The parliamentary borough Beverley was first represented in the
Model Parliament of 1295, but after 1306 it did not elect members again until 1563. Thereafter it maintained two members until being disfranchised in 1870. The borough consisted of the three parishes of the town of Beverley, and by 1831 had a population of 7,432 and 1,928 houses. The right of election was vested not in the population as a whole, but in the
freemen of the borough, whether resident or not; at the contested election of
1826, 2,276 votes were cast. The borough was large enough to retain two members under the compromise of the
Great Reform Act 1832 when its boundaries were slightly extended to include some outlying fringes, increasing the population by roughly 800. The first of three progressive acts, by the
Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 were such boroughs more equally thus fairly
apportioned. For much of the borough's history, elections in Beverley were notorious for their corruption. In 1727, one of the victorious candidates was unseated on petition, his agents were imprisoned and Parliament passed the
Bribery Act 1729 as a result. Between 1857 and 1868 six petitions were lodged against election results, of which three succeeded in voiding the election and unseating one or more of the victors. After the
1868 election, the writ for the borough was suspended and a
royal commission appointed to inquire into the conduct of elections in Beverley; when it reported that it had found proof of extensive bribery, the
Bridgwater and Beverley Disfranchisement Act 1870 (
33 & 34 Vict. c. 21) was passed permanently depriving Beverley of the right to return Members of Parliament, abolishing the constituency and incorporating it within the
East Riding constituency. The novelist
Anthony Trollope was one of the defeated candidates in the final corrupt election for which Beverley was disfranchised. He drew on his experience directly for his description of the Percycross election in his novel
Ralph the Heir, and also told the story in his
Autobiography. He found that corruption was taken for granted and that the price of a vote was between 15 shillings and £1. His unsuccessful campaign cost him £400.
Sir Henry Edwards and
Edmund Hegan Kennard were those candidates deemed elected Members of Parliament in this final contest for the constituency.
1950 to 1955 The Beverley constituency which existed from 1950 to 1955 was a predominantly rural one. Under the boundary revisions introduced by the
Representation of the People Act 1948, which came into effect at the
1950 general election, the three existing
county constituencies of the
East Riding were abolished, and the county was divided into two new constituencies, each named after their biggest towns –
Bridlington and
Beverley. The new Beverley constituency comprised the western half of the Riding. This encompassed parts of all three of the county's previously existing constituencies (
Buckrose,
Holderness and
Howdenshire). The Beverley constituency was abolished in further boundary changes implemented at the
1955 general election, being divided between the new
Haltemprice and
Howden seats.
1983 to 1997 Beverley again became a constituency name in
1983, this time for a constituency mostly suburban in character. The new constituency replaced, and strongly resembled, the
Haltemprice constituency which had been introduced in 1955: its main components apart from Beverley were the prosperous suburbs to the north and west of
Hull, such as
Cottingham,
Anlaby and
Kirk Ella. The Beverley constituency was abolished in
1997 general election, Beverley itself moving to the new
Beverley and Holderness constituency. ==Boundaries==