the civil war, many were relatives of the clergy; then for two hundred years after the restoration there was always a Fitzwilliam, or a Fitzwilliam nominee, sitting as member for Peterborough, making it a Whig stronghold. Representation was reduced to one member under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. One of the earliest incumbents, Sir Walter Mildmay, member for Peterborough from 1553 to 1554, subsequently became Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1559 to 1589. Later, in the nineteenth century, William Elliot, Whig member from 1802 until his death in 1819, was Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1806 and 1807; the Hon. William Lamb (later the 2nd Viscount Melbourne), Whig member from 1816 to 1819, became Home Secretary in 1830 then Prime Minister from 1834 to 1841; and Sir James Scarlett (later the 1st Baron Abinger), Whig member from 1819 to 1830, was, from 1827, Attorney General for England and Wales. From the formal merger of the breakaway Liberal Unionists with the Conservatives in 1912 and the absorption of rural North Northamptonshire in 1918, Peterborough has been predominantly Conservative; however, it has elected Labour MPs several times from 1929 onwards. Lord Burghley, as he then was, succeeded the socialist writer and illustrator, Frank Horrabin, who was born in the city and elected under the leadership of Ramsay MacDonald in 1929. David Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter, winner of 400m hurdles at the 1928 Summer Olympics, member of the International Olympic Committee for 48 years and chairman of the organising committee of the 1948 Summer Olympics, was the Conservative member from 1931 to 1943. In 1966, in one of the closest polls in UK history, Sir Harmar Nicholls held the seat by three votes after seven recounts. Nicholls was the Conservative member from 1950 to 1974, when he lost in the October election of that year to Labour's Michael Ward, having held on by just 22 votes after four recounts in the election eight months earlier. The growth in the New Town from 1967 may in part account for Labour's victory here in 1974. In 1979, however, Ward lost the seat to the Conservative Brian Mawhinney, who would represent Peterborough for the entire duration of the incoming Conservative government and was a Cabinet Minister and Conservative Party Chairman during the second Major government (1992–97). The seat was made more competitive in the 1997 boundary review by the formation