Full Project Title: Elections in the Anglesey and Caernarfonshire Constituencies between 1689 and 1832
Doctoral Researcher: Lynn Edwards
Supervised by: Dr Lowri Ann Rees
Lynn’s research focuses on the history of contested parliamentary elections in Anglesey and Caernarfonshire constituencies between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The research builds on the earlier studies of Peter D. G. Thomas, especially his Politics in Eighteenth-Century Wales, and makes use of the fantastic primary source material held by Bangor University Archives and Special Collections, including letters, polls and election books.
Lynn’s project is an attempt to ignite interest in the politics of Welsh electioneering and demonstrate the scope of the activity linked to these political processes: she has already discovered accusations of murder, the activities of a ‘political puppet master’, and attempts to disgrace a major landowner.
Lynn’s thesis will pivot on several case studies focusing on contested elections. The earliest of these sees a man of the ‘middling sort’, who had acquired his wealth through his profession, rather than rent, challenge the local political establishment of the late seventeenth century. Another sees two brothers standing against each other for the same seat – at a vast cost, financially and socially. This episode had long-term repercussions for the parliamentary representation of the locality. A third case study focuses on another middleclass insurgent, basing a campaign around the rights of the lower classes in the 1830s.
The objective is to set this regional case study within the context of the wider Welsh and British political scene, demonstrating how north-west Wales aligned with and departed from general national trends. The long-term analysis allows for a consideration of changes over the period.
