In the wake of the General Election Bury St Edmunds historian Martyn Taylor looks back at the town’s previous MPs

For over 500 years Bury St Edmunds was owned and controlled by the abbey, the mitred Abbot representing the town in parliament, but with the dissolution of the abbey in 1539 we were disenfranchised, with the Guildhall Feoffees in effect running the town for the next 75 years.

This was the situation until the last charter of three of James I/VI, issued in 1614, gave the town the right to send not one, but two MPs to parliament.

However, as his first charter had set up a corporation of 37 members, it fell these to elect the MPs. Comprising the privileged elite of the town, some no doubt were not adverse to bribery and corruption, leading to accusations of Bury being a ‘pocket-borough’.

The first two MPs to represent the town were Robert Crane and Sir Thomas Jermyn, the latter the shape of things to come because for much of the following two centuries it was the well-heeled aristocratic members of the Hervey family (Earls of Bristol) and the Fitzroys (Dukes of Grafton) who represented the town.

However, as the country became more aware of the politicians running the ‘show’ in London, disgruntlement set in until the government was forced to broaden the national franchise with the Great Reform Act of 1832. This widened considerably the number of the Bury constituency voters (men only) from 37 to 600! This year, a lawyer, Francis King Eagle, stood as candidate for the Radical Reform Party against the normal suspects of Lord Charles Fitzroy and Earl Jermyn, well-heeled local aristocrats. It was his intention to upset the status quo and there was even a chance Eagle could succeed. Despite accusations of vote-rigging and a recount on the grounds of alleged malpractice, in as much some voters were bribed, Eagle lost by a narrow margin in one of the two seats. He did, however, have the satisfaction of being elected as Bury’s first mayor in 1836.

With the Redistribution Act of 1884, whereby rotten boroughs such as Eye were got rid of, Bury lost one of its two MPs.

Over time, Bury was to be represented in parliament by businessmen, brewer Edward Greene and his son Sir Walter Greene notable examples, though the Hervey family was still in the background at different times.

An unusual situation arose in 1906 when Captain Frederick William Fane Hervey RN only served a year as MP as he was elevated to the peerage as the 4th Marquess of Bristol - he was the nephew of the third.

Strangely, the military backgrounds continued for several years to come in the 20th century. Lt Col the Hon Walter Edward Guiness, who certainly appreciated Bury, was elected to parliament for the town in 1907 until relinquishing that role in 1931. A ministerial vacancy had enabled him to join the Cabinet as Minister of Agriculture from November 1925 until June 1929, where his main success was in increasing the growth of sugar beet; the beet processing factory being built in his constituency. Retiring from the Commons in 1931, he became Baron Moyne on 21st January, 1932. Not sitting on his laurels in the House of Lords, while on governmental business in Cairo in 1944 he was sadly assassinated by two members of the Jewish Lehi terrorist gang.

Three other subsequent militarian titled MPs representing the town were: Colonel Frank Heilgers, from1931 until 1944 when he tragically died in a train crash; Major M Keatings then elected in a by-election until standing down in1945 for the General Election that swept Labour to power nationally, and Lt Col Clifton-Brown,1945-50.

William Aitkins then had a long tenure as the town’s MP from then to 1964, his successor even longer, Eldon Griffiths from 1964-92. Next was Richard Spring who was elected to serve from 1992-97 (he is now in the House of Lords as Lord Risby), with David Ruffley becoming MP from 1997-2015.

Jo Churchill continued the Conservative Party domination, serving the people of Bury and increasing her majority each election as time went by until standing down this year at the General Election. Considering the fact that women got the vote from 1918 (providing you were over 30 years old) it took nearly a hundred years before Bury got its first female Member of Parliament.

So who was elected to Parliament in this year’s General Election? Well it was a seismic result as the Labour Party candidate Peter Prinsley, a surgeon from Norwich, took the newly formed Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket constituency.

— Martyn Taylor is a local historian, author and Bury Tour Guide. His latest book, Bury St Edmunds Through Time Revisited, is widely available.