Boroughbridge (UK Parliament constituency)

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Boroughbridge Borough constituency
Created:	1553
Abolished:	1832
Type:	House of Commons
Members:	two

Boroughbridge was a parliamentary borough in Yorkshire from 1553 until 1832, when it was abolished under the Great Reform Act. Throughout its existence it was represented by two Members of Parliament in the House of Commons.

The constituency consisted of the market town of Boroughbridge in the parish of Aldborough (which was also a borough with two MPs of its own). By 1831 it contained only 154 houses, and had a population of 947.

Boroughbridge was a burgage borough, meaning that the right to vote was vested in the tenants of certain specified properties, of which there seem to have been about 65 by the time the borough was abolished. Since these properties could be freely bought and sold, the effective power of election rested with whoever owned the majority of the burgages (who, if necessary, could simply assign the tenancies to reliable placemen shortly before an election). For more than a century before the Reform Act, Boroughbridge was owned by the Dukes of Newcastle, who controlled around fifteen seats across the country; however in the 1790s they sold one of the seats for £4,000 to the banker Thomas Coutts, who used it to put his son-in-law, Francis Burdett, into Parliament.

Contents 1 Members of Parliament 1.1 1553-1640 1.2 1640-1832 1.2.1 Notes 2 References

[edit] Members of Parliament

• Constituency created (1553)

[edit] 1553-1640

• 1563-1567: John Ashley
• 1584-1586: Nicholas Faunt
• 1586-1587: George Savile
• 1588-1589: Sir Edward Fitton
• 1593: John Brograve
• 1593: Vincent Skinner
• 1597-1598: Sir Henry Fanshawe, Knt., of Ware Park, Remembrancer of The Exchequer (d. 1631)
• 1601: Thomas Fairfax
• 1601: Richard Whaley
• 1604-1611: Sir Henry Jenkins
• 1604-1611: Sir Thomas Vavasour
• 1620-1622: George Wethered
• 1620-1627: Sir Ferdinando Fairfax

[edit] 1640-1832

Year			First member	First party	Second member	Second party
		April 1640	Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax
		November 1640	Sir Philip Stapylton (d. September 1647)	Parliamentarian	Thomas Mauleverer	Parliamentarian
		1648	Henry Stapylton
		December 1648	Stapylton excluded in Pride's Purge - seat vacant
		1653	Boroughbridge not represented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate
		January 1659	Colonel Laurence Parsons		Robert Stapylton
		May 1659	Not represented in the restored Rump as Thomas Mauleverer had died in the interim
		1660	Conyers Darcy		Sir Henry Stapylton
		1661	Sir Richard Mauleverer, Bt		Robert Long[1]
		1673			Sir Henry Goodricke, Bt
		1675	Sir Michael Warton
		March 1679	Sir Thomas Mauleverer, Bt
		August 1679			Sir John Brookes, Bt.
		1685			Sir Henry Goodricke, Bt
		1689	Christopher Vane[2]	Whig
		1690	Sir Brian Stapylton
		1695	Thomas Harrison
		1698	Sir Brian Stapylton
		1705	John Stapylton		Craven Peyton
		1708	Sir Brian Stapylton
		1713			Edmund Dunch	Whig
		1715	Thomas Wilkinson		Sir Richard Steele	Whig
		1718	Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bt
		March 1722	Conyers Darcy[3]		James Tyrrell
		October 1722	Joseph Danvers
		1727	George Gregory
		1742			William Murray	Tory
		1746	Earl of Dalkeith
		1750	Hon. Lewis Monson Watson [4]
		1754	John Fuller
		1755	Sir Cecil Bisshopp, Bt
		1756			Earl of Euston[5]	Whig
		1757			Thomas Thoroton
		1761			Brice Fisher
		1767			James West the younger
		1768	Nathaniel Cholmley		James West the elder
		1772			Major-General Henry Clinton
		1774	Anthony Eyre		Charles Mellish[6]
		1775			Colonel William Phillips
		1780			Charles Ambler, KC
		1784	Sir Richard Sutton, Bt		The Viscount Palmerston
		1790			Morris Robinson
		1796	Francis Burdett[7]	Independent	Sir John Scott	Tory
		1799			Hon. John Scott	Tory
		1802	Edward Berkeley Portman	Whig
		January 1806			Viscount Castlereagh	Tory
		November 1806	Brigadier William Henry Clinton	Tory	Henry Dawkins	Tory
		1808			Henry Clinton	Tory
		1818	Marmaduke Lawson	Tory	George Mundy	Tory
		March 1820			Richard Spooner	Tory
		June 1820	Captain George Mundy, RN[8]	Tory	Lt Colonel Henry Dawkins	Tory
		1830	Sir Charles Wetherell	Tory	Matthias Attwood	Tory

• Constituency abolished (1832)

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Created a baronet as Sir Robert Long in 1662
2. ^ Vane was returned as MP at the election of 1689, but on petition he was unseated and Stapylton declared to have been elected in his place
3. ^ Darcy was also elected for Richmond, which he chose to represent, and never sat for Boroughbridge
4. ^ Watson was re-elected in 1754, but had also been elected for Kent, which he chose to represent, and did not sit again for Boroughbridge
5. ^ Euston was elected two weeks later in a by-election for Bury St Edmunds, which he chose to represent, and never sat for Boroughbridge
6. ^ Mellish was also elected for Pontefract, which he chose to represent, and never sat for Boroughbridge
7. ^ Succeeded to a baronetcy as Sir Francis Burdett in 1797
8. ^ Spooner and Lawson were initially declared re-elected at the 1820 general election, but they were unseated and Mundy and Dawkins were returned on petition

[edit] References

• Robert Beatson, "A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament" (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807) [1]
• Michael Brock, "The Great Reform Act" (London: Hutchinson, 1973)
• D Brunton & D H Pennington, “Members of the Long Parliament” (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
• Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808) [2]
• J E Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (London: Jonathan Cape, 1949)
• J Holladay Philbin, "Parliamentary Representation 1832 - England and Wales" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
• Henry Stooks Smith, "The Parliaments of England from 1715 to 1847" (2nd edition, edited by FWS Craig - Chichester: Parliamentary Reference Publications, 1973)
• Frederic A Youngs, jr, "Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, Vol II" (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991)
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page