Anglesey

Beaumaris had anciently been an English town on a Welsh island, and its only competitor as a settlement to justify the description of borough was Newborough, which probably because of the encroachment of sand-drift had by the mid-sixteenth century become so impoverished as to forfeit any claim to a charter. G. Roberts, ‘Parlty Hist. Beaumaris, 1555-1832’, Trans. Anglesey Antiq. Soc. (1933), 98-9. The importance of Beaumaris lay in its harbour, protected from the ravages of the Irish Sea by the Menai Straits.

The island of Anglesey, rich in cultural significance though it was for the Welsh people, not least as the patrimonial home of the Tudor dynasty, was in the seventeenth century marked by its poverty. Indeed, Penmynydd, from whence the Tudors had sprung, was thought the most barren parish of all. In 1636 it was asserted by a resident that agricultural practice on Anglesey was backward, and no more than three men there could ‘lay out £300 at an instant’. Cal. Salusbury Corresp.

‘Neat and well built’, and the only place of note to be seen in the Isle of Anglesey (according to Defoe), Beaumaris was effectively a pocket borough of the Bulkeleys, whose seat at Baron Hill overlooked the town. The 3rd and 4th Viscounts Bulkeley held the office of constable of Beaumaris Castle successively throughout this period, and so dominated the corporation that Bulkeley nominees, almost always kinsmen, were returned at every election, bar one. Indeed, the 3rd Viscount (Richard Bulkeley*) served as mayor, and thus as returning officer, in 1690, when his uncle (Hon.

Beaumaris was a pocket borough of the Bulkeley family of Baron Hill. During the minority of the 7th Viscount (1754-73), it was controlled first by his maternal grandfather Thomas Rowlands, and after his death in 1763 by the dowager Lady Bulkeley, who married secondly Sir Hugh Williams.

Beaumaris, the only corporation borough in Wales, was under the ‘sole influence and direction’ of Thomas James, 1st Baron Bulkeley, who had no issue and returned his stepfather again in 1790.Oldfield, Boroughs, ii.

Beaumaris was controlled by the Bulkeleys of Baron Hill, Tories, who under George I returned Henry Bertie, the 4th Lord Bulkeley’s brother-in-law, defeating William Bodvell, a Whig, in 1722. After Bodvell’s defeat a petition was presented reviving the claim of the borough of Newborough to share in the representation, but no decision was reached on it.

Beaumaris was the only corporation borough in Wales. Under its charter of 1562 the franchise lay with the mayor, two bailiffs and 21 aldermen. There were no contributory boroughs, and in normal times it was completely subservient to the Bulkeleys of Baron Hill, just outside the town. The return of the Commonwealth official Griffith Bodurda at the general election of 1660 was doubtless part of a bargain by which the qualification of Robert Bulkeley, Viscount Bulkeley, for the county was not challenged.

In 1562 Beaumaris was granted a charter, which was unique in North Wales although common enough in English boroughs. It established a governing body of 24, comprising a mayor, two bailiffs and 21 capital burgesses. Provision was also made for a recorder, a common clerk and coroner, and the borough was to have its own j.p.s. Two factors contributed to the granting of the charter, the burgesses’ offer to keep the town’s defences in repair at their own cost, and the influence at court of the leading local family, the Bulkeleys.

The castle, town and port of Beaumaris were founded after the suppression of a revolt in Anglesey in 1294. Edward I granted the borough a charter two years later and this was repeatedly confirmed and amplified throughout the middle ages and again in 1502, 1510 and 1547.