From its first known general election in 1542 until 1918, the constituency consisted of a number of boroughs within the historic county of
Denbighshire in Wales. The seat should not be confused with the county constituency of
Denbighshire, which existed from the sixteenth century until 1885. The county was divided into
East Denbighshire and
West Denbighshire between 1885 and 1918. After 1918 Denbighshire was represented in Parliament by two single member county constituencies, which included all the boroughs formerly in the Denbigh District of Boroughs. One of these was
Wrexham, but the other was the
Denbigh division of Denbighshire.
Denbigh (1535–1832) On the basis of information from several volumes of the
History of Parliament, it is apparent that the history of the borough representation from Wales and Monmouthshire is more complicated than that of the English boroughs. The
Laws in Wales Act 1535 (
26 Hen. 8. c. 26) provided for a single borough seat for each of 11 of the 12 Welsh counties and Monmouthshire. The legislation was ambiguous as to which communities were enfranchised. The county towns were awarded a seat, but this in some fashion represented all the ancient boroughs of the county as the others were required to contribute to the members wages. It was not clear if the burgesses of the contributing boroughs could take part in the election. The only election under the original scheme was for the 1542 parliament. It seems that only burgesses from the county towns actually took part. The
Parliament Act 1543 (
35 Hen. 8. c. 11) confirmed that the contributing boroughs could send representatives to take part in the election at the county town. As far as can be told from surviving indentures of returns, the degree to which the out boroughs participated varied, but by the end of the sixteenth century all the seats had some participation from them at some elections at least. The original scheme was modified by later legislation and decisions of the House of Commons (which were sometimes made with no regard to precedent or evidence: for example in 1728 it was decided that only the freemen of the borough of Montgomery could participate in the election for that seat, thus disenfranchising the freemen of Llanidloes, Welshpool and Llanfyllin). In the case of Denbighshire, the county town was Denbigh. The out boroughs were
Chirk, Holt, and Ruthin. At some point, between 1603 and 1690, Chirk ceased to participate. In 1690–1790 the freemen of the three remaining boroughs were entitled to vote. There were about 1,400 electors in 1715 (including non-resident freemen). This number was reduced to about 400 after 1744, when only resident freemen were allowed to vote. The electorate increased to about 500 in the 1754–1790 period.
Denbigh Boroughs (1832–1918) This was a district of boroughs constituency, which grouped a number of
parliamentary boroughs in Denbighshire into one single member constituency. The voters from each participating borough cast ballots, which were added together over the whole district to decide the result of the poll. The enfranchised communities in this district, from 1832, were the four boroughs of
Denbigh,
Holt,
Ruthin, and
Wrexham. The exact boundaries of the parliamentary boroughs in the district were altered by the
Parliamentary Boundaries Act 1868, but the general nature of the constituency was unchanged. There were no further boundary changes in the 1885 redistribution of parliamentary seats.
After 1918 In the redistribution of seats which took place at the
1918, the Denbigh Boroughs constituency was abolished, along with the two county divisions of
East Denbighshire and
West Denbighshire. They were replaced by a new
county division called
Denbigh, which comprised the whole of the county, except for the
Municipal Borough of Wrexham and part of the
Chirk Rural District which formed the
Wrexham division. The local authorities in the Denbigh division were the Municipal Boroughs of Denbigh and Ruthin; the
Urban Districts of
Abergele and
Pensarn,
Colwyn Bay and
Colwyn,
Llangollen, and
Llanrwst; as well as the
Rural Districts of
Llangollen,
Llanrwst,
Llansillin,
Ruthin,
St Asaph (Denbigh),
Uwchaled, part of Chirk, and the part of
Glan Conway not in
Caernarvonshire. ==Members of Parliament==