Radnorshire

<p>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.

<p>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.

<p>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.

<p>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.

<p>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.

<p>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.

<p>By the mid 13th century the town of Old Radnor had been superseded by that of New Radnor, some two miles away.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.

<p>The English plantation borough of New Radnor had taken over the mantle of its declining neighbour, Old Radnor, in the thirteenth century. It suffered badly during the Glynd?r rebellion, and did not receive a full charter until 1562, when the townsmen apparently joined with the Anglesey borough of Beaumaris to lobby for incorporation. The charter provided for a council of 25 capital burgesses, from which a bailiff and two aldermen were selected annually.

<p>New Radnor (Maesyfed), situated 30 miles north north-east of Brecon, was the old county town of Radnorshire, probably its only chartered borough, and the polling town of the contributory boroughs constituency to which it gave its name. It comprised ten scattered hamlets and extended, in a five-mile radius from the castle, over a fifth of the county’s 272,128 acres.<fn> <em>Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales</em> (1844), iv.