Bere Alston or Beeralston was a parliamentary borough in Devon, which elected two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons from 1584 until 1832, when the constituency was abolished by the Great Reform Act as a rotten borough.
History Bere Alston was first summoned to return MPs in 1584; like many of the boroughs over the county boundary in Cornwall that were enfranchised during the reign of Elizabeth I, it had never been of much size and was a rotten borough from the start. Indeed, its first return of members specifically states that they had been elected at the request of the Marquess of Winchester and Lord Mountjoy, the chief landowners in the borough, and its enfranchisement plainly designed to allow them to nominate MPs.
The borough consisted of most of the village of Bere Alston in the parish of Bere Ferris, 10 miles north of Plymouth. By the time of the Great Reform Act there were 112 houses within the borough boundaries, and 139 in the whole village. The population was not separately recorded in the census. It was customary for elections to be conducted under a great tree in the centre of the village; there was no equivalent of a town hall, and indeed no municipal corporation.
Bere Alston was a burgage borough,Page 136, Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition - London: St Martin's Press, 1957) the right to vote resting with the freehold tenants of a number of specified properties within the town of which there appears to have been only 30. For much of the eighteenth century most, if not all, of these burgage properties were owned by the Drake and Hobart families (the latter becoming the Earls of Buckinghamshire in 1746). Only one contested election therefore occurred in the eighteenth century, when the two families failed to compromise. In the 1770s the borough was acquired by the 1st Duke of Northumberland, and was retained by his descendants until the borough was disenfranchised.
In the debates before the passing of the Reform Act, Bere Alston was held up as one of the most notorious examples of a rotten borough, vilified in more than one of the pro-Reform newspapers. The Times carried the following report of what happened in Bere Alston in the general election there in 1830:
"Dr Butler [the Portreeve, who was Returning Officer for the borough] ... met the voters under a great tree, the place usually chosen for the purpose of election. During the time the Portreeve was reading the acts of Parliament usually read on such occasions, one of the voters handed in to him a card containing the names of two candidates, proposed by himself and seconded by his friend. He was told ... this was too early. Before the reading was completed, the voter on the other side handed in a card corresponding with the former, which he was told was too late. The meeting broke up. The Portreeve and assistants adjourned to a public house in the neighbourhood, and then and there made a return of Lord Lovaine and Mr Blackett, which was not signed by a single person having a vote."
The election return actually bears seven signatures - individuals who were probably made temporary burgage holders to qualify as electors for the day of the election but none of whom probably resided in the borough. The two "voters" who sought to nominate candidates were probably unqualified but were actual residents. Otherwise the report is probably truthful.
The borough was disenfranchised by the Reform Act.
Members of Parliament 1584-1640 ParliamentFirst memberSecond memberParliament of 1584-1585Edward Montagu Edward PhelipsParliament of 1586-1587(Sir) Charles BlountNicholas MartinParliament of 1588-1589Richard SpencerFerdinand ClarkeParliament of 1593Sir Charles BlountThomas BurgoyneParliament of 1597-1598Sir Jocelyn BlountGeorge CrookeParliament of 1601Charles ListerJohn LangfordParliament of 1604-1611Sir Arthur Atye 1604Humphrey May from 1605Sir Richard StrodeAddled Parliament (1614)Thomas CreweSir Richard WhiteParliament of 1621-1622 Thomas Keightley Sir Thomas WiseHappy Parliament (1624-1625) Thomas Jermyn Sir Thomas ChekeCheek sat for Essex and was replaced by William StrodeUseless Parliament (1625) Sir Thomas Cheke William Strode Parliament of 1626-1627 William Strode Thomas WiseParliament of 1628-1629 William Strode Thomas WiseNo Parliament summoned 1629-1640
1640-1832
YearFirst memberFirst partySecond memberSecond partyApril 1640 William StrodeDied 1645 Parliamentarian John Harris November 1640 Sir Thomas CheekCheek was also elected for Harwich, which he chose to represent, and did not sit again for Bere AlstonParliamentarian December 1640Hugh PollardExpelled 9 December 1641 for involvement in a plan to intimidate Parliament by bringing the Royal army in the North to WestminsterRoyalist1641Charles PymParliamentarian1646Sir Francis DrakeParliamentarianDecember 1648Drake and Pym excluded in Pride's Purge - both seats vacant1653Bere Alston was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the ProtectorateJanuary 1659 Sir John MaynardParliamentarianElisha CrymesParliamentarianMay 1659Bere Alston was not represented in the restored RumpApril 1660John MaynardParliamentarian George Howard CavalierJune 1660 Richard Arundell Cavalier 1661 Sir John Maynard Parliamentarian George Howard Cavalier 1662 Richard Arundell Cavalier 1665 Joseph Maynard ParliamentarianFebruary 1679 Sir William Bastard WhigMarch 1679 Sir John Trevor Tory 1681 Sir Duncombe Colchester Tory John Elwill Whig 1685 Sir John Maynard Whig Sir Benjamin Bathurst Tory19 January 1689 John Elwill Whig31 January 1689 Sir John Holt ToryMay 1689 Sir John Trevor Tory 1690 Sir Francis Drake Whig John Swinfen Whig 1691 John Smith Whig 1694 Sir Henry Hobart WhigNovember 1695 John Elwill WhigDecember 1695 Sir Rowland Gwynne Whig 1698 John Hawles Whig 1698 James Montagu WhigJanuary 1701 Sir Rowland Gwynne Whig Sir Peter King WhigMarch 1701 William Cowper Whig 1705 Spencer Cowper Whig 1710 Lawrence Carter Whig 1715 Horatio Walpole Whig 1717 Edward Carteret Whig 1721 Philip CavendishCavendish was initially declared elected, but on petition the Commons found in favour of his opponent, Broderick, who was seated in his place Whig 1721 St John Brodrick Whig 1722 Sir John HobartHobart was also elected for St Ives, which he chose to represent, and did not sit for Bere Alston Whig 1724 Sir Robert Rich Whig 1727 Sir John HobartHobart was also elected for Norfolk, which he chose to represent, and did not sit for Bere Alston Whig Sir Francis DrakeDrake was also elected for Tavistock, which he chose to represent, and did not sit for Bere Alston Whig 1728 Sir Archer Croft Whig Lord Walden ToryFebruary 1734 William MordenMorden later changed his name to Harbord WhigMay 1734 Sir Francis Drake Whig John Bristow Whig 1740 Samuel Heathcote Whig 1741 Sir William Morden Whig 1747 Sir Francis Henry Drake Whig 1754 John Bristow Whigs 1761 Hon. George Hobart Whig 1771 Francis William Drake Whig 1774 Sir Francis Henry Drake WhigSeptember 1780 Lord Algernon PercyPercy was also elected for Northumberland, which he chose to represent, and did not sit for Bere Alston Tory The Lord Macartney WhigDecember 1780 Viscount Feilding Tory 1781 Laurence Cox Tory 1784 The Earl of Mornington Tory 1787 Charles Rainsford Tory 1788 John MitfordSir John Mitford from 1793 Tory 1790 Sir George Beaumont Tory 1796 William Mitford Tory 1799 Lord Lovaine Tory 1806 Hon. Josceline Percy Tory 1820 Henry Percy Tory 1825 Percy Ashburnham Tory 1830 Christopher Blackett ToryJanuary 1831 David Lyon ToryMay 1831 Lord Lovaine Tory1832 Constituency abolished
Election results Elections in the 1830s
Caused by Percy's succession to the peerage, becoming 5th Duke of Northumberland
Notes
References
Robert Beatson, "A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament" (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807) Michael Brock, 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) J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (London: Jonathan Cape, 1949) 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)