Caernarvon Boroughs

The constituency of Caernarvon Boroughs comprised five chartered boroughs that dotted the coastline of north-west Wales from Conwy in the east to Criccieth on the southern side of the Llŷn peninsula. The largest and most important of these boroughs was Caernarfon itself, which served as the county’s administrative and judicial centre, although the second town of the county, Conwy, had periodically pressed its own claims for that role. Caernarfon’s economy was based upon its market, which was reputed ‘very good for corn and provisions’, and its trade importing grain and other basic commodities – mainly from Chester, Bristol and various ports in Wales – and exporting wool, cloth, hides, dairy products and slate. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 282; HP Commons, 1509-58; HP Commons, 1604-29’; A.H. Dodd, Hist. of Caern. 1284-1900 (Denbigh, 1968), 34-5; J. Gwynfor Jones, Law, Order and Government in Caern. 1558-1640 (Cardiff, 1996), 22-3; Gwnfor Jones, ‘Aspects of local government in pre-Restoration Caern.’, Caern. Hist. Soc. Trans. xxxiii. 9-12; H. Carter, ‘Caernarvon’, in Historic Towns ed. M.D. Lobel (Oxford, 1969), i. 4, 6. Pwllheli was a small port town with at least some urban attributes; Nefyn and Criccieth were little more than villages. I. Soulsby, The Towns of Medieval Wales (Chichester, 1983), 117-18, 192-3, 221-2. According to the 1670 hearth tax returns, the populations of the five boroughs were approximately 1,000 for Caernarfon, 600 for Conwy, 350 for Nefyn, 300 for Pwllheli and 200 for Criccieth. L. Owen, ‘The population of Wales in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion (1959), 109; N. Powell, ‘Urban population in early modern Wales revisited’, WHR xxiii. 14, 37.

Caernarfon was dominated both physically and politically by its castle. As prescribed in its medieval charters, the town was governed by the crown-appointed constable of the castle, who was ex officio mayor, and two bailiffs elected annually by the ‘burgesses’ (i.e. freemen). Some of the duties associated with the office of constable – which had often been held in absentia – were performed by a deputy-mayor, who was being styled ‘mayor’ by the early seventeenth century. Supplementing the town’s borough court, presided over by the bailiffs, was a ‘general assembly of burgesses’. In Caernarfon, as in the out-boroughs, admission to the freeman body, and therefore to the parliamentary franchise, was controlled by its borough court. In law, the franchise was vested in the freemen of the five boroughs, and the returning officer was the constable of Caernarfon Castle acting in his capacity as ex officio mayor. In practice, there was ‘a notable lack of consistency about voting rights’, with the freemen of Caernarfon sometimes dominating the electoral process to the point where they appear to have sidelined the freemen of the four out-boroughs altogether. Moreover, the returning officers were ‘sometimes the mayor and sometime[s] the bailiffs’. Cal. Wynn Pprs. 167, 172, 239; Procs. LP ii. 669; K. William-Jones, ‘Caernarvon’, in Boroughs of Medieval Wales ed. R.A. Griffiths (Cardiff, 1978), 86-7; Dodd, Hist. of Caern. 73; ‘Caernarvon Boroughs’, HP Commons 1509-58, HP Commons 1558-1603, HP Commons 1604-29; M. Gray, ‘Castles and patronage in sixteenth-century Wales’, WHR xv. 491-2.

The dominant interest in Caernarfon by 1640 appears to have been that of the Glynne family of Glynllifon, in the parish of Llandwrog, a few miles south of the borough. In the elections to the Short Parliament, the Boroughs returned the future parliamentarian grandee John Glynne on 9 March 1640. The only named parties to the indenture, besides the high sheriff, were the bailiffs of Caernarfon, who, ‘with the whole assent and consent of the rest of the boroughs’, made ‘choice and election’ of Glynne ‘to be burgess for our said town of Caernarfon’. The only signatories to the indenture were the two bailiffs. C219/42/2/110. Glynne – a younger brother of the MP for Caernarvonshire in the Short Parliament, Thomas Glynne – was also returned for the borough of Westminster and opted to waive his election for the Boroughs. Infra, ‘Caernarvonshire’; ‘John Glynne’. This Glynne electoral monopoly of the shire and Boroughs seats was asking for trouble, and it duly arrived in the elections to the Long Parliament. Chief among the Glynnes’ electoral opponents that autumn was their erstwhile ally against the Wynn of Gwydir interest, John Griffith I* of Cefnamwlch. As constable of the castle, vice-admiral of north Wales and one of Caernarvonshire’s wealthiest gentlemen, Griffith made a formidable adversary. Infra, ‘John Griffith I’. John Glynne avoided tangling with him by securing re-election that autumn for the borough of Westminster. Infra, ‘Westminster’. But his brother Thomas ran headlong into the Cefnamwlch interest by standing for both Caernarvonshire and the Boroughs.

The elections for Caernarvonshire and for the Boroughs to the Long Parliament were delayed as a result of the high sheriff’s failure to execute the writ on the ‘county day’ in October 1640. This oversight by the sheriff – James Brynkir, a kinsman of the Griffiths – was apparently by design to undermine Thomas Glynne’s candidacy for both seats. Because the November county day would fall after the Long Parliament had assembled, the writs were returned as tarde, and the Commons, on 10 November, ordered the issue of a new writ for electing a knight of the shire. There is no record of a similar order in relation to the Boroughs, although a writ for a new election there was evidently issued anyway. CJ ii. 25b; A.H. Dodd, ‘Caern. elections to the Long Parliament’, BBCS xii. 44; J.K. Gruenfelder, ‘The Wynns of Gwydir and parliamentary elections in Wales, 1604-40’, WHR ix. 135-6. The two elections were held on successive days early in December and saw the return of Griffith’s son John Griffith II for the county and one of the Caernarfon area’s leading gentleman, William Thomas, for the Boroughs. The indenture for the Boroughs election featured only two named parties – Brynkir and John Griffith I, who signed himself ‘mayor’. C219/43/3/182.

The son of a former deputy-mayor of the town, Thomas almost certainly enjoyed a healthy interest among the Caernarfon freemen. Infra, ‘William Thomas’. But probably more important in securing him victory against Glynne on election day (3 Dec.) was the backing of his father’s former political adversary, Griffith I. Using his authority and influence as mayor and returning officer and doubtless assisted by Brynkir, Griffith was selective in notifying the out-boroughs of the election and in the timing of a poll – or so Glynne and his supporters later alleged. Procs. LP ii. 668-70. Nevertheless, the election indenture was signed by an unusually high number of voters – approximately 70 on this occasion. C219/43/3/182; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Caernarvon Boroughs’. Although Glynne would support Parliament during the civil war while Thomas opted in 1643 to side with the royalists, there is no evidence that the contest for the Boroughs seat was anything other than a local power struggle. Infra, ‘Thomas Glynne’; ‘William Thomas’. If differences over national issues intruded, it was not remarked upon by contemporaries.

Thomas Glynne did not take his double defeat for Caernarvonshire and the Boroughs with good grace. It was probably the Glynllifon interest and its friends at Westminster that was responsible for a Commons order of 1 January 1641, summoning Brynkir to answer for his ‘neglect and contempt to this House’ in failing to hold elections for the county and Boroughs in October and for ‘other misdemeanours’ in the December elections. CJ ii. 61b; Procs LP ii. 89. On 11 and 20 January, the Commons ordered that petitions from Glynne, Brynkir and from ‘some few of the inhabitants of Caernarfon and Conwy’ be referred to a committee set up on 31 December to investigate allegations of malpractice in the election for Bedfordshire. CJ ii. 66a, 70b; Procs. LP ii. 73, 160-1, 668. On referring petitions from Griffith I and William Thomas to this committee on 8 March, the House added to it two Welsh-speaking MPs in regard that many of the witnesses summoned on behalf of the disputants could not speak English. CJ ii. 99b; Procs. LP ii. 665, 668.

The committee, under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Herbert, began scrutinising the Boroughs election that same day (8 Mar. 1641), when several of Glynne’s witnesses testified to the effect that there had been ‘a practice [design] to elect Mr Thomas’, that Griffith and his confederates had ‘observed not the [statutory] time and hours’, and that they had either not summoned the freemen of the out-boroughs to attend the election or had failed to give them sufficient notice of it. Nevertheless, it was conceded that at least some of the freemen from the out-boroughs had been present in Caernarfon on election day, and that Griffith had observed custom in holding the Boroughs election the day after that for knight of the shire. One of the Conwy aldermen claimed that he and the borough’s bailiff had proceeded to Caernarfon on 3 December to demand notice of the election ‘to the end all the burgesses might be there ... and Mr Griffith made answer that reading the mandate upon the election of the knight [of the shire] the day before was notice sufficient’. Another witness alleged that many of the freemen from Criccieth, Nefyn and Pwllheli had been newly created – presumably, for purposes of electoral advantage. Procs. LP ii. 668-70. Commenting on the day’s proceedings, a correspondent of the Wynns believed that William Thomas’s return would be declared void on the grounds that the out-boroughs had not been given timely summons on election day. Cal. Wynn Pprs. 271. Having reconvened on 11 March, the committee heard testimony that approximately 17 of Conwy’s 30 or so freemen had been present at the Boroughs election but had received prior notification of it only through friends. However, some of the witnesses appear to have accepted that the county election constituted sufficient advance notice for the Boroughs election. The picture that emerges from the testimony heard on 8 and 11 March is that considerable confusion and informality attended the Boroughs election, and that Griffith had not committed an egregious breach of customary procedure. But convinced, it seems, by the Conwy freemen’s allegations of sharp practice, the committee concluded its examination of the Boroughs election by voting that Thomas’s return should be made void. Procs. LP ii. 716; Dodd, ‘Caern. elections to the Long Parliament’, 45-6.

Although Glynne had triumphed (in Herbert’s committee) in relation to the Boroughs election and Griffith had lost a great deal of money defending both this case and that for the county election, it was reported in late March 1641 that both sides now regretted pursuing the dispute. Cal. Wynn Pprs. 272. The Commons issued orders on 20 April and on 11 and 13 May for reviving Herbert’s committee but directed that it investigate the county election dispute only. Evidently, the committee’s vote on 11 March to void Thomas’s election was deemed to have decided the matter in relation to the Boroughs election, although a further petition from Thomas was referred to it for consideration. CJ ii. 123b, 143b, 144b, 145b; Procs. LP iv. 23, 321, 362. It was reported in July that the committee had ‘long since’ voted in favour of overturning both the county and Boroughs elections. However, the weight of more important business in the House meant that the committee could secure no time to make its report on either election, with the result that Griffith II and Thomas retained their seats by default. Cal. Wynn Pprs. 274; Dodd, ‘Caern. elections to the Long Parliament’, 246; Dodd, ‘The Caern. election dispute of 1640-1 and its sequel’, BBCS xiv. 42-3.

William Thomas sided with the king during the civil war and was disabled from sitting as an MP in February 1644. Infra, ‘William Thomas’. On 8 December 1646, a few weeks after the last royalist stronghold in Caernarfonshire (Conwy) had fallen to Parliament, the Commons ordered that a writ be issued to hold a new election for the Boroughs. CJ v. 4b; A.H. Dodd, ‘Caern. in the civil war’, Caern. Hist. Soc. Trans. xiv. 22-4. The House had appointed Thomas Glynne ‘governor of the town and castle of Caernarfon and of the garrison there’ in June, which allowed him to exercise considerable power in the area. Infra, ‘Thomas Glynne’. With the two largest of the five boroughs, Caernarfon and Conwy, firmly under parliamentary control, the ‘recruiter’ election for the Boroughs, held on 13 January 1647, was probably a mere formality for the successful – and doubtless only – candidate, the Hertfordshire-based Lincoln’s Inn lawyer William Foxwist. According to the election indenture, which was signed and returned by the two bailiffs of Caernarfon, Foxwist had been elected ‘with the whole assent and consent’ of the town’s freemen; there was no mention of the out-boroughs. C219/43/3/184. Although Foxwist belonged to a family with deep roots in Caernarfon and was a nephew of William Thomas, he almost certainly owed his return to the patronage of his uncle’s former rivals John and Thomas Glynne, who may well have calculated that his presence would augment the Presbyterian interest at Westminster, of which John Glynne was a leading member. Infra, ‘William Foxwist’; Dodd, ‘Caern. in the civil war’, 25-6. Foxwist was secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648, leaving the Boroughs without formal representation in the Rump. Infra, ‘William Foxwist’.

Disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government in 1653, Caernarvon Boroughs regained its seat in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659. The leading candidate for the Boroughs on this occasion was the scion of a long-established Caernarfonshire family, Robert Williams of Conwy and Penrhyn. Equally important in terms of his electoral prospects, he was a son-in-law of John Glynne, the principal power-broker in north-west Wales. Having represented Caernarvonshire in the second protectoral Parliament, Williams made way in 1659 for his brother-in-law William Glynne* and looked instead to win the Boroughs seat. Infra, ‘Caernarvonshire’; ‘Robert Williams’. The backing of the Glynllifon interest notwithstanding, Williams’s father, Sir Griffith Williams, was hard-pushed to secure his son’s return against competition from the London mercer and financial administrator Humphrey Jones – the brother of another north Wales Cromwellian grandee, John Jones I*. Infra, ‘John Jones I’; CJ vii. 618a; NLW, Llanfair Brynodol ms C176; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 229-30. On election day, 5 January, Sir Griffith was confronted outside Caernarfon town hall by an unruly crowd of Jones’s supporters drawn largely, it seems, from the out-boroughs of Criccieth, Nefyn and Pwllheli. NLW, Llanfair Brynodol ms C176; Cal. Wynn Pprs. 351. With the help of Richard Wynn* (the county sheriff) and probably also of Caernarfon’s mayor Thomas Mason – who had been appointed constable of the castle in 1649 – Sir Griffith was able to prevent his son’s opponents from making any meaningful input in the election. Wynn had certainly refused to hold a poll in the equally disorderly county election that day (5 Jan.), and it seems likely that he had done the same for the Boroughs. NLW, Llanfair Brynodol ms C176; Burton’s Diary, iv. 224; Kalendars of Gwynedd ed. E. Breese (1873), 127. The indenture returning Williams featured four named parties – the high sheriff, Mason and the two bailiffs of Caernarfon – and was signed by Mason and one of the bailiffs. C219/48, unfol.

Determined not to take their defeat at Caernarfon lying down, Jones and five bailiffs from the out-boroughs of Criccieth, Nefyn and Pwllheli presented a petition to the Commons against Williams’s return, which was referred to the committee of privileges on 22 March 1659. A similar petition from Thomas Madrin* against the return of William Glynne for the county was laid aside. CJ vii. 618a. No report on the Boroughs election was made to the House before Parliament was dissolved in April. But if the petition of Jones and the five bailiffs can be credited, Sir Griffith Williams and several other gentlemen had been engaged at ‘the desire of a person of great authority [i.e. John Glynne]’ to secure the return of William Glynne for the county and Robert Williams for the Boroughs. To further this design – or so the petitioners alleged – one the bailiffs of Conwy had created approximately 250 burgesses for the borough two days before the election; but finding that Williams’s return was still not assured, the ‘confederated gentlemen’ had taken possession of the town hall on election day and had used soldiers to ensure that only ‘such as would vote for Robert Williams’ were admitted. The bailiffs and burgesses of Criccieth, Nefyn and Pwllheli – the majority of whom had evidently supported Jones – had been excluded from the election ‘by force’, and several had been assaulted. The election had ended with the bailiffs of Caernarfon returning Williams. NLW, Llanfair Brynodol ms C176; Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 109.

Again, there is nothing to suggest that this contest was deeply influenced by national political issues. Leading members of the Glynne-Williams faction were royalists or had royalist pasts – notably, Sir Griffith Williams, Richard Griffith of Llanfair-is-gaer, William Griffith of Cefnamwlch and John Hookes of Conwy. Infra, ‘Robert Williams’; NLW, Llanfair Brynodol ms C176; DWB, ‘Griffith fam. Cefn Amwlch, Penllech, Llŷn’; N. Tucker, ‘Richard Griffith at the siege of Chester’, NLWJ xiii. 57-64; Tucker, ‘The royalist Hookes of Conway’, Caern. Hist. Soc. Trans. xxv. 5-12. But the heads of the parties that contended for the Boroughs seat in 1659 – John Glynne and John Jones I – were both loyal Cromwellians. Infra, ‘John Glynne’; ‘John Jones I’. This was not a clash of political parties, it seems, but of rival local interests that pitted the leading men of Caernarfon and Conwy against those of the three smaller out-boroughs.

Caernarvon Boroughs regained its parliamentary representation on 21 February 1659, when Foxwist, along with the other Members secluded at Pride’s Purge, was re-admitted to the House. Infra, ‘William Foxwist’. In the elections to the 1660 Convention, the Boroughs returned William Glynne, apparently without a contest. HP Commons 1660-90.