The existence of so many out-boroughs in Glamorgan did not necessarily produce a large or unmanageable electorate: only Cardiff, Swansea and Neath were in any way thriving urban centres, the remainder being little more than villages. Moreover, in each case the lord of the manor could exercise, through his appointee as constable or steward, a degree of control over the government of the corporation and the admission of freemen; and where the authority of the manorial proprietor was less than absolute, borough politics tended to be oligarchic rather than popular.

Politics in Glamorgan in this period can be understood in terms of the maintenance of the power of the Mansel dynasty, which survived a generational change of partisan allegiance, from Whig to Tory, and was even strengthened in 1706 by the union of its two branches, at Margam and Briton Ferry. Periodic opposition to the Mansels’ ascendancy was concentrated on the Boroughs, where the family was more vulnerable, though in 1705–8 factional conflict overflowed into the shire election.

Despite the fact that its freeman electorate was ‘without limitation’ and therefore numerous, the Flint Boroughs constituency was subject to the same cartels through which county elections were controlled, and especially so after 1697, when the only surviving interests belonged to the leading Tory gentry, the Conways, Hanmers and Mostyns.

Flintshire elections were the preserve of a charmed circle of greater gentry, the four families of Conway, Hanmer, Mostyn and Puleston, who for the most part arranged the county and borough representation among themselves, serving in rotation. Aside from Sir Roger Puleston, a moderate Whig, who in any case died in 1697 heavily in debt, all were Tories.

Although the Commons decided in 1744 (significantly, on an amendment to their original motion) that the franchise in Denbigh Boroughs was confined to resident freemen, and this after hearing evidence of elections under William III and Anne, it is highly unlikely that the qualification was ever imposed before that date.

The Myddeltons of Chirk Castle had held the upper hand in Denbighshire county elections since the Restoration; after 1684, when the estates of their only serious rivals, the Salusbury family of Lleweni, passed, through a failure in the male line, to the Cottons of Combermere, Cheshire, they were utterly dominant. Sir Richard Myddelton, 3rd Bt., a High Tory, was returned without opposition at every election from 1685 until his death in 1716.

‘An ancient, but not a decayed town . . . well built and populous’, Carmarthen borough no less than the rest of the county was in thrall for most of this period to the Vaughans of Golden Grove, and was represented in every Parliament by the head of a cadet branch of the family, Richard Vaughan I of Cwrt Derllys, who was also recorder of the corporation. Vaughan’s connexion with the borough went back to 1683, when he was first elected to the recordership as a Tory and in all probability a client of the 1st Duke of Beaufort (Henry Somerset†).

The overpowering interest of the Vaughans of Golden Grove, headed by the Earl of Carbery [I] (John Vaughan†), custos of Carmarthenshire from the Revolution onwards, made the county (one of the more populous in Wales) a citadel of Whiggism until the Sacheverellite fever of 1710. The ability of the Whig Sir Rice Rudd, 2nd Bt., to retain the shire seat unopposed until he died, derived, we may assume, from support Carbery must have accorded him, since Rudd was himself nearly bankrupt and his Carmarthenshire estates were weighed under with debt.

Of the Cardiganshire boroughs, the county town itself was easily the most important: the elections were always held there, with the mayor acting as returning officer. Governed by its common council, a self-perpetuating oligarchy responsible for the admission of freemen, Cardigan corporation was controlled by the owner of the priory estate. At the beginning of the period this was the outgoing Whig Member Hector Phillips, who returned himself again in the 1690 election.

The Vaughans of Trawscoed (also known as Crosswood) and the Pryses of Gogerddan, Whig and Tory respectively in this period, were traditional rivals in Cardiganshire politics, and in the 1690 general election the master of Gogerddan, Sir Carbery Pryse, 4th Bt., defeated the master of Trawscoed, John Vaughan, through the connivance, or so Vaughan alleged, of the county sheriff. Such considerations may explain the complaint made to the House on 1 Apr. 1690 that the Cardiganshire return had not yet been made to the Crown Office.