Aldborough was a parliamentary borough located in the

West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county County of York, West Riding (the area under the control of West Riding County Council), abbreviated County ...

, abolished in the

Great Reform Act The Representation of the People Act 1832 (also known as the 1832 Reform Act, Great Reform Act or First Reform Act) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom (indexed as 2 & 3 Will. IV c. 45) that introduced major changes to the electo ...

of 1832.

Boundaries

Aldborough was a small borough (not even including the whole parish of Aldborough, since

Boroughbridge Boroughbridge () is a town and civil parish in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is north-west of the county town of York. Until a bypass was built the town lay on t ...

, also within the boundaries, was also a borough with its own two MPs), and by the time of the Reform Act it had a population only just over 500 and an electorate of less than 100. This made it a pocket borough and easy for the local landowner to dominate.

History

Aldborough returned two

Members of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MPs) from 1558 until 1832. (currently unavailable) It was a "

scot and lot Scot and lot is a phrase common in the records of English, Welsh and Irish medieval boroughs, referring to local rights and obligations. The term ''scot'' comes from the Old English word ''sceat'', an ordinary coin in Anglo-Saxon times, equivalen ...

" borough, meaning that any man paying the poor rate was eligible to vote. In the 18th century, Aldborough was controlled by the

Duke of Newcastle Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne was a title that was created three times, once in the Peerage of England and twice in the Peerage of Great Britain. The first grant of the title was made in 1665 to William Cavendish, 1st Marquess of Newcastle ...

. In April 1754 Newcastle, who had just become Prime Minister, selected his junior colleague and future Prime Minister, William Pitt (Pitt the Elder), to sit as its MP. Pitt represented Aldborough for two-and-a-half years, but having fallen out with Newcastle and been dismissed from his ministry, he was forced to find a new constituency when he next needed to be re-elected to the Commons in 1756.

Members of Parliament

*''Constituency created'' (1558)

MPs 1558–1640

MPs 1640–1832

Notes

Elections

Elections in the 1830s

References

{{Reflist *Robert Beatson, "A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament" (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807

*

Michael Brock Michael George Brock (9 March 1920 – 30 April 2014) was a British historian who was associated with several Oxford colleges during his academic career. He was Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford, from 1978 to 1988. Youth and education Michae ...

,''The Great Reform Act'' (London: Hutchinson, 1973). *D Brunton & D H Pennington, ''Members of the Long Parliament'' (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954) *''Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803'' (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808

*D Englefield, J Seaton & I White, ''Facts About the British Prime Ministers'' (London: Mansell, 1995) * Maija Jansson (ed.), ''Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (House of Commons)'' (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988

* J E Neale, ''The Elizabethan House of Commons'' (London: Jonathan Cape, 1949) *J Holladay Philbin, ''Parliamentary Representation 1832, England and Wales'', (New Haven, Connecticut: 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, Volume I'' (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1979) Parliamentary constituencies in Yorkshire and the Humber (historic) Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom established in 1558 Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom disestablished in 1832 Rotten boroughs Politics of the Borough of Harrogate Boroughbridge