Wenlock Franchise

Wenlock Franchise in Shropshire

The Franchise of Wenlock is a hundred in Shropshire, named after the town of Much Wenlock, which it contains. It had a population of 34,817 in 2011.

It comprises the ancient parishes of:

• Badger
• Barrow
• Beckbury
• Benthall
• Broseley
• Deuxhill
• Ditton Priors (part)^*
• Eaton
• Hughley
• Linley
• Little Wenlock
• Madeley
• Monkhopton
• Much Wenlock
• Munslow (part)^*
• Posenhall (ex. par.)
• Rushbury (Gretton township)^*
• Shipton
• Stoke St Milborough (except Heath)^*
• Willey

^*: Remainder in Munslow Hundred.

History

The Franchise of Wenlock originates from unforeseen, probably unintended, effects of an early 12th-century declaration that all the lands of the Cluniac priory of Wenlock constituted one parish, although they never actually did. From 1198 the priory's liberty became known as Bourton Hundred, or Wenlock Hundred. In 1468, Edward IV granted a charter conferring on the town of Much Wenlock the status of a 'free borough incorporate forever', with the right to elect a member of Parliament. The intention was to make Much Wenlock town a borough, however, the charter defined the borough as the parish of Holy Trinity, which, according to the declaration of 1110, was the entire priory liberty. Thus the eccentric, scattered nature of the liberty and hundred also became a single borough. The parliamentary borough survived the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867, and was only finally disenfranchised with the wholesale redrawing of Parliamentary seats in 1885.

Outside links

• British History Online - The Liberty and Borough of Wenlock