Beverley has been the name of a parliamentary constituency in the East Riding of Yorkshire for three periods. From medieval times until 1869 it was a parliamentary borough consisting of a limited electorate of property owners of its early designated borders within the market town of Beverley, which returned (elected) two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons of the English and Welsh-turned-UK Parliament during that period (sometimes called burgesses). A form of a Beverley seat was revived for a single-member county constituency created in 1950, abolished in 1955, and similarly between the 1983 and 1992 general elections inclusive after which the area was largely incorporated into one 1997-created seat Beverley and Holderness; the remainder of the seat contributed to two other late 20th century-created seats. History 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 Reform Act of 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 third Act in 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 a new Bribery Act 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, an Act of Parliament was passed permanently depriving Beverley of the right to return Members of Parliament, abolishing the constituency and incorporating it within