Breconshire

Seventeenth-century Brecon was one of the largest Welsh towns, an administrative and judicial centre with an important, twice weekly, livestock market. While the cattle trade was probably the most valuable, the textile and leather trades were essential to the economic health of the town, which supported six guilds. Though it sustained close communications and trade links with Hereford, Brecon’s economy was robust enough to encourage a growth of population through the early modern period, so that by 1670 it had reached a figure of over 2,000. The Taylors Cussion ed. E.M.

Breconshire lay about half way in demographic size among the Welsh counties, with a population estimated to have been above 27,000 by 1670. L. Owen, ‘The Population of Wales’, Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion (1959), 113. Its topography was dominated by the Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacons, but in the eastern and western fringes of the county there was scope for the growing of wheat to complement the pasturage dictated by the upland conditions. Leland’s Itinerary in Wales ed. L. Toulmin Smith (1906), 104.

The corporation of Brecon was controlled by a close oligarchy of 15 common councilmen, who annually elected from their number a bailiff and two aldermen as magistrates, and who were solely responsible for the admission of freemen. There were no out-boroughs, though claims were later advanced for the rights of inhabitants of such places as Hay, Llanywern, Llywel, Talgarth and Trecastle. The franchise was settled in the freemen at large, but not without the possibility of dispute.

Brecon was a pocket borough of the Morgans of Tredegar, and was used by them to provide seats for junior members of the family who could not yet aspire to the honour of a county seat.

Brecon remained a pocket borough of the Morgan family of Tredegar, who controlled the self-elected corporation of 15, which in turn had the sole right to create freemen. The number of freemen was kept low.R. D. Rees, ‘Parl. Rep. S. Wales 1790-1830’ (Reading Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1962), i. 130. This arrangement was challenged for the first time since 1740 in 1818, by which time the population had grown to nearly 4,000. Walter Wilkins, son of the Radnorshire Member, stood on behalf of the inhabitant householders.

The control of Brecon was disputed between two local Whig families, Morgan of Tredegar and Jeffreys of the Priory. In 1715 the sitting Member, supported by the Tredegar interest, was returned unopposed. In 1722 William Morgan of Tredegar was returned without a contest, but made his election for Monmouthshire, putting up his younger brother, Thomas, who was returned both on this occasion and in 1727 against Priory candidates.

There were no contributory boroughs in Breconshire, and the freemen of Brecon, a prosperous market and industrial town ‘well-furnished with conventicles’, enjoyed the sole right of election. The dominant interest was enjoyed by Brecon Priory, which passed from the Price to the Jeffreys family. As prominent Cavaliers, neither Sir Herbert Price nor John Jeffreys is likely to have stood in 1660, and the seat was taken by a country gentleman, Sir Henry Williams, the son of a more cautious Royalist. In 1661 Price stood for both county and borough.

Brecon, shire town of a new county created by the Act of Union, received a charter of incorporation in 1556. A common council of 15 capital burgesses was created, from which a bailiff and two aldermen were to be chosen annually. The councilmen were authorized to meet in the guildhall at Brecon, and to elect a recorder and a common clerk. The first councilmen, chosen from the ‘better and honester burgesses’, are named in the charter.

Situated at the confluence of the rivers Honddu and Usk, Brecon was a prosperous market town with five craft guilds or companies, the administrative centre for the region and after the Union the county town of Breconshire. Although burgesses are mentioned in a deed of 1100, the first recorded charter dates from 1276. This was confirmed and modified throughout the middle ages and again in 1517 by the 3rd Duke of Buckingham as owner of the lordship. On Buckingham’s fall the borough and castle escheated with the lordship to the crown.