Heytesbury (UK Parliament constituency)

UK former constituency infobox
Name = Heytesbury
Type = Borough
Year = 1449
Abolition = 1832
members = two

Heytesbury was a parliamentary borough in Wiltshire, which elected two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons from 1449 until 1832, when the borough was abolished by the Great Reform Act.

History

The borough consisted of a small part of the village of Heytesbury, once a market town, in the south-west of Wiltshire. (In 1831, when the population of the whole village was 1,394, the borough had a population of only 81.) Already a small settlement, Heytesbury burned to the ground in 1765, but this did not affect its right to return MPs; the village was subsequently rebuilt.

Heytesbury was a burgage borough, meaning that the right to vote was reserved to the householders of specific properties or "burgage tenements" within the borough; there were 26 of these tenements by the time of the Reform Act, and all had been owned by the Ashe A'Court family since the 17th century, giving them total control of the choice of MPs. (Shortly before the Reform Act, the head of the family, Sir William Ashe A'Court, was elevated to a peerage as Lord Heytesbury.) By 1832 it was more than half a century since the last contested election.

Heytesbury was abolished as a constituency by the Reform Act, those of its residents who were qualified voting thereafter in the Southern Wiltshire county division.

Members of Parliament

1449-1640

* 1604-1611: Sir William Eyre
* 1604-1611: Walter Gawen
* 1621-1622: Sir Thomas Thynne
* 1621-1622: Sir Henry Ludlow

1640-1832

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]
* 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]
* Lewis Namier, "The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III" (2nd edition - London: St Martin's Press, 1961)
* T H B Oldfield, "The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland" (London: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1816)
* J Holladay Philbin, "Parliamentary Representation 1832 - England and Wales" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
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