The Sessional Divisions of Hinckford South (Braintree Bench) and Witham; and
Parts of the Sessional Divisions of Hinckford South (Halstead Bench), Lexden, and Winstree.[5]
Formally known as the Eastern or Maldon Division of Essex, incorporating the abolished Parliamentary Borough of Maldon and extending northwards to include the towns of Witham, Braintree and Halstead.
1918–1950
The Municipal Borough of Maldon;
The Urban Districts of Braintree, Burnham-on-Crouch, and Witham;
The Rural District of Maldon; and
The Rural District of Braintree (including the detached part of the parish of Inworth which was wholly surrounded by the parishes of Great Braxted and Kelvedon).[6]
Area to the south between the rivers Crouch and Blackwater, including Burnham-on-Crouch, transferred from the South-Eastern Division of Essex. The northernmost area, including Halstead, and eastern fringes transferred to Saffron Walden and Colchester respectively. Other minor changes.
1950–1959
The Municipal Borough of Maldon;
The Urban Districts of Braintree and Bocking, Burnham-on-Crouch, and Witham;
The Rural District of Maldon; and
Part of the Rural District of Braintree.[7]
Marginal changes as a result of changes to local authority boundaries.
1959–1974
As above but the part of the Rural District of Braintree was altered by the County of Essex (Braintree and Lexden and Winstree Rural Districts) Confirmation Order 1955.[7]
Marginal changes as a result of changes to local authority boundaries.
1974–1983
The Municipal Borough of Maldon;
The Urban District of Burnham-on-Crouch; and
The Rural Districts of Maldon and Rochford.[8]
Major reconfiguration, as Braintree and Bocking, and Witham, together with the parts of the Rural District of Braintree, formed the basis for the new constituency of Braintree. The Rural District of Rochford was transferred from South East Essex.
Constituency abolished for the 1983 general election. Southern area, comprising the former Rural District of Rochford, included in the new constituency of Rochford. Remainder formed the majority of the new constituency of South Colchester and Maldon.
Map of boundaries 2010-2024
2010–2024
The District of Maldon wards of Althorne, Burnham-on-Crouch North, Burnham-on-Crouch South, Heybridge East, Heybridge West, Maldon East, Maldon North, Maldon South, Maldon West, Mayland, Purleigh, Southminster, and Tillingham; and
The Borough of Chelmsford wards of Bicknacre and East and West Hanningfield, Little Baddow, Danbury and Sandon,Rettendon and Runwell, South Hanningfield, Stock and Margaretting, South Woodham Chetwood and Collingwood, and South Woodham Elmwood and Woodville.[9]
Following the Boundary Commission's Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, Parliament radically altered some constituencies and created new ones to allow for changes in population. The majority of the former Maldon and East Chelmsford constituency formed the basis of this new seat for 2010. The constituency retained Maldon and Burnham-on-Crouch, but lost the Chelmsford parts to the re-established Chelmsford seat and the new constituency of Witham. To compensate, wards in and around South Woodham Ferrers were added from the former Rayleigh constituency, and Margaretting was added from the former West Chelmsford constituency.
Maldon was originally a Parliamentary borough in Essex, first represented in the House of Commons in 1332; it elected two MPs until 1868, and one from 1868 until 1885. In that year the borough was abolished but the name was transferred to a county division of Essex, which continued with some boundary changes until 1983.
Maldon borough (1332–1885)
Boundaries and franchise before the Reform Act
Until the Great Reform Act of 1832, the borough consisted of the three parishes of the town of Maldon, a small market town and port on the coast of Essex.
Maldon had been a municipal as well as a Parliamentary borough. Its first charter dated from the reign of Henry II, and at one time the corporation had the sole right to elect the town's MPs. From 1701 at the latest, however, the right to vote was exercised by the freemen of the town, whether or not resident within the borough; and, unusually, honorary freemen and those acquiring the freedom by purchase were also entitled to vote in Maldon. This had several consequences. The electorate in Maldon was much bigger than was usual in a town of that size — in the first half of the 18th century, the number of qualified voters was generally about 800 (the majority of whom did not live in Maldon). It also meant that the town corporation, with the power to create freemen and therefore voters, was in a position to gerrymander elections if it so wished. This might, as was the case in some other boroughs, have ended in one interest gaining control of the corporation and turning Maldon into a pocket borough; in fact, however, Maldon instead stayed independent but venal, and gaining election there tended to be an expensive business. Sometimes it was not merely a case of bribing the voters: in 1690, it was recorded in the House of Commons journals that the wives and daughters of Maldon freemen were being bribed at election time as well.
One interest that was firmly established by the middle of the 18th century, however, was that of the government, which ensured that lucrative posts in the customs house were reserved for loyally-voting freemen, and also attempted to have government supporters – often strangers to the town – elected to vacancies on the corporation. It was generally taken for granted that the government candidates would normally be elected.
The Strutt ascendancy
However, in the 1750s the government's control of Maldon weakened, and a prominent local Tory, John Strutt, found he had enough influence with the voters to sway elections. He secured the election of several of his friends over the years and eventually, in 1774, successfully stood for election himself.
In the meanwhile, however, there was a dramatic change in the system. In 1763 one of the sitting MPs, Strutt's friend Bamber Gascoyne, was appointed to the Board of Trade and therefore had to stand for re-election at Maldon. Gascoyne's opponent, John Huske, accused him of threatening that any freemen working in the customs house who did not vote for him would be dismissed (which, by that time, would have been an illegal threat).[11] Although the Prime Minister, George Grenville, denied having authorised Gascoyne to make any such threat and Gascoyne denied having made it, it seems clear it was believed in Maldon and the corporation sided with Huske, creating enough new freemen to ensure Gascoyne was defeated. Both sides started actions for bribery, but Gascoyne had decided on more drastic action. He took out a writ against the corporation, and the Courts ordered the ousting of the majority of members; eventually, in 1768, the corporation was dissolved by judicial order.
For half a century the duties of returning officer were transferred to the High Sheriff of Essex. However, the Sheriff could not assume the corporation's function of swearing in new freemen, and Strutt's influence was thus entirely secured against any possibility of new voters being created to outvote him. However, there was a problem: by the time of the general election of 1807 the number of remaining qualified voters had dwindled to 58, and the constituency was in imminent danger of quite literally dying out. Yet there were more than 800 new freemen who were only barred from voting because there was nobody to swear them in. Finally a new charter was granted, in time to enfranchise them for the election of 1810.
Matters then returned to normal in Maldon for the remaining 22 years before the Reform Act. Strutt's son, Joseph Holden Strutt, retained much of the influence that his father had wielded, being generally considered to be able to nominate one of the two MPs or to choose to sit himself; as he exercised all government patronage in Maldon, he was well-placed to secure the other seat as well. But when the voters proved uncooperative, they could easily enough be overruled: at the 1826 election, the Corporation secured the result it wanted by admitting another thousand new freemen in time for them to vote: 3,113 freemen voted, of whom only 251 were Maldon residents.
After the Reform Act
In the initial drafts of the Reform Bill, Maldon was to lose one of its two seats. It was eventually spared this fate, but its population of 3,831 in 1831 left it very close to the borderline. The eventual Reform Act extended the borough by adding the neighbouring parish of Heybridge, increasing the population to 4,895; but with only 716 qualified voters under the new franchise its electorate was less than a quarter of what it had previously been. The constituency was a highly marginal one, victory rarely being secured by more than a handful of votes. In 1852, only 40 votes separated first place from fourth, and the second Tory's majority over his Whig opponent was only 6; after the losing candidates petitioned, alleging corruption, the election was declared void[12] and Maldon's right to representation was suspended while a Royal Commission investigated. However, no major scandal was uncovered and (unlike some other boroughs similarly investigated at the same period) its right to vote was reinstated and a writ for a new by-election which took place in 1854 was issued.[13]
Maldon county constituency (1885–1983)
The Second Reform Act, implemented in 1868, took seats from most of the smallest boroughs, and Maldon's representation was halved; but it was still too small, and at the election of 1885 the borough was abolished altogether. The county division into which the town was placed, however, was named after the town. (Officially, until 1918, it was the Eastern (or Maldon) Division of Essex; after that, simply the Maldon division.) As well as Maldon itself this contained the towns of Braintree, Halstead and Witham. Once again this constituency was a marginal one — almost the only rural county seat in the South East at this period not to be safely Conservative. The strength of the Liberal vote seems to have been based partly on the strength of Nonconformism in the Halstead area, but also on trade unionism among the agricultural labourers (which elsewhere in Essex was offset by a strongly Tory maritime vote which Maldon lacked).
Maldon in Essex, 1918–1945
After 1918, boundary changes added Burnham on Crouch and the surrounding district, but the constituency was still a rural one, with 35% of the occupied male population employed in the agricultural sector at the time of the 1921 census. The Labour Party rather than the Liberals were now the Conservatives' main opponents. When the Liberal Party split in 1922, Maldon's Liberals split as well, and the constituency was the first where the Lloyd George Liberals set up a constituency association, though this was apparently without the sanction of the national party headquarters and the association is not recorded as having organised any activities. In 1923 no Liberal candidate stood at all, and Labour captured the seat for the first time. The Conservatives retook the seat in 1924, holding it until the 1940s, but it was won by Tom Driberg in a wartime by-election; yet his hold on the seat was rarely secure and he eventually moved to sit for a safer seat. Thereafter Maldon remained Conservative until its abolition, though at first by the narrowest of margins.
The Maldon constituency was abolished in the boundary changes which came into effect at the 1983 election, being divided between the new Colchester South and Maldon and Rochford constituencies.
Members of Parliament
MPs 1332–1640
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (August 2008)
Driberg was elected in 1942 as an Independent Labour candidate, but took the Labour Party whip in January 1945, and stood in the 1945 election as a Labour Party candidate.
The 1852 election was declared void on petition due to bribery and treating,[44] and the writ was suspended in March 1853.[12] A by-election was held in August 1854 to fill the vacancy.
Another General Election was required to take place before the end of 1915. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to take place and by July 1914, the following candidates had been selected;
^A county constituency (for the purposes of election expenses and type of returning officer).
^As with all constituencies, the constituency elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election at least every five years.
^Comyns was re-elected in 1715, but his election was declared void because he refused to take the oath that he met the property qualification to be elected. Tufnell, was seated in his place.
^On petition, Gaskell was adjudged not to have been duly elected, and his opponent, Western, was seated in his place.
^Peacocke changed his name to Sandford during the Parliament of 1865.
References
^"The 2023 Review of Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries in England – Volume two: Constituency names, designations and composition – Eastern". Boundary Commission for England. Retrieved 26 June 2024.
^"Maldon | History of Parliament Online". www.histparl.ac.uk. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
^"Representation of the People Act 1867" (PDF). Schedule A.
^ abGreat Britain, Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales. The public general acts. unknown library. Proprietors of the Law Journal Reports, 1884.
^Fraser, Hugh (1918). The Representation of the people act, 1918 : with explanatory notes. University of California Libraries. London : Sweet and Maxwell.
^ abCraig, Fred W. S. (1972). Boundaries of parliamentary constituencies 1885-1972;. Chichester: Political Reference Publications. ISBN 0900178094. OCLC 539011.
^"The Parliamentary Constituencies (England) Order 1970". www.legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved 28 August 2019.
^"The Parliamentary Constituencies (England) Order 2007". www.legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved 28 August 2019.
^"The Parliamentary Constituencies Order 2023". Schedule I Part 2 Eastern region.
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrStooks Smith, Henry. (1973) [1844-1850]. Craig, F. W. S. (ed.). The Parliaments of England (2nd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. pp. 110–112. ISBN 0-900178-13-2.
^ abEscott, Margaret (2009). "BARRETT LENNARD, Thomas (1788–1856), of Belhus, Aveley, Essex and Hyde Park Terrace, Mdx". The History of Parliament. Retrieved 27 May 2018.
^ abFisher, David R. (2009). "Maldon". The History of Parliament. Retrieved 27 May 2018.
^ abHall, Catherine; Draper, Nicholas; McClelland, Keith; Donington, Katie; Lang, Rachel (2014). "Appendix 4: MPs 1832-80 in the compensation records". Legacies of British Slave-ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 292. ISBN 978-1-107-04005-2. Retrieved 22 April 2018.
^ ab"Witham". Essex Standard. 6 August 1847. p. 2. Retrieved 27 May 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^ ab"Essex Elections". Morning Post. 26 December 1832. p. 2. Retrieved 27 May 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^"Maldon MP Sir John Whittingdale re-selected by council". Maldon Standard. 4 April 2023. Retrieved 2 December 2023.
^ https://www.reformparty.uk/maldon-constituency. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
^ https://twitter.com/EofELabour/status/1767930158076289275. Retrieved 13 March 2023. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
^"Simon Burwood runs to be Maldon's Lib Dem MP". Maldon Liberal Democrats. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
^"Your Green candidates for Parliament in the next election". Brentwood & Chelmsford Green Party. Retrieved 27 April 2024.
^"Notional results for a UK general election on 12 December 2019". Rallings & Thrasher, Professor David Denver (Scotland), Nicholas Whyte (NI) for Sky News, PA, BBC News and ITV News. UK Parliament. Retrieved 11 July 2024.
^"Maldon Parliamentary constituency". BBC News. BBC. Retrieved 19 November 2019.
^"Election Data 2015". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 17 October 2015. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
^"Peter Edwards". Labour Party (UK). Archived from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 23 November 2014.
^"Zoe O'Connell". Liberal Democrats (UK). Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 24 May 2021.
^"Green Party announces parliamentary candidate for Maldon constituency". Witham and Braintree Green Party. Archived from the original on 5 February 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
^"Election Data 2010". Electoral Calculus. Archived from the original on 26 July 2013. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
^"Election Intelligence". Morning Post. 17 August 1854. p. 4. Retrieved 27 May 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^"The Elections". Blackburn Standard. 23 August 1854. p. 2. Retrieved 27 May 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^"To the Electors of the Borough of Maldon". Chelmsford Chronicle. 29 April 1859. p. 1. Retrieved 27 May 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^"Electors of Maldon". Essex Herald. 3 February 1874. p. 1. Retrieved 6 January 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^ abcdefghBritish Parliamentary Election Results 1885-1918, F. W. S. Craig.
^ abcdefThe Liberal Year Book, 1907.
^Debrett's House of Commons & Judicial Bench, 1886.
^ abDebrett's House of Commons & Judicial Bench, 1901
^ abDebrett's House of Commons & Judicial Bench, 1916
^ abFisher, David R. "Maldon". The History of Parliament. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
Sources
Robert Beatson, A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807) [1]
D. Brunton & D. H. Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
John Cannon, Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972)
Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808) [2]
The Constitutional Year Book for 1913 (London: National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, 1913)
F. W. S. Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1832-1885 (2nd edition, Aldershot: Parliamentary Research Services, 1989)
Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918-1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
Michael Kinnear, The British Voter (London: BH Batsford, Ltd, 1968)
J. Holladay Philbin, Parliamentary Representation 1832 - England and Wales (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
Edward Porritt and Annie G Porritt, The Unreformed House of Commons (Cambridge University Press, 1903)
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)