Bodmin (UK Parliament constituency)

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Bodmin Borough; (1885) County constituency
Created:	1295
Abolished:	1983
Type:	House of Commons
Members:	1295–1868: two 1868–1983: one

Bodmin was the name of a parliamentary constituency in Cornwall from 1295 until 1983. Initially it was a parliamentary borough, which returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom until the 1868 general election, when its representation was reduced to one member. The borough was abolished with effect from the 1885 general election, but the name was transferred to a county constituency, which elected one MP until the 1983 general election.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Borough constituency (1295-1885) 1.2 County constituency (1885-1983) 2 Members of Parliament 2.1 1295-1640 2.2 1640-1868 2.3 1868-1983 3 Elections 4 References

[edit] History

[edit] Borough constituency (1295-1885)

The borough which was represented from the time of the Model Parliament consisted of the town of Bodmin though not the whole of the parish. Unlike many of the boroughs in Cornwall which were represented in the Unreformed House of Commons, Bodmin was a town of reasonable size and retained some importance; for most purposes, indeed, it was considered the county town of Cornwall. In 1831, the population of the borough was 3,375, and contained 596 houses.

The right to vote, however, was held not by the residents at large but by the town's corporation, consisting of a Mayor, 11 aldermen and 24 common councilmen. Contested elections were quite unknown before the Reform Act, the choice of the two MPs being left entirely to the "patron". However, this power did not arise, as in many rotten boroughs, from the patron being able to coerce the voters; in Bodmin, the patron was expected to meet the public and private expenses of the corporation and its members in return for their acquiescence at election time.

Early in the 18th century, the Robartes family (Earls of Radnor) were the accepted patrons. Their interest was inherited by George Hunt, whose mother was the Robartes heiress, but he ran into difficulties and could not afford to retain complete control. By the 1760s another local magnate, Sir William Irby, secured enough of the town's goodwill to have a say in the choice of one member, while Hunt continued to select the other. In 1816, the patron was Lord de Dunstanville, nominating both MPs, but he found himself so overburdened with debts that he was forced to give it up, and The Marquess of Hertford was induced to take over the patronage, and the corporation's debts.

While the MP was not expected to assume the same financial obligations as the patron, nor to attend to the needs of his constituents in the manner of a modern MP, they were expected to attend the election ball, a high point in the social calendar for the wives and daughters of the otherwise undistinguished corporation members. John Wilson Croker, elected in 1820, described the Bodmin ball as "tumultuous and merry " but "at once tiresome and foolish".

Bodmin retained both its MPs under the Reform Act, but its boundaries were extended to bring in more of Bodmin parish and the whole of the neighbouring parishes of Lanivet, Lanhydrock and Helland. This increased the population to 5,258, although only 252 were qualified to vote.

By the time of the second Reform Act in 1867, Bodmin's electorate was still below 400, and consequently its representation was halved with effect from the 1868 general election. The extension of the franchise more than doubled the electorate, but Bodmin was still far too small to survive as a borough, and was abolished in 1885.

[edit] County constituency (1885-1983)

The Bodmin constituency from 1885 until 1918, strictly called The South-Eastern or Bodmin Division of Cornwall, covered the whole of the south-east corner of the county, including as well as Bodmin itself the towns of Liskeard, Fowey, Lostwithiel and Saltash. Although predominantly rural, the string of small ports along its coast gave it a maritime as well as agricultural character. Through most of this period the constituency was marginal, the Unionists being helped by the popularity of their candidate Leonard Courtney, who had been Liberal MP for Liskeard when it was still a separate borough before joining the Liberal Unionists when the party split in 1886. Looe and the other fishing ports were predominantly Liberal and Fowey a Unionist stronghold, while the areas within the ambit of Plymouth's dockyards tended to vote against whichever was the sitting government. Another factor was the strength of non-conformist religion, as elsewhere in Cornwall, and this was thought to be the explanation for the Liberal gain in 1906, when agricultural seats elsewhere mostly remained with the Tories.

The boundary changes at the 1918 general election, which established what was now called Cornwall, Bodmin Division and later Bodmin County Constituency, extended the constituency somewhat towards the centre of the county, taking in Callington and the surrounding district. These boundaries remained essentially unchanged for the remainder of the constituency's existence, except that Fowey was moved into the Truro constituency in 1974. As elsewhere in Cornwall, Labour never established a foothold in Bodmin, and the Liberals remained the main challengers to the Conservatives. The Conservatives held it continuously from 1945 to 1964, and at one point might have considered it a safe seat, but by the mid-1960s the Liberal revival had established it as a Liberal-Conservative marginal, which it remained until its abolition.

The Bodmin constituency ceased to exist as a result of the boundary changes implemented in 1983. Although the bulk of the constituency survived, Bodmin itself had been moved, enforcing a change of name: Bodmin joined Cornwall North, while the rest of the constituency was reunited with Fowey to become Cornwall South East. Bodmin's last MP, Robert Hicks, stood and was elected for the latter constituency.

[edit] Members of Parliament

[edit] 1295-1640

• 1584: John Awdeley
• 1597: Sir Bernard Grenville
• 1625-1626: Henry Jermyn
• 1625-1626: Sir Richard Weston

[edit] 1640-1868

Year	1st Member		1st Party	2nd Member		2nd Party
November 1640		John Arundell	Royalist		Anthony Nichols[1]	Parliamentarian
January 1644	Arundel disabled from sitting - seat vacant
1648		Thomas Waller
December 1648	Waller excluded in Pride's Purge - seat vacant			Nichols not known to have sat after Pride's Purge
1653	Bodmin was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate
January 1659		John Silly			William Turner
May 1659	Not represented in the restored Rump
April 1660		Hender Robartes			John Silly
1661					Sir John Carew
1679					Nicholas Glynn
1689		Sir John Cutler
1693		Russell Robartes
1695					John Hoblyn
July 1702		John Grobham Howe
December 1702		Francis Robartes
1706					Thomas Herne
1708		John Trevanion[2]			Russell Robartes
1710		Francis Robartes
1713					Thomas Sclater
1715					John Legh
1718		Charles Beauclerk
1722		Isaac le Heup			Richard West
January 1727					John LaRoche
August 1727		Robert Booth
1733		Sir John Heathcote
1741		Thomas Bludworth
1747		Sir William Irby
1753					George Hunt
1761		John Parker
1762		Sir Christopher Treise
1768		James La Roche
1780		William Masterman
1784		Sir John Morshead			Thomas Hunt
1789					George Wilbraham
1790					Roger Wilbraham
1796					John Nesbitt
July 1802					Charles Shaw-Lefevre
December 1802		Josias du Pre Porcher			John Sargent
August 1806					James Topping
November 1806		William Wingfield			Davies Giddy, later Gilbert
1807		Sir William Oglander
1812		Charles Bragge Bathurst
1818		Thomas Bradyll
1820		John Wilson Croker	Tory
1826		Horace Beauchamp Seymour
1832		William Peter	Whig		Samuel Thomas Spry	Whig
1835		Charles Crespigny Vivian	Whig
1841					John Dunn Gardner	Conservative
1843		Sir Samuel Thomas Spry	Conservative
1847		James Wyld	Whig		Henry Charles Lacy	Whig
1852		William Michell	Whig		Charles Brune Graves-Sawle	Whig
1857		Hon. John Vivian	Liberal		James Wyld	Liberal
April 1859		Hon. Edward Leveson-Gower	Liberal		William Michell	Conservative
August 1859					James Wyld	Liberal
1868	Representation reduced to one member

[edit] 1868-1983

Election		Member	Party
1868		Representation reduced to one member
	1868	Edward Frederic Leveson-Gower	Liberal
	1885	Leonard Henry Courtney	Liberal Unionist
	1900	Sir Lewis Molesworth	Liberal Unionist
	1906	Thomas Charles Reginald Agar-Robartes	Liberal
	1906	Freeman Freeman-Thomas	Liberal
	1910	Cecil Alfred Grenfell	Liberal
	1910	Sir Reginald Pole-Carew	Liberal Unionist
	1916	Charles Augustin Hanson	Coalition Conservative
	1922	Isaac Foot	Liberal
	1924	Gerald Joseph Cuthbert Harrison	Conservative
	1929	Isaac Foot	Liberal
	1935	John Rankin Rathbone	Conservative
	1941	Beatrice Frederika Rathbone (later Wright)	Conservative
	1945	Sir Douglas Marshall	Conservative
	1964	Peter Joseph Bessell	Liberal
	1970	Robert Hicks	Conservative
	1974	Paul Archer Tyler	Liberal
	1974	Robert Hicks	Conservative
1983		constituency abolished

[edit] Elections

General Election 1929: Cornwall, Bodmin
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal	I. Foot	16,002	46.3	−2.6
	Conservative	G. J. C. Harrison	15,088	43.7	−7.4
	Labour	P. Reed	3,437	10.0	+10.0
Majority			914	2.6
Turnout				84.9	+2.5
	Liberal gain from Conservative		Swing	+2.4

[edit] References

• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page
• 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) [1]
• F W S Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1832-1885 (2nd edition, Aldershot: Parliamentary Research Services, 1989)
• Michael Kinnear, The British Voter (London: BH Batsford, Ltd, 1968)
• Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition - London: St Martin's Press, 1961)
• Henry Pelling, Social Geography of British Elections 1885-1910 (London: Macmillan, 1967)
• J Holladay Philbin, Parliamentary Representation 1832 - England and Wales (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
• Edward Porritt and Annie G Porritt, The Unreformed House of Commons (Cambridge University Press, 1903)
• Frederic A Youngs, jr, "Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, Vol I" (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979)

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