Bewdley was the name of a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1605 until 1950. Until 1885 it was a parliamentary borough in Worcestershire, represented by one Member of Parliament; the name was then transferred to a county constituency from 1885 until 1950. Its MPs included the former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who represented the seat from 1908 to 1937, and afterwards took the name of the constituency as part of his title when he was raised to the peerage.

History

The unreformed borough (1614-1832)

Bewdley was enfranchised in 1614, being one of only a handful of English boroughs electing one rather than two MPs. The borough consisted of part of Ribbesford parish in Worcestershire, of which the market town of Bewdley was the main settlement. In 1831, the population of the borough was 3,908, and contained 891 houses.

The right to vote was exercised by the bailiff and burgesses (members of the town corporation, who need not necessarily be resident in the borough); this normally amounted to only 13 voters, though the report to Parliament before the Reform Act recorded the electorate as 42. (The discrepancy is perhaps academic, since it was many years since there had been a contested election.)

In the second half of the 17th century, the inhabitants at large made several attempts to secure the right to vote by petitioning against the election results, but in each case the Commons upheld the restrictive provisions of the original grant. The corporation were entitled to nominate their own successors, meaning in theory that their power was self-sustaining. However, in the early 18th century this was circumvented by issuing a new Royal charter for the borough that extinguished the existing corporation and appointed a new one. In 1708 the Whig government had a new charter issued to eject the existing Tory-dominated corporation, and at that year's election both the old and new corporations attempted to exercise their right to vote; the Whig majority in the Commons upheld the new charter and seated the Whig candidate. After the 1710 election, however, the Whig government had lost its Commons majority and the new House declared the charter of 1708 void and the Tory candidate victorious. However, the repeal of the charter could only be secured through recourse to the courts, and although an action was begun it appears that the various parties made up their political differences before it reached a conclusion, and all sides eventually acquiesced in the new corporation's legitimacy.

For most of Bewdley's existence as a borough until the Reform Act, the corporation (and therefore the choice of its MP) was under the influence of one or other prominent local families. In the mid-17th century this control was exercised by the Foley family, but after they acquired a hold on nearby Droitwich (which elected two MPs) their interest in Bewdley seems to have waned - possibly because in Droitwich they were able to secure legal ownership of the voting rights, whereas in Bewdley they had to proceed by bribery. (In 1677, the Commons upheld a petition against Thomas Foley's election on grounds of bribery, and declared his opponent duly elected in his place.) At later periods the "patronage" was held alternately by the Lytteltons and the Winningtons; but from 1806 the influence passed to a local attorney, Wilson Roberts.

The reformed borough (1832-1885)

Under the Reform Act 1832, which liberalised the franchise, Bewdley's borders were also extended to take in the whole of Ribbesford parish; this brought six hamlets into the borough, and almost doubled the population to 7,500. This new constituency had 337 electors qualified to vote in 1832, and the second extension of the franchise with a further expansion of the borough boundaries in 1867 increased this to just over 1,000. At this period, elections were sometimes uncontested when the candidate was the head of the locally influential Winnington family, but otherwise were generally close-run affairs with the winning majority frequently under 20.

The county division (1885-1950)

The borough was too small to retain separate representation after the Third Reform Act, and was abolished with effect from the general election of 1885; however, the Bewdley name was transferred to the new county division in which the town was placed, formally called The Western or Bewdley Division of Worcestershire. This new constituency comprised the whole of the western half of the county, largely rural but including the town of Great Malvern, which contributed about a third of the population; the Worcester freeholders (who were entitled to a county vote even though their property was within the borough boundaries) also voted here. It was a very safe Conservative seat. Alfred Baldwin was elected as MP in 1892, holding the seat until his death in 1908. He was succeeded by his son, Stanley, who later became Prime Minister while still Bewdley's MP.

The constituency (now simply the Worcestershire, Bewdley Division) was redrawn in 1918, its southern end being transferred to the Evesham seat and acquiring instead part of the north-western corner of the county including Stourport, previously in the abolished Droitwich division. These changes had little effect on the political complexion of Bewdley, and Baldwin generally secured twice as many votes as his nearest opponent, when the constituency was contested at all - indeed, in three of the five elections he fought as Prime Minister Bewdley returned him unopposed.

The Bewdley division was abolished with effect from the general election of 1950, being divided between the Kidderminster constituency (in which Bewdley itself was placed) and Worcestershire South (which included Malvern).

Members of Parliament

Bewdley borough 1614-1885

Year		Member	Party
	12 James I	Sir Thomas Edmonds
	21 James I	Ralph Clare
	1640	Sir Henry Herbert	Royalist
	August 1642	Herbert disabled from sitting - seat vacant
	1647	William Hopkins (died before taking his seat)
	1648	Nicholas Lechmere
	1653	Bewdley was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate
	January 1659	Edward Pytts
	May 1659	Nicholas Lechmere
	April 1660	Thomas Foley
	1661	Sir Henry Herbert
	1673	Thomas Foley
	1677	Henry Herbert
	1679	Philip Foley
	1685	Sir Charles Lyttelton, Bt
	1689	Henry Herbert	Whig
	1694	Salwey Winnington	Tory
	1708	Hon. Henry Herbert	Whig
	1709	Charles Cornwall	Tory
	October 1710	Anthony Lechmere	Whig
	December 1710	Salwey Winnington	Tory
	1715	Grey James Grove	Whig
	1722	Crewe Offley	Whig
	1734	William Bowles	Whig
	1735	Phineas Bowles	Whig
	1741	William Bowles	Whig
	1748	William Henry Lyttelton	Tory
	1755	William Finch
	1761	Sir Edward Winnington, 1st Bt	Whig
	1768	Hon. Thomas Lyttelton	Tory
	1769	Sir Edward Winnington, 1st Bt	Whig
	1774	William Henry Lyttelton	Tory
	1790	Hon. George Fulke Lyttelton	Tory
	1796	Miles Peter Andrews	Tory
	1814	Charles Edward Wilson	Tory
	1818	Wilson Aylesbury Roberts	Tory
	1832	Sir Thomas Winnington, 3rd Bt	Whig
	1837	Thomas Winnington	Whig
	1847	Thomas James Ireland	Conservative
	1848	Viscount Mandeville	Conservative
	1852	Sir Thomas Winnington, 4th Bt	Liberal
	1868	Sir Richard Atwood Glass	Conservative
	1869	John Cunliffe Pickersgill Cunliffe	Conservative
	1869	Augustus Henry Archibald Anson	Liberal
	1874	Charles Harrison	Liberal
	1880	Enoch Baldwin	Liberal
1885		Borough abolished - name transferred to county division

Bewdley county division 1885-1950

Year		Member	Party
	1885	Sir Edmund Lechmere, Bt	Conservative
	1892	Alfred Baldwin	Conservative
	1908 by-election	Rt Hon Stanley Baldwin	Conservative
	1937 by-election	Roger Conant	Conservative
1950		constituency abolished: see Kidderminster & South Worcestershire

Notes

References

• 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) [289355]
• F. W. S. Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1832-1885 (2nd edition, Aldershot: Parliamentary Research Services, 1989)
• F W S Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949 (Glasgow: Political Reference Publications, 1969)
• T H B Oldfield, The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1816)
• Henry Pelling, Social Geography of British Elections 1885-1910 (London: Macmillan, 1967)
• J Holladay Philbin, Parliamentary Representation 1832 - England and Wales (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
• Frederic A Youngs, jr, Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, Vol II (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991)