Boroughbridge (UK Parliament constituency)

UK former constituency infobox
Name = Boroughbridge
Type = Borough
Year = 1553
Abolition = 1832
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.

Members of Parliament

*"Constituency created" (1553)

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

1640-1832

*"Constituency abolished" (1832)

Notes

References

*Robert Beatson, "A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament" (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807) [http://books.google.com/books?vid=024wW9LmFc5kXY0FI2&id=Gh2wKY2rkDUC&printsec=toc&dq=Return+of+Members+of+Parliament&as_brr=1&sig=SK5GVtGLfWQ9ovZDbyZObAyIO5I#PPP9,M1]
*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) [http://www2.odl.ox.ac.uk/gsdl/cgi-bin/library?e=p-000-00---0modhis06--00-0-0-0prompt-10---4------0-1l--1-en-50---20-about---00001-001-1-1isoZz-8859Zz-1-0&a=d&cl=CL1]
*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)
*Rayment