Boroughbridge (UK Parliament constituency)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

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, one of around fifteen boroughs they controlled across the country.

[edit] Members of Parliament

• Constituency created (1553)

Year			First member	First party	Second member	Second party
		1660	Conyers Darcy		Sir Henry Stapylton
		1661	Sir Richard Mauleverer, Bt		Robert Long
		1673			Sir Henry Goodricke, Bt
		1675	Sir Michael Warton
		March 1679	Sir Thomas Mauleverer, Bt
		August 1679			Sir John Brookes
		1685			Sir Henry Goodricke, Bt
		1689	Christopher Vane
		1690	Sir Brian Stapylton
		1695	Thomas Harrison
		1698	Sir Brian Stapylton
		1705	John Stapylton		Craven Peyton
		1708	Sir Brian Stapylton
		1713			Edmund Dunch
		1715	Thomas Wilkinson		Sir Richard Steele	Whig
		1718	Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bt
		March 1722	Conyers Darcy		James Tyrrell
		October 1722	Joseph Danvers
		1727	George Gregory
		1742			William Murray	Tory
		1746	Earl of Dalkeith
		1750	Lewis Watson
		April 1754	Lewis Watson the younger
		December 1754	John Fuller
		1755	Sir Cecil Bisshopp, Bt
		1756			Earl of Euston	Whig
		1757			Thomas Thoroton
		1761			Brice Fisher
		1767			James West the younger
		1768	Nathaniel Cholmley		James West the elder
		1772			Henry Clinton
		1774	Anthony Eyre		Charles Mellish
		1775			William Phillips
		1780			Charles Ambler
		1784	Sir Richard Sutton, Bt		The Viscount Palmerston
		1790			Morris Robinson
		1796	Francis Burdett	Independent	Sir John Scott
		1799			John Scott (junior)
		1802	Edward Berkeley Portman
		January 1806			Viscount Castlereagh	Tory
		November 1806	William Henry Clinton		Henry Dawkins
		1808			Henry Clinton
		1818	Marmaduke Lawson		George Mundy
		March 1820			Richard Spooner
		June 1820	Captain George Mundy, RN		Lt Colonel Henry Dawkins
		1830	Sir Charles Wetherell		Matthias Attwood

• Constituency abolished (1832)

[edit] References

• Michael Brock, "The Great Reform Act" (London: Hutchinson, 1973)
• J Holladay Philbin, "Parliamentary Representation 1832 - England and Wales" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
• Frederic A Youngs, jr, "Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, Vol II" (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991)

This page incorporates information from Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page.