Boroughbridge (UK Parliament constituency)


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. 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. 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

ParliamentFirst memberSecond member
1553 William TancredChristopher Wray
1554 Ralph CholmleyChristopher Wray
1554 Christopher WrayJohn Holmes
1555Christopher WrayRobert Kempe
1558William FairfaxChristopher Wray
1558/9Sir John YorkRichard Bunny
1562/3John AstleyThomas Disney
1571Cotton GargraveThomas Boynton
1572 Thomas Eynns Cotton Gargrave
1584 Henry ChekeNicholas Faunt
1586 George SavileRobert Briggs
1588/9Sir Edward FittonFrancis Moore
1593John BrograveVincent Skinner
1597 Henry FanshaweThomas Crompton
1601Richard WhalleyThomas Fairfax
1604John FerneSir Henry Jenkins
1609Sir Thomas VavasourSir Henry Jenkins
1614Sir Ferdinando FairfaxGeorge Marshall
1621Sir Ferdinando FairfaxGeorge Wethered
1624Sir Ferdinando FairfaxChristopher Mainwaring
1625Sir Ferdinando FairfaxWilliam Mainwaring
1626Sir Ferdinando FairfaxPhilip Mainwaring
1628Sir Ferdinando FairfaxFrancis Neville
1629–1640No Parliaments summonedNo Parliaments summoned

1640–1832

Source: The Parliaments of England by Henry Stooks Smith, second edition edited by F.W.S. Craig

Elections in the 1800s

Elections in the 1810s

In the Boroughbridge by-election, 1819, Marmaduke Lawson was elected unopposed.

Elections in the 1820s

Elections in the 1830s