Carmarthenshire

County

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

No names known for 1542

Elections

DateCandidate
1545RICHARD DEVEREUX
1547(SIR) RICHARD DEVEREUX
prob. late in 1547JOHN PERROT vice Devereux, deceased1
1553 (Mar.)HENRY JONES I
1553 (Oct.)HENRY JONES I
1554 (Apr.)(SIR) HENRY JONES I
1554 (Nov.)(SIR) HENRY JONES I
1555RICHARD JONES
1558(SIR) THOMAS JONES

Main Article

The county of Carmarthen was consolidated and enlarged by the Act of Union. It was further enlarged in 1543 by a proviso in the Act (34 and 35 Hen. VIII, c.26) transferring the lordships of Laugharne and Llanstephan from Pembrokeshire. Although the Act of Union did not name Carmarthen as the meeting place of the county court, the town was the traditional venue and all the elections for the knights of Carmarthenshire took place there save in the autumn of 1553 when the court met at Llandovery in the north-east of the county. No return exists for the Parliament of 1542, when the election was contested and Richard Devereux, the son and heir apparent of the 3rd Lord Ferrers, chamberlain for South Wales, was one of the candidates. The conduct of Devereux’s supporters was referred by his adversary to the Privy Council which remitted the complaint to the council in the marches for investigation. The election in 1545 was likewise contested, Devereux being chosen by a majority of 80. Indentures survive for the Parliaments between 1545 and 1555 with the exception of April 1554, those for 1545, 1547 and 1555 being written in English. The contracting parties are the sheriff of Carmarthenshire and about 25 named electors ‘and freeholders’. In 1555 the election was held between eight and nine o’clock in the morning.2

The Elizabethan antiquary George Owen relates how the knight for Carmarthenshire in 1542 worked with Sir Thomas Jones of Abermarlais, then sitting for Pembrokeshire, in obtaining the transfer of the lordship of Laugharne and Llanstephan. If the unnamed knight was Richard Devereux his cooperation with Jones suggests that the two families divided the representation between them, Devereux sitting until his death in 1547 and Jones, his sons Henry and Richard and stepson John Perrot monopolizing it until the 1570s. Cotton production in the county was regulated by an Act of 1543 (34 and 35 Hen. VIII, c.11).3

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes

  • 1. Hatfield 207.
  • 2. Lloyd, Carm. i. 208, 216, 220; ii. 8; C219/18C/169, 19/147, 20/179, 21/221, 23/188, 24/232.
  • 3. Desc. Pemb. (Cymmrod. rec. ser. i), iii. 113-14.