Commons 1690-1715

Haverfordwest surprised Defoe: it was ‘a better town than we expected to find, in this remote angle of Britain . . . strong, well built, clean and populous’. The franchise had been settled by a decision of the Commons in 1663 in ‘the burgesses inhabitants’, that is to say the resident freemen, and ‘the inhabitants which paid scot and lot’ (a definition construed in 1715 to include freeholders as well), but it seems clear that the corporation still constituted the most important element in the parliamentary constituency.

The Owens of Orielton, who led the Whig interest in Pembrokeshire, held the county seat throughout the period 1660–1727 with two Tory intervals, the first in the 1680s and the second between 1710 and 1715, when the trial of Dr Sacheverell and subsequent Tory resurgence enabled their main rivals, the Barlows of Slebech, to effect an overthrow. Prior to 1701 the Barlow family, formerly recusants and Church papists, had been hamstrung by their Jacobite associations.

The rivalry between the Herberts of Montgomery Castle, who controlled the county town of Montgomery, and their Catholic cousins the Herberts of Powis Castle, who similarly dominated two of the out-boroughs, Llanfyllin and Welshpool, was effectively ended in 1689 by the outlawry of the Jacobite Marquess of Powis. It is true that influence of Powis Castle could still be felt in Llanfyllin and Welshpool in 1690, and there may have been some electoral significance in the admission of 64 new freemen in Welshpool in that year, but this was the swan-song of the Powis interest.

Montgomeryshire was devoid of magnates almost from the outset of this period. The Herberts of Powis Castle, who had previously been hampered by their recusancy, were devastated by the outlawry in 1689 of the 1st Marquess of Powis, a Jacobite exile. His forfeited estate, valued at over £10,000 p.a., was granted by King William in 1696 to Dutch favourites, the bulk of the property going to the Earl of Rochford, who, however, failed to develop any electoral influence in the county.

A mountainous county, with many more sheep than people, Merioneth was blessed with comparatively few large estates. Reputedly only one gentleman paid the 1692 poll tax, and the lieutenancy commission of 1701 comprised six. No contested elections are recorded in this period, though it may be that the veteran Tory Sir John Wynn, 5th Bt., was pushed into retirement in 1695 by his successor Hugh Nanney, whose family had been traditional enemies of the Wynns and whose own political allegiance seems to have been to the opposite party.

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.