Welsh Journals

Should I be so fortunate by your Graces Good & Kind Recommendations my Interest for a member to succeed at Cardigan, shall be most strenuously Exerted, for any Person, yr. Grace may Recommend to that Burough, & cannot Faill of success, as one of Contributory Buroughs is my own and are the Majority of the Electors of the Town of Cardigan.-I Did myself the Honour of writing to your Grace some Time Past, but imagine it was not received. If your Grace should Honour me with an answer, By your Secretary, a Letter addressed will find me at Peterwell, Lan- dovery Bag South Wales. I am with the Profoundest Respect My Lord Duke Your Graces most Dutiful & Faithful Humble sert Herbt. Lloyd Peterwell Jan the 2d 1766. NOTES 1. The ancient boroughs of Cardiganshire were Aberystwyth, Atpar, Cardigan, Lampeter, Llanddewibrefi, and Trefilan (William Rees, A bibliography of published works on the municipal history of Wales,' Bulletin of the Board ofCUtic Studies, II [1925], 346-9). An act of 1543 authorised those boroughs which contributed towards the wages of the borough member to share in his election. A double return was made for the boroughs in the election of 1604, but William Bradshaw of St. Dogmaels was seated on petition. He then brought an action before the Court of Exchequer for non-payment of his wages', the defendants being the mayor of Cardigan, the mayor of Aberystwyth, the portreeve of Tregaron, the portreeve of Talsarn (i.e., Trefilan), the portreeve of Lampeter, and the portreeve of Trerhedyn (i.e., Atpar) (T. I. Jeffreys Jones [ed.], Ex- chequer Proceedings concerning Wales in tempore James I, 1955, p. 293). This is probably the only evidence that the borough of Talsarn ever exercised the franchise. There is no evidence that Llanddewibrefi ever did so. Tregaron had evidently participated in this election although it was not an ancient borough. After the election of 1729 the House of Commons ruled that the inhabitants of Tregaron had no right to vote for the borough member (Commons Journal, XXI, 571, 7 March 1730). In Atpar, the portreeve was ousted in 1741 and thereafter the corporation remained moribund. 2. John Hughes, A History of the Parliamentary Representation of the County of Cardigan, 1849 W. R. Williams, The Parliamentary History of the Principality of Wales, 1895 David Jenkins, The Pryse family of Gogerddan (part ii), National Library Jjpf Wales Journal, VIII (1953), 176-93. 3. J. M. Howells, The Crosswood Estate, 1547­1947,' Ceredigion, III (1956), 70-88. 4. J. G. Williams, Sir John Vaughan of Trawscoed, 1603-74,' National Library of Wales Journal, VIII (1953), 33-48, 121-46. He may have represented the boroughs in 1628, and did so in the Long Parliament of 1640. 5. For these petitions see John Hughes, op. cit., p. 17, and Samuel Heywood, Digest of the Law respecting County Elections, 1790, pp. 255, 426.