Breconshire

Breconshire was a mountainous border county of isolated farmsteads and villages into which the unfranchised iron town of Merthyr Tydfil extended at Cefn-Coed-y-Cymer. Administratively it comprised six hundreds: Builth, Crickhowell, Defynnog, Merthyr, Pencelli and Talgarth, and its market towns were Brecon, Builth, Crickhowell and Hay.Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), i. 260, 261. The representation was controlled by the largest landowners, who were absentees and Tory in sympathy. These were the lord lieutenant, the 6th duke of Beaufort, who was also lord lieutenant of Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire; Sir Charles Morgan of Y Dderw and Tredegar, who represented Monmouthshire with Beaufort’s second son and returned his own sons for Brecon, and the 1st Marquess Camden, owner of the prestigious Brecon Priory estate, who made his Breconshire interest available to his kinsman by marriage, the sitting Member Thomas Wood, a Middlesex squire and heir to his maternal grandfather, the late Sir Edward Williams of Gwernyfed. Wood, a brother-in-law of the Liverpool ministry’s foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh*, had first been returned in 1806, when the Morgans lacked a suitable candidate. He had defeated Sir Charles Morgan’s eldest son Charles Morgan Robinson Morgan* at the general election of 1818, but Morgan had considered petitioning, and a second contest between them was widely expected. P.D.G. Thomas, ‘Parl. Elections in Brec. 1689-1832’, Brycheiniog, vi (1961), 99-113; E.G. Parry, ‘The County Election of 1818’, Brycheiniog, xxvii (1994-5), 79-109; NLW, Tredegar mss 121/792, 852-4. The lesser gentry, who were mainly resident, were generally responsible for the surges of intermittent party activity that the county experienced. F. O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons, and Parties, 339. Some, like Sir Charles Morgan’s stewards Hugh and Thomas Bold, Wood’s agent John Jones of Glan Honddu, former agent Henry Allen of The Lodge, and Edward Priest Richards (from 1824 the 2nd marquess of Bute’s Cardiff agent), prospered in the service of the non-resident aristocracy. Others, including the Radnorshire Member Walter Wilkins and his relations and banking partners, promoted Whig causes, assisted by Penry Williams of Penypont, John Lloyd of Dinas and William Alexander Madocks*, who in 1818 had married the heiress of Tregunter.

Notifying Sir Charles Morgan of his forthcoming candidature, 3 Feb. 1820, Wood outlined his plan ‘to write to the leading gentlemen of the county as my franks will by degrees cover their letters, and then wait until we see from the business that may be brought before the present Parliament what further duration it is likely to experience’. Tredegar mss 135/764. His letters received a mixed response, but as Morgan chose not to oppose him, Beaufort did not stand in his way, and he was returned without incident at an estimated cost of only £320. His addresses contained the usual professions of loyalty to church and king and service to his constituents. R.D. Rees, ‘Parl. Rep. S. Wales, 1790-1830’ (Reading Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1962), 127; Tredegar mss 45/1506; 135/765-77; NLW, Maybery mss 6911-14; Cambrian, 26 Feb. 1820; NLW, mân adnau 1341 A, pp. 9, 14. After the election, an Association for the Preservation of Fish and Game was established; Tredegar mss 135/796; Maybery mss 4588, 4589. and a series of meetings considered the future development of the 40,000-acre Great Forest of Brecon, an issue Wood had previously sought to avoid, which led to the passage of the 1821 Enclosure Act, construction of Christie’s tramroad and the crown land sales of 1823 and 1827. Tredegar mss 45/1457; 135/782; Maybery mss 5966, 5967, 5979, 5982-6, 5989, 6049-55, 6244, 6245, 6906; Cambrian, 7 Oct. 1820; D. Davies, Brecknock Historian, 47, 57-59; P.R. Reynolds, Brecon Forest Tramroad, 56-58, 61, 67, 125. Wood remained a keen defender of the agriculturists’ interest in the Commons, and his view that ‘the agitation of a corn petition can do no good’ apparently prevailed in 1820, despite local pressure to join Monmouthshire’s petitioning campaign. Wood also looked to the interests of the Brecon and Monmouth Canal Company, then threatened by the Western Union Canal Act, and of steam engine owners fearing ruin if legislation limiting noxious emissions was passed; but he failed to secure the exemption of Welsh ponies used in the iron and coalfields from the horse tax. Maybery mss 6918; Tredegar mss 45/1520; The Times, 22 June 1821. He was severely criticized in Seren Gomer for combining his defence of Wales’s separate judicature and courts with allegations that speaking Welsh was a sign of backwardness and that the language’s demise was nigh, 1 June 1820. Seren Gomer, iii (1820), 219-21. The 1821 Breconshire Bridges Act limited the county’s liability for repairs. Maybery mss 6544; Brecknock Historian, 29, 39.

Queen Caroline’s prosecution in 1820 attracted widespread interest and its abandonment was celebrated countywide. Cambrian, 28 Oct., 4 Nov., 1 Dec.; The Times, 27 Dec. 1820. By January 1821 over 100 freeholders had signed a requisition headed by Walter Wilkins, Thynne H. Gwynne of Buckland, Madocks and Penry Williams for a county meeting to consider the ‘present distressed state of the country plunged into almost irremediable evils by the folly and incapacity of the present advisers of the crown, and to implore the king to dismiss them’. Hereford Jnl. 10, 17 Jan.; Cambrian, 13 Jan. 1821. Wood thought it was motivated by national rather than county politics and stayed away, 20 Jan. Maybery mss 6545. Wilkins and Penry Williams carried a petition urging the ministry’s dismissal for failing to alleviate distress and mishandling the queen’s case, and the petition also called for the restoration of her name to the liturgy and for parliamentary reform. Meanwhile, without a meeting, a loyal address to the king signed and paid for by Beaufort, Camden, the 3rd earl of Ashburnham as owner of Porthamal, Camden’s son Lord Brecknock*, Wood and their tenants and friends was prepared, presented, and printed in the Courier, 20 Jan., in an apparently successful attempt to ‘destroy’ the petition. Ibid. 6546-8, 6550, 6863, 6919-21; Carmarthen Jnl. 19, 26 Jan.; Cambrian, 20, 27 Jan.; Courier, 20 Jan.; The Times, 24 Jan.; Hereford Jnl. 24 Jan.; Seren Gomer, iv (1821), 61, 62; Courier, 31 Jan. 1821. The address attributed distress to a ‘succession of events beyond the scope of human wisdom to control’, and complained:

We have witnessed with equal indignation and alarm the baneful delusion produced upon the minds of the uninstructed and unwary by the factious and inflammatory declarations at public meetings, by the fallacious representations of disaffected journalists, and by the increasing activity and unrestrained operation of a licentious, disloyal and perverted press employed in every possible shape to disseminate its pernicious doctrine; and we look with confidence to the vigilance and energy of Your Majesty’s councils, to Your Majesty’s undeviating justice, exercised in firmness and moderation, for the removal of this lamentable delusion and for the protection of this once happy land from the horrors of anarchy and misrule. Maybery mss 6862.

Wood presented and dissented from the petition, 14 Feb. The Times, 15 Feb. 1820; Maybery mss 6920; CJ, lxxvi. 72. Brecon and the county displayed great loyalty to George IV when he stayed overnight at The Priory in September 1821 on his way to London following the queen’s death. LMA ACC/1302/108a-d, 199, 200.

John Christie of Cnewr was sheriff when the county met to petition for urgent action to combat agricultural distress, 11 Apr. 1823. Thynne Gwynne and Penry Williams proposed alternative resolutions, but both insisted it was not a party question and were united in advocating greater protection under the corn laws and criticizing the restoration of the gold standard in 1819. Williams’s resolutions, which Gwynne and the meeting eventually approved, called additionally for retrenchment and a tax on property and fundholders. The Lords received it, 28 Apr., and the Commons the next day. The Times, 14, 30 Apr. 1823; LJ, lxv. 649; CJ, lxxviii. 264. The magistrates protested at the cost of installing a treadmill at the county gaol, as required under the 1823 Act; but the home secretary Peel refused to make concessions for small counties. Cambrian, 2 May; The Times, 27 June 1823; Maybery mss 6553-7. The Commons received petitions against West Indian slavery from Crickhowell and the Llangadog area, 26 June 1823, 4 May 1824, and the secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society Thomas Clarkson, who visited the county that July, was heartened by the growing support for the cause and for the Bible Society. CJ, lxxviii. 429; lxxix. 319; NLW ms 14984 A, pt. ii. 15, 16. Both Houses received anti-slavery petitions from Breconshire between February and April 1826. CJ, lxxxi. 60, 139; LJ, lviii. 261; The Times, 9, 23 Mar. 1826. In 1825 the magistrates, clergy and others with interests in the Wye salmon fisheries petitioned the Commons to object to the construction of weirs preventing the free movement of fish, 29 Mar. The Times, 19 Apr. 1825; CJ, lxxx. 285. A dissolution was expected that autumn, and Wood and the Member for Brecon George Gould Morgan canvassed at the assizes and shared the stewardship of the October races. Maybery mss 6558; Cambrian, 1, 8 Oct. 1825. Wood’s speeches at the general election of 1826, when he was again unopposed, made no reference to politics. According to the Hereford Journal, ‘the unanimity of the morning could only be exceeded by the hilarity of the evening’, when he dined 140 at the Castle and the other inns were thrown open, at an estimated cost of £700. Cambrian, 27 May, 3, 10, 24 June; Hereford Jnl. 7, 14, 21 June 1826; NLW, mân adnau 1341 A, p.10. The gentry returned to Brecon in September 1826 for the eisteddfod. Maybery mss 6561; Cambrian, 30 Sept. 1826.

Following John Williams’s resignation in January 1828, the county coronership was hotly canvassed by the Whigs but resolved without a contest. Cambrian, 12 Jan.; Hereford Jnl. 13 Feb. 1828. The brewers and farmers petitioned for repeal of the 1827 Malt Act, whose restrictions on wetting corn for malting they resented, 20 Mar.; and the sheep farmers contributed to the petitioning campaign against foreign wool imports, 16 May. Cambrian, 23 May 1828; CJ, lxxxiii. 185, 356. Dissenters, especially Baptists, were well represented in Breconshire, and they petitioned strongly for repeal of the Test Acts in 1828. Greal y Bedyddwyr, ii (1828), 93; Hereford Jnl. 13 Feb., 12 Mar.; Cambrian, 1, 15 Mar. 1828; CJ, lxxxiii. 90, 100, 104, 105; LJ, lx. 14, 51, 80. The appointment of a successor to Michael Nolan* as a judge on the Brecon circuit, a post conferred on Nathaniel Gooding Clarke, was made a political issue and compounded by the duke of Wellington’s refusal to appoint Beaufort’s nominee, Ebenezer Ludlow, to a vacant puisne judgeship. Wellington mss WP1/920/19, 23, 33; 958/13, 24, 32; 995/29. Wood, the former Tredegar agent Hugh Bold, Penry Williams and Richard Crawshay were trustees of the Breconshire turnpike, which, as a countywide trust, was the envy of its neighbours. However, by 1828, the 1809 Act required renewal to facilitate further construction. Meetings were held from December 1829, but controversy over the line of the Defynnog road (a major local petitioning issue, 1828-30) created ill feeling and delayed the Act’s renewal until 8 Apr. 1830. Even then controversy continued, causing problems for Wood. Brecknock Historian, 11-14; Maybery mss 6563.

Under pressure at the 1818 election, Wood, who like Castlereagh was inclined to favour concessions, had promised to heed his constituents’ anti-Catholic views, and had subsequently refrained from voting on the question. Parry, 91-94. The clergy of the county’s three deaneries had petitioned regularly since 1821 against Catholic relief, and the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists opened their hostile petitioning campaign in April 1828. LJ, liv. 189, 342, 353; lx. 307; CJ, lxxxiii. 277. When Wellington, whose administration Wood had hitherto supported, conceded emancipation in 1829, Builth, Crickhowell, the parishes of the hundreds of Builth and Pencelli and others where the clergy were anti-Catholic or the Morgans held sway, petitioned strongly against it. Hereford Jnl. 18 Feb., 4 Mar.; Cambrian, 21, 28 Feb. 1829; NLW, Tredegar Park mss 191, ff. 1-145; CJ, lxxxiv. 98, 121, 141, 154; LJ, lxi. 114, 143, 211, 253, 302. As late as 28 Feb. and 3 Mar., Wood gave the impression to Beaufort and other government supporters that he might divide with them for the bill; but a predominantly anti-Catholic county meeting in Brecon, 9 Mar., when Major Price and Captain George Clifton of Tymawr were the main speakers, called on him to honour his pledge and cheered when he promised to do so. NLW ms 1341 A, p. 10; Hereford Jnl. 4, 18 Mar.; Cambrian, 7, 14 Mar.; Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 17 Mar. 1829; Ellenborough Diary, i. 399. Writing to Edward Smith Stanley*, the recorder of Brecon, Hugh Bold, who with Penry Williams, Beaufort, the high sheriff Fowler Price of Huntingdon, Williams’s kinsman, the archdeacon of Brecon Richard Davies, and other magistrates and men of property, had failed to secure an adjournment to promote the case for emancipation, observed, 12, 15 Mar.:

Many of us thought the county meeting acted most unconstitutionally in imposing such conditions upon the Member, and protested accordingly. In consequence of this proceeding the sheriff and as many of the acting magistrates as the shortness of time will allow us to consult have thought proper to draw up the enclosed address which we mean to send up in time for presentation on Tuesday ... if you can conveniently do us the favour ... We do not like to send it to our Member as he will not or dare not advocate its prayer, but I am quite sure that he will bear testimony to the respectability of the names annexed to the petition, as they are the signatures of all the leading men in this county ... It would tend to inform the House that we are not entirely anti-Catholics; and I cannot help thinking that a petition coming as our does, from the sheriff and acting magistrates must have greater weight than a petition signed by the rabble of our county meeting. Derby mss 920 Der (14) 63.

Wood voted against the measure as directed, and presented and defended the Breconshire anti-Catholic petition as respectably and numerously signed (by 19 magistrates and 954 freeholders), 26 Mar.; and on 6 Apr. Lord Kenyon did the same in the Lords, who had received the pro-emancipation counter-petition on the 1st. CJ, lxxxiv. 173; LJ, lxi. 353. In the Commons, 26 Mar. 1829, its presenter Smith Stanley had claimed that the question in anti-Irish Breconshire was one of Protestantism against Popery, and alleged that during the fortnight’s delay between adoption and presentation, the anti-Catholic petition had been hawked about and exposed to malpractices. There was no late surge in anti-Catholic petitioning. NLW ms 1341 A, p. 10; Hereford Jnl. 4, 18 Mar.; Cambrian, 7, 14, 28 Mar., 4 Apr.; Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 17 Mar.; The Times, 27 Mar. 1829; Ellenborough Diary, i. 399.

Responding on behalf of the county to the 1828 justice commission’s questionnaire, Wood explained that he now favoured abolition of the Welsh judicature and assimilation of the courts of great sessions into the English circuit system ‘from conviction’. Henry Allen, the chairman of the quarter sessions, recommended abolition and ‘blending’ English and Welsh counties, while George Cross, attorney-general of the Brecon circuit, saw little advantage in such change but welcomed the introduction of ‘Westminster judges’. The commissioners’ February 1829 report advocated abolition of the Welsh courts and dividing the county into three, adding the Builth and Talgarth hundreds to Radnorshire, with cases heard in Hereford; joining the Crickhowell hundred to Monmouthshire, where Monmouth was the assize town; and adding the remainder of the county to Glamorgan, where their cases would be heard at Neath. PP (1829), ix. 42, 44, 62, 381, 386, 466, 467. Wood protested repeatedly in the Commons against the proposed division while supporting the principle of change, and endorsed the magistrates’ April 1829 memorial of complaint to Peel. Despairing of obtaining a joint assize district for Breconshire and Radnorshire, he sought Bute’s support for a plan to unite Breconshire and Glamorgan, whereby Brecon and Cardiff would host the assizes in alternate years. Unlike its neighbours Carmarthenshire and Radnorshire, there was no mass meeting in or petition against the 1830 administration of justice bill from Breconshire. The Radnorshire Member Thomas Frankland Lewis lobbied in vain on linguistic grounds to have Radnorshire’s assize business dealt with in Hereford and against amalgamating the Breconshire and Radnorshire assizes under the administration of justice bill which was rushed through immediately before the dissolution in July 1830. Lewis blamed the 1st earl of Cawdor, Wood and the Breconshire and Radnorshire Whigs for the decision. Hereford Jnl. 22, 29 Apr.; Cambrian, 25 Apr. 1829; Glam. RO D/DA15/42; NLW, Harpton Court mss C/399, 604-6. A new Turnpike Act to improve communications between Brecon, Swansea and the Glamorgan coalfield was also then enacted. Wood’s personal friendship with William IV was stressed at proclamations of his reign countywide, and no opposition was raised to his return at the 1830 general election, when he spent £730 on hospitality. His sponsors, the Whig banker Walter Wilkins† of Maesllwch, son of the late Radnorshire Member, and Penry Williams, described him as constant in his views over the past 24 years, and Williams said that he regretted their differences on parliamentary reform. Acknowledging this, Wood added that he also differed from the king on the question. Cambrian, 3, 10, 24 July; Mon. Merlin, 10 July; Hereford Jnl. 14 July, 4, 11 Aug. 1830; NLW, mân adnau 1341 A, pp. 10, 14.

The Wesleyan and Welsh Calvinistic Methodists of Cefn-Coed-y-Cymer, Crickhowell, Defynnog, Glasbury, Hay and Llangamarch sent petitions to both Houses for the abolition of colonial slavery, 1830-1. CJ, lxxxvi. 155, 444; LJ, lxiii. 408, 487, 492. Support for reform was manifested in Brecon, Crickhowell and the Wilkins stronghold of Hay in March 1831 when details of the Grey ministry’s reform bill were announced, and Wood and the Brecon Member Charles Morgan Robinson Morgan were publicly commended for voting for its second reading, 22 Mar. Mon. Merlin, 29 Jan.; Hereford Jnl. 16 Mar.; Cambrian, 19, 26 Mar., 15 Apr. 1831. The county reform meeting, 14 Apr., chaired by the undersheriff Thomas Lawrence of Henley, was a hurriedly convened affair, prompted by Wood’s much-publicized Commons speech of 30 Mar. outlining his reservations on the bill. The requisition was headed by Penry Williams, Hugh Bold and John Lloyd Vaughan Watkins, his father’s successor in 1829 to Penoyre. An erstwhile anti-Catholic for whom Beaufort had applied unsuccessfully for a baronetcy, Vaughan Watkins was a brother-in-law of Wood’s brother Charles Wood and a nephew of John Lloyd of Dinas. Wellington mss WP1/940/21; Cambrian, 7 Mar. 1829; Maybery mss 6566, 6567; Hereford Jnl. 11 Apr. 1831. Annoyed that his pro-reform vote had achieved so little, and perceiving correctly that as in neighbouring Carmarthenshire and Monmouthshire, the reformers would try to dictate his future conduct, Wood deliberately stayed away from the meeting and asked Henry Allen and John Jones to represent him. This was particularly difficult for Jones, who, as the reformers were swift to recall, had endorsed the bill at the Brecon borough meeting, 15 Mar. 1831. Allen eulogized Wood for turning down invitations to stand for Middlesex, an admiralty lordship, and household office in order to represent Breconshire, stressed his vote for the bill, and appealed to the freeholders’ anti-Irish prejudices in an attempt to rally support for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, opposing the relative reduction in English Members, for which he knew Wood intended to vote. He also proposed resolutions in the form of an amendment to the pro-reform petition sponsored by Penry Williams and Archdeacon Richard Davies. According to the reporters present, Allen could hardly be heard. The Rev. Walter Wilkins of Hay disposed of the resolutions and criticized Wood as a ‘party’ man who had opposed reform and supported Wellington and Peel. An amendment calling for agricultural protection and a lower voting qualification for smallholders, proposed by Clifton, who complained that the bill placed ‘agriculturists beneath chimney sweeps and halliers’, was not seconded. All attention was focused on pro-reform speeches by Hugh Bold, Penry Williams and Archdeacon Davies, who condemned Wood as ‘bob ochr’ [two sided] and called on the county to look to Penry Williams, should Wood be found wanting. Maybery mss 6929, 6930; Carmarthen Jnl. 22 Apr.; Cambrian, 23 Apr. 1831.

Wood supported Gascoyne’s amendment, 18, 19 Apr. 1831, and, deeming it ‘best to be prepared for war’, especially as his endeavours to present the Breconshire reform petition had failed, he had prepared his addresses, instructed Jones and Allen to press for an early election and retained counsel, solicitors and transport. Maybery mss 5751, 5752, 6568-71, 6582, 6583. His agents sought to counter a requisition of 22 Apr. to Penry Williams with professions of satisfaction and support for Wood. By 30 Apr. they could demonstrate that despite strong criticism of Wood for attacking reform ‘by a side wind’, he retained the support of Beaufort, Camden and Sir Charles Morgan, who retired rather than risk defeat in Monmouthshire. Penry Williams had decided by 26 Apr. not to stand, and on the 30th John Lloyd Vaughan Watkins announced his candidature as an uncompromising supporter of the bill. Ibid. 6572-7; The Times, 26 Apr.; Hereford Jnl. 27 Apr., 4 May; Cambrian, 30 Apr.; Mon. Merlin, 30 Apr. 1831. Hay declared for him, but despite offers of help and transport from the reformers of Merthyr Tydfil and Carmarthen, with less than a week’s canvassing time available there was, as The Times later acknowledged, little the reformers, who paraded and tried Wood in effigy, could do to counter the combined efforts of Beaufort, Camden, Wood’s agents and the Morgan interest. Wood, whose father lay ‘alarmingly ill’ at Littleton, was sponsored by Allen and Colonel Marmaduke Gwynne of Glanbrane Park, and Vaughan Watkins was proposed by Hugh Bold, with Lloyd of Dinas seconding. Booths were erected in Brecon for each hundred, and after a two-day poll of 400 (1,241 fewer than in 1818), in which he lagged behind Wood in each hundred, Vaughan Watkins retired. Wood’s highest share of the vote (92 per cent) was in the hundred of Crickhowell, where Beaufort’s agents had been busy issuing life leases, and his lowest (55 per cent) in the Hundred of Merthyr. Vaughan Watkins claimed that he had hundreds of votes unpolled, promised to stand again and, persisting with his canvass, encouraged reports that Wood would vacate on being raised to the peerage at the coronation. Maybery mss 6574-8, 6931-3; Dur. CRO, Londonderry mss C 83 (33); NLW, mân adnau 1341 A, pp. 9, 11, 11b, 16-18; Carmarthen Jnl. 6, 13 May; Hereford Jnl. 11, 18 May; The Times, 12 May; Cambrian, 14 May; Mon. Merlin, 14 May 1831. The contest cost Wood, who had deposited £1,000 with Wilkins’s bank, £1,589. He voted for the reintroduced and revised reform bills at their second readings, while criticizing their details in committee, and became the leading Commons advocate of separate representation for Merthyr Tydfil. Anxious lest he be misreported, he had copies of his parliamentary and public speeches sent to Brecon for circulation in the provincial press. NLW mân adnau 1341 A, pp. 14-18; Maybery mss 6580-91, 6934; Mon. Merlin, 22 Oct.; Cambrian, 22 Oct.; Hereford Jnl. 26 Oct.; Carmarthen Jnl. 30 Dec. 1831, 11 Feb., 9 Mar. 1832; M. Cragoe, Culture, Politics, and National Identity in Wales, 1832-1886, pp. 257, 258. His opportunistic plea for two seats for Breconshire, 9 Aug. 1831, was not taken seriously. The Times, 10 Aug. 1831. The reformers tested their strength at coroners’ elections in July 1831 and February 1832, and Vaughan Watkins curried support for them at dinners, dances and hunting parties countywide, but association with the June 1831 Merthyr riots and mob violence in Brecon in November 1831 weakened their cause, and on both occasions their candidates were defeated. Hereford Jnl. 29 June, 14, 28 Sept., 10 Oct., 9, 16, 30 Nov.; Cambrian, 16 July, 24 Sept., 8, 15 Oct. 1831, 23 Mar., 16 June 1832; Mon. Merlin, 18 June 1831, 25 Feb., 3 Mar. 1832; Carmarthen Jnl. 25 Nov. 1831, 13 Jan., 3 Mar. 1832.

After the reform bill became law in June 1832 the reformers switched the main thrust of their canvass from the county to Brecon, where Vaughan Watkins was the second largest property owner and there was less scope for Beaufort, Wood and Camden to act effectively in concert with Morgan against them. The only boundary changes were the transfer of the Radnorshire part of the parish of Glasbury, where Wood was lord of the manor, to Breconshire, and the loss of Cefn-Coed-y-Cymer to Merthyr. To the annoyance of Builth, who petitioned accordingly in 1833, no polling place was designated outside Brecon. CJ, lxxxviii. 419. One-thousand-six-hundred-and-sixty-nine electors, only seven of whom were copyholders, were registered in October 1832 at a cost of £102 16s.: 372, 182, 371, 225, 217, 302 respectively in the hundreds of Crickhowell, Pencelli, Defynnog, Builth, Merthyr and Talgarth. PP (1834), ix. 457. Slavery abolition, tithe and church reform and changes in turnpike routes had been the subject of recent memorials and petitions. With cholera and hospital endowment they were important local issues at the December 1832 election. CJ, lxxxvi. 572, 621; Cambrian, 6, 13, 27 Oct., 8 Dec. 1832. Nothing came of a brief show of interest by the 5th earl of Jersey’s heir, Lord Villiers*, and Wood, standing as a Conservative, was unopposed. Gwernyfed mss, parcel 36, Wood to John Jones, 7 July, E.H. Seymour, T. Price and C. Vaughan to Wood, 21 July; Maybery mss 6589, 6595, 6595a, 6597, 6935; Berks. RO, Pusey mss D/Ebp C1/31; Carmarthen Jnl. 21 Dec. 1832. Breconshire was contested on four occasions between 1832 and 1885. Wood, the protectionist ironmaster Joseph Bailey of Glan Usk, Breconshire and Nant-y-glo, Monmouthshire, and the heir to Y Dderw and Tredegar, George Charles Morgan, retained the seat for the Conservatives until 1875, when the Liberal William Frederick Maitland of Garth prevailed.