Kinross-shire (UK Parliament constituency)

Kinross-shire was a county constituency of the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1708 until 1800, and of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832.

The constituency

Kinross-shire was Scotland's second-smallest county, and was paired as an alternating constituency with neighbouring Clackmannanshire. The freeholders of Kinross-shire elected one Member of Parliament to one Parliament, while those of Clackmannanshire elected a Member to the next.

Abolition

The Representation of the People (Scotland) Act 1832 abolished the alternating constituencies. Kinross-shire was merged with Clackmannanshire into the single constituency of Clackmannanshire and Kinross-shire, electing one Member between them to each Parliament.

Members of Parliament

References

Kinross-shire

The County of Kinross is a historic county in eastern Scotland, administratively part of Perth and Kinross. Surrounding its largest settlement and county town of Kinross, the county borders Perthshire to the north, Fife to the east and south, and Clackmannanshire to the west.

Scotland's second smallest county, Kinross-shire is dominated by Loch Leven, a large inland loch, with two islands and an internationally important nature reserve. One of the islands contains a castle, where Mary, Queen of Scots was once held prisoner. Much of the land in Kinross-shire is fertile agricultural land and most of the inhabitants were originally employed in farming. The gently-rolling farmland surrounding Loch Leven gives way to steep, more rugged terrain at the outskirts of the county.

History

The shire or sheriffdom of Kinross was formed in the thirteenth century when the two parishes of Kinross and Orwell were removed from the Fothriff area of Fife. Cleish, Portmoak and Tullibole were added by act of parliament in 1685. As local government in Scotland evolved, Kinross-shire gained a county council in 1890, which was later amalgamated with Perth County Council under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929.

Kinross-shire (Parliament of Scotland constituency)

Before the Acts of Union 1707, the barons of the shire of Kinross elected commissioners to represent them in the unicameral Parliament of Scotland and in the Convention of the Estates.

History of the constituency

The small barons and freeholders were first authorised to elect "commissioners of the shire" to represent them in Parliament by an act of King James I in 1428; the sheriffdom of Kinross was to be represented by one commissioner. This act, however, remained inoperative, and the representation of the shires was not established until 1587.

For many years the majority of Kinross-shire was owned by the Earl of Morton and the Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who already sat in Parliament as peers. There was therefore no commissioner for the shire, except during the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland when the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross were jointly represented by one Member of Parliament at Westminster from 1654 to 1659. This situation continued until the 1670s when Lord Morton's estate of Kinross, comprising most of the shire, was purchased by Sir William Bruce of Balcaskie. Having been elected commissioner, Bruce was allowed to represent the shire according to former custom, by Royal Letter of 13 August 1681.