, election expenses, 1820; Carm. RO, Aberglasney mss 30, G. Thomas to Pryse, 3 Oct. 1821; Greal y Bedyddwyr, v (1831), 192.

There was great interest, especially in Aberystwyth, in the queen’s trial and all three towns were illuminated in November 1820 after the Liverpool government abandoned her prosecution. Glanpaith mss C330. The mayor of Aberystwyth, George Bonsall of Glanrheidol, chaired celebrations at the Gogerddan Arms; but in Cardigan ‘the inhabitants were not all of one mind’ and ‘some pains were taken to repress the popular feeling which prevailed on the occasion’. Nanteos mss L1434; Carmarthen Jnl. 24 Nov. 1, 8, Dec. 1820. Cardigan celebrated the victory of the popular Tory barrister and leading Red John Jones of Ystrad at the Carmarthen by-election of July 1821 and processions, fireworks and bonfires on Netpool Bank again marked the coronation that month. Carmarthen Jnl. 13, 27 July, 3 Aug. 1821. A stamp inspector had recently been denied access to the Aberyswyth corporation books by the town clerk William Jones, who informed Pryse, 10 June, ‘I showed him our last presentment book in which fortunately there were but few burgesses and stated that my brother had the other books at Machynlleth’. The inspector did not check, but an anxious Jones reminded Pryse that creations in Bonsall’s recent mayoralty remained unstamped:

The penalty to which the town clerk subjects himself by not entering the admissions within a month after the swearing of the burgesses is £10 for every admission, and as we have admitted about 130, the penalties inflicted would be serious. Gogerddan mss, W. Jones to Pryse, 10 June 1821.

Borough politics were essentially parochial and oligarchic. PP (1835), xiii. 197, 198, 307-12, 419-22. The attorneys kept a watchful eye on legislation and ensured that no opportunity for the exercise of patronage was lost, especially vacancies in the customs service at Aberystwyth and Cardigan. Gogerddan mss, J. Morse to Pryse, 29 Feb. 1824. Sponsorship of the races and the gifts to the needy and for municipal improvement schemes remained essential to Pryse’s political welfare, but had to be made carefully so that the influence of lesser local dignitaries was not jeopardized. Greal y Bedyddwyr, v (1831), 192; R.J. Colyer ‘Gentry and County in 19th Cent. Card.’ WHR, x (1980-1), 497-535; Pryse mss (History of Parliament Aspinall transcripts), H. Evans to Pryse, 19 Oct. 1829; Cambrian, 22 Jan. 1820, 3 Sept. 1825, 22 Sept. 1827, 1 Mar., 21 June 1828, 14 Feb. 1829; Carmarthen Jnl. 4 Feb. 1820, 26 Jan. 1821, 1, 22 Feb. 1828, 8 Jan. 1830; Aberglasney mss 30, G. Bonsall to Pryse, 28 Jan. 1821. Aberystwyth assembly rooms opened in 1820 and the Crynfryn dispensary in 1823, the year a new market cum town hall replaced that owned by Powell and demolished in 1821. D. Samuel, Old Aberystwyth, 4-10; Aberystwyth Guide (c. 1816), 3-87; Evans, Aberystwyth, 47, 48, 119, 190. For Powell’s disputes with the corporation see Nanteos mss L371, 373, 394, 395, 502. When the corporation-inspired campaign for a new church gathered momentum in 1825, Pryse and Powell contributed £250 apiece and headed the list of subscribers, although Pryse had (9 Apr. 1824) voted against the £500,000 parliamentary grant from which Aberystwyth drew £1,298 to be repaid from church rates (a subsequent cause of controversy) towards the cost of the new St. Michael’s. I.G. Jones, ‘Religion and Politics: Rebuilding of St. Michael’s Church Aberystwyth’, Ceredigion, vii (1972-5), 117-24. The Commons received petitions for the abolition of slavery from Aberystwyth and Cardigan in April 1824 and the secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society Thomas Clarkson visited both towns that summer. CJ, lxxix. 303, 319; The Times, 15 Apr. 1824. In Cardigan, he found the bookseller and magistrates’ clerk Caleb Lewis supportive, and prevailed on Major [Thomas] Bowen to distribute the Society’s literature in Cardigan and Newcastle Emlyn, ‘but few need to be sent because few speak or read English’. Bowen eventually consented to a ‘petition against drawbacks and bounties, if necessary, but to no petition which should imply that the government had not done their duty to the utmost’. Clarkson commented:

[Caleb] Lewis seemed not to dare to give an opinion on the subject before Major Bowen. The magistrate and principal inhabitant of the town kept him in subordination and ignorance. This is no thoroughfare therefore. The people only half-civilized. NLW ms 14984 A, ii. 12-14.

Aberystwyth readily established a committee at Clarkson’s request, 2 Aug. 1824, but only the burgesses and inhabitants of Cardigan contributed to the petitioning campaign against slavery in 1826. Ibid.; CJ, lxxxi. 372. With the Mynachdy estate in chancery following the death of Davis’s ally Alban Thomas Jones Gwynne in 1819, Harford turned to Bishop Burgess of St. Davids, Evans of Highmead, Jones of Derry Ormond and Archdeacon John Williams for local advice and support during the negotiations which led to the endowment and construction of St. David’s College on the old Lampeter Castle site. Harford, 85-88. Pryse played no part in the passage of the Lampeter legislation, whereby the college was endowed and funded from tithes and advowsons scattered throughout the see of St. Davids, and the bill was introduced to the Lords, 17 June, rushed through the Commons the following day and received royal assent, 21 June 1824. CJ, lxxix. 510-11, 521, 525; LJ, lvi. 445, 447. Branches of the Cymreigyddion, a society promoting Welsh literature and culture, were established at Aberystwyth and Cardigan in 1822 and 1824, and flourished in both towns. Cambrian, 19 June, 18 Dec. 1824, 22 Jan., 26 Mar., 10 Dec. 1825, 21 Jan., 11 Feb. 1826. As mayor, 1823-4, the president of the Cardigan Cymreigyddion Thomas Bowen enrolled Powell and his brother Robert Owen Powell as freemen, 4 Oct. 1824. At special mayor’s courts, 13, 27 Dec. 1824, his successor William Owen Brigstocke of Blaenpant and Gelli Dywyll admitted 59 freemen, 39 of them Pryse’s Abernantbychan tenants from the parishes of Pembryn, Bettws and Troedyraur, and Pryse’s Cardigan attorney James Morse was elected to the common council. Ceredigion Archives CDM/14, 39-46; Gogerddan mss RB55. Parliamentary returns specify only nine admissions in 1824 and 14 in 1825 (PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 510). Anticipating a dissolution, the court leet at Aberystwyth was kept adjourned from October 1825 to June 1826, but only eight burgesses were created and there was ‘unusual quiet’ and no contest at the general election that month. Pryse, who spent £158 4s. on hospitality, was proposed by James Richard Lewes Lloyd of Dôl-haidd, with Thomas Lloyd of Cilrhiw (Kilrhue) seconding. Aberystwyth borough recs. A4; Carmarthen Jnl. 9, 23 June; Cambrian, 10, 24 June 1826; Gogerddan mss, election expenses, 1826.

Dissenters of all denominations in Cardigan petitioned the Commons for repeal of the Test Acts, 7, 22 June 1827, and the inhabitants, ‘friends of religious liberty’ and chapels from all three boroughs petitioned both Houses similarly before it was enacted in 1828. CJ, lxxxii. 527, 594; lxxxiii. 73; LJ, lx. 47, 71, 79, 80, 86, 177. Petitions were also received from Cardigan’s maltsters, traders and inhabitants for repeal of the 1827 Malt Act, 18 Feb., and of legislation prohibiting the circulation of small notes, 2 June, and from Cardigan’s Welsh Calvinistic and Wesleyan Methodists against Catholic relief, 8 May 1828. CJ, lxxxiii. 79, 322, 389; LJ, lix. 126; lx. 74. The concession of Catholic emancipation in 1829 was opposed in petitions to both Houses from the gentry, clergy and inhabitants of Aberystwyth, who met publicly, 31 Jan., certain inhabitants of Cardigan and congregations and parishes in the three boroughs and in Adpar. Carmarthen Jnl. 16, 30 Jan., 6, 13, 20 Feb.; Cambrian, 21 Feb., 14, 21, 28 Mar. 1829; CJ, lxxxiv. 41, 89, 121, 177; LJ, lxi. 55, 105, 316. Pryse, who had delayed voting for emancipation to the last (30 Mar. 1829), went to the Aberystwyth court leet at the Gogerddan Arms to elect Henry Benson as mayor, 13 Oct. 1829, and in November Evans of Highmead’s stepson Delme Seymour Davies and his friends became capital burgesses of Lampeter. Carmarthen Jnl. 16 Oct; Cambrian, 28 Nov. 1829. Evans and his allies among the Blues supported Cawdor’s scheme, endorsed by the justice commissioners’ 1829 report, whereby the Welsh courts of great sessions and judicature were to be abolished and the Welsh assize districts increased in area and incorporated into the English circuits. Cawdor had proposed dividing Cardiganshire north-south, so that Aberystwyth cases would be heard in Merioneth’s county town, Dolgellau, and Cardigan’s assizes business transferred to Carmarthen, where cases for south Cardiganshire, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire would be heard. Pryse’s stance was initially equivocal, but in the Commons, 27 Apr. 1830, he presented and endorsed the mayor, common council and burgesses of Cardigan’s petition against change (which the Lords received, 4 May), and on 18 June he voted in the minority against the recommittal of the administration of justice bill, through which it was enacted, 23 July. A late government amendment left the existing assize structure almost intact. CJ, lxxxv, 336; LJ, lxii. 320; M. Escott, ‘How Wales lost its Judicature: the making of the 1830 Act for the Abolition of the Court of Great Sessions’, Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion (2006), 135-59. At the dissolution that month it was rumoured that Evans of Highmead would oppose Pryse. Nanteos mss L879. Harford contemplated creating an interest in Cardigan and extending opposition to the county, and he hastened to Lampeter for talks at Highmead, but to no ‘material purpose’. Bristol RO, Blaise Castle mss 28048/C3. The barrister heir to Gwernant, Edward Lloyd Williams of Edgbaston, the author of a recent pamphlet on the game laws, advertised his candidature and canvassed against Pryse, but found too little support to proceed (he was the defeated Conservative candidate at Banbury in 1835). Hereford Jnl. 28 July; Cambrian, 31 July 1830. Pryse informed Evans, 3 Aug.:

All is well over and I am again an MP. Lloyd of Dôl-haidd was intended to propose me and Coedmore Lloyd to second me. The latter was behind time and the consequence was that Dôl-haidd applied to Powell to propose me and he conducted it himself. This was anything but what I would have wished. However, I could not help it. NLW, Highmead mss 3150.

John Lloyd Williams was chosen to second Powell’s nomination for the county, Cambrian, 21 Nov.; Shrewsbury Chron. 27 Nov. 1829; Carmarthen Jnl. 13 Aug. 1830. and signed the indenture for Pryse’s return with Evan Davies, Lewes Lloyd of Dôl-haidd, Griffith and Jonathan Jenkins, Powell, Webley Parry and the Bowens. Fewer Aberystwyth dignitaries than usual signed. Ceredigion Archives CDM/SE6/35. Presentment books record only two burgess admissions at Aberystwyth since the 1826 election, although the court leet had been repeatedly adjourned, but 39 were admitted at Cardigan, 1826-9, and a further 26 in 1830. Precise admission dates are unavailable after October 1826. Aberystwyth borough recs. A4; PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 510; Ceredigion Archives CDM/15.

The gentry, clergy and inhabitants of Aberystwyth and Cardigan and Methodist and Dissenting congregations in the three boroughs petitioned both Houses in 1830-1 for the abolition of slavery. LJ, lxii. 136, 183, 244, 413, 488; CJ, lxxxvi. 188, 465. The threat to the port and merchant interests gave Aberystwyth’s corporators a vested interest in petitioning for repeal of the coastwise coal duties, 11 Feb., and Cardigan petitioned similarly, 17, 18 Feb. 1831.CJ, lxxxvi. 237, 256; LJ, lxii. 233. Petitions in favour of the Grey ministry’s reform bill were received by both Houses 28 Mar., 20 Apr., from the inhabitants of Aberystwyth, where there is no evidence of a campaign for separate representation, despite the borough’s size and projected expansion (it contributed £925 in assessed taxes in 1830, Cardigan £403, Lampeter £70 and Adpar £49). LJ, lxiii. 384; CJ, lxxxvi. 509; PP (1831-2), xli. 57-73. Meanwhile, speeches in English and Welsh in support of Pryse and reform were delivered at Cardigan’s reform meeting, 18 Mar., which provided Major Bowen, Thomas Francis, Lord Kensington†, Thomas Lundly, James Morse, Saunders Davies and Griffith Thomas, the vicar of St. Mary’s, with opportunities to make their views known. Letters of support were read out from Lewes Lloyd of Dôl-haidd and Pryse, and Morse echoed the demand of reformers throughout Wales for additional county representation, ‘as Wales was now become a part and parcel of England, under the same laws, and such laws administered by the same judges’. Cardigan’s reformers were prominent at the county meeting at Lampeter, 7 Apr. 1831, when clerics on that borough’s corporation expressed misgivings about the bill but refrained from voting against the resolutions. Cambrian, 16 Apr. 1831.

Pryse’s votes against the duke of Wellington’s ministry on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830 and for reform, 22 Mar., 19 Apr. 1831, were well publicized, and he was returned unopposed at the general election precipitated by the bill’s defeat. He was then

chaired through the principal streets of the town amidst the most enthusiastic rejoicings ... preceded by a blue silk banner decorated with a crown and the words ‘Reform Bill’ tastefully inscribed on it - a gift from the Commercial Club. Carmarthen Jnl. 6 May; Cambrian, 13 May 1831.

The entire common council of Cardigan signed the indenture. NLW, Morgan Richardson mss L157. Before he returned to Westminster to vote for the bill as promised, Carmarthen Jnl. 13 May 1831. the pro-reform consensus in Cardigan was disturbed by turbulent electioneering in the neighbouring counties and boroughs of Carmarthen and Pembroke, which placed conflicting obligations on trades and professional men, and especially on squires and magistrates with estates and votes on both banks of the Teifi. Morse, himself torn by divided loyalties and likely to lose post office custom, wrote:

I came forward to serve you [Pryse] (to be a reformer in Cardigan and an anti-reformer in Pembrokeshire I think would have deserved punishment) and looked upon the cause as not only yours but mine, our king and government, in fact all well disposed to the future safety of our country. Had I served Sir John Owen*, all would have been well, but let my punishment be what it may, persecution will only flourish for a time and I hope to live to see him and his party meet the fate they so much deserve. Pryse mss, Morse to [Pryse], 13 June 1831.

Well-attended and orderly meetings to petition for the bill, to urge the Lords to pass it and to call on the king to appoint only reformers to office, were held at Cardigan, 14 Nov. 1831, 21 May 1832, but there was also evidence locally of ‘reaction’ and Morse ‘could not fail observing how much he regretted the absence of many on the bench who had been foremost in advocating the cause of reform when first agitated’. Supportive letters continued to be received and printed from Cawdor, Lord Ebrington*, Powell and Pryse. Carmarthen Jnl. 3 Dec. 1831; Welshman, 6 Apr., 25 May, 6 June 1832. No further reform meetings were held at Aberystwyth and Lampeter, although the mob that attacked James Williams’s Aberystwyth house, 17 Feb., were suspected of being reformers. The bill’s enactment in June 1832 was widely celebrated. Carmarthen Jnl. 23 Mar.; Welshman, 20, 27 June 1832.

The boundary commissioners recommended minor changes at Aberystwyth and Lampeter, and Cardigan’s boundaries were pushed north beyond the common and south across the Teifi into Pembrokeshire to include Bridge End and ‘the populous village of St. Dogmels’. Adpar’s boundaries were also extended across the Teifi to include the township of Emlyn. John Bull considered its addition to the reformed constituency a ‘job’ calculated to increase Cawdor’s influence. PP (1831-2), xli. 23-42; Salopian Jnl. 20 June 1832. One-thousand-and-thirty electors were registered in November 1832, 35 more than the total of 995 given in the Carmarthen Journal, which reported that 241, 29, 127 and 34 £10 householders were registered at Aberystwyth, Adpar, Cardigan and Lampeter and that 139 Aberystwyth, 171 Cardigan and 254 Lampeter freemen retained their voting rights. Carmarthen Jnl. 26 Oct., 30 Nov. 1832; PP (1835), xxiii (1), 200. The Orange (Tory) party’s ‘Newcastle junta’ made a late show of opposition when Pryse, standing as a Liberal, was returned without a poll in December 1832. He saw off his challengers in 1835 and 1837, and was reseated on petition in 1842, after a bitter contest in 1841 against Harford produced a double return. The constituency was polled again on three occasions between Pryse’s death in 1849 and its abolition in 1885. It remained almost exclusively Liberal, returning a Conservative only in 1855. Welshman, 31 May, 21 Sept, 21 Dec. 1832, 6 Jan. 1833; Carmarthen Jnl. 14 Sept., 7 Dec. 1832; R.G. Thorne, ‘Parliamentary Representation: From the First to the Third Reform Acts, 1832-85’, Card. Co. Hist. iii. 387-406.