Wootton Bassett (UK Parliament constituency)

Wootton Bassett was a parliamentary borough in Wiltshire, which elected two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons from 1447 until 1832, when the rotten borough was abolished by the Great Reform Act.

Wootton Bassett
Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons
1447–1832
Number of members	Two

History

The borough consisted of the town of Wootton Bassett, a market town in northern Wiltshire. Even when the borough was created by Henry VI it was a town of little consequence, with no significant industry or trade; by the 19th century it suffered from endemic unemployment, and the money to be gained by electoral corruption was probably one of its economic mainstays.

In 1831, the population of the borough was approximately 1,500, and contained 349 houses. The right to vote was exercised by all inhabitant householders paying scot and lot. At the last contested election, this amounted to 309 eligible voters, of whom 228 cast valid votes; in other words, only a comparatively small proportion of households were excluded from the franchise. The local landowners were generally recognised as "patrons" of the borough, and at most periods were able to exercise close control as they were the employers of the majority of the voters. However, they were occasionally vulnerable to the intervention of monied outsiders, since Wootton Bassett's voters had few scruples at selling their votes to the highest bidder.

At the end of the 17th century, the St John family of Lydiard Tregoze had the predominant influence in the borough, and could usually return their chosen candidates without difficulty, the main competing interest being that of the Hydes. After Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke fled abroad in 1715 following the Jacobite Rebellion the St John influence was weakened, and a wealthy local landowner and clothier, Robert Neale of Corsham, was able to secure election in 1741. Neale then began to strengthen his interest, hoping to gain control of the second seat in alliance with the Hydes, and this led to a vigorous contest for control of the borough in the 1750s.

Corruption was playing its part in Wootton Bassett elections at least from the late 17th century. In 1690, a candidate who petitioned against the election of Henry St John was found to have bribed the voters himself, reportedly purchasing votes at one-and-a-half guineas a head, and his agent was taken into custody by order of the House of Commons. Again in 1700, bribery was reported to the Committee and the agent was committed to Newgate Prison.

At the election of 1754, Robert Neale attempted to win the support of the Mayor (who was ex officio returning officer) with a bribe of £500, and both sides spent lavishly. The St John candidates (John Probyn and Thomas Estcourt Cresswell) paid 30 guineas a head to voters, the total cost including treating at taverns coming to £6000, while Neale admitted spending £1800 and his co-candidate the Earl of Drumlanrig probably spent a similar amount. St John's candidates were successful, but Neale petitioned against the outcome and (as a supporter of the government) apparently expected a partisan decision to overturn the result in his favour. In the event, the Duke of Newcastle, then serving as the prime minister, refused to support the petition but Neale was compensated £1000 from secret government funds.

After another contested election in election of 1784, when George Tierney, backed by the Hydes, spent £2500 in an unsuccessful attempt to win a seat against the St John candidates, the two families reached an agreement to nominate one MP each at future elections. This lasted until the early years of the following century when a barrister, James Kibblewhite, began to acquire property in the town and secured both a majority on the Corporation and sufficient "influence" with the voters to have his candidates returned as MPs – the nature of the influence is indicated by reports that the price of a vote had risen to 45 guineas a man. When Benjamin Walsh, who was elected on this occasion, was shortly afterwards declared bankrupt it emerged on the investigation of his accounts that he had paid £4000 for his seat. Kibblewhite sold his interest in the borough to Joseph Pitt for £22,000, but Pitt was unable to retain control over the voters despite his domination of the corporation and the St Johns and Hydes once more resumed the patronage.

Perhaps surprisingly, the corruption at Wootton Bassett never led to a major scandal or to any attempts to disfranchise the borough – unlike nearby Cricklade, which was "thrown into the hundred" for its misdemeanours in the 1770s, or Hindon which nearly suffered the same fate. However, the town was far too small to justify separate representation after the Great Reform Act, and the constituency was abolished in 1832. The town was within the penally-expanded boundaries of Cricklade, which retained both its MPs, and was thereafter part of that borough constituency.

Members of Parliament

1447–1640

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Parliament	First member	Second member
1449–1450	John Daunt
1510–1523	No names known [1]
1529	Richard Tracy[2]	Walter Winston [1]
1536	?
1539	?
1542	?
1545	Edmund Brydges	Hugh Westwood [1]
1547	John Seymour	Robert Huick [1]
1553 (Mar)	Gabriel Pleydell	William Garrard [1]
1553 (Oct)	Henry Poole	John Throckmorton [1]
1554 (Apr)	John Tull	Giles Payne [1]
1554 (Nov)	Giles Payne	William Hampshire [1]
1555	Edmund Plowden	Richard Bruning [1]
1558	Richard Bruning	Humphrey Moseley [1]
1559	Christopher Dysmars	Humphrey Moseley[3]
1562/3	John Hippisley, sat for Wells replaced Jan 1563 by Matthew Poyntz	Gabriel Pleydell [3]
1571	Henry Knyvet	John Winchcombe [3]
1572	Henry Knyvet	Edmund Dunch [3]
1584	Thomas Vavasour	John Hungerford[3]
1586	Thomas Vavasour	John Hungerford[3]
1589	Sir Henry Knyvet	John Hungerford[3]
1593	John Hungerford	William Meredith [3]
1597	Henry Dacre	John Lowe [3]
1601	John Wentworth	John Rice [3]
1604–1611	Henry Martin	Alexander Tutt
1614	Sir William Willoughby	Edward Hungerford
1621	Richard Harrison	John Wrenham
1624	Sir Roland Egerton	John Bankes
1625	Robert Hyde	Sir Walter Tichborne
1626	Sir John Francklyn	Sir Thomas Lake
1628	Sir John Francklyn	Anthony Rous
1629–1640	No Parliaments summoned

1640–1832

Year		First member	First party		Second member	Second party
April 1640		Thomas Windebanke			Edward Hyde
November 1640		William Pleydell	Royalist		Edward Poole	Parliamentarian
February 1644	Pleydell disabled from sitting – seat vacant
1645		Edward Massie [4]
December 1648	Massie and Poole excluded in Pride's Purge – both seats vacant
1653	Unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate
January 1659		Henry St John			Robert Stevens
May 1659	Not represented in the restored Rump
April 1660		John Pleydell			Lord Herbert of Raglan
June 1660					Sir Baynham Throckmorton
1661					Sir Walter St John
February 1679					Laurence Hyde
August 1679		Henry St John
1681					John Pleydell
1689					John Wildman
1695		Thomas Jacob			Henry Pinnell
1698		Henry St John
January 1701		Henry St John
November 1701					Thomas Jacob
1702					Henry Pinnell
1705					John Morton Pleydell
1706					Francis Popham
1708		Robert Cecil
October 1710		Henry St John [5]			Richard Goddard
December 1710		Edmund Pleydell
1713					Richard Cresswell
1715		Sir James Long			William Northey
1722		Colonel Robert Murray			William Chetwynd
1727		John St John			John Crosse
1734		Sir Robert Long			Captain Nicholas Robinson
1741		Robert Neale			John Harvey-Thursby
1747					Martin Madan
1754		John Probyn			Thomas Estcourt Cresswell
1761		Major the Hon. Henry St John [6]
1774					Robert Scott
1780					William Strahan
1784		Hon. George North			Hon. Robert Seymour Conway
1790		John Thomas Stanley			The Viscount Downe
1796		John Denison			Edward Clarke
July 1802		General the Hon. Henry St John			Robert Williams
December 1802		Peter William Baker	Tory
1806		Robert Knight	Whig
1807		Sir John Murray	Tory		John Cheesment [7]	Tory
1808					Benjamin Walsh [8]
1811		Robert Knight	Whig
March 1812					John Attersoll	Whig
October 1812		James Kibblewhite	Whig
March 1813		Richard Ellison
April 1813					Robert Rickards
1816					William Taylor Money
1820		Horace Twiss	Tory		Sir George Philips Bt	Whig
1830		Viscount Mahon	Tory		Thomas Hyde Villiers	Whig
1831					Viscount Porchester	Tory
1832	Constituency abolished

Notes

1. "History of Parliament". History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 2011-10-29.
2. s: Tracy, Richard (DNB00)
3. "History of Parliament". History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 2011-10-29.
4. Massie was disabled from sitting in January 1648 but the order was revoked in June 1648
5. St John was also elected for Berkshire, which he chose to represent, and did not sit again for Wootton Bassett
6. Lieutenant Colonel 1762, Colonel 1776, Major General 1779, General 1797
7. Later adopted the surname Severn
8. Expelled from the House, 5 March 1812, after conviction for attempting to defraud the Solicitor-General, Sir Thomas Plumer

References

• Robert Beatson, A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807)
• D Brunton & D H Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
• John Cannon, Parliamentary Reform 1640–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972)
• Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808)
• Lewis Namier & John Brooke, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1754–1790 (London: HMSO, 1964)
• T. H. B. Oldfield, The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1816)
• J Holladay Philbin, Parliamentary Representation 1832 – England and Wales (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
• Henry Stooks Smith, The Parliaments of England from 1715 to 1847 (2nd edition, edited by FWS Craig – Chichester: Parliamentary Reference Publications, 1973)
• Frederic A Youngs, jr, Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, Vol I (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979)
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "W" (part 5)