Beaumaris

Beaumaris had anciently been an English town on a Welsh island, and its only competitor as a settlement to justify the description of borough was Newborough, which probably because of the encroachment of sand-drift had by the mid-sixteenth century become so impoverished as to forfeit any claim to a charter. G. Roberts, ‘Parlty Hist. Beaumaris, 1555-1832’, Trans. Anglesey Antiq. Soc. (1933), 98-9. The importance of Beaumaris lay in its harbour, protected from the ravages of the Irish Sea by the Menai Straits. Its castle, built by Edward I, dominated the Straits, and the constable of the castle was also the captain of the town. Beaumaris harbour was the principal trading port in north Wales, sustaining coastal commerce with Lancashire and Chester as well as with Scotland, Ireland and France. It was a creek or sub-port of Chester for customs purposes, with the townsmen confident enough to claim in 1616, implausibly, that they were exempt from customs and impositions. Exchequer Proceedings Concerning Wales ed. T.I. Jeffreys Jones (Board of Celtic Studies, Univ. of Wales Hist. and Law ser. xv), 18-19. An estimate of the borough’s population made in 1676, 434, is thought to refer to adult males only, but another modern assessment suggests that Beaumaris can not have been home to many more than 700 souls. The same calculations estimated Beaumaris to be three times the size of Newborough. Compton Census, 478, 485, 486; N. Powell, ‘Do Numbers Count? Towns in early modern Wales’, Urban Hist. xxxii. 50.

Beaumaris was the only Welsh borough in which the franchise was limited to the corporation, which by an Elizabethan charter of 1562 consisted of a mayor, two bailiffs and 21 capital burgesses. G. Roberts, ‘Parlty. Hist. Beaumaris’, 99. In this instance, since the incorporation, the prevailing Welsh electoral arrangement of contributory boroughs had been set aside. The elections were held at the guildhall, and since 1572 the recorder had invariably been returned. The Bulkeley family of nearby Baron Hill, the family of greatest substance on the island, played a dominant role in Beaumaris affairs, but from 1597 their allies the Jones family of Castellmarch, Caernarvonshire, occupied the seat in seven out of nine Parliaments up to and including 1628. These tenacious lawyers were successively Sir William Jones†, an eminent judge, and his barrister son Charles, in turn recorders of the borough. Charles Jones was returned to the Short Parliament both for Beaumaris and Monmouth, and in the latter borough stood against a monopolist client of Henry Somerset, 5th earl of Worcester, William Watkins. But in Monmouth Watkins was also returned, and the House failed to adjudicate on this double return before the dissolution on 5 May.

Charles Jones did not live to see the Long Parliament, to which his successor as recorder, John Griffith I of Cefnamwlch, Caernarvonshire, with inherited property in Anglesey, was returned. The contracting parties on the indenture were the mayor, Thomas Bulkeley, and the two bailiffs. Twelve burgesses signed the dorse of the document. C219/43/6/5/156. Griffith was prominent in the king’s recruiting drive in north Wales on the outbreak of civil war, and died at Oxford, quite possibly of camp fever, in July 1643. The town was commanded for the king by the constable of the castle, Colonel Richard Bulkeley, and only in May 1646 did the loyalty of the townsmen begin to waver. Cal. Wynn Pprs. 290. The strategy of Thomas Mytton*, major-general for Parliament in north Wales, was to win over the islanders by very conciliatory terms of surrender. Commissioners including John Jones I* and Roger Pope* had by the end of May begun to isolate Beaumaris from the rest of the island gentry, who proved amenable to negotiation. Bulkeley surrendered Beaumaris only reluctantly in mid-June. Cal. Wynn Pprs. 291-6. Among the surrender articles proposed by the royalists were provisos that would have safeguarded the charter of the borough and would have allowed the gentry and inhabitants of Anglesey a veto over the appointment of the castle governor, but the articles finally concluded were inevitably far less concessionary. Cal. Wynn Pprs. 294-5; Phillips, Civil War in Wales, ii. 312-3. In the last months of the year, the head of the Bulkeley family, Thomas, Viscount Bulkeley, was using an agent, Sir Robert Eyton, to procure an ordinance from Parliament to free him from delinquency. CJ v. 686a, 695a; Baron Hill 5386, 5387. The writ for holding an election for Beaumaris was issued on the same day as that for Anglesey (8 Dec.). CJ v. 4b.

The election was held on 22 January 1647, more than three weeks after the meeting to return Richard Wood for Anglesey. The only signatures appearing on the indenture were those of the mayor and bailiffs, suggesting that the meeting to elect William Jones, though conducted at the guildhall, may have been without even the participation of the other burgesses. C219/43/6/5/158. As the brother of one Beaumaris Member, and the son of another, Jones was doubtless selected as an uncontroversial candidate, but his main qualification was probably his association with the recorder of London, John Glynne*, whose patronage lay behind the election of William Foxwist for Caernarvon Boroughs a week earlier. Once at Westminster, Jones was a shadowy figure in the Commons, but it would have been his association with Glynne and the Presbyterian interest that brought on to his head the wrath of the army and his seclusion from the House in December 1648. Jones’s fate would doubtless have been the same even without the Anglesey revolt of 1648, which focused on control of Beaumaris castle. Dodd, ‘Anglesey in the Civil War’, Anglesey Antiq. Soc. Trans. (1952), 23-4.

Beaumaris lost separate representation in Parliament under the Instrument of Government of December 1653, and only regained it when the council of Lord Protector Richard Cromwell* chose to re-introduce the electoral arrangements that had prevailed in 1640. The Beaumaris election took place on 13 January 1659, the same day as the election for Anglesey. The only candidate was Griffith Bodurda, son-in-law of John Griffith I, and another client of John Glynne, his brother-in-law. The indenture recorded how the burgesses had assembled between eight and eleven on the morning of the election to conclude their business, but no names were identified beyond those of the elected Member, the sheriff of Anglesey, Robert Bulkeley, and the mayor and bailiffs of Beaumaris. C219/48. Bodurda managed to hold on to the seat in 1660, while the Presbyterian interest was still powerful, but from 1661 the Bulkeley interest re-asserted itself, but Charles II imposed an ex-cavalier from Denbighshire on the seat after Heneage Finch, brother-in-law of Robert Bulkeley, 2nd Viscount Bulkeley, chose to sit for Oxford University. No contest for the seat is known before 1689.