The hold of the Williams Wynn family of Wynnstay over the county representation remained unchallenged in this period. During the minority of Sir Watkin, 5th Bt., whose father had held the seat until his death in 1789, a ‘particular friend and relation’ of the family,
For the last half-century Carmarthenshire politics had been dominated by the rival houses of Rice of Dynevor (alias Newton) and Vaughan of Golden Grove.G. Roberts, Hist. Carm. ed. Lloyd, ii. 1-87; R. D. Rees, ‘Parl. Rep. S. Wales 1790-1830’ (Reading Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1962), i.
The county had not gone to a poll since 1741 and the tendency of the aligned county families to avert the threat of a contest by compromise again operated in this period when vacancies arose in 1796 and 1816.R. D. Rees, ‘Parl. Rep. S. Wales 1790-1830’ (Reading Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1962), i. 137. In 1790 Lord Lisburne was returned for the fifth consecutive election: since 1774 he and the family of Thomas Johnes of Hafod had been allies in county politicsNLW, Trawsgoed deeds iii. 24, Wilmot Vaughan to Johnes, 9 Mar. 1774. and were too strong for opposition.
The dominance of the influence of Thomas James, 1st Baron Bulkeley, of Baron Hill, which had secured the return of John Parry of Wernfawr in 1780 and 1784, was further confirmed in 1790, when Parry made way for Robert Williams, Bulkeley’s uterine brother.P. D. G. Thomas, Trans. Caern. Hist. Soc. xx.
County politics were dominated by three estates, Dderw, Gwernyfed and the Priory, all in the possession of absentee families who had inherited them through the female line. Dderw belonged to the Morgans of Tredegar, whose chief interests were in Monmouthshire, and on the death of John Morgan in 1792 was inherited by his brother-in-law Sir Charles Gould, who took the name of Morgan.
After a keen contest between Henry Paget, Earl of Uxbridge and Thomas James Bulkeley, Baron Bulkeley, for control of the county in 1784, in which the former was successful, a compromise was devised whereby Bulkeley surrendered Anglesey to Uxbridge in exchange for the latter’s support in Caernarvonshire. This balance of power remained undisturbed throughout the period and three of Uxbridge’s sons occupied the county seat in succession.
In Fox’s often quoted words, ‘Yorkshire and Middlesex between them make all England’. Of Pitt it was likewise alleged that Wilberforce was to him ‘the whole people of England’, because he represented its most populous county, Yorkshire, as his friend and had ousted the Whigs.Life of Wilberforce (1838), ii. 133; Fitzwilliam mss, Laurence to Fitzwilliam, 26 Nov. 1797. Wilberforce and his colleague Duncombe, the nominees of the Yorkshire Association in 1784, when at the instigation of the Rev.
The leading interests were those of the Foley, Lygon, Ward, Lyttelton, Cocks and Coventry families. There was no change in the representation from 1775 until 1803, and no contest from 1741 until 1806. On the death of Foley the Whig Member in 1803, his nephew Lord Foley pressed Ward, Viscount Dudley’s son, then Member for Downton, to stand. This step was approved by the lord lieutenant, Coventry, and by the other Member, Lygon, and urged by his father, so Ward agreed, sure that it would be ‘extremely difficult’ to turn him out ‘at any future election’.
Apart from a by-election contest in 1772, the peace of Wiltshire was not disturbed between 1715 and 1818. On a vacancy, the leading gentry families chose one of their number to represent them at a meeting of the Deptford and Beckhampton Clubs and he was duly adopted at the county meeting. The county aristocracy, confined to borough influence, were reduced to the role of Greek gods.
