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Flint Boroughs (sometimes known as Flint or the Flint District of Boroughs) was a parliamentary constituency in north-east Wales which returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and its predecessors, from 1542 until it was abolished for the 1918 general election.

Boundaries

From its first election in 1542 until 1918, the constituency consisted of a number of boroughs within the historic county of Flintshire in north-east Wales. The seat should not be confused with the county constituency of Flintshire, which existed from the sixteenth century until 1950.

After 1918 Flintshire was represented in Parliament by the single member county constituency, which included all the boroughs formerly in the Flint District of Boroughs.

Flint 1536-1832

On the basis of information from several volumes of the History of Parliament, it is apparent that the history of the borough representation from Wales and Monmouthshire is more complicated than that of the English boroughs.

The Act of Union 1536 (26 Hen. VIII, c. 26) provided for a single borough seat for each of 11 of the 12 Welsh counties and Monmouthshire. The legislation was ambiguous as to which communities were enfranchised. The county towns were awarded a seat, but this in some fashion represented all the ancient boroughs of the county as the others were required to contribute to the members wages. It was not clear if the burgesses of the contributing boroughs could take part in the election. The only election under the original scheme was for the 1542 Parliament. It seems that only burgesses from the county towns actually took part. An Act of 1544 (35 Hen. VIII, c. 11) confirmed that the contributing boroughs could send representatives to take part in the election at the county town. As far as can be told from surviving indentures of returns, the degree to which the out boroughs participated varied, but by the end of the sixteenth century all the seats had some participation from them at some elections at least.

The original scheme was modified by later legislation and decisions of the House of Commons (which were sometimes made with no regard to precedent or evidence: for example in 1728 it was decided that only the freemen of the borough of Montgomery could participate in the election for that seat, thus disenfranchising the freemen of Llanidloes, Welshpool and Llanfyllin).

In the case of Flintshire, the county town was Flint. The out boroughs were Caergwrle, Caerwys, Overton and Rhuddlan.

In 1690-1715 the freemen of the five boroughs were entitled to vote. The exact number is unknown, but in the only poll of the period (a by-election in 1690) there were seven hundred and sixty voters.

By the second half of the eighteenth century the inhabitants of the five boroughs, paying scot and lot (a local tax), formed the electorate. In the 1754-1790 period there were estimated to be about 600 voters, although Namier and Brooke point out the constituency was controlled by local squires. No election went to a poll in that period.

Flint Boroughs 1832-1918

The Flint Boroughs, was a district of boroughs constituency, which grouped a number of parliamentary boroughs in Flintshire into one single member constituency. The voters from each participating borough cast ballots, which were added together over the whole district to decide the result of the poll. The enfranchised communities in this district, from 1832, were the eight boroughs of Flint, Caergwrle, Caerwys, Holywell, Mold, Overton, Rhuddlan and St Asaph.

The exact boundaries of the parliamentary boroughs in the district were altered by the Parliamentary Boundaries Act 1868, but the general nature of the constituency was unchanged. There were no further boundary changes in the 1885 redistribution of parliamentary seats.

Members of Parliament 1660-1918

Supplemental Notes:-

• F. W. S. Craig, in his compilations of election results for Great Britain, classifies Whig, Radical and similar candidates as Liberals from 1832. The name Liberal was gradually adopted as a description for the Whigs and politicians allied with them, before the formal creation of the Liberal Party shortly after the 1859 general election.

Election results

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Sources 1690-1715: Cruickshanks et al; 1715-1754: Stooks Smith; 1754-1784: Narnier and Brooke; 1784-1832 Stooks Smith. Positive swing is from Whig to Tory. Source 1832-1918: Craig. Positive swing is from Liberal to Conservative.

• Death of Puleston

References

• Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885-1972, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (Parliamentary Reference Publications 1972)
• British Parliamentary Election Results 1832-1885, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (Macmillan Press 1977)
• British Parliamentary Election Results 1885-1918, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (Macmillan Press 1974)
• The House of Commons 1509-1558, by S.T. Bindoff (Secker & Warburg 1982)
• The House of Commons 1558-1603, by P.W. Hasler (HMSO 1981)
• The House of Commons 1690-1715, by Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D.W. Hayton (Cambridge University Press 2002)
• The House of Commons 1715-1754, by Romney Sedgwick (HMSO 1970)
• The House of Commons 1754-1790, by Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke (HMSO 1964)
• The Parliaments of England by Henry Stooks Smith (1st edition published in three volumes 1844-50), second edition edited (in one volume) by F.W.S. Craig (Political Reference Publications 1973)
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages

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• History of Flintshire
• Historic parliamentary constituencies in North Wales
• United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies established in 1542
• United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies disestablished in 1918
• United Kingdom historical constituency stubs