Denbigh Boroughs

Denbigh (Dinbych) in the Vale of Clwyd, five miles south of the cathedral city of St. Asaph, was the old county town of Denbighshire, an agricultural centre whose principal trades were in shoe leather and books. Denbigh was the constituency’s polling town and its bailiffs were the returning officers and assessors. It had a recorder and corporation of 25, including two aldermen and two bailiffs, elected annually from among them. The freedom was conferred by gift of the corporation only and a Commons ruling of 7 Feb. 1744 confined it to residents. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), i. 559-60; PP (1835), xxvi. 2662-3; CJ, xxiv. 549-50; P.D.G. Thomas, Politics in 18th Cent. Wales, 39-40. Not 7 Feb. 1743, as stated in Oldfield, Hist. Boroughs, (1792), iii. 25. The out-borough of Ruthin, seven miles south-east of Denbigh on the River Clwyd, was the county’s assize town and a borough by prescription. Its corporation comprised a recorder, a steward, two annually elected aldermen and 16 capital men, and the franchise was vested in ‘burgesses actually resident at the teste of the writ’. A prohibitory £5 fine, authorized by by-law, served as a deterrent to burgess admissions by birth and apprenticeship, and most were created following election by a majority of the aldermen and common council. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales, iv. 27; PP (1835), xxvi. 2847-9. Holt, five miles from Wrexham, was a borough and township nine miles in circumference situated on the west bank of the River Dee (the English border), 29 miles east-south-east of Denbigh. It was governed locally by a mayor, two bailiffs and a coroner, who were elected annually. No uniform franchise qualification applied and the residence required of electors was habitually manipulated for electoral purposes to include the town’s ‘Englishry’. Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dict. of Wales (unpaginated); PP (1835), xxvi. 2662-3. From 1690, and continuously since 1722, the Myddeltons of Chirk Castle had dictated the representation.

Following the death of the last Richard Myddelton in 1796, possession of the estate and control of the seat (which until 1802 passed temporarily to the eccentric Shropshire landowner Thomas Jones†, as proprietor of Carreghwfa, Denbighshire) had been bitterly disputed by Myddelton’s sisters and co-heiresses Harriet Myddelton, Charlotte, the wife of the banker Robert Bidulph†, and Maria, the second wife of Frederick William West†, a younger son of the courtier, the 2nd Earl De La Warr. HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 205-6; iv. 324-6; 650; v. 517-18. Expensive contests between the Whig Myddelton Biddulphs and Tory Wests, or their nominees, became customary, and were generally preceded by partisan burgess creations and followed by petitioning and quo warranto proceedings. These capitalized on the laxity with which the boundaries of Denbigh and Ruthin had been defined and on differing interpretations of the rights of non-resident freemen, particularly the ‘English burgesses’ of Holt. West took the seat, 1802-6, Biddulph (as Myddelton Biddulph), 1806-12, when he lost to West’s nominee Viscount Kirkwall of Leweni (on the outskirts of Denbigh), who retired in 1818 to avoid defeat by the liberal John Wynne Griffith of Garn, the acting chairman of the county magistrates and recorder of Denbigh. See below. He was the acknowledged candidate of Mrs. Biddulph, whose husband had died in 1814 and eldest son would not be of age until 20 June 1826. He was publicly backed by the corporation of Denbigh, William Hughes* of Kinmel Park and William Shipley, dean of St. Asaph, and tacitly endorsed by the county Member, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn of Wynnstay. HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 495; NLW, Garn mss (1956), W. Shipley to J.W. Griffith, 24 May 1817, 2 Jan. 1820, W. Hughes to same, 19 Feb. 1819. A chancery ruling in February 1819, that Charlotte Biddulph, Harriet Myddelton and Maria West should be awarded the Chirk Castle, Ruthin Castle and Llangollen estates respectively, was confirmed in a private Act, but the costly struggle for control of the Boroughs persisted. NLW, Chirk Castle mss F/11402-6; The Times, 15 Apr. 1819; Private Act 59 Geo. III, c. 4.

By 1820, Maria West’s only son Frederick, Harriet Myddelton’s favourite nephew, was newly of age and expected to stand. He had recently presided at celebrations to mark the estate settlement at Holt, Llangollen, Wrexham and Ruthin, where 102 new burgesses were created. Chester Chron. 19 Nov., 10 Dec. 1819, 14 Jan., 11, 18, 25 Feb., 3 Mar.; Cambrian, 19, 26 Feb.; The Times, 1 Mar. 1820. There had been 120 admissions in Denbigh, but no figures survive for Holt, where a resident frequently deputized for a non-resident mayor and the corporate rights of non-residents were currently challenged in the James Dale case. Stamp duty was customarily paid by the corporations and charged to the patrons, Denbigh levying a further 10s. 6d. per admission, a payment usually waived at Holt and Ruthin. Chirk Castle mss F/4790, 4809; PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 517; (1835), xxvi. 2662, 2663, 2666, 2667; J. Williams (Glanmor), Recs. Lordship of Denbigh, i. 159. Her ‘friends’ on Denbigh corporation attended Mrs. Biddulph at Chirk Castle, 4 Aug. 1819, and lobbied strongly with some success against the Tory West and Kenyon parties in Holt and Ruthin that Michaelmas. They elected Griffith and the attorney John Copner Williams (the deputy recorder and local Chirk Castle agent) as aldermen and John Williams of Henblas and John Parry Tynewydd as bailiffs of Denbigh, and displayed their strength again at a public dinner at Ruthin’s Wynnstay Arms chaired by Colonel Kenrick of Nantclwyd, with Griffith as the main speaker, 4 Jan. 1820. Chirk Castle mss C/76; Cambrian, 15, 22 Jan. 1820. As in 1818, Chirk Castle agents tried to resist corporation pressure to spend during Robert Myddelton Biddulph’s minority, and at the dissolution precipitated by the king’s death in January 1820 their Denbigh ‘friends’, who were expected to contribute to the cost, sought reassurance, before committing themselves to a contest, that West’s Ruthin creations posed little threat. Chirk Castle mss C/79; Garn mss (1956), C.M. Biddulph to J.W. Griffith, 4, 22 Feb. 1820. Chirk Castle’s London agent, Robert Archibald Douglas of the Inner Temple, was informed:

In Denbigh, Ruthin, and Holt, the burgesses are honorary and it is admitted on all hands that there is no inchoate right. Several burgesses were elected in April last in an opponent’s interest, but were not sworn until December and Mr. Griffith wishes to know whether those thus sworn in December can vote in April in consequence of the election, as it may be said that an election is an inchoate right. It was ruled otherwise at Denbigh election and that though so elected twelve months, if not sworn so long that they were not entitled. You are aware that when persons are according to the customary of the corporation entitled to be elected burgesses ... they can vote immediately. Chirk Castle mss C/78.

The widower Griffith’s liberalism and his dependence on the widow Mrs. Biddulph’s support were much lampooned during the campaign, but he defeated ‘the De La Warr courtier’ West after a two-day poll. The new Ruthin voters were rejected, and West’s party vented their spleen against the Rev. Richard Newcome, warden of the borough’s Christ’s Hospital, ‘an interested meddling priest’ who, with Wynnstay’s approval, had seconded Griffith’s nomination. Denbigh’s celebrations adjourned to Griffith’s home ‘Y Garn’, 15 Mar., whence he issued an address interpreting his victory as a triumph for the ‘elder branch of the Chirk Castle family’ and promised to vote as he thought fit. Ibid C/80-85; Chester Chron. 10, 17 Mar.; N. Wales Gazette, 23 Mar. 1820. West pledged to stand again, and the paper war between the parties continued unabated until July, when about 40 burgesses were enrolled in the Chirk Castle interest at Holt, so foiling an attempt to nominate West as mayor. Chester Chron. 7 Apr., 30 June; Chirk Castle mss C/76; Garn mss (1956), E. to J.W. Griffith, 25 June 1820. Accounting for overspending on the latter occasion, and seeking advice from Douglas on corporation law, Copner Williams explained:

Firstly, all of our party were of opinion that the cause would be lost unless a larger sum than the amount of the usual expenses should be sacrificed. Secondly, the resident burgesses expressed their expectations of receiving about five pounds each for their trouble at and previous to the last election at Denbigh, independently of that at Holt on the 2nd inst. Thirdly, it appears to me that even supposing Mrs. Biddulph should lose the cause, she would not wish to retire from the contest without satisfying her friends and by that means preserving the interest until Master Biddulph’s arrival at the age of 21. Frankly, it appeared to be the general opinion that Mr. West would oppose her no longer unless he succeeded in this instance. And I might add that her better sort of friends at Wrexham would hear of no denial to that advice as to the spending of money, which they thought was absolutely necessary not only to the success, but to answer the expectations of the Holt friends. Mr. Brown ... who acted as assessor, is particularly anxious that an opinion should be taken on the legality of our proceedings, that we may be prepared with it by the next court; and if we have need to give notice and state therein the opinion since taken; and that if it should appear necessary, that he will admit a poll for Mr. West. The charter runs ‘That our mayor and burgesses of our aforesaid town have sole and full power to choose and make English burgesses as it shall please them and use and enjoy all manner of franchising and liberties and all other free customs as our aforesaid burgesses have used and enjoyed for evermore; and that none which is not received and chosen to be burgess by our mayor and bailiffs and by the consent of the burgesses of our aforesaid town, do any manner of ways enjoy nor use any burgesses liberties against the will and mind of our mayor and burgesses aforesaid within our aforesaid town nor the liberties of the same’. Chirk Castle mss F/7487.

At Michaelmas 1820 the Chirk Castle ‘party’ kept control of Holt, but failed to prevent West’s election as steward of Ruthin. In Denbigh, where the borough subscription raised by John Heaton of Plas Heaton in June for the distressed Irish was resented and the Chirk Castle agents had yet to pay election bills of £2,500, they had to make ‘a great show’, and ‘instead of the town hall as usual’, 300 were dined at the ‘Crown Inn and ten other houses’, with Griffith, Copner Williams and Heaton presiding. Diners at the Black Lion strongly challenged Griffith’s decision to support Queen Caroline’s cause in the Commons. Ibid. E/3460-2; Garn mss (1956), G. to J.W. Griffith, 20 June; Chester Chron. 6 Oct. 1820. Little was made of the withdrawal of the case against her in November, which coincided with celebrations to mark West’s marriage to Lady Georgiana Stanhope, but the corporation sent a loyal address to the king, 9 Dec. 1820. Williams, i. 160 (but misinterpreted as an address to George IV on his accession). While Griffith remained at Westminster, the Boroughs paid comparatively little attention to national politics. Legislation enacted in 1821 and 1825 to improve the Denbigh-St. Asaph and Denbigh-Pentre Foelas turnpikes was, however, welcomed. Denbigh petitioned Parliament for action against agricultural distress, 11 Mar. 1822, and to condemn the trial of the Methodist missionary John Smith, indicted for inciting slaves to riot in Demerara, 28 May 1824; and Ruthin for repeal of the leather duties, 29 Apr. 1822, and against Catholic relief, 17 May 1825. CJ, lxxvi. 237; xxvii. 214; xxix. 430; xxx. 518; LJ, lvii. 829.

The Chirk Castle ‘party’ had failed to prevent George Kenyon of Cefn’s election as mayor of Holt at Michaelmas 1821, when Williams Wynn’s brother Charles Williams Wynn* attended as steward, and, assisted by the Parrys of Holt Lodge, the West and Kenyon party, ‘the Sky Blues’, were to retain a majority of about 60 freemen in the borough until at least 1829. Chester Chron. 12 Oct. 1821; J. Powell, Holt, 52-53. The Chirk Castle ‘party’ were disappointed and put to considerable expense by their failure to secure a judgment confirming Denbigh borough officers’ legal rights in the Jones v. Rees case at Shrewsbury assizes in August 1824, but they remained the strongest faction, and admitted 93 recently elected burgesses, 7 June 1825, in anticipation of a dissolution. The Times, 16 Aug. 1824; PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 517; (1835), xxvi. 2667. Mrs. Biddulph had already asked the corporation to nominate a candidate, and their letter giving Griffith first refusal was dispatched that day. Garn mss (1956), Copner Williams to J.W. Griffith, 7 June 1825. His response is not known.

The election was not called until 1826. Richard Myddelton Biddulph, whose mother had let her house and gone abroad, had ‘regularly announced himself as a candidate’ the previous November, and West’s father was ‘said to have assembled his friends and tenants at Ruthin and to have addressed them with the very straightforward question, have I not bought you all?’. NLW ms 2795 D, Lady Williams Wynn to H. Williams Wynn, 3 Nov. 1825. The mutually hostile broadsheets and letters to the press, with which the campaign opened in April 1826, assumed that Myddelton Biddulph would be of age and that the contest would be between him and West, ‘your countryman and neighbour’. His bilingual address described West as the ‘church and state’ candidate committed to preserving the Protestant ascendancy. Myddelton Biddulph, a Member of Brooks’s, was expected to adhere to his father’s and Griffith’s Whiggism, but, unlike them, he declared against Catholic relief. Among the squires and clergy, he could depend on William Chambers Chambers, Griffith, Heaton, William Hughes, the Lloyds and Copner Williams in Denbigh, but only Newcome in Ruthin, where he was burnt in effigy, and he had little beyond his mother’s interest in Holt. West, who had been promised Miss Myddelton’s support, could also call on the interests of the Cloughs of Llwyn Offa and Broughton Hall, Lord Newborough of Glynllifon, Price of Bryn-y-Pys, Roberts of Ystrad, the Salusburys of Cotton Hall in Denbigh; Lord Bagot, the Rev. William Edwards, Sir Robert Williames Vaughan*, Wynne of Coed Coch and Youde in Ruthin; and Colonel Barnston, Mrs. Holford and Lord Kenyon in Holt. The contest was expected to cost each side between 15 and 20 thousand pounds. Chester Courant, 11, 18, 25 Apr., 2, 9, 16, 23 May; N. Wales Gazette, 13, 20, 27 Apr.; The Times, 19 Apr.; Cambrian, 29 Apr., 6 May 1826; Chirk Castle mss F/9541. An early Chirk Castle canvass return gave Myddelton Biddulph 48 Denbigh and 23 Ruthin votes and West 33 Denbigh and 18 Ruthin votes, with 23 undeclared in Denbigh and 24 in Ruthin. No information was entered for the 80 Holt electors listed. Chirk Castle mss C/88. West’s party, however, had control of the writ and fixed the nomination for 13 June, a week before Myddelton Biddulph’s twenty first birthday. Joseph Ablett of Llanbedr Hall, a wealthy newcomer and Denbigh corporator, nominated by Heaton and Colonel Peers of Plas Newydd, stood against West, and it was rumoured that his father, the cotton master Joseph Ablett of Ffynogion, would build a cotton factory in Ruthin and extend the election to the county by opposing Williams Wynn. Chester Chron. 9, 16, 23 June 1826. West, as in 1820, was proposed by John Roberts of Ruthin and seconded by Richard Roberts of Denbigh. The Times, 9 June; Cambrian, 17 June; Chester Courant, 20 June 1826. Polling commenced on the 14th and ended on the 24th, when, after ‘the greatest riot and disorder’, numerous legal obstructions and unbounded use of liquor, music and processions, West called for a truce and the sheriff declared a double return with 273 votes accepted for each candidate. A further 66 votes had been tendered for Ablett and 51 for West. By agreement, West was chaired at Ruthin and Ablett in Denbigh, where ‘the mob attacked the Crown when all the party were at dinner and dispersed them in every direction’. NLW ms 12870 D, Robert Davies to Morgan Dafydd [1826]; Garn mss (1956), J.W. to G. Griffith, 24 June 1826; Chester Courant, 20, 27 June; N. Wales Gazette, 29 June, 6 July; Cambrian, 1 July 1826.

Costly petitioning inevitably followed, and 98 burgesses were admitted at Denbigh at Michaelmas in preparation for a second contest, when Myddelton Biddulph was expected to stand. PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 517. West’s petition, presented on 22 Nov. 1826, accused the returning officers, John Williams and Chambers, of partiality, and sought to have Ablett’s return made void. Burgesses in his interest petitioned alleging that legitimate votes had been rejected and bribery was rampant, 5 Dec. Similar counter-petitions from Heaton and others in support of Ablett were presented, 1, 13 Dec. 1826, but on the last occasion, and again, 8 Feb. 1827, the recognizances provided by Chirk Castle’s London agent were inadequate, and despite a plea from Heaton, their petitions were timed out. CJ, lxxxii. 15, 48, 49, 79, 115, 116, 122, 123, 125. More than 50 witnesses were summoned to London to back West’s petition, but its consideration was repeatedly postponed, and he failed in his attempt to have the matter dealt with swiftly once Ablett had declared in writing (12 Feb.) that he would offer no defence, 13 Feb. In response to a notice placed by the Speaker in the London Gazette, 16 Feb., and as urged in the correspondence columns of the North Wales Gazette, a petition from ‘parties in the room of the said Joseph Ablett’ was presented, 14 Mar. West’s retaliatory petition calling for Ablett’s name to be erased from the return was judged inadmissible and withdrawn, 16 Mar. The investigative committee appointed, 22 Mar., declared West duly elected, 29 Mar., and he took his seat when the return was amended the following day. He had reputedly tried and failed to have the boundaries of the boroughs contracted in order to make the constituency easier for one person to manage. The North Wales Gazette reported that the struggle was no longer between two branches of the same family, but between West and 20 county gentlemen anxious to preserve the ‘independence’ of the Boroughs. Ibid. lxxxii. 118, 148, 159, 160, 314, 315, 328, 343-5, 370, 375; N. Wales Gazette, 22 Feb., 22 Mar. 1827. Acting retrospectively, and to deter West, eight of this latter group on Denbigh corporation took out a £451 five per cent bond, 8 Sept. 1827, and instructed Copner Williams to buy sufficient stamps to admit 150 burgesses. There were eight admissions in Denbigh that Michaelmas and only two more before the reform bill was passed. Chirk Castle mss E/2611; PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 517. Testifying before the 1827 select committee on borough polls, West complained of the cost of bringing Holt voters to Denbigh and thought it would be a ‘considerable improvement’ if polling took place in each or the most central town, his stronghold of Ruthin. He observed that 560 of the electorate of 817 had voted in 1826, when there was ‘ten days’ polling, then two or three days spent in nothing but discussion, one day entirely’. PP (1826-7), iv. 1143-4.

By April 1828, Mrs. Biddulph had decided to proceed with family land exchanges and sell her Denbigh properties by public auction, so creating what Griffith warned would be a ‘great sensation among your friends’ and ‘triumphant exultation amongst our opponents who already boast of the ample revenge they shall take and the punishment they will inflict upon your friends that occupy the premises when they have the power of purchasing them’. At Griffith’s instigation, private sales to Denbigh partisans were agreed. Chirk Castle mss E/2593, 2598, 9, 3487, 8, 3520 (i) and (ii). Denbigh landowners and traders petitioned against legislation prohibiting the circulation of small notes, 21 Feb., and the Malt Act, 20 June 1828, and chapels and inhabitants petitioned the Lords against Catholic relief, 5 Mar. 1827, and for repeal of the Test Acts, 25 Feb. 1828. CJ, lxxxiii. 91, 101; 456; LJ, lix. 126; lx. 74. Denbigh eisteddfod that September was a borough and county affair at which the duke of Sussex, a guest at Kinmel Park, agreed to become an honorary burgess. Shrewsbury Chron. 12, 19 Sept. 1828. Anti-Catholic petitions, supported by West and the Kenyons, were received by Parliament in 1829 from the corporations and inhabitants of Holt and Ruthin and the inhabitants only of Denbigh. CJ, lxxxiv. 72; LJ, lxi, 23, 67, 153. The 1828 justice commission’s 1829 report recommended that Ruthin and Mold should hold assizes alternately when the Welsh judicature and court of great sessions was abolished, and the borough hosted and was well represented at county meetings that defied the Williams Wynns and adopted petitions proposed by Griffith, on Copner Williams’s advice, advocating improvements to the great sessions instead of wholesale change, 22 Sept. 1829, 15 Apr. 1830. A late government amendment to the 1830 administration of justice bill, by which the changes were implemented, left Wales’s county assize structure almost intact. Shrewsbury Chron. 25 Sept. 1829; Chester Courant, 6, 20 Apr. 1830.

In August 1829 Mrs. Biddulph, whose son Robert, a popular beau, had accumulated extensive gaming debts, decided to abide by a plan of ‘great and rigid economy’ at Chirk. Copner Williams was dismissed and retaliated by sending bailiffs to her London house to recover his outstanding salary and her debts to Denbigh corporation. Herefs. RO, diaries of John Biddulph of Ledbury [Biddulph diary] G2/IV/5/56, 14 Aug.-19 Sept. 1829. In a display of independence and anti-West speeches over which Griffith and his son George presided at Michaelmas 1829, Denbigh corporation had financed their own feast and elected their first Catholic burgess and corporator, the Wrexham banker Charles Sankey. N. Wales Chron. 15 Oct. 1829. John Madocks of Glan-y-wern was trying to create interests in the county and Boroughs, but a report that ‘West and Biddulph have both withdrawn from Denbigh’ proved false. Chester Chron. 23 Feb.; NLW ms 2797 D, Lady Williams Wynn to H. Williams Wynn, 13 July 1830. West stood down and came in for East Grinstead on the De La Warr interest at the 1830 general election, to avoid ‘a repetition of proceedings similar to those which disgraced the last election’; and after discussing the financial arrangements with his brother Thomas and their uncle, the banker John Biddulph, Myddelton Biddulph was returned unopposed for the Boroughs, proposed by Griffith and Ablett. Chester Courant, 13, 20, July, 3, 10 Aug.; Biddulph diary, 5/57, 15, 18 July 1830. The new Member confined his speech to family and local matters, leaving politics to Griffith, who pressed the need for parliamentary reform and lower taxes. John Maxwell of Park Gate, a possible reserve candidate, argued strongly against the East India Company’s monopoly and West Indian slavery and Heaton presided at the dinner. Chester Chron. 6 Aug. 1830.

At Michaelmas 1830, Denbigh elected Sankey and Thomas Hughes as bailiffs, and Myddelton Biddulph chaired the dinner and provided venison. Nothing came of plans for ‘an Act to regulate and improve the streets and suburbs of Denbigh’, but the corporations, inhabitants and Wesleyan Methodist congregations of each borough petitioned both Houses in 1830-1 for the abolition of slavery. Chester Courant, 5 Oct. 1830; Cambrian Quarterly Mag. ii (1830), 112; CJ, lxxxvi. 167, 194, 444; LJ, lxiii. 136, 485, 489. Griffith, Madocks, Chambers and Copner Williams moved the resolutions at the Denbigh reform meeting of 11 Mar. 1831, and their petition in support of the Grey ministry’s bill, which proposed adding Wrexham to the constituency, was presented to the Commons with another from Holt, 28 Mar. Denbigh reformers dominated the county reform meeting at Ruthin, 31 Mar., and the Lords received a favourable petition from the freeholders, householders and inhabitants of Ruthin, 21 Apr. 1831. N. Wales Chron. 17 Mar.; Chester Courant, 29 Mar. 1831; CJ, lxxxvi. 435; LJ, lxiii. 499. Myddelton Biddulph’s votes to bring down the Wellington ministry, 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 and lauded in Ruthin, where the mob burnt Sir Watkin Williams Wynn in effigy. Chester Courant, 23 Nov. 1830, 29 Mar., 26 Apr., 3, 10 May; Morning Chron. 3 May; Chester Chron. 6 May; Caernarvon Herald, 7 May 1831. At a celebration dinner in Denbigh, 28 May, toasts were drunk to Grey, Mrs. Biddulph and the Cheshire and North Wales reformers (George Griffith, William Hughes, Earl Grosvenor, Madocks, Foster Cunliffe Offley*, Sir Edward Pryce Lloyd* and George Wilbraham*). Chester Courant, 31 May 1831. Fearing domination by Wrexham, Denbigh reformers, led by Griffith, had already sought the assistance of Hughes, Myddelton Biddulph and Edward Mostyn Lloyd Mostyn to encourage Llanrwst and Abegele to petition for inclusion in the enlarged Denbigh District constituency. UCNW, Mostyn of Mostyn mss 7871. Llanrwst’s petition for enfranchisement was presented, 22 June, and printed on the 27th. It cited the town’s status as the chief market town for western Denbighshire and eastern Caernarvonshire and the need to provide ‘a due balance in the choice of a Member for the boroughs of Denbigh, Holt and Ruthin, which, by the intended introduction of Wrexham, would fall totally into the hands of the latter place’. CJ, lxxxvi. 534, 572; D.A. Wager, ‘Welsh Politics and Parl. Reform, 1780-1832’, WHR, vii (1974), 444. To Mostyn, Griffith wrote with due exaggeration, 12 July:

Although Llanrwst would not join in petitioning to be a contributory to Denbigh at my solicitation, I see that a petition has been presented to the House by Sir Watkin which was sent of their own accord. I have not been able to get one from Abergele, as they seem indifferent about it. Perhaps they do not like to lose their vote in the county, which those who have no freeholds elsewhere would do. I wish you would, in conjunction with Sir Edward, Col. Hughes and Biddulph, try to introduce them in the committee as Wrexham will completely control Denbigh and Ruthin and Holt, the latter not having six £10 houses in the borough and Denbigh and Ruthin not above two-thirds the number of Wrexham. Mostyn of Mostyn mss 7872.

When the Welsh contributory boroughs were considered, 10 Aug. 1831, Lord John Russell announced that no further alterations to the Denbigh constituency were intended. However, the Williams Wynns argued successfully against giving Wrexham’s rural voters borough votes and, despite Waithman’s objections, secured an amendment enfranchising the town of Wrexham, with its estimated population of 4,795, instead of the parish, with 11,087. N. Wales Chron. 16 Aug. 1831. Myddelton Biddulph declared in September that he would stand for the county, if, as expected, it acquired a second seat; and at Michaelmas an attempt was made to elect the radical Caernarvon surgeon, O.O. Roberts, a native and freeman of Denbigh, to the corporation. A pro-reform petition to the Lords was also adopted, and another, from Ruthin, presented, 4 Oct. 1831. Caernarvon Herald, 24 Sept., 1 Oct.; Chester Courant, 4 Oct. 1831; LJ, lxiii. 1047. In 1832 the prevention of cholera, the return of the duke of Sussex to Denbigh at Michaelmas to receive his freedom, the instigation of quo warranto proceedings against Ruthin’s aldermen in November and the fierce contest between Myddelton Biddulph and Lloyd Kenyon* for the second county seat were the main matters of concern. C.J. Williams, ‘Denbigh Borough Recs.’ Trans. Denb. Hist. Soc. xxv (1976), 185; Garn mss (1956), W. to G. Griffith, 15 May, 4 July, Dinorben to J.W. Griffith, 28, 31 Oct. 1832.

The boundary commissioners had rejected pleas to include Henllan in the borough of Denbigh, which was defined as an area one and a half miles in radius from the town cross and estimated to have 308-348 resident freemen and 260 £10 houses, 96 of them with land attached. The township of Farndon on the English bank of the Dee, with its population of 423 and 25 £10 houses, was added to Holt, whose boundary was otherwise unchanged. It had 38 £10 houses and 114 burgesses. No alteration was suggested at Ruthin, where the boundary usually perambulated was accepted. The borough, which was belatedly accorded county polling town status, was thought to have 282 resident burgesses and about 150 qualifying houses and included a large rural area on all sides of the town. Wrexham, where the banker Richard Myddelton Lloyd of Plas Power, West, and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn were the major landlords, was defined as Wrexham Abbot and Wrexham Regis together with those parts of Ecculsham surrounded by them; it added some 330 £10 electors to the constituency, which had a registered electorate of 1,131 in November 1832. PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 517; xli. 61-67; (1835), 2659-69, 2845-60. Madocks, who had been put forward for the county in 1831 but desisted, declared early, and despite the hostility he encountered as ‘Biddulph’s man’, he was returned unopposed as a Liberal in December 1832, when the Conservatives were unable to field a candidate. Charles Williams Wynn recalled how previously ‘the sums wasted ... by the Wests and Biddulphs’ had deterred ‘every gentleman of the neighbourhood’, most of them heavily committed in the county, from opposition. NLW ms 2797 D.W. to H. Williams Wynn, 10 July, 21 Nov. 1832; NLW, Coedymaen mss 231; N. Wales Chron. 1 Jan. 1833. The seat was contested eight times by the local gentry, 1832-85. Excluding Madocks’s return in 1832, it remained Conservative until 1868 and Liberal or radical thereafter, its Members strictly vetted by Baner ac Amserau Cymru. The Myddelton Biddulphs failed to regain the seat through Thomas Myddelton Biddulph (1837, 1841), but West resumed the representation, 1847-57. Caernarvon Herald, 3 Jan. 1835; M. Cragoe, Culture, Politics, and National Identity in Wales, 1832-1886, pp. 24, 157, 260-1.