Radnorshire

Radnorshire was one of the smallest and most barren counties in seventeenth-century Wales. K. Parker, Radnorshire from Civil War to Restoration (Logaston, 2000), 1-2; R. Suggett, Houses and Hist. in the March of Wales: Radnorshire 1400-1800 (Aberystwyth, 2005), 3, 6-7, 9. It was described in the 1670s as ‘for soil, very hungry and ungrateful to the husbandman ... being so mountainous and rocky, especially in the west and north parts, which are fit only to feed cattle. And were it not for the many rivers which so plentifully water it ...

At its formation under the Henrician Acts of Union, the constituency of New Radnor Boroughs had comprised shire town itself and perhaps as many as seven out-boroughs – a number that by the Restoration period had apparently contracted to the four of Cefnllys, Knighton, Knucklas and Rhayader. ‘New Radnor Boroughs’, HP Commons 1509-58, HP Commons 1604-29, HP Commons 1660-90. All but two of the eight towns that may initially have made up the constituency – that is, Cefnllys and Rhayader – lay close to Radnorshire’s eastern borders with Herefordshire and Shrop

Although New Radnor itself exceeded in size any of the other out-boroughs the disparity was not so great as to afford it an easy dominance within the constituency; nor did the fact that its bailiff acted as returning officer give the corporation the power to control parliamentary elections. There was an alternative focus of influence in the person of the steward of the crown manors in the county, who admitted freemen to three of the four remaining boroughs (the exception was Cefnllys) at his courts leet.

There were three electoral interests in this constituency: the corporation of New Radnor, which controlled the election of its own freemen; the steward of the King’s manors, who controlled the creation of freemen (both resident and non-resident) in Knighton, Rhayader, and Knucklas; and the Price family, who had considerable interest in Knighton and Kevenlleece. The sitting Member at the dissolution in 1754 was Thomas Lewis, who had represented the constituency since 1715 and whose brother was steward of the King’s manors, and he was again returned unopposed at the general election.

Since 1781 Edward Harley, 4th Earl of Oxford, having routed the rival interest of the Lewis family of Harpton Court after a 20-year struggle, had been unquestioned patron of the boroughs. His nominee Edward Lewis was, however, an opponent of Pitt’s administration, and the earl’s brother Thomas Harley prevailed on the dying peer to allow him to promote the candidature of his son-in-law Murray, who had in that Parliament supported Pitt and was duly adopted at Presteigne on 6 Apr. 1790.

This seat depended on the power of the corporation of New Radnor to create freemen in the capital borough, and on that of the steward of the King’s manors to create freemen, as well non-resident as resident, in three of the contributory boroughs, Rhayader, Knighton and Knucklas.

None of the six Members who actually sat in this period resided in any of the Radnorshire boroughs; three were Englishmen and one a North Walian. For the first 20 years of the period the Harley interest was dominant, though acquired, as their opponents pointed out, ‘in the worst of times’. Edward Harley had been one of the corporation of New Radnor (the ‘Twenty-Five’) since about 1647, and at the Restoration his brothers were respectively recorder of New Radnor and steward of the crown manors, thus controlling between them the burgess rolls of four of the contributory boroughs.

The population of New Radnor was very small when it was made the shire town of one of the new counties at the Act of Union. In 1562, with the help of Thomas Hoby, a local man in high favour at court, it acquired a charter of incorporation. Borough government was placed in the hands of a self-perpetuating common council of 25, from whom a bailiff and two aldermen were to be chosen each year. There was also a recorder, a common clerk, two chamberlains and a coroner. A residential qualification was imposed upon all councilmen and officials.CPR, 1560-3, pp. 343-6; Trans. Rad.

By the mid 13th century the town of Old Radnor had been superseded by that of New Radnor, some two miles away. The borough is said to have had a charter destroyed in 1401 during Owain Glyn Dwr’s uprising but no new one was issued until 1562. In the early 16th century, when the lordship of the borough belonged to the crown as part of the earldom of March, authority was vested in a bailiff and common council. Made the shire town at the Union, New Radnor alternated with Rhayader as the meeting place of the county court until 1543 and with Presteigne for the rest of the period.