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^v I ^"5 .a?'

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

FROM THE BEQUEST OF

CHARLES SUMNER

cuss OF IS30

Senator from MasttukuseUt

FOB BOOKS ULATINC TO POIinCS AND RNB AKR

!

I

UNREFORMED HOUSE OF. COMMONS/)

PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION BEFORE 183a

BY

EDWARD PORRITT

ASSISTED BY

ANNIE G. PORRITT

VOLUME<I "

ENGLAND AND WALES

CAMBRIDGE

at the University Press

1903

<t/ /^s-^^

^RO"'CGi%%v^

PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PREFACE.

THESE volumes are concerned with Parliamentary representa- tion in England and Wales, in Scotland, and in Ireland before 1832, My aim has been to trace the changes that repre- sentation in all four countries underwent from the time that the House of Commons in England began to have a continuous existence until the Reform Act of 18S2.

With the Houses of Lords in England and in Ireland I have had no concern, except in so far as touches the relations which in both countries existed between the House of Commons and the House of Lords. In treating of the Parliament of Scotland I have described the place of the First Estate. This has been necessary to an adequate presentation of the organisation and working of the Parliament of Scotland, as the peers and the representatives of the shires and burghs sat in one chamber. But in regard to the Parliaments of England and Ireland I have concerned myself only with the elected members. My care has been exclusively with the Houses of Commons and the repre- sentative system on which the Commons were chosen. In r^ard to all fom* countries my purpose has been to trace the changes wliich came about in the representative systems from the thirteenth c^tury to the nineteenth, and to show how these changes affected both the House of Commons and municipal life. In a word, I have attempted such a history of Parliamentary representation BM would enable a student of constitutional developement to realise what the representative system actually was when, in 1831, Grey, Russell, Althorp, and Brougham undertook the great work of Parliamentary Reform.

vi Preface.

Further, it has been my purpose to trace the changing relations which from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth existed between electors and elected; the incoming of the system under which so many members were at least for a century and a half prior to 183S chosen to the House of Commons by patrons ; to show the relations which existed between members so chosen and the men who sent them into the House of Commons ; and how it was that in 1832 the representative systems of England and Wales, Scotland, cmd Ireland were so greatly in need of a touch of the supreme authority to set them right, to restore the representation to something like the basis on which it had stood in the early centuries of Parliament.

In respect to all three Parliaments I have also tried to show the changing character of the representative assemblies chosen on the various franchises of the five centuries preceding reform, and the way in which each of these assemblies became gradually organised for its legislative work ; and in particular, in the House of Commons at Westminster, the developement of the organisation and procedure which exist to-day. I have gone into this part of the subject with some detail, because in the three centuries in which the House of Commons met in the old Chapel of S. Stephens's there was slowly developed an organisation and a code of written and unwritten laws which have been duplicated almost to the last detail in the popularly elected chambers of all the self-governing British colonies, and which have also to a great degree shaped the organisation and procedure of Congress at Washington, and of the forty-five American State Legislatures.

Still further it has been my aim to show the relations towards the outside world of the representative assemblies of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of the House of Commons subsequent to the Unions, and also to trace how the representative system of Scotland in 1707 and that of Ireland in 1800 were merged into the nondescript system on which, between 1800 and 1832, the 658 members from England and Wales, Scotlcmd, and Ireland were chosen. Another aim has been to bring out the relations of the Crown to the representative system; to show how the Crown concerned itself with Parliamentary elections in order to influence or control the House of Commons, first during the long

Preface. vii

era of personal government which came to an end at the Revo- lution, and next during the shorter period after government by Cabinet had become established.

These have been my aims. Now as to what I have not sought to do. Into the changes made by the Reform Act of 183S, and again by the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884-85, 1 have not gone with any pretence at completeness. In the few instances in which the changes have been indicated, the object has been to make the story self-contained. I have not treated of these nineteenth- century reforms in detail for the same reason that only allusively have I mentioned the short-lived reform of the representative system made during the Commonwealth. Cromwell's reform, as I have come to view it, is really a part of the movement three centuries long for the reforms which began with the Reform Act of 183S. This movement is traceable back as far as the reign of Elizabeth ; and Cromwell's reform seems more properly to belong to its history than to that of the old representative system, of which it was not more than an incident, and on which it left no traceable permcment impression.

At some future time I may write the history of the movement for Parliamentary reform firom the time of Queen Elizabeth to the Acts of 1884h-85, extending the franchise in the counties and finally breaking up the old system under which knights of the shire were so long chosen to Wc^minster. Then I hope to trace the varying phases of the movement; how at one time it was sporadic, represented only by isolated movements for wider franchises in individual boroughs ; how at other tiroes, as during the Commonwealth, it was general; how it was aided by the- American Revolution; how partial success came in 183S, and how in later years the movement was revived, and resulted in the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884.

The research for the history of the movement has already been done. At the outset it was my purpose to include in one work the history of the movement for Reform and to bring the history down to 183S. But the wealth of material regarding the old systems of representation, and the desire to present an adequate history of the representation in Scotland and Ireland, and of the Unions of 1707 and 1800, so far as representation is concerned.

viii Preface.

seemed to make it expedient to defer to a later volume the history of the long contest which ended in, 1885.

The actual writing of these volumes is the work of one pen; but in the research, in the shaping of the plan, in the final form of the volumes, and in reading them for the press, I have had the constant collaboration and suggestive help of my wife, without whom indeed the work would not have been undertaken.

This book has been written during a nine years' residence in the United States; and the standpoint has been affected by a close and continuous observation of the political systems of the United States and Canada. While engaged on it, I have been much in attendance on the sessions of Congress at Washington, of the Dominion Parliament at Ottawa, and of several of the State €md Provincial Legislatures. At least five-sevenths of the research have been done in the libraries of Congress, of the Dominion Parliament, and of the State and Provincial capitols; in the libraries of the Universities of Yale and Columbia; of Trinity Collie, Hartford ; in the Watkinson Library, and in that of the Connecticut Historical Society, both also at Hartford ; in the public libraries of Hartford, Boston, and New York; in the library of the New York Bar Association; and in numerous other libraries in America, public and private, of which the use has been kindly and helpfully extended to me. Some of the research has of necessity been done in England ; but the bulk of the work in the Journals of Parliament, Statute books, official returns and reports, Parliamentary histories, Hansards, calendars of State papers. State trials and Election Committee and Law reports, reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, municipal council books and municipal histories, and the publications of the numerous English and Scotch printing societies, as well as the greater part of the reading of memoirs, letters and diaries, has been done in American libraries, whose well-ordered and easily accessible wealth in all these departments of history must come as a pleasant surprise to ^English student in the United States.

INOTON^ Connecticut. June, 1903.

CONTENTS.

Preface

PART I.

THE REPRESENTATION OF ENGLAND AND WALES.

CHAPTER L V PARUAMENTARY REPRESENTATION IN 1832. 1-19.

The purpose of the Reform Act, 1. E^rly recognitions of the need of reform, 1. Changes in the representative system between 1604 and 1832, 2. Several descriptions of borough franchises, 4. Boroughs begin to prize Parliamentary representation, 5. Controverted election cases and the narrow- ing of borough franchises, 7. Last determinations, 8. Boroughs as property, 9. Local movements for wider franchises, 10. National move- ment for reform, 12. Reform needed in boroughs more than in counties, 14. Membership of the House in 1832, 15. Few changes between 1677 and 1832, 15. Treatment of delinquent boroughs, 15. Distribution of repre- sentation in England, 17. Cities and boroughs of counties, 17.

CHAPTER n.

THE COUNTY FRANCHISE. 20-28.

The early county franchise, 20. The Act of 1430, 20. County seats in demand, 21. Multiplication of freehold qualifications, 22. Disappearance of residential qualification, 24. Statutory qualifications, 24. Registration of voters, 25. The abortive registration Act of 1788, 26.

P. b

v/

Contents,

CHAPTER III. THE BOROUGH FRANCHISES. 29-«4.

Four groups of boroughs^ 29.

(1) Soot and Lot and Potwallopkr Boroughs. 30-33.

Diversity in scot and lot boroughs, 30. The potwalloper franchise, 31. Parliamentary and municipal l>oroughs not coterminous, 32. Boroughs of restricted area easy of control^ 32.

(2) BuiMh: Boroughs. 33-41.

Usually of small electoratM|H3. Intrinsic and extrinsic value of bur- gages, 34. Residential qi|HKation, 34. Snatch-paper burgages, 35. Droitwich salt springs, 36. ^Hrnton burgages, 36. Opposition to estab- lishment of a residential qu^^Hion, 37. Burgage franchises and election committees, 38. Local qm^^Btions in burgage boroughs, 39. Women burgage owners and the fra^H^e, 40.

(3) CorJHItion Boroughs. 41-57.

Origin of the right of co||||rations to elect, 41. Early elections by cor- porations, 42. Corporation^ bAgin to value the right, 42. Elections by corporations general, 43. Awakening of populaf interest in elections, 44. Efforts to exclude the commonalty, 45. Outside influence on corporations, 45. Developement of the patron, 46. Right of corporations to elect confirmed by charter, 46. Contests with corporations over Parliamentary franchise, 47. Attacks on corporations at the Restoration, 48. Peculiar result of contest at Preston, 49. Charles II and James II favour corporation control, 50. Cor- porations assailed in 1688, 50. Appreciating value of seats in the Pensioner Parliament, 51. Effect of increased value on constituencies, 52. Cor- porations defeated in local contests, 52. Indirect corporation control, 52. Complete corporation control, 53. Nou-resident mayors and members of corporations, 53. Neglect of municipal government, 54. Dissenters in corporation boroughs, 55. Degradation and end of the corporations, 55.

(4) Freeman Bor4>uohs. 58-84.

The freeman franchise, 57. Extensions and restrictions, 58. Use of the word '' freeman," 58. Non-residents representing boroughs made freemen, 59. Patrons and their adherents made honorary freemen, 60. /^^^eemeii who had ceased to be resident allowed to vote, 63. Swamping of electorates by honorary freemen, 63. A slight check to the making of freemen, 65. Further attempts at reform, 67. No real check until 18-32, 67. Residential and rate-paying qualifications in some freeman boroughs, 68. Prisoners allowe<l to vote, 69. Corporation control by increasing or restricting the number of freemen, 70. Pressure by corporations on individual voters, 73. The use of patronage, 74. Attempts at reform by disfranchising office- holders, 74. The value of his vote to a freeman, 75. Cost of elections in freeman constituencies, 76. Corruption before and after the Restoration, 77.

Contents.

XI

The freeman franchise traiwmitted through women^ 78. Women share in the bribes to voters^ 79. Parliamentary electioneering and aristocratic patrons, 80. Compensation for patrons suggested in 1832, 81. The de- gradation of municipal life due to the system, 82. A modem revival with a difference, 84.

CHAPrER IV. THE ELECTORAL MAP IN 1832. 85-98. '/

Distribution of electoral power unrelated to population, 85. No legislative redistribution until 1821, 85. The transfer of Grampound's franchise, 86. Principle of reform involved in Grampound Act, 87. No other change in the map between 1677 and 1832, 89. Disproportionate number of boroughs in maritime counties due to early economic conditions, 90. The Cornish boroughs, 92. Twin boroughs of Dorset, Sussex and Yorkshire, 93. Land- nuirks on the electoral map, 96.

CHAPTER V. UNIVERSITY REPRESENTATION. 99-103.

Universities petition for enfranchisement, 99. llie first election, 100. Crown influence, 101. University qualifications, 103.

Charters of James I, 99. Mode of election, 102.

CHAPTER VI.

THE REPRESENTATION OF WALES. 104-118.

Distribution of representation in Wales, 104. Enfranchising Acts of lo3o-36 and 1543-44, 104. Borough franchise based on the payment of wages, 105. Shire towns and contributory towns, 106. Forty-shilling free- hold franchise in the counties, 106. An inhabitant householder franchise in the towns, 107. One corporation borough, 108. Contests between shire towns and contributory towns, 108. Incoming of honorary burgesses, 108. Boroughs freed from contributory towns, 109. The contest between Beau- maris aHd Newborough, 111. Patrons and Welsh boroughs, 115. Wales free from much of the electoral rottenness of the English system, 117.

V

bi

xii Contents.

PART II.

V

RELATIONS BETWEEN MEMBERS AND CONSTITUENTS.

CHAPTER VII. RESTRICTIONS ON THE CHOICE OF CONSTITUENCIES. 121-141

The residential qualification, 122. A short-lived social qualification for knights of the shire, 122. Eldest sons of peers excluded and admitted, 123. Sheriff and mayors excluded, 123. When electors had the freest choice, 124. Clergymen excluded by law of Parliament and by statute, 125. Roman Catholic clergy excluded, 127. Religious oaths imposed^ after the Refor- mation, 127. The Act of 156*3, 127. Roman Catholics excluded from the House of Commons, not from the House of Lords, 128. Prayers and attend- ance at service, 129. The Act of 1601^ imposing Oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration, 130. The test of the taking of Communion, 130. Vigilance in the exclusion of Papists, 131. Attitude of the House after the Restoration, 132. BiUs to exclude Dissenters, 133. The Test Act and the electoral fran- chise, 134. Quakers and the oaths, 134. The struggle for the relief of Quakers, 135. The first Quaker returned to the House, 137. New barriers against Roman Catholics, 137. The declaration against transubstantiation, 137. The Relief Act of 1829, 138. The first Roman Catholic member, 139. O'Connell and the Relief Act, 140. Scotch Roman Catholics disqualified by enactment, 140. Civil disabilities of Jews, 140. The movement for the removal of Jewish disabilities, 141. Jews admitted in 1858, 144.

CHAPTER VIII.

V RESTRICTIONS ON CHOICE FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE

CROWN. 145-150.

Oaths to protect the Crown against the Papacy, 145. Safeguarding the Revolution settlement, 146. Protection against the exiled Stuarts, 147. Remodelling of the oaths in 1866 and 1868, 148. The Scotch Episcopal Church and the Jacobites, 149.

CHAPTER IX. /

^ MEN WITHOUT MEANS EXCLUDED FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 151-203.

Usages and laws excluding men without means, 151. Election expenses thrown on candidates, 152. Wages cease to be paid, 153. Candidates offer

/

' Contents. «iii

indue 3ment8 to constituenciee^ 154. Members accept reduced allowances^ 155» Candidates agree to serve without pay^ 157. Members make gifts to con- stituencies^ 157. Constituencies become more demanding^ 159. Municipal patriotism at the expense of candidates, ld3. Modem survivals of the practice of bribing constituencies, 165.

i/fhioPERTY Qualifications for Members. 166-181. Qualification imposed by Act of 1710, 166. The agitation for the Act, 166. The bill in Parliament, 168. Provisions of the Act, 169. The operation of the Act, 170. The creation of fictitious qualifications, 171. The Act amended in 1760, 171. Few cases of exclusion under the Act, 172. Quali- fications bestowed by friends, 173. llie business of making qualifications, 174. Sir William Molesworth's retrospect of the working of the Act, 174. The Act amended in 1838, 176. Personal property made a qualification, 176* The Act repealed in 1858, 179. Uselessness of the Acts, 179.

/Election Expenses thrown on Candidates. 181-203. Abiding importance of the custom of throwing election expenses on can- didates, 181. Election expenses originally small and not authorised by statute, 182. Fees and charges made proportional to eagerness of candidates for election, 183. Election charges regarded as an abuse before the Revo- lution, 184. The first Act throwing charges on candidates, 185. The developement of election machinery, 186. Cost of elections borne by can- didates previous to statutory requirement, 186. The Act of 1712, 187. l*he first Act special and trivial, 187. The Act of 1745 makes certain charges general, 188. Acts of 1781 and 1794 add to expenses of candidates, 189. Act of 1704 the first to apply to boroughs, 191. Dispute about payment of election charges at Coventry, 192. • Litigation concerning Westminster election charges in 1807, 193. Westminster Act of 1811, 195. Act of 1828, 195. Proposals to relieve candidates of election charges, 196. Parliamentary Return of Election Charges in 1833, 197. Legislation since the Reform Act, 201.

/chapter X.

OFFICE-HOLDERS, PENSIONERS, AND CONTRACTORS EXCLUDED. 204-222.

Agitation for the exclusion of ofilice-holders begun in 1675, 204. The movement for general exclusion and for excluding holders of specified places, 206. Exclusion bills between 1693 and 1705, 206. The clause in the Act of Settlement, 210. Its abrogation in 1705, 210. ITie principle of re-election after taking office in the Act of 1705, 211. The working and interpretation of the Act, 211. Inefficacy of exclusion laws against pen- sioners, 214. Later place bills, 215. The Act of 1742, 215. The Act of 1733 excluding Scotch judges, 215. Act of 1782 excluding government contractors, 217. Great need for this Act, 217. The Act a concession to public opinion, 218. The last exclusion Act before 1832, 220. The laws with regard to placemen, and contractors at the present time, 220. llie effect of the exclusion Acts, 222.

xiv Contents. \

i

CHAPTER XI.

MINORS AND ALIENS ON THE EXCLUSION LIST. 223-236

Minors excluded iirst by law of Parliament and later by enactment^ 2S& Law of Parliament unheeded, 223. Minors of the House from the sixteenth century, 223. Protests against their presence in the reign of James I, 224. Boys of fifteen in the Pensioner Parliament, 224. Minors excluded by Act of 1695-96, 226. Act not at once effective, 227. Minors still of the House but do not vote, 227. Minors elected but do not take their seats until of age, 230. Fox the last minor to address the House, 230. Public opinion causes the law to become effective, 230. Election of locum tenens until minors come of age, 231. Gradual reform of the representative system due to public opinion, 234.

Aliens and Naturalised Subjects. 23&-236.

Aliens excluded by common law, 235. Exclusion of naturalised subjects until 1870, 236.

/

CHAPTER XII. THE TIE BETWEEN ELECTORS AND ELECTED. 237-255.

Nature of the tie in the early years of Parliament, 237. Power of the House over the attendance of members, 238. Members liberated by issue of new writs, 238. Writs sometimes refused by the House, 240. Hold of the House on its members, 241. Stewardship of the Chiltem Hundreds, 242. Stewardships conferred by Government, and the House loses its hold on mem- bers, 244. Partisan use of the Stewardships, 245. Bills to place members on an equality in respect to resignation, 246. Break-down of the partisan . method of granting Stewardships, 248. Constituencies never able to rid themselves of their representatives, 250. C'onstituencies long indifferent to conduct of members, 251. Protest from Canterbury against an absentee member, 252. Still no law enforcing attendance, 253. Modern relation > of members to constituencies due to public opinion, 254.

CHAPTER XIII.

V POLITICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN MEMBERS AND CONSTITUENTS. 256-282.

Relations close in early days of House of Commons, 256. Members account to constituents on receiving their wages, 257. Relations close while legislation was based on petitions, 258. Eictra-ParliamenUry duties, 258. Members carry weights and measures, 259. Report recusants, 259. Keep order in counties, 260. Aid in collection of poll tax, 260. Members and

Contents. xv

tUoo local legislation^ 261. Heavy claiins on members from large cities^ 262.

(ladi Members receive instructions from constituents^ 263. Members show

«r.tDf deference to opinion of constituents^ 267. Loyal addresses to oflfiset in-

;tir> structions, 268. Government instigates loyal addresses^ 269. Passing of

^ instructions, 270. Members cease to consider themselves as representing

only their constituencies^ 271. Pledges demanded of candidates^ 271.

Infrequent before 1832^ 272. Public opinion never entirely ignored by

House of Commons^ 273. Efforts of Government to influence public

opinion, 273. Government uses House of Lords to defeat bills demanded

by public opinion, 275. Not possible for members from large constituencies

to ignore public opinion, 276. Influence of an approaching election on the

House, 279. Public opinion and eighteenth century legislation, 281.

J

CHAPTER XIV.

LETTERS BETWEEN MEMBERS AND CONSTITUENTS. 283-291.

Franlcing established to facilitate intercourse between members and con- stituents, 283. Franking authorised by the Commonwealth Parliament, and continued after the Restoration, 284. Correspondence of members with constituents, 284. Abuses of the franlcing privilege, 286. Eagerness for franks, 287. Use of franks in social and business correspondence, 288. First real check to abuses in 1802, 289. Franking of newspapers, 289. Franking entiroly abolished, 290. Franking in the United States and Canada, 290.

Chapter xv.

MEMBERS, ELECTORS, AND THE CIVIL SERVICE. 292-308.

Government patronage passes into the hands of members of the House of

Commons, 292. Early instances of the use of patronage in elections, 293.

Increase in amount of patronage in eighteenth century, 294. Share of the

corporation and freeman boroughs, 294. Church patronage as political

spoils, 296. Bishops and clergy busy in elections, 296. Evil effect on the

Church, 298. Borough masters and Crown livings, 299. Multiplication

of offices in admiralty boroughs, 299. Disfranchisement of revenue ofllicers

no check on use of patronage, 300. Work thrown on members of the House

of C)ommons by patronage system, 301. The scramble for patronage at the

treasury, 302. Creation of office of Patronage Secretary, 303. Effect of

spoils system on the civil service, 303. On Parliament, 306. On members

personally, 306. ^>u the Church, 307. Effect of reform of civil service

on electorate, 308.

V

xvi Contents.

^/cHAPTER XVI.

^RELATIONS BETWEEN MEMBERS AND PATRONS. 309-364.

Period at which patrouage hegan, 309. Number of members returned by patrons in 1793 and 1827^ 310. Fox's characterisation of the system, 311. Seats for counties and large towns preferred to nomination boroughs, 312. Gladstone's eulogy of patronage system ill-founded, 313. Nomination boroughs serviceable to office-holders or after defeat elsewhere, 314. Nominated members expected to act with their patrons, 315. Pitt's relation to Lowther, 316. Lowther as a patron, 316. Conduct expected from nominees, 318. Nominees who opposed their patrons, 318. Family seats and their holders, 323. How fJEtr patrons dictated the conduct of their members, 326. \Vhen the system reached its height, 326. Peerages earned by use of House of Commons patronage, 327. Official patronage distributed among borough owners, 329. An instance of a bargain for a peerage, 331. Home Tooke's proposal to buy out borough masters with peerages, 331. Borough masters and their demands on the treasury, 332. No public spirit in politics of borough masters and nominated members, 333. Deference of nominated members to patrons, 335. Little evidence to sustain a favourable view of the patronage system, 337. Evidence to the contrary from Abbot, Denman, and Staunton, 337.

Treasury Boroughs. 340-348.

Boroughs controlled from the treasury, 340. Seats purchased from borough masters by the treasury, 340. Members nominated by the treasury, 341. Relations of the treasury to borough patrons, 342. The treasury as a patron, 342. Relation of nominated members to the treasury, 344. llie Whigs and the management of treasury boroughs, 345. Steady allegiance of treasury nominees, 347.

Mrmbbrs nominated on Easy Conditions. 348-353.

Borough owners in opposition usually easy patrons, 348. Nominees expected to be in political sympathy with patrons, 349. Some instances of nominees left politically free, 350. Nominated members insecure in the tenure of seats, owing to family claims on patrons or changes of fortune, 351. Absolute independence of patrons impossible for nominated members, 352.

Skats acquired by Purchase. 353-364.

Boroughs sold in Tudor times, 353. Purchase of seats common from beginning of eighteenth century, 354. Price of seats advancing throughout eighteenth century, 355. Open traffic in seats, 357. Their value in 1832, 358. Sale of seats unconditional or with conditions attached, 358. Use of the purchase system by its adversaries to secure reform, 359. Borough masters without political conscience, 360. A f-wd^y into the House for independent members, 361. Patronage system and the encouragement of genius, 363.

Contents. xvii

PART III. THE CROWN AND THE FRANCHISE.

CHAPTER XVn.

THE CROWN AND THE FRANCHISE— TO THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 367-378.

The Crown and the value of seats in the House^ 367. Early interference of the king in elections, 367. Richard II and the sheriffs, 368. The Lancastrian kings, 369. Henry VI's charters of enfranchisement, 369. The dominance of Henry VII, 371. Henry VIIFs interest in elections, 371. Cromwell as election manager for Henry VIII, 372. The subserviency of his Parliaments, 372. Additions to the House in his reign, 373. Edward VI recommends men for election, 373. Twenty-two boroughs added, 373. Mary's fourteen new charters, 374. Maidstone forfeits its charter, 375. Elizabeth's thirty-one charters, 375. Newly enfranchised boroughs at once under control, 376. Elizabeth's Council and the boroughs, 376. Directions from the Court to the sheriffs, 377.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE CROWN AND THE FRANCHISE— FROM JAMES I TO THE REVOLUTION. 379-405.

James I's proclamation on calling his first Parliament, 379. A protest against undertaking in 1614, 380. Another royal proclamation in 1620, 381. Recommending candidates to boroughs, 381. The charters of James I, 382. Cliarles I and elections, 382. His scheme for excluding obnoxious mem- bers, 383. The making of sheriffs, 383. Charles dissolves his second Parliament, 384. His efforts in county elections in 1628, 385. The magistrates of Cornwall and the county election, 385. James Bagg as an election manager, 386. His efforts and his care for his partisans, 387. Surly response of the country to Charles Ts efforts, 388. He dissolves his third Parliament, 389. The elections for the fourth and fifth Parlia- ments, 389. Cliarles Ts personal part in elections, 390. Buckingham's share in Crown electioneering, 390. Additions to the House of Commons from the reign of Henry VI, 391. Charles II and the attack on the cor- porations, 393. Quo Warranto proceedings against the City of London, 393. Other cities and boroughs surrender or forfeit their charters, 394. Charles II and James II's electioneering activity, 395. James IFs commands and recommendations, 397. Unexpected opposition from his Parliament, 398. The King's electioneering tour in 1687, 399. Resumption of Qmo Warranto proceedings, 399. Repeated remodelling of charters, 400. An instance

V

xviii Contents.

4it Bury St Edmunds, 400. At York, 401. ITie King's failure in the boroughs, 402. His efforts to control county elections, 403. Their non- success, 404. The failure of the Stuarts, 405.

vtHAPrER XIX.

THE CROWN AND THE FRANCHISE— FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE REFORM ACT. 406-420.

William III, 406. llie dissolution of 1695, 406. His electioneering tour, 407, No Crown interference in elections between William III and George III, 407. The state of the representative system in the reign of George III, 408. George Ill's activity in electioneering, 409. His watchfulness of by-elections, 411. He chooses a time for dissolving Par- liament, 411. Westminster and Middlesex elections in 1774, 412. The general election of 1780, 414. George Ill's contributions to the election fund, 414. His help at Windsor, 415. The King's expenditures on elections, 415. His attitude towards reform, 419. The elimination of Crown interference in elections, 420.

PART IV.

THE HOUSE AND ITS USAGES.

CHAFIER XX. THE PLACE OF MEETING. 423-431.

S. Stephen's Chapel part of a royal palace, 424. Meeting places previous to the use of S. Stephen's^ 425. Edward VI assigns S. Stephen's Chapel to the Commons, 425. Relations of the Crown to S. Stephen's, 425. De- scription of the Chamber of the Commons in Elizabeth's reign, 425. Seating accommodation in the House always inadequate, 427. The galleries, 429. Proposals for new chambers, 429. The old and the new era at S. Stephen's, 430.

CHAPTER XXI. , THE SPEAKER. 432-444.

Hungerford the iirst recorded Speaker, 432. Speakers chosen by the Crown, 433. Speakers attached to party, 433. Speakers as a link between the Crown and the House, 433. Nominated by the Crown, 434. Dependent on the Crown, 435. Charles I and his Speakers, 437. Contest over the election of Seymour, 437. Ceremonial excuses by the Speaker, 438. Se)rmour omits them, 439. Seymour not approved by the King, 439. Re- sentment of the Commons, 439. Compromise effected, 442. Advantage with the Commons, 443. Later attempts of the Crown to influence election of Speaker, 444.

Contents. xix

CHAPTER XXII.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE NON-PARTISAN SPEAKER. 445-481.

The Speakership ceasee to be a courtier office, 445. The Speaker s rights in committee^ 445. Foley, 446. His successoi^ until 17 1^^ 446. Compton becomes minister^ 447. Ex-Speakers in the House, 447. Speakers and legislation, 448. Arthur Onslow^ 448. His ideal, 449. His conduct in the Chair, 450. Changes he effected, 451. Pensions and peerage for the Speaker, 453. Onslow's impress on the Speakership, 454. Political life in his time, 454. Changes after the accession of George III, 455. Cust, 458. Sir Fletcher Norton, 458. George Ill's hostility to Norton, 459. Comewall, 460. Grenville, 461. Addington, 461. His connection with party and legislation, 461. Influence of the Speaker on the House, 462. Objections to Ex-Speakers in the House, 462. Abbot, 463. His opposition to the Catholic Relief bill of 181,3, 463. His address to the Prince Regent, 464. His conduct challenged in the House of Commons, 465. Public opinion on his action, 469. Increased interest in Parliamentary proceedings, 470. Growing importance and dignity of the Speakership, 471. Rewards and social duties of the Speaker, 471. His salary, 473. His rank, 473. His ex-officio positions, 474. Popular conception of the Speakership, 474. Manners-Sutton, 474. His interventions in com- mittee, 475. His impartiality in the House, 476. His connection with party, 477. His failure of re-election in 1835, 478. Abercrombie, 479. Shaw Lefevre, 480. The first of the modem Speakers, 480. The modem ideal, 480. The Speaker's constituency, 481.

CHAPTER XXIH

THE ATTITUDE OF THE HOUSE TOWARDS THE CHAIR.

482-488.

Deportment of members towards the Chair, 482. Rules concerning the Speaker s control, 483. Concerning order in debate, 484. Phraseology used in the House, 485. llie Speaker empowered to reconcile disputes, 486. The Speaker subject to the House, 486. Spokesman to the Crown, 487.

CHAFIER XXIV. THE OFFICERS OF THE HOUSE. 489-501.

The Clerk, 489. His emoluments and duties, 490. His table, 491. The Sergeant^t-Arms, 491. His appointment, 491. His duties, 492. The Mace, 493. The Sergeant's dress and pay, 495. Prayers in the House, 496. A Chaplain appointed, 498. Preferment for the Chaplain, 499. His duties, 500. The Prayer for Parliament, 500.

XX Contents.

CHAPTER XXV. THE SEATING OF THE HOUSE. 502-^10.

Feudal distinctions^ 502. Knights and burgesses^ 503. Difference in the fees paid by knights and burgesses, 503. Privileges of knights, 503. No distinction in seating, 504. Places accorded to peers' sons, 505. Front benches for privy councillors, 505. Courtesy places, 505. Party lines in seating, 506. Opposition benches, 508. Party whips, 509. His Majesty's Opposition, 510.

^CHAPTER XXVI. THE PERSONNEL OF THE HOUSE. 511-527.

Knights of the shire chosen from the landed classes, 511. Change in the class of men chosen from the boroughs, 512. Lawyers as non-resident members from the boroughs, 512. An attempt to exclude them, 513. They seek advantages from their membership, 513. Objections to their presence in the House, 514. They claim pre-audience in the courts, 516. Their neglect of Parliamentary duties, 516. The distrust of them in the eighteenth century, 517. Lawyers in the modem House, 518. Merchants as members of Parliament, 519. llie new men of wealth, 520. Their purchase of seats, 520. Retunied East Indians, 521. Manufacturers in the House, 522. The iron-masters, clothiers, and cottoners, 522. George HI and men in trade, 524. Cabinet rank for the newly rich, 525. Scotch- men and English constituencies, 525. Irishmen before the Union, 526.

CHAPITER XXVII. PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE. 528-544.

Little change in procedure since 1547, 528. Legislation by petition and by bill, 528. Stages of a bill iii 1572, 529. Debate at second reading stage, 530. Committees, 531. l*he Chairman of Committees, 532. Deputy Speaker, 533. Instructions to committee, 534. Private bill com- mittees, 535. Divisions in the House, 535. An experiment in voting by ballot, 537. Determination of election petitions by committees, 538. Petitions heard at the bar, 538. The Grenville Act, 540. (.^renville com- mittees, 541. llie working of the Act, 541. llie reading of a bill pro formdy 542. Obstruction in the seventeenth century, 543. Conservatism of the House, 544.

Contents. xxi

CHAPl'ER XXVIII.

RELATIONS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 545-^564.

Interference of the Lords, direct and indirect, in elections to the House of Commons, 545. Efforts to exclude it, 546. The contest as to the voting and appropriating of money, 548. The stand made hy the Commons in 1661, 1671, and 1678, 548. The victory of the Commons, 554. Their vigilance in guarding their right, 555. The constitutional result of the struggle, 556. Relations between the two Houses in regard to legis- lation, 557. Conferences, 557. Jealousies between the two Houses, 559. Messages between the two Houses, 560. Bills affecting the Lords originate in the Upper House, 562. Attendance of Commons at the bar of the Lords, 562. The peers' gallery, 563. Lawyer members of the Commons pleading before the Lords, 563.

CHAPTER XXIX.

RELATIONS OF THE HOUSE TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD.

565-^83.

The House insists on order outside its meeting place, 565. Westminster, the Parliament City, 566. Privilege of Members of Parliament — for their persons, 567 ; for their actions and speeches in the House, 568. Hooker's account of privilege, 569. Stretching privilege, 569. Legislation restricting privilege, 570. Bankrupts and privilege, 572. Petitions, 573. Their regulation by Act of Parliament and orders of the House, 573. London and Dublin privileged to present petitions, 574. Debates on Pe- titions, 575. Strangers in the House, 575. Their exclusion, 576. Efforts to relax the exclusion orders, 577. The orders evaded, 578. Privileged visitors, 579. Women as visitors, 580. Excluded from the gallery, 581. Admitted to the ventilator, 581. llie strangers* gallery, 582.

CHAPIER XXX. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND THE PRESS. 584-596.

Proceedings of the House kept secret until the seventeenth century, 584. Acts and processes made public, 585. Journals kept by members, 585. The House orders publication of proceedings in 1641, 585. Official publications on sale, 587. Efforts to check unofficial publications, 588. New».letter writers, 588. Their conflict with the House, 589. The newspapers, 590. Fear of misrepresentation in the newspapers, 591. Newspaper reports pro- hibited in 1762, 592. The contest with the Press in 1771, 592. Defeat of the House, 594. Reporters gain a footing, 595. Still in the House on sufferance, 595.

/^

\

MAP

Showing the English and Welsh Constituencies on the Eve of the Reform Act . . . Frontitpiece

1

PART I

THE REPRESENTATION OF ENGLAND AND WALES.

CHAPTER I.

PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION IN 1832.

On the 7th of June, 1882, in the second year of the reign of The Reform William IV, after an agitation which can be traced back to the ^^ ^^ ^®^2- days of Queen Elizabeth % the royal assent was given to an Act of Parliament reforming the constitution of the House of Commons. The preamble declares that "it is expedient to take effectual measures for correcting divers abuses that have long prevailed in the choice of members to serve in the Commons' House of Parliament ; to deprive many inconsiderable places of the right of returning members ; to grant such privilege to large, populous and wealthy towns; to increase the number of knights of the shire; to extend the elective franchise to many of his Majesty's subjects who have not hitherto enjoyed the same; and to diminish the expense of elections".''

Sovereigns as far back as Elizabeth and James I had ad- Early Re- mitted the existence of these divers abuses in the electoral system. Electona ^ £ach of these sovereigns had urged their correction. A partial Abuses. and temporary correction was made during the Commonwealth by Cromwell ; a reform which even so strong a royalist as Clarendon described as "a warrantable alteration and fit to be made in better times." A permanent correction was urged at the Restora- tion; again at the Revolution of 1688; again at the union of Seotland with England in 1707; and once more in 1800, at the union of Ireland with Great Britain. From the time of Elizabeth, when Wylson, Her Majesty's Secretary of State, in refusing the request of the Earl of Rutland for the Parliamentary enfranchise-

1 Cf. HiH. M88, Comm, 12th Rep., App., pt. iv. p. 117. « 2 W. IV. c. 25.

r. 1

2 T%e Unreformed House of Commons.

ment of Newark, wrote " it is thought that there are overmany ^ (burgesses) already, and there will be a device hereafter to lessen the number for the decayed towns*,'' and from the time of ^ James I, who in calling the Parliament of 1604 charged the

sheriffs not to direct "a writ to any ancient town, being so ruined that there were not residents sufficient" to make choice of bur- gesses^; and in 1624 refused the royal assent to a bill "for the County Palatine of Durham to send knights to Parliament, on the ground that the House was already too large, and that some decayed towns, as Old Salisbury, must be deprived of their members before this desire could be granted*," the question of the reform of the House of Commons had never long been at rest.

Every sovereign fix)m Elizabeth to William IV knew of these divers abuses, and of the ruined and decayed towns referred to by Wylson and James L Six of the sovereigns, James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II, William III, and Greorge III, can be shown to have turned these divers abuses to their advantage, when seeking control of the House of Commons ; and it remained for William IV, two and a half centuries after Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State had foreshadowed a measure of Parliamentary reform, to fulfil, in respect to the representative system, that part of the coronation oath which binds the sovereign to "restore the things that are gone into decay; maintain that which is re- stored; purify and reform what is amiss; confirm that which is in good order." Changee In the two centuries and a quarter which had intervened be-

after 1604. tween the proclamation of 1604, in which James I charged sheriffs not to direct writs to decayed boroughs for elections of members of the House of Commons, and the drafting of the preamble of the Parliamentary Reform Act of 183S, the electoral system in England had undergone but little organic change. In this period the payment of wages by constituencies to members of the House had come to an end. The residential qualification for members, which existed in the early days of the House of Commons, when the franchise was uniform and when every householder who did watch and ward could vote at a ParUamentary election, had been

^ Thomas Wyhon, SecreUry of State, to Earl of BnliMid^ June 17lii, 1679, HiH. M88. (hmm, 12th Rep,, App., pt. iv. p. 117. « Pari, HiH. i. 967. ' (ML SkUB Biif$n, ie2»-26, pp. 265, 268.

Parliamentary Representation in 1832. 8

allowed to fall into desuetude^, and had been finally abrogated by Act of Parliament*. The clergy of the Church of England had also become of the electorate. After the Restoration, the Church '^secured nearly as many votes at the election of knights of the shire as there were beneficed clergy in each county','' The ^ dei^ came in gradually. Many of them voted at the first election after the Restoration*; and by an Act passed in the session of 1664-^, which taxed the clergy in common with the laity, their new status as Parliamentary electors was confirmed'. Further than this, fifty-one additional English members had been added to the House of Commons, twenty-seven from fourteen boroughs enfranchised in the reign of James I, eighteen from boroughs enfranchised in the reign of Charles I, and six by the enfranchise- ment of the County and City of Durham and the borough of Newark in the reign of Charles II. The union with Scotland in 1707 had added forty-five members ; and in 1801 there had been another addition of one hundred members, consequent upon the union of Ireland with Great Britain.

* These additions to the House of Commons between 1604 and No Organic 1888 had . brought no marked organic changes in the electoral K«form. system in England. There had been increases in the number of county electors. The throwing of corrupt boroughs into the hundreds as a punishment for corruption had wrought some local changes, and had added to the electoral power of forty-shilling freeholders in the rapes or hundreds into which the corrupt boroughs of Shoreham, Cricklade, Aylesbury, and Retford had been thrown. One ancient borough also, that of Grampound, for reasons similar to those which had led to the enlargement of the electorates in the fom: boroughs which have been named, had been deprived of its franchise entirely, and its two members had been transferred to Yorkshire, the largest county in England, which heretofore had been represented by only two members. Apart from these changes the new enfranchisements during the Stuart period, the coming of the clergy into the electorate after the

^ There is authoritative evidence that the laws of Henry V and Henry VI had not been enforced since 1620; cf. H. of C. Journals, zxziv. 706. In 16^ they were adjudged obsolete ; cf. Parry^ 528.

* 14 Geo. Ill, c. 58.

• Heywood, County Electwn Law Digest, 75.

* Hist. MSS. Comm, 11th Rep,, App., pt vi. p. 152.

• \% and 17 Car. II, c. 1.

1— a

4 The Unreformed House of Comvwns.

Restoration, the additions to the House at the union of England and Scotland and of Great Britain and Ireland, and the thro^ng of corrupt boroughs into the hundreds, the general system on which the House of Commons was elected was much the same in the opening years of the seventeenth century, when James I was urging reform, as it was immediately before the Act of 1832 totally disfranchised sixty boroughs ; deprived forty-six other small boroughs each of one member; gave the franchise to twenty-one Ifurge towns and cities, which had hitherto not been directly repre- sented in the House of Commons; made uniform the franchise in the English cuid Scotch boroughs, and wrought other minor changes in the system of representation. No Uni- There was no uniformity in the electoral system of the boroughs

BoroiSh'^ when James I ineffectually sought to bring about a reform by Franchises, his proclamation to the sheriffs, and there was none when Parlia- ment approached the work of reform in 1832. In the reign of James I, there were scot and lot boroughs, where the right to vote went with the payment of local taxation; and there were inhabitant householder boroughs and potwalloper boroughs, in all of which the electoral system had retained its early democratic characteristics. There were also, in the days of James I, burgage boroughs where the right to vote was in the owners or occupiers of ancient tenements', "holden of the superior lord of a borough by an immemorial certain rent distinctly reserved^''; freeman boroughs, in which the right to vote was in the freemen, and in which already the change was making from the medieval freemen to the freemen who figured so largely in municipal life until the reform of the corporations in 1835; and boroughs in which elections to the House of Commons were made by the municipal corporations, or the bodies which in the days of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties corresponded to the more modem but still un* reformed municipal corporations. Many boroughs, whether the elections were by the householders, by the burgage voters, by the freemen, or by the municipal corporations, were, in the reign of James I, and even at an earlier period, under the control of the landed aristocracy who nominated members to the House of

^ Burgage — '^ A tenure of lands in England by the performance of certain determinate services^ distinguished both from knight service^ in which thtt render «wa8 uncertain^ and from villenage where the service was of the meanest kind."— F. Pollock.

* Heywood^ Borough Election Laws, 276.

TT

Parbamentary Representation in 1832.

Commons. They did this usually in agreement with the electo- rates, or with the men whom the electors allowed to act for them ; but with little regard either to the resolutions of the House con- demning this mode of electing members, or to the enactments still on the Statute books, which declared that citizens emd burgesses sent to Parliament must be of the constituencies they represented.

In 1832, when the decayed boroughs, of which Wylson wrote Borough in 1679, and of which James I contemplated the disfranchisement ^^^^^^^ in 1604 and 1624, were finally legislated out of the representative system, or their representation in the House of Commons was reduced from two members to one, the same types of boroughs were in existence. Parliament in 1832 had to deal with inhabitant householder boroughs, in Which to quote the proclamation of James I "there were not residents sufficient^ to make choice of burgesses; with burgage boroughs; with freeman boroughs; and with boroughs in which the municipal coimcils had for centuries arrogated to themselves the right to choose members of the House, to the exclusion of the inhabitant householders with whom the choice had rested in the early days of the representative system. The chief difference between 1604 and 1832 was that in scores of these boroughs the curious and varying franchises had been confirmed by determinations of the House of Commons or of its election committees, and had been stamped and still more securely fastened on the boroughs by Act of Parliament, whereas up to the end of the Tudor period these borough franchises had only tradition, usage, and in some inste^nces charters to support them.

From the time when seats in the House of Commons became Borough generally in demand, which may be dated from the early years of prized *^^ the sixteenth century; from the time when the landed aristocracy was fastening itself on the boroughs, and obtaining the hold which it gained increasingly as time went on, and only partially lost in 1832 ; from the time when outsiders, nominated by the aristocracy or working independently in their own behalf, were willing without pay to rq>reMiit boroughs with which they had no local con- neetkHi, and were willing to confer favours emd advantages on towns and towmpeopk who would thus elect them, the right to letum members to the House began to be of value. From the time when this right to elect began to be prized, from the days when boroughs had no longer to compel their own burgesses to accept Parliamentary service, when manucaptors who were pledged to see that the bmrgesses elected to the House of Commons started

-i

6

The Unreformed House of Commons.

Petitions fbr finfran* cbisement.

on their journey to attend the meeting of Parliament had dis- appearedy and when, instead of manucaptors whose duties were to see that the elected rendered service, there came on the scene men of aristocratic rank who were anxious to nominate members, and lawj'ers, courtiers and political adventurers who were equally anxious to be chosen of the Parliament, the right of a borough to be represented rapidly appreciated. Cities and boroughs now no longer sought to evade the precept from the sheriff when a Parliament was called. Instead of constituencies ignoring the sheriff's precept, or pleading poverty as an excuse for making no return to it, the sheriff was now pressed for the delivery of his precepts; and bribes fiuid other underhand means were used by men eager to secure the precepts from the coimty sheriffs as the first step towards their election.

Minehead, a small borough in Somerset, was the last that failed to respond to a precept from the sheriff for the election of members to the House of Commons. This was in 1614 \ It never afterwards failed to elect; and, long before the failure of Minehead in the reign of James I, boroughs which in the early days of the House of Commons had similarly failed and permitted their right to lapse, had sought and secured a revival of it ; and many boroughs which had not had representatives, had by this time possessed themselves of the right; while others, such as Newark in the reign of Elizabeth, and Durham in the reign of James I, had sought it unsuccessfully. The county and city of Dvu-ham' and the borough of Newark* subsequently came in ; but other towns, in respect of which petitions for enfranchisement were presented between the reign of Charles II cuid the end of the seventeenth century, were not so successful. There were unavailing petitions in behalf of Wirksworth in the reign of Charles II*; in behalf of Torrington at the Restoration"; and in behalf of Basing- stoke in 1693^ Torrington and Basingstoke had sent members to the House in its early days, and the petitions fipom these boroughs were for a revival of their ancient rights. The petition from Basingstoke in 1693 was the last for representation witil Birmingham and Manchester petitioned at the time the movement

» Parry, 273.

* 26 Car. II, c. 9. '29 Car. II.

« HisL MSS. Ckmm,, 9th Rep,, App., pt. ii. p. 398.

* CaL State Papere, 1661-62, 579. ^ ff, o/C, JaurruUe, xi. 85.

Parliamentary Representation in 1882. 7

for Parliamentaiy reform became general after the revolt of the American colonies.

In the early days of the House of Commons, when contro- Controverted verted elections were exceedingly few, because as yet men were ^l®ctio° not desirous of being of the House, these cases were tried in Chancery. From 1428 to 1586, they were tried locally before judges of assize. From 1586 until 1868, controverted election cases were determined by the House or by its select committees ; and the House of Elizabeth^s day was no sooner in possession of this power than the Commons ^ began to seclude one another upon the pretence of undue elections and retiums ; and that rather to strengthen or weaken a party in the House than to rectify undue elections and returns ^^ This removal of disputed election cases firom the courts to the House of Commons had much to do with the narrowing of the franchise in the boroughs which went on between the reign of Elizabeth and the Revolution. Then began the usurpations which can be ascribed to no legal origin; but which moulded the borough representation for two centuries to come.

From the time seats in the House began to be coveted, there Restrictions had obviously been interests within and without the boroughs, ^*^*|^. municipal and aristocratic, which could be served by these usur- pations, by these restrictions of the franchise. When the heads of local territorial families were pressing their nominations on the electorates, and candidates were outbidding each other to secure election, and were willing not only to serve without pay but to bestow their largess on boroughs as a whole and on electors individually, to build bridges and quays, to restore guildhalls, or to deepen harbours and rivers, and also to pay individual electors in kind or in money for their votes, the municipal corporations which had arrogated to themselves the right of election became more tenacious of this power, and increasingly on their guard against those of their fellow-townsmen who were disposed to question or assail it, and to demand a more democratic franchise. When those who exercised the franchise, instead of having, as in the early period of the House of Commons, to meet the charges of members sent there, could obtain a bribe or an advantage wlienever they were called upon to vote at Parliamentary elections, - burgages b^an to have a market value determined by other

1 Prynne, Hea for the Lords, 413.

8 The Unreformed Hotise of Commons.

considerations iheui the intrinsic worth of the holdings. In the freeman boroughs also, when the medieval freemen had given place to the new freemen, freedoms became more prized and the freemen more emxious to restrict the right of election to freemen as distinct from inhabitant householders. Even in the inhabitant house- holder boroughs, when Parliamentary votes became of value, there were efforts, sometimes successful, to restrict the area of the borough so far as the Parliamentary electorate was concerned, and thus keep down the number of electors. Borough All these various and continuously active local interests and

^'ififlft^*^ influences, together with party feeling and party interests in the House of Commons, were at work between 1586, when the House obtained the control over disputed elections, and the Revolution ; and they were largely though not entirely responsible for the absence of uniformity in the electoral system of the boroughs, tod for the narrow franchise in many of them, on which Shaftesbury commented at the Revolution when some measure of Pcurliamentary reform, affecting in particular the smaller boroughs, was expected from the Convention Parliament. "I conceive,*" wrote Shaftes- bury ^ " it may become the prudence of this Parliament to look into the constitutions and customs of such boroughs which have right to elect, and which in several particulars seem to reqxiire a touch of the supreme authority to set them right. The first incon- venience they labour under is the variety of their respective tities, some claiming to elect by prescription; others by grant; some again by a select number ; others by the populacy ; some by the magistrates, biu'gesses and freemen and commonality; and some / also in respect of their ancient borough houses only, the rest of the town which is the much more considerable part, being excluded.^ Last Deter- The touch of the supreme authority to set the boroughs right

minationB. ^^ ^^^ forthcoming from the Convention Parliament. TTie move- ment for reform or for wider borough franchises, which had been going on in individual boroughs with narrow franchises for a century prior to the Revolution, soon received a set-back from which it did not recover until after the 'AmericeCn Revolution. This set-back came through the Last Determinations Act, passed in 1696', which was made more positive and definite by a second

i '^ Observations concerning the Regulating of Elections for Pftrlia- f mentj" Somers^ Tract*, viii. 396. « 7 and 8 W. Ill, c. 7.

Parliamentary Representation in 1832. 9

Act passed in 17S9^ The first of these Acts declared illegal any return from a city or borough which was made contrary to the last determination of the right of election by the House of Commons. . Almost immediately after the Act of 1696, the House decided that it did not bind it, or regulate its decisions in controverted elections; but established only a rule for returning officers in making their returns ; and in pursuance of this decision an election committee heard a petition from Tavistock, which called in question a determination of the right which had been made before the Act of 1696*. But in 1729, when the House passed a Bill for the more effectual preventing of bribery and corruption at Parliamentary elections, the House of Lords availed itself of this opportunity to remove all doubt as to the intention of the Act of 1696. When the bribery Bill was before the House of Lords, a clause was added which set out that "such votes shall be deemed to be legal which have been so declared by the last determination in the House of Commons, which last determination concerning any county, shire, city, borough, cinque port or place, shall be final to all intents and purposes whatsoever, any usage to the contrary not- withstanding'.*" The Bill with this amendment was accepted by the Commons; and stands out as a landmark in eighteenth century legislation affecting the English electoral system.

In 1735, when the question of last determinations was again Borougha under discussion in the House of Commons, it was stated that *® '^"^P^rty. the amendment to the Act of 1729 was introduced in the Lords with a view to bringing about the rejection of the Bill ; that it was put there from a feeling that the Commons would not accept the interference of the Lords in a matter affecting the determination of controverted elections; and that the House of Commons would rather see the Bill fail than that it should pass with the last determination claused There is little ground for accepting this theory of the introduction of the clause. There were, in 1729, nearly as many borough owners in Parliament as there were in 1832. Boroughs were as much property in the reign of Greoi^ IT as they were in that of Greorge III, or in that of William IV, when it was expected that Parliament would compensate borough owners for the disfranchisement of their boroughs by the Reform Act

1 2 Geo. II, c. 24. ^ H,ofC, Jmmais, ii. 510.

» Lord*' Journals, xxiii. 36^-4. ** Chandler, Debates, ix. 97.

10 The Unreformed Hotise of Commons.

Enhanced Nomination boroughs were certainly not so valuable in 1729 as

Value of they became during the long reign of Greorge III, because the value of boroughs was greatly enhanced by the Icurger payments from nominees to borough owners and borough patrons, and by the increased money value of votes in boroughs during the last three-quarters of a century of the unreformed House of Commons* But in 1729 every man who had a borough in his possession or control, and enjoyed the right of nominating members to the House, realized that his electoral influence was safeguarded ; that opposition inside the borough from the unenfranchised inhabitants^ and opposition from outside by men desirous of breaking down his domination, were effectually warned ofi^ by the second of the Last Determinations Acts. This Act had almost as much efiect in enhancing the value of Parliamentary boroughs as property as the Septennial Act; for it reduced the expense and worry of borough holding; and in the House of Commons, and alike in the House of Lords, there must have been many members who hailed with satisfaction and relief the royal assent to the Act of the reign of George II. What practically amounted to a Parlia* mentary title was given by this Act of 1729 to meuiy of the borough owners; and it had an efiect in delaying the reform^ finally brought about by the Act of 1832, which it is hardly possible to overestimate. The First From the time when the corporations, the burgage owners, and

fij^ rS^** the freemen began to claim and to exercise exclusive rights in the electoral franchise their unenfranchised neighbours in the cities and boroughs had contended for a wider sufirage. The Journals of the House of Commons, all through the Stuart period, are full of the records of these disturbing local contests, as waged before the House or the committees on controverted elections. These records show that the popular movement for a wider franchise was • never at rest in the constituencies from the time of James I to the

coming of William III. These records of controverted elections, of isolated but still numerous local struggles for political equality, which bulk so largely in the Journals, and which afibrd the fullest^ the most authentic, and the most picturesque descriptions extant of social and political life in provincial England from the reign of Elizabeth to the Reform Act of 1832, establish another fact of significance in the history of the English electoral franchise. They make it clear that the popular movement for Parliamentary reform, for the sweeping away of the little oligarchies, aristocratic, or

Parliamentary Representation in 1832. 11

municipal, or a combination of both, which for two centuries and a half prior to 1832 controlled borough representation in the House of Commons, began not with the inhabitants of great towns, such as Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Sheffield, which did not send members to Parliament; but in those towns and cities ' which were directly represented in the House. The movement began in these places, because the electorate was confined in many to the municipal corporations; in others to the burgage holders; and in others to freemen who might be resident or non-resident as the usage of the borough determined; and because, when a Parliament was called, oftentimes the larger body of the inhabitants in these places had to act merely as spectators while a handful of electors exercised the franchise.

After the Act of 1729, which for the sake of distinction has The Move- been described here not by its title, but as the Last Determinations ^^^^ Act, these local contests were at an end in more than a hundred boroughs; and it was not possible to contest last determinations with the least hope of success until within about forty years of the great reform of 18S2. The avenue which had been partly closed in 1696, and completely closed on the initiative of the House of Lords in 1729, was partially reopened in 1788", when in an Act amending the law governing controverted elections, and proceedings before House of Commons' committees trying these cases, a clause was inserted making it '^ lawful for any person or persons *" within twelve months after the determination of the right of election " to petition the House to be admitted as a party or parties to oppose that right of elec-tion.'*' But by this time the movement for Parliamentary reform had become general. Pitt, while Prime Minister, had associated himself with it, and as yet in 1788 had not openly and finally abandoned the cause. The American Revolution had stirred the coimtry to the need of reform. Reform had frequently been discussed in Parliament. The large unenfranchised towns were now agitating for direct representation, and the movement had got beyond the stage at which it stood between Queen Elizabeth's reign and the Revolution. Then out- side Parliament it was sporadic; and except during the Common- wealth, when the army demanded biennial Parliaments, and a redistribution of seats by which burgesses were to be taken from ^ poor and inconsiderable towns, and additions made to counties',^

» 28 G«o. Ill, c. 52. « Pany, 478.

12 The Unreformed House of Commons.

it was confined to the Parliamentary boroughs in which the in- habitants were contending for a less restricted suffrage. The When these seventeenth and eighteenth century contests were

N^ti^nS"* being waged there was no newspaper press. People in one borough could have little knowledge of political movement in other boroughs. The reformers in each borough were making independent fights against the electoral system as it presented itself to them ; in one place against the corporation; in another against the freemen, resident and non-resident. With better means* of communication and with a newspaper press, these sporadic movements for reform must soon have become general, and they could not long have been withstood. In scores of boroughs they were crushed out by the Last Determinations Act; and when, after 1788, it was possible to contest last determinations of the right of election which narrowed the franchise, or confirmed an existing narrow franchise, the movement for Parliamentary reform was on much broader lines. It was now national instead of local, and although it had still tremendous obstacles to overcome, and was to be delayed for one generation by the French Revolution, the end was in sight. Contro- The spirit in which the House of Commons determined contro-

ti^*^ d^^ verted elections in Queen Elizabeth's reign is manifest in Prynne's Fiunchises. statement that these determinations were ^^ rather to strengthen or weaken a party in the House than to rectify undue elections and returns."" Prynne's is not contemporary evidence. He was, however, near enough to the time when the House first obtained jurisdiction over controverted elections, to be familiar with its mode of dealing with the borough contests ; and there is abundant contemporary evidence as to how controverted elections were deter- mined during the seventeenth century, and from the Revolution to 1770, when the GrgBsille-Ac^was passed, and the determination of these cases was transferred to select committees, so chosen as to guarantee fair treatment for all parties concerned, whether candidates or electors, and to increase the likelihood of equitable decisions. The rights of electors were little considered during the hundred and eighty years which intervened between the time the House obtained jurisdiction over controverted elections and the first of the Grenville Acts. The interests, municipal and terri- torial, which were to be served by the narrowing of the borough franchise, were oftentimes powerful when controverted elections

1 10 Geo. Ill, c. 16.

Parliamentary Representation in 1832. 18

were before the House ; and scores of the exclusive borough franchises which obtained until 1882, derived Parliamentary title between the time election cases ceased to be tried before the judges of assize, and 1T70, when the Grenville Committees came into being.

Controverted election cases from the boroughs had been dealt Closing with by the House of Commons, usually with an utter disregard of j^^f^j^m ' every principle founded upon equity, law, or common sense, for a century and a half when the Act of 1729 perpetuated the deter- minations as to the right of election made in the contests which had been carried to the House during this long period, and the Act further gave the House the exclusive power of finally deter- mining the right in all cases which should hencefon^'ard come befoi*e it. In 1729, there were two hundred and eighteen English and Welsh boroughs electing members to Parliament. As far as I have been able to trace, determinations had then been made in respect to the right of election in one hundred and twenty-seven English boroughs; so that in these one hundred and twenty-seven boroughs, and in others, in respect of which there were determinations be- tween 1729 and 1788, when determinations became no longer final, it was useless for the unenfranchised at the recurring elections to attempt to widen the borough franchise. The local contests which had been waged to this end all through the seventeenth century and particularly at the Restoration, and again at the Revolution, were now necessarily at an end in most boroughs; and as the last determinations clause in the enactment of 1729 was read by the returning officer in boroughs before he began to take the poll, the unenfranchised inhabitants had due notice that it would be of no avail for them to enter on a contest.

In most of the boroughs afiected by the Act of 1729, whether The Door the determinations were before or subsequent to that enactment, ""^^P®""^' exclusive groups, in some cases municipal corporations, in others the burgage-holders or the freemen, were by these last deter- minations put in undisputed possession of the right of election, and continued in possession until the Reform Act of 1832 swept sixty small boroughs out of existence, and for the first time made the franchise uniform in all boroughs which thereafter sent members to the House of Commons. The local contests for a wider franchise, which had gone on throughout the seventeenth century, and which had been begun even before that century, were resumed in a few boroughs in the closing decades of the eighteenth, and the early decades of the nineteenth century. Local reformers had now better

14 The Unreformed Hotise of Commons.

ground for hope when they entered on these contests. These eon- tests were hopeful, because the Grenville Committees were fair tribunals, and because the general question of Parliamentary reform was now being urged on Parliament, and this general move- ment made its influence felt on the local contests. In a few boroughs, notably at Scarborough and Steyning*, less exclusive franchises than those previously existing were established as a result of these contests in the half century which preceded the Reform Act But these wider franchises in isolated places, made possible by the Act of 1788, were not sufficient to work any marked changes in the system of borough representation as it stood when the Grey Administration took the general question of reform in hand and created a uniform franchise in all the Parliamentary boroughs. WTiere The Act of 1729 was applicable to last determinations in con-

mo^'needed ^^o^erted election cases from counties. All through the history of the unreformed House of Commons, however, controverted election cases from oounties were very much fewer than from boroughs, and the actual right of election in counties could seldom be in dispute, because there was a statutory franchise, the forty-shilling free- holder Act of 1430% which could be appealed to; while as concerns the boroughs, there was no such statute, and there was >- no statutory uniformity of franchise in boroughs from the time boroughs first sent representatives to Parliament in 1265 until the Act of 1832. It was the controverted elections from the boroughs which kept the House, or the committees on privileges, or the select committees under the Grenville Acts, busy in the early days of each new Parliament It was on the borough representation that the partisan method of determining controverted elections, which usually prevailed from Queen Elizabeth's reign until the end of the first decade of that of Greorge UI, buttressed as this method was by the Act of 1729, had its most lasting and pregnant con- sequences; for nearly all the abuses of the unreformed House of Commons, and especially the unconstitutional influence which the Crown was so long able to exert on Parliament, grew out of centuries of manipulation of the borough representation. It was

^ At Scarborough in 1791 ^^the ancient right of inhabitant householders resiants" was recovered. At Steyning the burgage-holders^ who had been in possession since 1715^ had in 1792 to give place to the householders^ in- habitants paying scot and lot and not receiving alms. Oldfield^ Represent tative Hist., v. 319 and v. 41.

« 8 Hy. VI, c. 7.

A. __ /

Parliamentary kifir&$entation m^^2. 16

the working of the seventeenth and eftriy eighteenth century methods of dealing with the ooniroverted elections, preceded as these methods were in the seventeenth o»itury by local endeavours to narrow the borough franchises, whidi bad so large a part in the creation and perpetuation of the nondescript, undemocratic and illogical system of borough representation which survived until 1832. Of this system the last vestiges, the control of boroughs by landed families, and the electoral corruption of the smaller boroughs, did not disappear until after the Parliamentary Reform and Redistribution of Seats Acts of 1884 and 1885, enactments which after nekrly three centuries of agitation, at some periods local and at others general, put the electoral system back on the democratic basis on which it originated, alike in the boroughs and in the counties, in the thirteenth century.

Prior to the Reform Act of 1832, there were 668 members The of the House of Commons of the Parliament of Great Britain and Commons. Ireland. Of these, 513 were from England and Wales ; 45 from Scotland ; and 100 from Ireland. The members from each country y/ ^^ were elected on franchises peculiar to each, the one condition uniform throughout was that all members of the House of Commons served without pay.

The number of members representing England and Wales at Changes this time had been stationary at 513 for one hundred and fifty- gentation. five years. In this period there had been some slight redistri- bution of electoral power, due to the mode in which Parliament from 1770 had dealt with boroughs of proved delinquency. Long before 1770, the House of Commons had sought, but had never obtained, the support of the other branch of the Legislature in dealing with boroughs in which corruption had become so deep- seated, so general and so notorious as to call for measures of partial disfranchisement. From the Revolution, writs had been frequently withheld from such delinquent boroughs, and Bills for their partial disfranchisement had been introduced in the House of Commons. In 1701, for instance, the House passed a Bill throwing the borough of Hindon into the Hundred of Downton. It was sent to the House of Lords, where it failed ^ and imtil 1770, the House of Lords had never given its assent to any of these Bills, and no statutory measures had been carried for penalising delinquent boroughs. But by 1832, as the result of Acts passed with this

^ U. o/C. Joumak, xir. 184; Buraet, Hist, of His Own TUnes, m. 427.

16

Vi/

fse of Commons.

Grampound,

/

Other

Delinquent

Boroughs.

intent, there were five fewer self-contained Parliamentary boroughs than in 1677, after the enfranchisement of Newark, the last English constituency to come into the representative system.

Up to 1832, only one of these delinquent boroughs, for gene- rations previously the plague-spots of the electoral system, had completely lost its franchise. This was the long notorious Gram- pound, a name which even to-day, after an interval of eighty years from its disfranchisement, always recalls the unreformed House of Commons, and is yet a synonym of electoral squalor and corruption. Grampound lost its franchise in 1821^ when its right to elect two members was transferred to Yorkshire, and there was thereby made the first addition to the number of English county representatives subsequent to the admission of the county of Durham into the representative system in 1674.

The other four delinquent boroughs which had been dealt with by Act of Parliament prior to 1832, New Shoreham in 1770*, Cricklade in 1782% Aylesbury in 1804*, and East Retfoid in 1828% unlike Grampound did not entirely lose their franchise. At New Shoreham the old scot and lot franchise survived. At Cricklade the right, determined in 1686 as being in the freeholders, copy- holders and leaseholders, was retained; and until the Reform Act, Cricklade had the distinction of being the only constituency, borough or county, in which copyholders were of the electorate. At Aylesbury the householders^ franchise, which had been settled by determination in 1695, was retained; and at East Retford the freeman franchise was continued. But by these Acts of 1770, 1782, 1804 and 1828, while the old rights of election of these corrupt boroughs were thus continued, to quote the words of the New Shoreham enactment, "in the persons who by the custom and usage of the said borough have or shall hereafter have a right to vote,'' the electorate in each was enlarged, and the Parliamentary area greatly extended by the addition of the forty-shilling free- holder voters of the rape of Bramber in the case of Shoreham, and of the hundreds in which the other three delinquent boroughs were situated. The result of these reforms was that these free- holders had votes at the elections for their counties, as well as at the elections for the boroughs whose electoral areas had been thus enlarged.

1 1 and 2 Geo. IV, c. 47. 8 22 Geo. Ill, c. 31. * 1 W. IV, c. 74.

« 10 Geo. Ill, c. 65. « 44 Geo. Ill, c. 60.

82 Members.
1«	99
50	5>
S32	>»
4	55
5	55
16	55
12	95

ParKamentary Representation in 1882. 17

These were the only changes in the distribution of political power between the enfranchisement of Newark and the general and sweeping but still incomplete reform which was made by the Act of 1882.

Between the disfranchisement of Grampound in 1821 and the Distribu- end of the unreformed Parliament, the 513 members represent- **^° ^ ^^ ing England and Wales in the House of Commons were thus apportioned: —

40 Counties in England 12 Counties in Wales ^ Cities* 166 Boroughs

2 Universities

5 Single-Member boroughs'

8 Cinque Ports 12 Welsh Boroughs

Included in this enumeration of the cities and boroughs in Citiee and £ngland and Wales, there were nineteen constituencies which were Co^^^* counties in themselves. Ten were cities and nine were boroughs. These were communities which, like the county boroughs of the present day created by the Local Government Act of 1888, were for local government purposes cut out of the counties in which they were situated. They had sheriffs of their own ; law-courts of their own; they raised their own quota of militia; and in other particulars they enjoyed special privileges in their municipal govern- ment. To these cities and boroughs the Lord Chancellor's writs for a Parliament went direct. They were not received, as were the precepts for all other boroughs, except for those of the County Palatine of Lancaster, for the Cinque Ports and for Berwick-on- Tweed, from the sheriffs of the counties in which the boroughs were situated.

These cities of counties and boroughs of counties, with the Charters. exception of London, which owed its place in the list to pre- scription, all had their origin in charters dating subsequent to 1S78, when Bristol received its charter from Edward III. The object of the creation of the other seventeen cities or boroughs of counties was much the same as led to the Bristol charter. This

1 JESach returning two members, with the exception of London^ which returned four.

* Abingdon, Banbury, Bewdley, Higham Ferrers, and Monmouth.

F. 2

18 The Unreformed House of Commons.

was to make them as self-contained as possible for local go>v ment. The Bristol charter was granted to save burgesses, con- cerned with public business, from the necessity of travelling to Gloucester or Dchester, then the county seats of Gloucestershire, and ^^ distant thirty miles of road, deep (in mud) especially in winter time, and dangerous to passengers^"' The last of these charters -f was granted to Worcester in the reign of James I. Freeholders Many of these cities and boroughs of counties had interesting

m Citiw and electoral histories, due to the peculiar and unconstitutional position Counties. of the freeholders, who in most of them could neither vote at the i borough elections, nor for the knights of the shire for the counties from which these cities of counties and boroughs of counties had been severed. As a result, in the last two centuries of the unreformed House of Commons, from the time in fact when votes became of value and added to a man's local consequence, there were move- ments in most of them, successful in a few, but unsuccessful to the last in others, on the part of the freeholders to join with the townsmen exercising the franchise, as established by municipal usage and determined by election committee decisions, in electing members to the House of Commons. In six of these cities of counties or boroughs of counties the freeholders had grafted them- selves on the local electorates, and were enjoying the right of voting when the reform of 1882 was accomplished. These were Bristol, Haverfordwest, Lichfield, Norwich, Nottingham and Carmarthen*. In Canterbury, Poole and Southampton^ the freeholders were in possession of the right to vote at elections for knights of the shire for the parent counties. In the City of York part of the free- holders exercised a similar right; while in nine of these consti- tuencies, Chester, Coventry, Exeter, Gloucester, Kingston-upon-Hull, Lincoln, London, Newcastle-on-Tyne and Worcester, the fr^ee- holders, as such, could not vote either at the borough or the county elections. These freeholders were paying land tax and bearing all county and municipal charges*; and for ninety years prior to 1882, election laws' applicable to forty-shilling freeholders in counties had been made to apply to county boroughs; yet

* Seyer, Charters ofBrUtol, 40.

« Corbett, County Boroughs, 20-28; Hansard, xv. 634. s Corbett^ County Boroughs, 20.

* Cf. Mackenzie, Hist, of Newcastle, i. 65d--661 ; Oldfield, Representative Hist., V. 277.

6 13 Geo. II, c. 20; 19 Geo. 11^ c. 28.

Parliamentary Representation in 1832. 19

freeholders in at least half of these places were, as long as the old system survived, completely cut off from the exercise of the Parlia- mentary franchise. In county boroughs where they were thus excluded, the freeholders were in a worse constitutional position than the freeholders in the most exclusive corporation or free- man boroughs; because in these boroughs, while they might not be able to vote at the borough election, they could vote at the county election. They were worse off too than the freeholders in such unenfranchised towns as Manchester or Leeds; because the fr-eeholders of Manchester voted at the election for the County of Lancaster, while those of Leeds, Bradford and ShefBeld had neces- sarily in the closing decades of the old representative system, when commerce and industry were extending, a large influence in the election of knights for Yorkshire. Especially was this so during the last ten or eleven years of the unreformed Parliament, when the Comity of York had profited by the disfranchisement of Grampound.

2—2

CHAPTER IL

THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.

Contrast with Borough Franchise.

Early

County

Franchise.

Thk county firanchise of the unreformed Parliament had a less; eventful history than the borough franchises. It underwent much less change. Election committees of the House of Commons, were not able to leave their trail on the franchise in the counties^ because the statutory enactments governing the county franchise from the fifteenth century made impossible manipulations like those which mark the history of the borough franchises.

The landmark in the history of the county electorate between the thirteenth century and the Reform Act of 1832, is the Forty- Shilling Freeholder Act of 1430^ Prior to the reign of Henry VI, made memorable in electoral history by this Act of 1430, there is. abundant evidence to warrant the statement that every free in- habitant householder, fi-eeholder and non-freeholder, could vote at election of knights of the shire*. Freemen, who were not free- holders, were up to 1430 assessed for the piaiyment of wages of knights of the shire'. As long as sheriiis were elected, freemen voted at these elections*. Local offices were held by non-fr^ee- holders"; and in the first century of the House of Commons, service

» 8 Henry VI, c. 7.

> Cf. Longman, Edward III, i. 351 ; Merewether and Stevens, Hwt. qT Boroughs, Introd. vi, xxxiii ; Selden, Tabie Talk, 141 ; Merewether, " An Address to the King, Lords and Commons on the Representative Constitution of Enghind," 45.

» Cf. Prynne, Pari. WriU, iv. 381.

« 28 Edward I, c. 13.

^ Cf. Toulmin Smith, EngKsh GuiUU, 135, 136.

The County Franchise. 21

there, either as the representative of a county or of a borough, was not held in higher esteem than any local ofBce. In subsequent centuries the meaning of the term ^freehold** as used in the Act ^f 14j80 was greatly extended; and it was on the later seven- teenth and eighteenth century uses of the word that election committees, dealing with controverted cases from the counties, had chiefly to pass judgment, and on which their determinations were of lasting significance.

Early in the fifteenth century seats in the House of Commons Limiting the ^ for counties were in demand. Men were willing, as they were at gj^^™ ^ the same period in the boroughs, to serve the counties as knights of the shire without pay; and were by this time scheming and working to seeing election. By the time the fifteenth century was half-way through, it was a grievance with the followers of Jack Cade, the earliest popular advocate of Parliamentary or electoral reform of whom there are authentic records, that ^^ the freedom of election for knights of the shire hath been taken from the people by the great men who send letters to their tenants to choose such men as they approve not^"" Pressure by landlords on tenants had begun thus early. The practice was well established before the end of the sixteenth century', and it was continued after the Reform Act of 18SS. It survived, in fact, imtil in most counties the forty-shilling freeholders and the voters on the fifty-pound occupation qualification, one of the creations of the Act of 188£, were swamped by the extension of the county franchise to the labouring population by the Act of 1884, and the- county electorate so largely increased that pressure on tenants frt>m landlords was no longer of much avail.

By 1441 candidates at county elections were scheming to get The Struggle the writs into their possession' to enable them to forestall rival ^^g^ ^" ^ candidates; and by this time, alike in counties and boroughs, ^^

there had begun the irregularities in the issue and convey- ance of writs which were not corrected until 181S*, when an Act was passed under the provisions of which all Parliamentary writs were conveyed and delivered by the post office. This irregularity in the delivery of writs, which can be dated troxa the middle years

» Fwry, 186.

« Cf. Hi9t. M8S, Oomm. 10th Bep., pts. ii. and lu. 72.

5 Cf. PMon Letters, No. 408, ii. SC

* 53 Geo. Ill, c. 89.

22

The Unreformed House of Commons.

for the Franchise.

of the fifteenth century, is not only proof that seats in the House of Commons were thus early in demand; it is significant for another reason. It was this eagerness to obtain early possession of writs that, by usage, first fastened upon Parliamentary candi* dates fees in connection with elections. The early possession of a writ frequently went to the candidate who would bid most for its possession. For a long time previous to the reform of 1813, the messenger of the Great Seal collected a fee of five guineas for a writ for a borough, and ten guineas for a writ for a city or county*; and when the Act of 1813 turned the delivery of writs over to the general post oflice, the messenger of the Great Seal was liberally compensated for the loss of these fees. TheStniggle As early as 1467 candidates at county elections were enter- taining the freeholders' ; so that long before the end of the fifteenth century, pressure on tenants, bribery, and intriguing for early possession of writs had all begun. By about 1450 non-residents were seeking to vote at county elections'. But in this century and also in the sixteenth century, although seats in the House of Commons were becoming more and more in demand, and county elections were being contested with increasing spirit by territorial families, I have not been able to discover any evidence of enlarge- ment of the electorate by the subdivision of freeholds, solely to qualify voters. The faggot voter, so far as I can trace him, dates only trora the early years of Charles I. There are un- mistakeable indications that the faggot voter had come into existence by 1628*; and fix)m that time the multiplication of forty-shilling freeholds and the wider interpretations of the mean- ing of a freehold added largely to the number of votes based on the Act of 1430.

Before the Revolution men were voting in counties in respect of annuities and rent-charges ; as trustees and mortgagees ; as lease- holders for life ; and in respect of the dowers of their wives. Later on such properties as pews in churches carried with them the right to vote at county elections. When, soon after the Restoration, the electoral rights of clergymen of the Church of England had received statutory recognition, preferment and offices in the Church,

The Multi- plication of Freeholds.

1 Hansard, Debatss (1807) ix. 976, 977.

« Cf. Eden, Hist, of the Poor, App., xxxix.

' Cf. Prynne, Brevia Parliamentaria, 159.

* Cf. Cai. State Papers, 1628-1629, p. 6.

The County Franchise. 23

as well as offices connected with the judiciaiy system of which the tenure was for life, were held to confer the county franchise ; and as the eighteenth century advanced, and as knowledge of the fact that these offices conferred votes became more general, the nimiber of these voters steadily increased. Incumbents voted on such qualifications; so did the holders of lectiu:eships ; so did school- masters ; and so did clerks of the peace.

As soon after the discovery of this new avenue to the franchise as 1693, a chorister of Ely Cathedral voted at an election for the County of Cambridge in respect of his office^ ; and in 1808 the brewer and butler of Westminster Abbey, the bell-ringer, the gardener, the cook and the organ-blower all voted in respect of their offices^. In this case these votes were disallowed by a Grenville committee. But the fact that these servants of the Abbey were permitted to poll at the election for the County of Middlesex is an indication of the wide interpretation which, in the last century of the unreformed Parliament, was popularly put upon the mean* ing of the forty-shilling freeholder Act of 1430. In the closing decades of the unreformed electoral system votes were claimed in respect of purchases of the land-tax; and in 1811, doubts having previously arisen as to the right of these claimants to vote, an Act' was passed, confirming the right, and making it unnecessary for voters in respect of land-tax purchases to register any memorial of contract, or certificate of purchase with the clerk of the peace, as voters in respect of annuities, fee farm rents, or rent chaises had long been required to do.

For four centuries the county franchise remained on the statutory Electoral basis on which it was placed by the Act of Henry VI. But after ?"^*" . the electoral system had been reformed in 1832, when the forty- i832. shilling franchise was continued in its old form, with the addition of only one new county qualification, a fifty-pound occupation franchise, and right of voting in the boroughs had at last been made tmiform, there were no fewer than eighty-five avenues* through which the Parliamentary franchise could be reached. Some of these many avenues were in the boroughs in which the franchises, existing prior to 1832, were continued for the lifetime of the then holders of them. But most of them led only to the county

^H.ofC. Journals, xi. 93.

^ Peckwell^ Ckmniy Election Law, ii. 102.

3 61 Geo. Ill, c. 99. ^

* Cf. Hansard, Series iii. Vol. xcix. 893.

24

The Unreforvied House of Commons.

Residential

QuaU-

fication.

Tax ^ and lime Quali. F iications.

paying

TiE

franchise, and were the avenues which had been opened up by the inder interpretations of the Act of 1480.

Between the date of the forty-shilling freeholder Act of 1480 and that of the Reform of 1832, the county frandiise had under- gone three important changes. One was due to usage, the others to Parliamentary enactment. Before the Act of 8 Henry VI, the law directed that ^* choosers of knights of the shire be resident within the same shire, the day of the date of the writ of summons of Parliament*''; and by liie law which established the forty- shilling freehold qualification, it was directed that the knights should be ^^dK)sen by people dwelling and resident in the same counties.'' Exactly when this residential qualification of county voters became of non-efiect it is impossible to determine. It gradually fell into desuetude ; and the probability is that it was no longer in operation when, in 1620, the residential qualification for members of the House had admittedly become a condition of the past By 1679 there is adequate proof that it was no longer necessary to regard the law, for in that year more than four hundred non-resident voters, many of them students from Cam- bridge, polled at an election for the County of Norfolk* ; and two or three years later, when Dalton wrote his handbook for the use of sheriffs, for the men with whom rested in the first instance the determination of who should and should not vote at county elections, his dictum was in favour of non-residents. ^^If," Dalton wrote, *'a man have two dwelling-houses in several shires, and a family or servant at each home; or if a man keep his family in one county, city, or borough, and abideth in service in another county, in both cases he may be a chooser of knights of the shire, or of the citizens or burgesses of the city or borough where he keepeth his family'." It may thus be concluded that the residential qualification had gone before the fa^ot voter arrived, and before those wider interpretations were given to the Act of 1480 which by 1832 had opened so many new gateways to the county franchise.

At the time the forty-shilling freehold frandiise was established, its exercise was contingent on the payment of neither national nor local charges. Residence in the constituency and the possession of

1 1 Heniy V, c. 1.

s Works of Sir Thos. Browne, i. 240, 241, Ed. 1840.

3 Dalton, Ojfict qfSherif, 332, £d. 1Q82.

The County Franchise.

25

a freehold were by the Act of 1480 the only conditions necessary

to a county vote. From the time the residential qualification fell

into desuetude until ITl^, possession of a freehold of the requisite

value was the only condition necessary to a vote. In 171^ the

exercise of the county franchise was made contingent upon the

assessment of the lands or tenements in respect of which the vote

was enjoyed to the ^* public taxes, church rates, and parish duties.""

With this new condition, which in this respect assimilated the

county franchise to the franchises in the scot and lot boroughs,

where the vote was dependent on the payment of poor rate or

churdi rate, there was also established an additional condition in

the nature of a time qualification. Both these new conditions were

created by the same Act of Parliaments As to the time quali-i

fication, tlie Act of Queen Anne provided that no person should!

vote in respect of lands or tenements for which he should not I

have received the rents or profits for one year before the election. I

An exception was made in the case of lands or tenements coming

to a person ^^ within the time aforesaid by descent, marriage,

marriage settlement, devise or presentation to some benefice in the

church, or by promotion to some office unto which such freehold

is affixed."" Tliese conditions as to national and local burdens

attaching to the county franchise were continued until 1781._ Then

the right to vote was made dependent on a charge or assessment

made within six months before the election '^towards some aid

granted 6r to be granted to' His Majesty by a land-tax, on an

assessment in the name of the person claiming to vote*."" These

enactments of the reign of Anne and George III, by which

certificates of payment of land-tax became the title of an

elector to vote, made the only statutory changes in the conditions

attending the forty-shilling freeholder franchise during the four

hundred years in which none but freeholders, using the term in its

wider eighteenth century acceptance, were of the county electorate.

Although these are the only noteworthy enactments which per- lleffistnitioii manently affected the coimty electoral system between the reign Voters'**'^ of Queen Anne and the Reform Act of 1832, the conditions under which the county franchise was exercised were frequently before Parliament during the last twenty years of the eighteenth century, and in particular much attention was given to the question of the registration of county voters. The system under which the county

9i^

^ 10 Anne, c. dl<

« 20 Geo* III, c. 17.

26 The Unreformed Hmise of Covimons.

elector carried his receipt for the payment of land-tax to the polls never worked satisfactorily. It involved much delay at elections. Furthermore the owners of many estates did not directly pay the land-tax. Small freehold properties carved out of larger estates were often sold fi«e of land-tax. In these cases agreements were made under which the owner of the principed estate paid the tax for the whole after its dismemberment, and was assessed for it. The result of transfers of land so made was that, as time went on, it often became difficult for the owners of the smaller properties to furnish documentary proof that their lands had been assessed. The system also afforded opportunities for sharp practices at elections; opportunities for taking advantage of legal technicalities, which, it is on record, were not overlooked by men who controlled political influence in the counties. Of such men in the last half of the eighteenth century, Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale, maybe taken as a typical representative; and of Lowther it is recorded that, at the Cumberland election in 1768, he *^ nobbled the sheriff, who rejected a large number of votes on the ground that the land-tax lists, which were the registers of voters, were in many cases signed by only two commissioners and not by three,^ as the law required ^ Publication There was an amendment to the land-tax system of registration

Lists " ^^ 1781', under which assessors of the tax in the parishes were required to publish preliminary lists of their assessments before sending them to the land-tax commissioners for the counties. These lists were to be placed on the door of the church or chapel of the parish for which the assessment was made, a mode of publi- cation continued by the registration system established by the first Reform Act; and it was then open to any fi-eeholder who was not on these parochial lists, to appeal to the commissioners of the land-tax of the county, and, if necessary, from the com- missioners to the magistrates in quarter sessions. An Abortive In order to simplify polling in counties. Parliament in 1788 Regristration passed an Act' to establish an elaborate system of registration. Under this Act of 1788 the lists of freeholders were to be printed by the King^s Printer in London, and the collectors of the land-tax were to be the custodians of the electoral lists in each parish. The preamble of the Act set forth that "it would

^ Ferguson^ Hist, of Cumberland , 168.

« 20 Geo. Ill, c. 17. » 28 Geo. Ill, c. 36.

The County Franchise. 27

be much for the ease and convenience of the generality of free- holders, if they were enabled to cause their names to be enrolled "^ on the register of freeholders, " without being obliged to travel a great distance from their respective habitations for the purpose *" ; and the machinery which has here been briefly described, and much other machinery, was created to bring about a uniform system of registration, and to make the lists of electors open and available for all public purposes. The first step under the Act was to be taken by the clerks of the peace, who on or before the 5th of April, 1789, were to deliver to the register keepers notices which were to be delivered to freeholders and otherwise published, an- noimcing that the register keepers would be ready on the first Monday in May to begin the enrolment of freeholders in pursuance of the Act. Between the passing of the Act of 1788 and the distribution of these notices in April, 1789, it had been realized that the expense of carrying the Act into effect, — ^which promised to be considerable, for the printer'^s bill alone was estimated at £55,000^, and there were to be local charges in addition, — ^was to be defrayed out of the county rates. When Parliament assembled in 1789 petitions were presented for the repeal .of the Act Some of them were fit)m the magistrates in quarter sessions. Others were from the " gentlemen, clergy and freeholders "^ of the counties. One, from the County of Warwick, was fixjm the unenfranchised copyholders, who complained that they would have to bear their share of the increased county rate, but would obtain no advantage fix>m registration ^ In most of the petitions, stress was laid on the cost attending the working of the Act. But it was further objected that many freeholders would be deprived of rights and immunities by being deterred from registering " merely from the apprehension of subjecting themselves to the inconvenience and expense of suits in a court of justice, as it is oftentimes difficult to determine the validity of votes of a doubtful nature'.*"

Between February 16th and March 12th, 1789, nearly twenty Repeal of of these petitions were presented. On the 12th of March the ® House of Commons went into committee on them, with the result that a bill was reported on the 8th of May for the repeal of the Act. The preamble of this bill declared that the operation of the Act of 1788 "would be attended with a

' Cf. H. ofC. Jmmais, xliv. 128. ^H.ofC, JoumaU, xuv. 280.

^<y^

28 The Unreformed House of Commons.

great and continual expense, and be productive of many hAnbh^ and inconveniences to freeholders and others^; and furthmnore that the *^said Act would be inadequate to answer the purposes thereof ^'^^ This was one of three noteworthy occasiom in tlie eighteenth century on which Parliament, in response to puUic agitation, repealed in one session an Act which it had pamcd in a preceding session. In consequence of the protests from quarter sessions and from other meetings of freeholders, Parliament in 1789 turned to the right-about as quickly on the registration Act of 1788 as it had done on the excise Act in 1733, and on the Act ^.. - "^ V ' for the naturalisation of Jews in 1764. The Old With this abandonment of a uniform system of registration, a

lUsumed system which had not even been tried, there was a reversion to the land-tax commissioners^ lists, and this unsatisfactory system, with its delays, confrision and contentions at elections, with the expense which it entailed on Parliamentary candidates for counties in barristers^ fees, and with the responsibility it threw on sherifis in respect to doubtful votes, was continued until after the Reform Act of 1832. Then a system, of registration, in its main features similar to that created by the abortive Act of 1788, was established, and with but little alteration has since been continued for both counties and boroughs.

1 29 Geo. Ill, c. 13.

"^

k

CHAPTEE III.

THE BOROUGH FRANCHISES.

In this chapter, which aims to give a sketch of the eIectoral\ system as it had been developed between the thirteenth century and the first thirty years of the nineteenth century, I have classed all the constituencies in England, other than the xx>uniies and the imiversities, as boroughs. In this category therefore must be understood to be included (1) cities and boroughs which were counties of themselves; (2) cities; (3) boroughs; (4) the cinque ports and their three dependent ports; and (5) the four delinquent boroughs which subsequent to 1770 were thmwn ^"^a the hundreds^ Of the 489 representatives of England in the last unreformed Parliament, 86 were returned by* the 40 counties and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The other 408 were from constituencies which are here classed as boroughs.

Of these English borough constituencies the number was 203. Excepting the City of London, which had four members, and Abingdon, Banbury, Bewdley, Higham Ferrers, and Monmouth, which were single-member boroughs, all these constituencies returned two members each to the House of Commons. This was the only point on which there was then any uniformity in borough representation. In the franchises of the boroughs there was no uniformity ; and while it is possible to group the boroughsi in four disjtinct classes, there was in the boroughs within these several classes, except as regards the period of residence in the scot and lot boroughs, no uniformity as to the conditions on which the exercise of the franchise was dependent Taking the fom^ groups of boroughs in the order in which they stood as

Classi- fication of Boroughs.

• la^^^

\^

FourGroups.

y

30 The Unreformed House of Commons.

regards nearness to the franchise on which th House of Commons was elected in ^the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, before it was to the interest of municipal oligarchies or of the landed aristocracy to naiTow the borough franchises, tbey were (1) scot anjj . lot boroughs, including the inhabitant^QUseholder boroughs in which the ancient scot and lot quaJificaiwn had disappeared; (2) burgage boroughs ; (3) corporation bovcyughs ; and (4) freeman boroughs.

Order of The scot and lot boroughs were nearest to the thirteenth and

™"P8- I fourteenth century franchise, because the vote in them to the last depended on residence and contribution to the charges of muni- cipal government The l)urgage boroughs come next in this grouping.; because the franchise in them, while narrowed by usage and tradition, still retained some of the characteristics of borough representation in its early days. The corporation boroughs and the freeman boroughs, especially those boroughs in both groups in which non-residents were of the corporation, or in possession of the freedom, were the farthest removed from the early borough V franchise; and their constitutions showed most obviously the I changes which had been wrought ^^m the period when seats in the House of Commons first became in demand, and when the landed aristocracy began to possess themselves of the control of borough representation.

Numbers I In the scot and lot group there were fifty-nine boroughs;

GiwiD / ^^ ^'^ burgage group thirty-nine ; in the corporation group forty- I three ; and in the freeman group sixty-two. Within ijiese groups, except in the scot and lot boroughs, wh^rp thprp was ^ six months residential qualification^ there was no imiformity in the conditions governing the exercise of the franchise. Much depended on local usages and customs which, in more than half the boroughs by the end of the eighteenth century, had been sanctioned and I stereotyped by last determinations of election committees, and \ fastened on the boroughs by the Act of 1729.

(1) Scot and Lot and PotwaMoper Boroughs.

Scot and Lot "^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ boroughs ranged in population from Gatton, Boroughs, where there were on the eve of the Reform Act only 186 inhabi- tants in the borough and parish\ while in the borough, according

^ Lewis^ Topographical Dictionary of England, ii. 217.

i

I

(

I

I

The Borough Franchises. 31

to another ai^f»rity writing in 1816, there were only six houses * ; to such populous places as Westminster and Southwark, and to "

such large inclustrial towns as Northampton and Preston. In these scot and lot boroughs, the only uniformity was as to length of residence necessary to qucdify for a vote, a uniformity which had been lacking until, after an imsuccessful attempt of the House of Commons to establish a qualification in 1789*, a six months qualification was imposed by Act of Parliament in 1786 '.

In some of these boroughs' the vote depended on the payment Potwalloper of poor rate or church rate, the equivalents of scot and lot. Boroug^hs. In others the only condition other than residence was that the voter was self-sustaining, that he had not been a charge on the poor rate. The potwalloper boroughs formed this subdivision among the boroughs in which the franchise was in the possession of the inhabitants generally as distinct from burgage holders, * corporations or freemen ; for the potwalloper'^s vote depended on proof that he provided his own sustenance, that he was master of a fireplace at which he could cook it^ and that he was in control of a doorway leading to his dwelling. An eighteenth century Parliamentary definition of a potwalloper was ^' every inhabitant in the borough who had a family and boiled a pot there,^ and in the case of Honiton, the borough in respect of which this definition was made, it was held that the inhabitants who came within this definition had a *^ right to vote equal with the rest of the inhabitants whether they paid or did not pay scot and lot».^

The potwalloper was the quaintest of the old borough The Pot- franchises, and in its seventeenth and eighteenth century modes of ^^Uop®''- claim and proof was the most picturesque and the most remin- iscent of medieval borough life. It went back to the days of serfdom, when serfs and freemen mingled in the urban communi- ties, and when freemen occasionally took their meals in public, in some places in the kitchens which before the Reformation were attached to the churches, to prove to their neighboins ^ - that they were free and self-sustaining and ate as dependents at no lord^s table. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centimes,

^ Oldfield^ Reprwentative HUt, u. 606. ' H,ofC, Journals, xxiii. 505. « 26 Geo. Ill, c. 100. ^H.ofC, Journals, xi. 492. * H. qfC. Journals, xx, 366.

82

The Unreformed House of Commons.

Restriction of Borough Ateas.

Oontrol >f these Boroughs.

when votes had become of value, in some boroughs the claimants to the potwalloper franchise set out tables in the street in front of their houses to prove that they were self-sustaining and entitled to the franchise \

In one o^her important respect there was a lack of uniformity in the boroughs in which the franchise remained to the end where it was when the representative system came into being. In many of the boroughs, where the inhabitant householders voted, the Parliamentary borough was not co-extensive with the town. It had not been permitted to extend with the growth of the town. The Parliamentary borough was restricted in area ; and this restriction, there is good ground for believing, dated back to the early years of the seventeenth century, by which time seats in the House of Commons were much in demand, and Parlia- mentary candidates were ready to bestow advantages, entertain- ments, or bribes in kind or in money, on electors who would vote in their, interest. These restrictions could hardly have existed in the days when members of the House collected their wages and their travelling charges from their constituents; for these charges had usually to be met by a special levy, and it was to everybody'^8 interest that the largest number of towns- people should come within the reach of the collector of the assessments. At Taunton, when the electoral system w^ reformed in 183^, the Parliamentary borough had long been smaller than the town '. It was the same at Bridgwater, where the inhabitants of the eastern and western divisions were excluded from the franchise'; and to name only two more instances, similar con- ditions existed at South wark* and at Guildford*.

The restriction of the Parliamentary area of boroughs had far-reaching effects on their electoral history. It helps to explain why boroughs, where the vote was in the hands of the inhabitant householders, fell under the control of the landed aristocrtu^ almost as quickly and as completely as the burgage or the corporation boroughs. The existence of these boroughs of restricted area

V

1 Cf. Defoe^ A Tour through the Whole hland of Great Britain, u. 19, Ed. 1738 ; Fraser^ Election Committee Reporte, ii. 269, Ed. 1793 ; Russell, England Displayed, i. 44 ; Farrer, Hist, qfRipon, 46, 47.

* Lewis, IV. 271.

s Oldfield, Representative Hist., iv. 446.

* Oldfield, lY. 587. & Lewis, II. 281.

The Borough Franchises. 38

*iK)irs moreover conclusively that the same forces and influences

^m* at work in them as were responsible for the narrowing of

r/aricliises in boroughs of the burgage, the corporation, or the

^•nrmin group. In the corporation and freeman boroughs, it

^8s csually a handful of electors who arretted to themselves

'^t eiclusive right to elect members of Parliament. In the

'" ivibitant householder boroughs neither corporations nor freemen

<^ Tipjetely usurped the franchise ; but those who possessed the

fptnchke were on their guard against its extension to new-

iw'itr?: and as the records of controverted elections in the

•I'/unuds of the House of Commons make clear, those who exer-

^hy) the franchise as inhabitant householders, were not unwilling

to ici with a municipal corporation or a local landed proprietor

to ^hose advantage it was that a larger electorate should not

confie into existence with the extension of the town.

These boroughs of restricted area were easier of control and Ease of / •" ^ 'inilation by borough owners than either corporation boroughs ^®'^^"**- fn TrK;man boroughs. Next to the biugage boroughs, they were tho tment of control In the inhabitant householder boroughs fit* i>f<tricted area the borough owner was seldom called upon to ininide himself into municipal politics, or subject himself to ^^' whims and caprices of either aldermen or freemen. If 'i- /arJ once possessed himself of the larger part of the property '■^i^hm a restricted Parliamentary area, as was done, to quote t^o instances, at the Yorkshire borough of Aldborough, and <'t SteyningS ^ ^^^ ^'^ necessary was to fill the houses ^'ith tenants, who would obey his instructions as the reciuring ^^iriiamentary elections came round.

(S) Burgage Boroughs.

In boroughs in the burgage group there was the same lack Small

^ uniformity in the conditions governing the exercise^of the *'1«<'^™*«8-

SLrliamentary franchise as in the inhabitant householder boroughs.

nearly all these boroughs the electorates were small. Burgages

Ji gradually been appreciating in value from the second half

the sixteenth century. Consequently when, in the seventeenth

d eighteenth centuries, burgages began to be acquired in groups

the landed arist(^cracy or by other controllers of burgage

1 Cf. Oldfield, v. 829 and 45.

8

/^

34

2%e Unreformed House of Commons.

Value attached to Burgages.

Residential

Quali-

fication.

borough interests, the holders, whether of single burgages or of groups of burgages, found it to their advantage to restrict the number of properties to which the right to vote at a Parlia* mentary election was attached.

Burgages were not peculiar to the Parliamentary boroughs. They existed in towns which never sent members to the House of Commons, and also in boroughs which were represented, but in which the Parliamentary franchise was not based on the ownership or occupation of burgages. It was only in those Parliamentary boroughs wh<>r<> ^tl^y Hght ^^ ^^^ ^^ tL\jt^h^\ PYff^iiRiv^Jv to burgages, that from the Stuart period to the' electoral reform of 1832, burgages were of great value and could command a ready market In other cities and boroughs where burgages existed or had existed, as in the City of London, in Liverpool, Carlisle and Cambridge, in all of which the right to elect was in the freemen, these properties had only an anti- quarian interest

In the boroughs where the franchise was in the biugage holders, the conditions, other than possession or occupation, varied according to local usage, which in most boroughs had the seal of a last determination; for from the time the House of Commons possessed itself of the right of determining con- >^ troverted elections until the end of the old electoral system, elections in burgage boroughs contributed more than those in boroughs in any of the other three groups to the work thrown on comimittees of privileges and elections and, later, on committees chosen under the Grenville Acts. Residence wa^ necessaiY to the exercise of the fiundiise in some of the burgage boroughs. This was the rule at Cnckiade, where a residence of forty days prior to an election was part of the qualification of a voter \ Residence was also necessary at Haslemere, a Surrey borough which in the reign of George UI was in the possession of the Earl of Lonsdale who, first as Sir James Lo¥rther and later as the Earl of Lonsdale, was the most powerful and notorious unofficial election undertaker of the period. The Earl settled at Haslemere a colony of Cumberland miners, whose only business was to occupy the biu*gage houses, and obey Lonsdale^s behests at the elections'.

^H.ofC. Journals, xxxvin. 869.

> Cf. Allen, Hitt. qf Surrey and SuMex, u. 70 ; Oldfield, iv. 599, 600.

)

I

c

T%e Borough Franchises. 37

supported it in the House of Commons, stated that he was the proprietor of ninty-nine out of the one hundred burgage tenures in this Wiltshire borough, one of the earliest boroughs which the House of Commons had proposed to throw into the hundred to eradicate its eighteenth century corruption, and that "one of the properties that gave a vote was in the middle of a water- course*."

All through the eighteenth century the boroughs in the Burgage ^ burgage group had many alert friends in Parliament When- j^rfjjjjj^ ever any attempt was made to establish fixed and uniform residential qualifications in the inhabitant householder boroughs, or to make any slight reform in the borough electoral system, the burgage boroughs were most jealously guarded. In an abortive bill which was before the House of Commons in 1739, a bill which had for its object the establishment of a six months residential qualification in the inhabitant householder boroughs, an exception was specifically made in favour of the burgage boroughs and their snateh-paper voters'. Again in 1746, when an Act was passed making forty-shilling freeholders, who in cities of counties or boroughs of counties had grafted them- selves on the local franchises, subject to the same conditions as to payment of land-tax as had long existed in connection with the county franchise, there was added after third reading, a clause excepting " where the right of voting is for or in respect of burgage tenure •.'^ In 1786, when it had been proved to Parliament that the residential qualification at Preston, widened beyond all precedent as the result of a contest between the corporation and the inhabitants in 1661^, had long been so loosely interpreted that there was nothing to hinder a regiment of soldiers fit)m marching into the town one night, and voting at an election the next morning, the Act^ was passed which created a six months qualification in all the inhabitant house- holder boroughs. In this Act there was embodied, as it was proposed there should be in the bill of 1739, an exemption of the burgage boroughs. And so it came about that until the Reform of 183S finally cut the burgage boroughs out of the

* Hansard^ Srd Series^ vii. 1394. « Cf. H. ofC. Jaumulsyxxy, 506. ^ H.qfC. Journals, xxv. 161, 161.

* H.ofC, Journals, viii. 36. « 26 Geo. Ill, c. 100.

f

Persistence of the Burgage Borough.

DiBputee conoeming Burgage Rights.

38

The Unreformed House of Commons.

electoral system, biirgages under water-courses ; ploughed fields like those at Old Sarum ; deeds which could not convey any property which could be seized either for taxes or for debts, like those at Droitwich; coal-houses, pigeon-lofts and pig-styes, on which burgage franchises were based at Richmond ^ ; and plots of land at Ludgershall so small that they might be covered with a hearth- stone', continued to confer the right to vote for members of the House of Commons.

To the last, in days when England had a well-established daily newspaper press, and the railway era had begun, as from the early days of the Stuart period. House of Commons election committees were burdened and vexed with the miserable local squabbles of the burgage boroughs, and the desperately- «vaged contests of rival claimants to borough influence in these long notorious rotten branches of the borough electoral system. To the last, in days when the back row in the gallery in the ancient chapel of St Stephen^s was occupied by shorthand reporters, tinning out verbatim reports of the proceedings on the floor below, which from quick printing presses were scattered broadcast over the land, and when select committees were busy in adjacent committee rooms listening to the evidence of Stephenson and Brunei, Grenville committees were spending arduous days in rooms thronged by banisters expert in burgage borough election law and burgage borough lore and tradition, by borough attorneys equally well equipped, and by oldest inhabitants, men and women, brought to London as witnesses from burgage boroughs in distant counties, solely to determine just such questions as had presented themselves to election committees in the seventeenth century.

From the time when the House of Commons took into its own hands the determination of controverted elections, the cases from the burgage boroughs had called for determination on such questions as whether the Widows' Row at Petersfield really stood upon the old foundation of six houses, which in the reigii of William HI conferred the Parliamentary franchise'; or whether new houses built on old foundations at Great Bedwin and Steyning gave votes*. Landed proprietors who were borough

^ Clarksoii^ Hist of Hiehmondy App., liii.

« Oldfield, V. 216.

» H,ofC, Journals, xx. 860.

* H, ofC. Journals f xxi. 294 ; Fmser^ Election Reports ^ ii. 339.

The Borough Franchises. 39

owners, mortgaged their lands to carry these and similar questions

to London for determination by the House of Commons and

its committees. They were carrying these cases to London

before the Commonwealth. They were still taking them there

when the stage coach had disappeared, and the oldest inhabitants,

who from the seventeenth century invariably had had their

place in these contests and whose evidence, as spread out in the

Journals of the House of Commons, throws such peculiarly

interesting light on municipal and local political life in the pre-

reform period, could be carried to the metropolis in railway

trains, of which Parliament had determined the speed and the

fares for passengers. Slavery in the United States could not

have long survived the era of the railway, the telegraph, and

the Hoe printing press. Similarly, these English biugage boroughs,

entrenched as they were in the electoral system, and supported

in Parliament by powerful interests, like those which so eflFec-

tually guarded tiiem in 1739, 1746 and 1786, could not have

survived the era of cheaper and more general travel, which came

in with the railways, coupled as this great change was with the

influence of a newspaper press freed from governmental control.

While in many of the boroughs in the burgage group the Vestiges of

dianges which had occurred in the two-and-a-half centuries in Pmichise.

which all Parliamentary franchises had been appreciating in value

and seats in the House of Commons had become increasingly prized,

had carried the conditions governing the exercise of a vote far

from where they stood when the Parliamentary vote was no

more valued than the vote for tithing meui, and when manucaptors

were still appointed at elections ; in at least some of the burgage

boroughs, other vestiges of the early conditions, besides easy and

ill-defined residential qualifications, survived until the last. These

survivals existed where the residential qualification was in force in

what may be described as the chimney burgage boroughs. In some

of them, as at Whitchurch S a burgage holder must have paid scot

and lot or its equivalent before he could vote; and in others,

receipt of poor law relief was a disqualification.

In the boroughs in the burgage group the electoral privil^es Women in

of women were more direct and more valuable than in those in the 2?'^'?*^^

flections. freeman group, the only other group in which women had any

electoral privileges assured to them. It does not seem possible to 1 Cf. H. qfC. Journals, xv. 548.

Rights.

40 The Unreformed Hotise of Commons.

trace that women ever voted at Parliamentary elections in boroughs. 1 They undoubtedly had their part in electioneering, a part which is easily traceable in reports of election committees in the Journals of the House, in the municipal records, and in the letters and memoirs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Oftentimes it must be conceded it was a discreditable and sordid part; for women were frequently the channels between the bribers and the bribed. Especially was this so in the inhabitant householder boroughs, and in the corporation boroughs, in which the wives of voters and of members of municipal corporations controlling elections often figured in these sordid electioneering bargains. In these two groups of boroughs, inhabitant householder and corporation, what- ever part women had in politics or in electioneering was extra- constitutional. Only in the burgage and freeman boroughs had women places recognized by custom and by the determination of election committees. Women's In the burgage boroughs, women who were burgage holders,

RhrKte^ ^ were permitted to transfer their right to vote to their husbands, their sons, their sons-in-law or their nephews. In fact, a woman burgage holder could transfer the right she enjoyed to any man possessed of the qualifications made necessary by usage in the particular borough in which the transfer was made. Men were voting in respect of burgages owned by their mothers or their wives at Pontefract and Corfe Castle as early as 1699*, and at Westbury and Whitchurch in 1702«. By 1729 widows at Great Bedwin were transferring their right to their neighbours'. The practice was for the non-burgage owning neighbour to exchange houses with a widow owning a burgage from a date three weeks before an election until a fortnight afterwards. A similar practice had been established at Steyning by 1734*. At Westbury, where on the eve of the Reform Act there were only sixty-one burgage voters", a transfer of this kind in 1747 was worth one hundred pounds to a widow*, an incident which, as told in detail in the Journals of the House, coupled with such later incidents as the migration of the Earl of Lonsdale's colliers from Cumberland to Surrey, helps to

1 Cf. H, qfa Journals, xra. 127, 128 and 249. « Cf. H. qfC, Journals, xiv. 25, 62. 3 Cf. K qfC, Journals, xxi. 295.

* Cf. Fraser, RsporU, ii. 295. « Cf. Lewis, IV. 428.

• H, qfC. Journals, xxv. 577.

The Borough Franchises. 41

explain why all through the eighteenth century electo^4nflueiioe^ in the larger burgage boroughs, in which there were still any T^^es^of a reiiSential qualification, was the most ..expensive ^ch a^ through patRWr conH set out to acquire and maintam. Not only were" theTnamduaTlmrgages held for high prices ; but the borough patron had to stand ready to carry any dispute to the House of Commons ; for although a last determination might, and in most cases did, reserve the right to the burgage owners, there were continual contentions as to which properties were burgages and which were not. It was in these boroughs, so far as their electoral history can be traced in the Journals of the House and in the later unofficial reports of proceedings before the Grenville committees, that women, who were burgage holders, as distinct from women of the territorial families who at times controlled some of the burgage boroughs outright, had from the Revolution to 188S, their most frequent, most conspicuous, and most direct part in the old representative system.

(3) Corporation Boroughs.

Corporations, or before the era of corporation charters select Election by bodies, were electing members to the House of Commons before ^ions?^*" burgages became of value by reason of their place in the electoral system, before votes in inhabitant householder boroughs were prized, and before seats in the House of Commons were generally in demand. Pr3nine, with good reason, dates Parliamentary elections by municipal corporations to the period when the final stages of borough elections took place not within the boroughs themselves, but at the shire towns where the county court was held at which knights of the shire were chosen \ It was because Parliamentary elections in those days occurred with such frequency, because votes were not yet of value, because no one was yet can- vassing for them, and no one was yet willing to bestow advcmtages on voters who would exercise the franchise in their favour, that tibe municipal corporations fell into the habit of electing the members to the House of Commons with little or no consideration for the townspeople to whom they were responsible for the admin- istration of municipal govetnment.

At this period the inhabitants of many boroughs either waived ^"^f^^ their right of election, or implicitly delegated it to the select ^fter 1444. 1 Prynne, Brema Pariiamentaria, 256.

42 T*he Unreformed Hcmse of Commons.

bodies ^ The final stages of borough elections took place in the county courts from 1374 to 1444, when by Act of Parliament* it was directed that the sheriff should send his precepts to the boroughs; that all the stages of an election should take place within the borough itself; that the boroughs should cease to have any part in the county court ; and that their elections should be made complete by the return of the precept to the sheriff. Early There are proofs that before 1444 select bodies in the munici-

bv mSc? parties were electing the members to the House of Commons. Bodies. Members were so elected at Northampton in 1381 ; and moreover

at a congregation held in the church on Tuesday of Easter week of that year, the mayor had been so chosen as one of the members to Parliament, which was to meet on the 7th of May, 1381 ; and it had been ordained ^^ that every one last holding the office of mayor of Northampton should be hereafter elected burgess of Parliament, if he shall not have discharged the office of burgess before, the office of mayoralty aforesaid being no hindrance'.'*^ At Lynn, in 143S, the election was by a very limited number not exceeding twelve, to the exclusion of the mass of the people*. Elections by select bodies during this period were, however, not general ; for in some places, notably at Shrewsbury, instead of the election of members of the House of Commons being made by the corporation, there were municipal ordinances which directed that "the commons assembled together on the ringing of the common bell shall choose the members to Parliament*."" Seats in the Before borough elections were entirely dissevered from any con-

Commons in "^*J<^^^ yf\\h the county court by the Act of 1444, membership of Demand. the House was appreciating in value. Tlie Act itself is proof of this,«for it was intended to check irregularities on the part of sheriffs, who in the past had returned men " which were never duly chosen, and other citizens and burgesses than those which, by the mayor and bailiffs, were to the said sheriffs returned*.'' The Right As seats in the House of Commons appreciated in value, it

^ 'd^ d ^g*^ *^ ^ *^ ^'^ advantage of the select bodies, or corpora- of Value. tions, to restrict the right of election to themselves. At the time

1 1 Merewether and Stephens^ Hist, of Boroughs ^ ii. 1331. « 23 Henry VI, c. 14.

3 NoHhampton Borough Records, i. 248, 249. * Archteologia, xxxiv. 317.

^ Merewether and Stephens, Hist, of Boroughs, iii. 2099. 0 Cf. Oficiat List, pt, i. 226.

The Barofugh Franchises. 43

that all the procedure of borough elections was transferred to within the boroughs by the Act of 1444, it was declared that the elections were to be by the citizens and burgesses. But who were such was still left to usage, as it had been since the boroughs were first represented in Parlisunent ; and the borough records and State Papers between 1444 and the end of the Tudor period put it beyond doubt that in scores of boroughs the elections continued to be made by the corporations, and that corporations now so valued the power they had acquired, that they were intent on having the right to elect members to the House of Commons secured to them by charter.

How numerous were the elections thus made in Queen Eliza- Evidence of beth'^s reign, and how well-established was the idea that to the ^^^^^' corporations belonged the right of election, may be gathered from ^ect Hooker^s statement of English Parliamentary procedure, submitted to the Irish House of Commons in 1569. Hooker was of the Irish Parliament. He had been of the Parliament at Westminster. He was a lawyer ; he had been chamberlain of Exeter ; and was well known as an antiquary. When he was of the Irish House of Commons, as member for the borough of Athenry, he sought to assimilate the procedure of the Parliament in Dublin to the pro- cedure of the English House of Commons. In a paper which gives one of the fullest contemporary descriptions of procedure at Westminster in Queen Elizabeth^s reign, Hooker explained the procedure at borough elections in England, evidently with the intention that a similar procedure should become the usage at borough elections for the Irish Parliament. ^^ The sheriff of every county,"" he wrote, " having received his writs, ought forthwith to send his precepts and summonses to the mayors, bailiffs, and h^ad officers of every city, town, corporate borough, and such places as have been accustomed to send burgesses within his county, that they do choose and elect among themselves two citizens for every city, and two burgesses for every borough, according to their ancient custom aiid usage''; and "the head officers," continued Hooker in a part of his paper which is of value as showing how so high an authority regarded elections by corporations, " ought then to assemble themselves and the aldermen and common council of every city and town, and to make choice among themselves of two able and sufficient of ever}' city or town to serve for and in the said Parliaments"

1 Hooker, Statement of English Procedure; Lord Montmorres, Ancient Irish FdrHaments, i. 93.

44 The UnrefoTTned Hotcse of Commons.

The

Awftkening of Popular Interest

Excuses for Corporation Monopoly.

That the feeling, thus expressed by Hooker, that the corpora- tions had the right to elect, survived his time and at a later period was held by men familiar with election procedure, and with the House of Commons, is shown by a letter from Greneral Sir Edward Cecil to Lord Zouch, Warden of the Cinque Ports, written in 16S4. Cecil was writing to Zouch concerning two members of the House of Commons who at the instance of the Lord Warden had been chosen for Dover. Their election had been declared void, and they had been " put out of the House of Commons as not being elected according to ancient law by the commons ^ of Dover. " If this law were generally followed,'^ wrote Cecil, who was one of the unseated members, "few would be left to sit in Parliament^*"

However complacently the free inhabitants of the period be- tween 1874 and 1444 may have regarded the elections by select bodies, however indifferent they may, in those days, have been as to who represented their boroughs in the House of Commons, and as to how and by whom these representatives were chosen, the in- difference was coming to an end by the time Hooker submitted his suggestions as to the reform of procedure in the Irish Parliament. Even nearly a century earlier than the date of Hooker's paper, there can be traced an awakening of popular interest. As early as 1474, only thirty years after all the procedure and formalities at borough elections had been transferred from the county court, over . which the sheriff presided, to the guildhalls, to the market crosses, and to the churches within the boroughs, there was a measure of electoral reform at Ipswich. It came from inside the borough. Parliament had no part in it. It was brought about by a muni- cipal ordinance, which decleu^ " that all burgesses resident, and no others, shall have their free votes in the election of bailiffs and other officers of the town, according to the ancient custom, upon the day of the Nativity of the Virgin ; and their free election of burgesses of the Parliament, whensoever the same shall be*.'*'

Similar movements were going on in the boroughs in the closing years of the Tudor dynasty, not always with the same success as at Ipswich; for as late as 1621 select bodies were still appropriating the right to elect members to the House of Commons.

» Cal. State Papers, 1625, p. 200.

' AnnalU qf Ipswiche, by Nathaniel Bacon, Berving as Recorder and Town Clerk, A.D. 1654, p. 135.

The Borough Franchises. 46

But in the Stuart period it was not the indifference of the inhabi- tants to Parliamentary elections which permitted these exclusions of the townspeople from the electoral franchise. The plea which the select bodies put forward to justify these exclusions proves that there was no longer any popular indifference, and shows that the inhabitants were now no longer willing that the municipal cor- porations exclusively should have the right, and exercise it at their sole discretion. The plea on which these exclusions were now urged or defended was ^ the avoidance of popular tumults common at elections.*" This was the ground on which the mayor, jurats and council at Sandwich in 1621 assiuned the right to elect ; and the inhabitants so keenly resented the exclusion, that Lord Zouch, the Warden of the Cinque Ports, through whom the writs went to these constituencies, was informed that it was ^^the intention of the commons of Sandwich to present a bill to Parliament for the restoration of their former privileges of having a voice' at elections, and for disannulling the late choice of burgesses V the choice which had been made by the mayor, jurats and council. In 1628, when Huntingdon obtained a new charter, a charter under which ^Mt sank rapidly into the spiritless condition of a rotten borough, in which it continued until the passing of the Reform Act,^ the reason set out in the new instrument for effacing the democracy in municipal government, and in the election of members of the House of Commons, was that it was necessary to prevent ^^ popular tumult, and to render the elections and other things and the public business of the said borough into certainty and constant Older V - '^

There were men of the corporations to whom it was per- The Coming sonally advantageous that the corporations should have these ex- ^**^® elusive ri^ts ; and outside these municipal oligarchies, there were Patron, men of the local territorial families who also had a direct and an appreciating interest in helping to place and keep electoral rights in the hands of as few borough inhabitants as possible. These outsiders were the forerunners of the borough patrons, although the phrase borough patron was not in vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As yet, the landed aristocracy who had their hands on the boroughs had not fiilly arrived at the position, of

1 Gal. State Papers, 161^1623, p. 219. , ^^

> John Bruoe^ ''An Unnoticed Incident in the Early U£e of Cromwell/" AtkefUBum, October Idth^ 1865.

46 The Unreformed House of Commons.

patrons. As yet they could not dictate to the townspeople in the inhabitant householder and the corporation boroughs. Their letters were still those of suppliants for favours. They were not couched in the commanding tones which characterised the correspondence between borough owners and subservient borough corpora- tions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ; and it was not until the eighteenth century that the term patron, as applied to a man who controlled borough influence and borough elections, generally found its way into literature, into memoirs and letters, into county histories, and into gazetteers. Even in England Displayed^ an ambitious and useful work in folio published as late as 1759, and one of the best precursors of Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England^ the fullest and most complete gazetteer published prior to the' Reform Act of 1882, it is not possible to find any references to patrons of Parliamentary boroughs. In Lewis the patrons of boroughs are named, as to-day the Clergy List publishes the names of the patrons of church livings. Develope- Dining the Tudor and early Stuart periods, the patron was still

mentofthe ^^y j^ develop^ment. But even then, and more so than in the eighteenth century when his hold on the boroughs had become secure, he was always ready at Court or in Parliament to serve a borough on which he was fastening himself; and whenever there was a new charter by which the right of election was transferred to a corporation, like that at Huntingdon in 1628, it is safe to assume that in that borough the predecessor of the eighteenth and nineteenth century patron was already on the scene*. Corporationfi In a borough whose charter dated earlier than the Restoration, ^ureljr in |^ corporation in possession of the exclusive right of electing members was entrenched in. an almost impregnable , fort. It was advantageously placed for discouraging, if not for preventing, a movement within the borough for a wider franchise. If such a movement were begim and persisted in, and carried to the House of Commons, a corporation with a charter had not much to fear from a contest at Westminster, even in the early days of Charles I, when as Greneral Sir Edward Cecil, from whose letter of 1624 quotation has already been made, affirmed that the House of Commons "is violent for free elections"'^; when Eliot, who was " always ready to oppose all unfair tampering with the rights of.

1 Cf. Bruce, Cal. State Papers, 1829-31, Introduction, viii.

2 Cal. State Papers, 1623, 1625, p. 192.

The BoroiLgh Franchises. 47

electors,^ and Hampden, who helped in and sympathized with Eliot's work as an electoral reformer*, were of the committee of privileges. But the committee of the Pariiament of 1628, of which Eliot and Hampden were members, while declaring in one of its resolutions that '^ the election of burgesses in all boroughs did of common right belong to the commoners, and that nothing could take it away from them,^ made an exception which afforded a cover for boroughs with charters, and in some instances for boroughs which had none, by adding "but a prescription and a constant usage beyond all memory to the contrary*.*" Some of the boroughs had both usage and charter to uphold the exercise of the exclusive right of election by the corporation; for the men within and without the corporations, interested in the con- tinuance of this right, had protected their interests by obtaining charters.

The contests between the advocates of popular franchises and Some the corporations in exclusive possession in non-charter boroughs, 5f^I^^" which went on from Queen Elizabeth's reign until shortly before Rights, the Revolution, especially from the beginning of the reign of Charles I to 1640, were, however, not in vain. While Eliot and Hampden were of the committee of privileges, and when, in all controverted election cases, Eliot "took earnest share and never but in behalf of a more extended franchise*,'' " the common sort of burgesses,'' those who in the earliest days of English municipal life did watch and ward, paid scot and lot, and within whose right it was to vote for members of the House of Commons, as it was their burden to pay their members' wages so long as the payment of wages lasted, had their electoral rights restored at Warwick, Colchester, Bpston, Bridport and Lewes*. In these boroughs, municipal oligarchies in the form of the mayor and common council at Warwick; bailiffs, aldermen and common council at Colchester ; two bailiffs and thirteen capital burgesses at Bridport ; and at Lewes a small number of constables, were all denied the exclusive right of electing members for these several boroughs.

The committee of privileges of this Parliament of 1628,

» Cf. Forater, Ufe qfEUot, i. 557 and ii. 271. » H. o/C. JaumaU, xvii. 143; Waylen, Hut, qfDetfixes, 347. 3 Forster^ U/e qf Eliot, n. 273, 274.

^ Colchester, March 28th ; Lewes, March 29th ; Bridport, April 12th ; Boston, May 7th ; Warwick, May 3l8t, 1628 ; K o/C. Journals, 1628.

48 J^e Unreformed House of Commons.

Electoral a Parliament nearly b& memorable as the one that succeeded it, left 1628™ ° ^^ impress on the representative history of England. By its work in the interest of electoral reform it gave an impetus to popular movements within the boroughs for a restoration of wider Parlia- mentary franchises, an impetus which made itself felt at the Restoration, and again at the calling of the Convention Parliament of 1688. It had not spent itself when it was checked and almost lost for two generations by the Last Determinations Act of 1729. In boroughs whose franchises had been passed upon by election committees, no matter how remote the determinations, this Act ended all these local popular agitations, these contests with cor- porations, corporations now grown more daring, more arrogant, and now frequently dominated by outsiders with no direct bonajide interest in the boroughs, who had become of the municipal corporations solely to advance euid conserve the Parliamentary interests of the territorial families imder whose patronage the boroughs had passed. Corporations At the Restoration, when the general electoral reform which Defence ^^ heiexi made by Cromwell was reversed, and the House of Commons was to be elected again on the old representative system, there were many contests in the boroughs between the exclusive groups which before the Commonwealth had claimed the right of election, and the inhabitants who saw in the calling of a Parliament on the old model an opportunity for possessing themselves of the franchise. There were so many of these local contentions, so many of these popular assaults on the corporations, that the corporation of Northampton, fearing the ill success of an isolated, defence, passed an ordinance declaring the intention of Northampton to " unite with any other corporation of the neighboiu*hood for the maintenance and continuance of their constancy in the choice of burgesses to serve in Parliament by the mayor, bailiffs and bur-

K

Contests of Nearly forty election contests were carried to the House of

1661 *"*^ ^ Commons in the Parliament of 1660 ; and, as the Journals show, most of these disputes were due to local agitation for a wider franchise. Seventeen of these cases were determined before the first Parliament of Charles II was dissolved on the S9th of December, 1660. Some of the determinations were in favbpr of the wider fi-anchise; as in several of the boroughs, notably at

^ Northampton Borough Records, ii. 488.

The Borough V^anchises. ^^

Plymouth \ at Northampton', and 9X St Ives', corporations or select municipal groups failed to inaiatain their hold on the right of election. On the other hai^d, corporations succeeded in doing this at Truro*;, at BuckingUun*; and at St Michaels*; so that by the determinations of tiie %it Parliament of Charles II, there was but slight change in the number of the corporations which were exercising the right (tf flection. The agitations for wider franchises were renewed at the i elections for* the Parliament of 1661 ; but in the determinations w^iich were made in contested elections by the House of Common4 in 1661 and 166S, there were only two instances in which municipal corporations lost the right they had hitherto enjoyed. ^[Jliese were at Preston and Ludlow '. I

The outcome of the determination in respect to Preston was Wide Fran- remarkable; for under this determination \<rf 1661 there ^as J^^* established one of the most extraordinaiy AmnStoKs on which members of the House of Commons were e^er elected, a franchise which was directly responsible, one hundred /^ind twenty-five years later, for the first Act of Parliament establishing a residential quaUfication in the popular boroughs, — ^in all the ^boroughs in which members were chosen otherwise than by burgpge holders, fineemen, or corporations. Until the Restoration th^ right of electing at Preston 'had been exercised by the corporatido. The determination of 1661 was, to quote the Journals, **^n favour of all the inhabitants^; and the determination was sp loosely rendered, and afterwards so widely interpreted, that until 1786, neither residence in the ordinary acceptance of the term, nor ^ any payment to local taxation was necessary to the exercise of the Parliamentary franchise. Any man who had been overnight in Preston could vote at a Parliamentary election there, until the six mon\(^ residential qualification for all inhabitant householder ^ borougfaf^^as established by the Act of 1786. The franchise at Preston from 1661 to 1786, sp favourable to fugacious electors, was thus wider than in the popular boroughs in which no

* Cf. H. ofC, Journals, viii. 59. « Cf. H, o/C, Joumais, vra. 70. ' Cf. H, qfC, Journals, viii. 90.

* Cf. K o/a Journals, viii. 69. « Cf. H. o/a Journals, viii. 87.

* Cf. H. o/a Journals, vui. 92.

^ Cf. H. OfC, Journals, viii. 336, 373.

P. 4

_Jt-

^ -t -TTife Unrrformed House of Commons.

Charles II mnd Corpo- ration Boroughs.

Corporations availed in 1088.

contribution to local taxatipn was necessary to a vote; for in these boroughs some period^ of reaidb?ice was required, ^d the term residence had not in tiftem the elastic meaning which it had at Preston. Moreover in ^^tyse pcqpular boroughs, even if a voter did not pay poor rate or d^oidi rate, he was usually disqualified if he had received help from fhe poor rate. Many curious anomalies resulted from the^^ determinations of election commit- tees; but none more curioi;ifi or more at variance with consti- tutional usages than retulte^ from the determination under which Preston was freed fit>m its municipal oligarchy, and the ri^t of election thrown into the fMssession of ^^all the inhabitants."^

At the Restoratiim tJ^i^ Crown was no more favourably dis- posed towards open bor#u(^ than it was in the years that in- tervened between the {Uetoiration and the Reform Act of 18SSt; for in 1661, when \ local reformers were still busy with the contests for wider frandiises which marked the calling of the first Parliament ct Charles II, and election committees were making occasional determinations in favour of tlie inhabitants and against t|t» local bodies which had been in control, instruc- tions in a cantmry direction were being issued frdpi Whitehall in respect ^ new municipal charters. These wer^ that when new chartqpr^ were granted for boroughs, there should be ^^ express reservation to the Crown of the first nomination of aldermen, recorders And^ town clerks'": and also that ^^ there be a provision for electH>nS' tft Parliament to be made by the comnion council only^^ iinetructions which foreshadowed the coming struggle between the last of the Stuarts and Parliamei^t.

At the . Bevolution, which the manipulation of the boroughs by Charles II and James II had done so much to bring about, j local reformers in the Parliamentary boroughs entertained the! same expectation of success and of the widening of fpand that they had held when the Parliament of 1660 was cPlied.' spite of the fact that the letters issued for the Conventiod Parliament contained a clause directing that the elections shoul^ be by ^^such persons only as according to the ancient laWs customs of right ought to choose members for Parliament*) the unenfranchised inhabitants of the boroughs, where sele groups had hitherto been in control, again pressed their claiil

1 Ckil. State PUpen, 1660-61, p. 682. > Stephens, Intro, to De Lolme, i. 479.

The Borough Franchises. 51

to vote, aa they had done at the Restoration; and again

many of these contests were carried for final settlement to

Westminster. Portsmouth then obtained a wider franchise^; but

the success of these local agitations at th^ Revolution ^as

even less than at the Restoration; and^lbetween the Revolution,

and the Last Determinations Act, few changes were made in the

position of the boroughs in which the corporations were in)

control. /^

The demand for seats in the House of Commons was greater Demand for

during the lifetime of the Parliament which was elected in 1661 p*^ "* t v/ I

and continued until 1678, than in any preceding Parliament, of 1661-78. \

This demand is evident from the number of candidates who j

presented themselves at by-elections % and from the more general \

use of bribes which marked the elections to the second Parliament

of Charles II'. It is clear also from the intimidations which

some members of the Pensioner Parliament used towards their

constituents, when at last this long-drawn out Parliament was

coming to a close. One member of this Parliament, Andrew

Marvell, is authoritatively known to have received wages from

his constituents at Kingston-upon-HulL But while there had

been isolated instances of local payment of wages during the :: Commonwealth, as for instance at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1654 ^ .r such payment had long ago generally disappeared, and it may be jc concluded that Marvell was the last member of the House to ^^. receive wages, r^ularly and freely paid by his constituents. Claims ^ for wages were threatened by many members of the Pensioner

Parliament, but the fact that these threatened claims were made ^- with a view to their use as levers to secure easy re-election*, ^^. led to the introduction of a bill to put a formal and statutory J lend to wages*. The bill did not become law; nor has any ^?such measure ever been passed. But that there were threats of Lj k revival of the old law, and that these threats were, according Marvell'*8 understanding of them, solely to give opportimities bargains for re-election, is another proof of the extent to

^H.ofC. Jaumaify xi. 411.

\ ' There were six at Aldborough in 1673. Of. Reresby^ Memoin, 177. I ' Cf. SavUle^ Correspondence, 113. i* Cf. Mackenzie, Hiit. o/Newcaotle, ii. 660. V Cf. Marvell, Worke, n. 618.

\ Cf. Somers^ Traete, vin. 396, 307.

4—2

62

The Unreformed HoiLse of Commons.

Enhanced Value of VoteB,

Unrecorded Contests.

which seats were in request between the Restoration and the Revolution.

The increased demand for seats and the larger bribes which from the Restoration began to be distributed among constituents, enhanced the value of exclusive rights of election, whether exercised by municipal corporations, by burgage holders, by the modem freemen to the exclusion of the inhabitants who were not freemen, or by the voters in scot and lot constituencies, where the Parliamentary borough was not co-extensive with the municipality. At the Revolution, in the boroughs and also among the territorial families which controlled or were seeking to control borough elections, there had already been long at work those interests which either schemed for the Last Determi- nations Act of 1729, or heartily welcomed that measure when it was placed on the statute book. *

When it is remembered how general was Parliamentary election by municipal oligarchies up to the end of the Tudor period ; when statements like those of Hooker and Sir Edward Cecil indicating the extent of this usage in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I are recalled, it becomes obvious that after .seats became in demand, and the Parliamentary franchise began to be prized, there must have been many local contests between muni- cipal oligarchies and larger bodies of inhabitants for the possession of the right to elect members to Parliament, which went against the oligarchies, but which are not recorded in the Journals of the House. Some of these contests, like that at Ipswich in 1474, where the inhabitants reasserted themselves, were doubtless settled in favour of a wider franchise, and settled as the Ipswich contest was, without any interference from the outside; for when the end came in 18S2, there were only forty-three boroughs, as far as I can trace them, out of a total of SOS in England and Wales, in which the corporations had by usage or by charter the exclusive right to elect. Indirect Forty-three does not represent the total number of boroughs

Corpomtion jjj which the control of Parliamentary elections was in the hands of Control. . ^ . . , . 1 ,

corporations. Corporations were m control in many boroughs

in which they had not the exclusive right of election. They

were in control in some of the freeman boroughs, and in some

of the scot and lot boroughs. In the freeman boroughs the

corporations possessed control chiefly by the exercise of the

right to make freemen, either resident or non-resident, as the

The Borough Franchises. 63

uaa^ of the borough allowed, and by their use of the corpora- tion property and revenues \ In the scot and lot boroughs they exercised control through their local political power, helped in some places by the manipulation of the poor law in their interest by the overseers of the poor, a|id often, as was the vogue in freeman boroughs, by the use of local charities for electioneering purposes'. But in boroughs controlled by cor- porations in this way, in these freeman and scot and lot boroughs, the inhabitants, or some portion of them, . were in possession of the franchise, and the corporations obtained and held control of Parliamentary elections, and often acted as sub- agents of borough Dfttions, by alliance with the electors.

In the borouglLs I have included in the category of corpora- Complete tion boroughs, this'^was not the case. In these boroughs the^^^t^ °" corporations were exclusively in possession of the right to elect, and needed no outside help or alliances. The right had been acquired and maintained through many generations, and in these boroughs the elections were made solely by the corporations; and the inhabitants, well-to-do and poor alike, were as completely ignored in the choice of members to Parliament as though they had been dwelling on another continent. Neither borough patrons nor members of the House of Commons in these constituencies had any political relations with the inhabitants who were not of the corporations; and from within a few years after the Revolu- tion, it was usual, as is evident from the letters and memoirs and the Parliamentary reports of the eighteenth century, for a member who represented a corporation borough to speak, not as nowadays "of my constituents,^ but of "my corporation ■.■" "t It was in these boroughs that it was often in the power of the mayor to tell Parliamentary candidates or local electoral reformers, and to tell them with truth, as the bailiff of Haslemere did in 1661, that "it lay in his little pate to return whom he

In these borough corporations there was as little uniformity Non-resident as to residential qualification for members of the corporation, as

* Cf. H. qfC, JoumaU, xii. 627.

• Cf. H. of C, Journals, xvi. 477; Mirror qf Parliament, 1836, ii. 1606; Municipal Chrporations Comm, lit Rep,, pt. iv. p. 2496. x

> Cf. Hi9t. M8S. Comm, 15th Rep., App., pt. iv. 94; Sir John Bland to Robert Harley, Jane 20th, 1704. « Oldfield, IV. 696.

64 The Unreformed House of Commons.

there was in regard to residential qualification for voting ir\the . burgage boroughs. In many of them the members of the corporations were non-resident. These corporations were supposed to exist for municipal government; but few of them were responsible to the community. Most of them were self-elected; and^ey were kept together, not primarily with a view to the well-being and good administration of thp borpnprhR^ but as orgimisalions for returning members to the House of Commons, and for defending and maintaining the exclusive right to make these elections. Usually this was the sole object of the non- residents who were of the corporation. Non-residents were frequently chosen as mayors, or to the offices which corre- sponded to that of mayor. They had no interest in the muni- cipal government of the borough. Oftentimes these mayors were not in the boroughs, at the head of whose munidpai governments they had been placed, fit)m one year's end to another ^ They took the office because in nearly all the boroughs the mayors were the returning officers. They, or their deputies, conducted the formalities connected with the Parliamentary elec- tions ; and when a borough was in the control of a patrop» it was necessary that TEe" patf6h sh6dld have as mayOT.,&^man on whom he could absolutely rely, to act steadtastly in his interest at the Parliamentary elections. Patrons of From the time when seats in the House of Commons became

Borou^^" generally in demand, the landed families who were fastening them- selves on the boroughs, and who in later years were to become their patrons, thrust themselves into municipal politics and subsequently into the municipal corporations. Their concern in municipal politics was always their Pii.rlT«.ip<*pfjLry i^tAtiPftf The intrusion of outsiders into the municipal corporations was solely to this end. They were there only as the guardians of the electoral influence of the borough patrons*. Pernicious Throughout the eighteenth century men of the landed classes

M^^*^'^ were thus active in municipal politics, and they pushed themselves Life. not only into the corporations in boroughs in which the corpora-

tions were in exclusive possession of the right to elect members to Parliament; but also into the corporations in those scot and lot and freeman boroughs in which the corporations had control

^ Cf. Municipal Carp, Gomm, Ut Bep,, p. 37. s Cf. Mirror ofParHameni, 1885^ ii. 1249.

The Borough Franchises. 66

their alliance with the inhabitants in whom the Parliamentary

chise was vested. The whole character and purpose of municipal corporations was altered, and altered for the worse, in I nearly every borough in which the corporations possessed the ri^t of election, or exercised it through influence over the local electorate. It is of the corporations in the period between the Revolution and the Reform Act, in the period of their most rampant rule, when they were permitted to make what by-laws they liked, and spend the borough revenues as they chose, that Professor Maitland writes, ^ There was a vicious circle. The cor- poration was untrusted because untrustworthy, untrustworthy because untrusted.^ ^^For what end then,^ Professor Maitland asks, after showing that the corporations were fulfilling none of the new duties that were to answer new urban needs, ^did its property exist ? *" " For,"' he ansi^ers, ** the election of the patron^s nominee, and then for the common good of the corporators, and that may mean dinners or a division of the income or even of the lands among themselves ^!"

The boroughs in which the corporations had exclusive right Dissenters in of election have another claim on the student of the history <>^S?''^'^'* the E^lish representative system. Dissenters from the Church of England were never incapacitated from being of the House of ^ Commons, or from being freemen. The Test and Corporation Acts did not apply to members of Parliament; but they did apply to municipal corporations, and from nearly all of them dissenters were rigorously excluded.

Tliree years after the Parliamentary electoral system was Hie End of reformed in 1882, these old borough corporations were also***®^'P^ reformed. Their reform came quickly after the Act of 1882. It was largely due to the democratic movement which was developed by the Reform Act. But even had the reforming spirit not so soon reached the corporations which had for more than a century made a travesty of municipal government and so long afironted the people whom they were supposed to serve, the old municipal corporations could not have survived the downfall of the old representative system. They were bound up with this system. They were part of it. The two systems, the Parliamentary electoral system and the system of corporation misrule, were so interwoven, so interdependent, that after the

^ Maitland^ Tawmhip and Borough, 96, Cf. Municipal Corp, Oomm. 1st Rep,, p. 49.

^y 66 The Unreforvied House of Commons. i

electoral system had been remodelledy the old corporations, if le

untouched by Parliament, must soon have toppled over of the

own weight. Patrons no longer had any need of them. ThQr

no longer paid salaries to those resident members of the corporation

who had hitherto locally safeguarded their Parliamentary interests.

Outsiders were no longer desirous of being of the corporatioiis.

The mission of these outsiders, who for the most part had tot

the remotest interest in the real municipal life of the boroi^hs

with which they had been officially and closely connected, was

at an end as soon as these corporations could no longer of^ their

own exclusive right, or through their influence with sc^t and

lot voters, or with freemen, elect members to the House of

Commons.

No more Landed proprietors who were borough patrons, or borough

Advantaps patrons who were of the commercial classes, ceased to trouble forMembera. , - . , «• .1.1 . . 1 a

themselves with offices within the municipal corporations after

, 18S2. Bribes to members of the small corporations, which in

amount sometimes reached a thousand guineas'; government

patronage which from soon after the Revolution had gone inr^

creasingly to members of municipal corporations and to their sons

and sons-in-law ; crown livings, clerkships in the State Departments

in London, cadetships in the Navy and in the India service,

and appointments under the Post Office and the Customs and

Inland Revenue Boards, — this stream of good things, which patrons

and members of the House of Commons who were supporters

of the Government had directed to their corporations, was

abruptly stopped. " The tumultuous and merry election ball,*" to

quote Croker'^s description of the dance he had to attend after

his election at Lord Dunstanville^s nomination borough of Bodmin

in 1820', was now a thing of the past. These balls were no

doubt " at once tiresome and foolish,*" as Croker, who had a close

connection with two other corporations in another part of the

country ', described the Bodmin ball. To Parliamentary candidates

they must have been tedious and fatiguing; but they added to

the social distinction of the wives and daughters of members

of the corporations, and attendance at them was part of the

price that men in high official position, like Croker, had to

pay for a seat in the unreformed House of Commons.

1 At Malmesbury in 1722 ; H. o/C. Journals, zx. 78.

• Croker^ Papers, i. 162, 153.

s Mirror 0/ ParUamerU, 1SS5, 11. 1249.

The Borough Franchises. 67

Bribery did not disappear with the old electoral system. It Degradation was as rampant at Stafford at the first election after the Reform ^^^J^JI^" Act, as it had been in any of the four boroughs which for their deep-seated corruption were thrown into the hundreds between 1770 and 1882. At the Stafford election, out of 1049 voters, 852 were bribed^, and the electoral condition was so bad that the early eighteenth century remedy of withholding writs was applied to the borough ; and in the session of 1835 a bill was introduced for its disfranchisement '. But while bribery continued under the new electoral system, and the evil was not completely eradicated until after the passing of the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, there were no longer, after 1832, the heavy bribes, douceurs which went into hundreds of pounds, to the members of municipal corpora- tions. Every advantage, except that of dividing among themselves the municipal revenues and the municipal lands, disappeared after the corporations were deprived of their exclusive right to elect members to the House of Commons, or of their great influence in bringing about these elections; and if Parliament in 1835 ^|iad passed an Act merely depriving the corporations of the right to do what they liked with what they regarded as their own, instead of sweeping two hundred corporations out of existence, the end would not have been long in coming. Divorced from their«old place in the Parliamentary electoral system, the cohesion of the municipal oligarchies was gone. The corporations had taken on all the exclusiveness, all the utter disregard of the real purpose for which they existed — they had taken on all the worst features which marked the last century and a half of their history, from their close and interested connection with the election of members of the House of Commons. They were held together chiefly by the gain of this connection; and the reform of the House of Commons, which abruptly cut them out of the electoral system, left them lower than ever in local esteem, stranded or derelict, and totally unable to withstand even a much less violent storm than that which overtook them and to which they gracelessly succumbed in 1835.

> Mirror of Parliament , 1SS5, ii. 1932. • Mirror of Parliament y 1835, i. 937.

68 The Unreformed House of Commons.

(4) Freeman Boroughs.

Warping of The freeman boroughs have been placed last in the grouping tiie Freeman ^f ^^ ^i^ English boroughs which has been here adopted, because in so many of them the Parliamentary franchise on the eve of the Reform Act was more remote than in any of the other three groups of boroughs from the franchise which existed when the House of Commons of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was elected — a franchise which could be exercised by any freeman who was a householder, who obeyed the curfew bell, did watch and ward, and bore the other burdens of municipal life. Burgages had a close connection with this early Parlia- mentary franchise, for each burgage may be taken to have represented a home, an occupied house within a borough \ It is not difficult to trace how corporations drew to themselves the exclusive right of electing members to the House of Commons, when the franchise was still unprized and few men were desirous of being of the Parliament. But only the exigencies of the control and management of Parliamentary elections, such as confronted borough managers from the closing years of the Tudor regime, could account for the extraordinary and utterly unconstitutional position in which the electoral franchise stood in the freeman boroughs, when Parliament at last seriously turned its attention to the reform of the representative system in 18S2. Extensions ^ thirty-eight boroughs in which hosts of honorary and

^ ^®* ^ non-resident freemen were permitted to vote at Parliamentary the Fran- elections, this wide difference between the early borough franchise chise, and the franchises in the freeman boroughs in 1882 was especially

marked. Even in some of the freeman boroughs in which the residential qualification survived to the last, or in which electors had to pay scot and lot, or poor or church rates, there had been departures from the early borough franchise. These were due to local usages which, with the appreciation of the Parlia- mentary vote, had gradually come into existence, and which restricted the number of freemen, thus withholding the franchise 1^ from all the inhabitant householders who could not comply with them. A restriction of this kind, which was typical of those in other freeman boroughs, existed at Carlisle. It excluded to the

> Cf. Merewether and Stephens^ HUt of Boroughs, ii. 830; Bacon^ AnnalU ofljmoiche, 146.

The Borough Franchises. 69

last inhabitants who were not of the trade guilds ^ In the ^ eighteenth oentury, and as long as the old electoral system continued, clergymen, lawyers, doctors and bankers were excluded from the franchise, because they were not of the guilds; and none of these inhabitants could vote at the elections at Carlisle, unless they managed to ally themselves with the oligarchy in. control, and were made honorary members of the trade guilds, and through this avenue obtained the right to the franchise. In London^^ andjn many other freeman boroughs, the usage was the same/ Onlythrough the trade guilds, or by their special &vour, could men obtain the Parliamentary franchise in the cities and boroughs in which the right of election was in the freemen, and in which the corporations did not possess entire power over the creation of freemen.

These usages, — which dissevered a man unless he were a Freameo. freeman from any recognized share in the municipal life of the town in which he lived, and which denied him trading, educational, and other local privileges of more immediate value than a participation in local politics, — ^became general in the boroughs after the word ^ freeman ^ had ceased to be used to mark the difference in social status of bond and free, between villeins and those who had lived free a year and a day in a borough, and thereafter owned no man as their lord. The term freeman as it was used in the last two centuries of the unreformed representative system, as distinguished from its medieval signifi- cation, dates from long after serfdom had entirely disappeared from English social life ; for until the early years of the seven- teenth century so far fit)m there being any restrictions to limit the number of freemen, men were compelled by municipal ordi- nances to assume the freedom and the municipal obligations which went with it*. But by this time the appellation of freeman was becoming more connected with trade, more special to the men who were of the trade guilds, as distinct from men who owned no lord, and the general term ^ inhabitants,^ which entirely overlooked the distinction of bond and free, was coming into use*. These were the freemen whose claims to the exclusive possession of the electoral franchise, or sometimes to a share

^ Cf. Lonsdale, Ufe of John Heyshatn, M.D., 2/8; H, of C, Journals, xvii. 107.

> Cf. Ipswich, Ordinance oj 1606; Bacon, Annalis o/Iptwiche, 433. * Cf. Merewether and Stephens, Mut, of Boroughs, in. 1664.

60

The Unrefbrmed House of Commons.

Honorary Freemen.

Members

Freemen.

with a corporation in the right of electing members to Parliament, now began to occupy the attention of committees of privil^e or of the House itself. These were the freemen, the men of the trade guilds, who in so many boroughs from the later days of the Tudor sovereigns were in attendance at guildhall to elect the mayor and aldermen, as well as the representatives of the borough to the House of Commons; and it was these men who in some of the boroughs wrested the right of election of members of Parliament from the municipal corporations.

In the first two or three decades of the seventeenth century the freeman voters may be taken to have adequately represented the constituencies in which they exercised the Parliamentary franchise; to' have been nearly as representative of the inhabitants of the freeman boroughs, as the scot and lot voters or the potwalloper voters were of the boroughs in which the Parlia- mentary franchise was based on these popular qualifications. It was only when seats in the House of Commons became generally in demand that there would be any political reasons for restricting the number of frieemen entitled to vote at Parliamentary elections. As soon, however, as that demand became general, as soon as Parliamentary candidates were willing to bribe fr'eemen to vote, two changes took place in the freeman boroughs. In some of the boroughs the corporations began to manoeuvre to keep down the number of freemen ; and in other boroughs there was begun the practice of making honorary fr'eemen, a practice which, before the eighteenth century was far advanced, had been extended to many of the boroughs in which members of the House of Commons were chosen wholly or partly by freeman electors.

The earliest of the non-resident freemen were outsiders who represented the freeman boroughs in Parliament. These men were made freemen either to comply with the old law which directed that members should be of the constituencies they repre- sented, or to comply with local ordinances and usages^ established after seats were in demand, which decreed that only frieemen should represent the borough in Parliament. This custom of making non-residents freemen had certainly begun as early as the reign of James I ; for at Rye in 16S4, Sir Edward Conway and John Angell were chosen to represent the port, and with the intimation to them of their choice there went a request **to

1 Cf. Norwich, 1640, U, of C. Journals, xv. 66, 66; Barnstaple, 1685, Pinecojfin M88,, Hi$L MS8. Ckmm, 5th Rep., App., 371.

The Borough Franchises. 61

come down to be swom in as freemen and to receive requisite information^ on what was to be done in Parliament for the benefit of the constituency^

In 1640 there was an instance of this kind, a case in which Cromwell an outsider was made a freeman in order that he might represent nian^of Canv^ a borough in Parliament, which in its results had a memorable bridge. eflPect on the course of English history in the seventeenth century. Early in 1640 Cromwell was again contemplating entering the House of Commons; this time as one of the members for the borough of Cambridge. He had already been of the House as member for the borough of Himtingdon; and at the time it was suggested to him that he should become a candidate for ^Cambridge, he was living at Ely. There was a difficulty in the way of his standing for Cambridge in that he was not a freeman of that borough. This objection was siurmounted by the mayor bestowing on him the freedom. Cromwell was made a freeman "gratis, on the payment of one penny for the poor''; and on the 26th of March he was elected to the first Parliament of 1640*.

After an end had been temporarily made to the House of Another Lords in 1649, the Earl of Salisbury was similarly made a freeman at King's Lynn*. He was elected to the Parliament of the Commonwealth, and served as member for King's Lynn until 1654, when he became member for the Coxmty of Hertford*. Salisbury was the first non-resident to represent King's Lynn in the House of Commons, and one of the earliest unpaid members for that borough*.

From the Restoration such bestowals of the freedom as that on Payments Cromwell at Cambridge, and on the Earl of Salisbury at King's pj^^|^„ Lynn, became frequent; and with the increasing pressure from candidates on borough constituencies, corporations in fr-eeman i boroughs began more generally to pass ordinances decreeing that none but freemen should represent them in the House of Commons. With pressure fit)m candidates, these bestowals of the freedom ceased to be made in good faith. They ceased to be made with a view to securing eligible candidates, and were often made solely for the purpose of extorting tribute; for it was the rule in most boroughs

1 Gal, State Papers, 1623-25, p. 152.

> Of. Sandford, Studies and lUustratums of the Great Rebellion, 267.

' Doyle, Official Baronage, in. 250.

* Doyle, Official Baronage, iii. 250.

^ Archaeologia, xziv. 327.

62 The Unreformed House of Commons.

that until this tribute had been paid, a candidate was not to be permitted even to try his fortunes at the polls. Aristocratic At the time boroughs were thus making freemen of outsiders

Freemen. ^j^^ desired to represent them in the House of Commons, they were also making two other innovations in connection with the freedom. They were using their power to confer the freedom on men who desired to become patrons of the boroughs in order to nominate their Parliamentary representatives ; and also on men who J desired to be freemen to help patrons to secure control, and whose only interest in the boroughs centred in the Parliamentary elections. The first of these two classes of outsiders, who were now being made honorary freemen, were men of territorial families. In boroughs in which the corporations exercised the exclusive right of election, as distinct from the boroughs in which the corporations exercised control through their influence with the freemen, these men became of the municipal oligarchies, and held the office of mayor or recorder, in order to guard their Parliamentary interests. In the reign of Charles I men of the landed classes, men who in many cases were already of the peerage, were being made honorary freemen in order that they might have a part in municipal politics, so far as such politics had any direct connection with the representative system, and thereby be enabled from inside the corporations, to advance and safeguard the claims they were now making, claims which in this reign were being generally conceded, to* nominate members of the House of Commons. Freemen at In 1639 Lord Windsor, whose family had long been established

Worceeter. ^^ Hewell Grange, near Worcester, was made an honorary freeman of this city, under circumstances which suggest that his interest in the city was Parliamentary, as distinct from municipal. Lord Windsor was evidently desirous, of becoming a freeman, for ^^he promised upon his honour not to claim exemption of toll, and to pay like a foreigner^; and from the time he was admitted on these terms, honorary freemen continued to be ad- mitted and to vote at Parliamentary elections at Worcester for more than a century. In 1746, with a view to an electi<m which took place in 1747, one himdred freemen were made at Worcester. This election was controverted, and the House of Commons, acting in a different spirit from the House which in 1701 upheld the right of honorary freemen at Hertford*, set > H,ofC. JaumtUi, xin. 709.

The Borough Franchises. 63

aode the right of the honorary freemen at Worcester^. But until the end of the old representative system, outvoters resident in London, Birmingham, Kidderminster and other places, freemen who had left Worcester, were carried there at the expense of Parliamentary candidates to vote at elections.

These non-resident freemen were a distinct class from honorary Non-rerident freemen. They were men who had complied with the conditions F'®®"*®^- necessary to ilie freedom of Worcester, who had obtained the freedom by birth, by servitude, or by redemption ; men who had once had a local connection with the city, but who had moved away after admission to the freedom. By their removal they did not lose their right to the franchise, as Worcester was one of the boroughs in which the only qualification for voting was the negative one that the freeman had not been in receipt of alms. The determination of the House of Commons of 1748 was special to Worcester. In other freeman boroughs honorary freemen continued to exercise the Parliamentary franchise until 18S2; and in most of the freeman boroughs in which there was not a residential or a scot and lot paying qualification, there were to the end of the old freeman franchises two classes of non-resident voters. These were the honorary freemen, who need never have /

had, as was the case with most of them, any connection with the \

boroughs, other than that of voting at Parliamentary elections, and non-resident freemen who had had a local connection, but who, for trade or other reasons, had left the city, and had ceased to have any connection with it except at election times. Then they were sought out in London, in JBirmingham, or else- where, and carried to their old home to exercise the Parliamentary franchise. So many freemen had drifted to London, that in the dosing years of the old electoral system a Parliamentary candi- date would call a meeting there of the freemen of the constituency he was about to contest, to canvass for their votes, and arrange for their conveyance to the constituency'. Rival candidates occasionally came to an agreement to refrain from bringing in at their expense the non-resident freemen*.

After the Restoration the making of honorary freemen was the At Dunwioh. most general method by which corporations, usuaUy working in the

1 Cf. Charles Gray^ Parliamenlary Not^ook, HiH. M8S. Cornm, 14th Rep,, App.> pt. IX. 311^ 312.

* Cf. Did. NaL Bio., lxi. 206; Colchester^ Diary, i. 62. > Cf. CromweU, Hitt. ofCokheHer, 292.

Indtanoee.

64 The Unreformed House of Commons.

interests of patrons, secured the control of Parliamentary elections. In 1670 five hundred non-resident freemen were made at Dunwich*, a Suffolk borough which had almost as remarkable a place in the old representative system as the more notorious boroughs of Gatton and Old Sarum. Like Old Sarum, Dimwich had once been the seat of a Bishop^s see. In the reign of Henry II it was described by William of Newburgh as a wealthy and famous seaport'. But in 1670, when five hundred honorary freemen were made there, there were only forty resident in Dimwich', as for. centuries past the German Ocean had been encroaching on this part of the Suffolk coast. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the encroachments of the ocean were still going on; and in 1816 Oldfield described Dunwich as consisting of only forty-two houses and half a chiut;h ; and suggested that the encroachment would probably in a few years oblige the constituent body to betake itself to a boat whenever the King^s writ summoned it to the exercise of the electoral franchise ^ Other At Grantham, in 1685, there is good reason for believing

that freemen were being made in the interest of the Earl of Rutland^s control of the borough*. On the eve of the election of the first Parliament of James II, the mayor and aldermen of Hertford "did arbitrarily make great numbers of persons who were neither inhabitants of the said borough or parishes'" freemen or free burgesses, who polled at that election and again for the first Parliament of William and Mary*. Before the Revolution honorary freemen were voting at East Grinstead'. At Colchester, in 1706, two days before an election, the mayor "without the consent of the common council made one himdred foreigners free, and swore them in the night time in alehouses and taverns without the town clerk, who ought to swear them publicly in the town hall'.'*' At Carlisle the practice of making freemen to carry elections, which was continued in that city until the end of the old electoral system, had begun as early as 1711'. In 1727 outsiders were pressing in at King's Lynn". In 177S three

1 Stephens^ Intro, to De Lolme, i. 481. * Lewis^ ii. 87.

3 Stephens^ Intro, to De Lolme, i. 481. * Oldfield^ iv. 561^ 662.

« Cf. Hist. MSS, Comm, Wh Rep., App., pt v. 87.

^H.ofC. Joumais, mi. 655.

^ H.ofC. Journals, xiii. 493.

^H.ofC. Joumais, xvi. 470.

* Mere wether and Stephens^ Hist, of Boroughs, in. 21d2#

^^ Phillips^ Election Cases, 851.

The Baroibgh Franchises. 66

handled and ninety-six freemen were made on the eve of an election at Northampton, ^^ the great majority of whom were utter strangers to either the town or shire of Northampton^^; and in 1784 five hundred freemen were made at Liverpool in order to constitute it a court borough*.

These practices so begun, except for isolated checks like that at A Check to IVoroester in 1748, went on without any interference from Parlia- of Freem^. tiieat until 1763; and until that time in many boroughs, scores, sometimes hundreds, of honorary fi-eemen were often made on the eve^ an election ; some of them after the writs for a new Parlia- ment or for a by-election were out. At an election for the City of Dvirham in 176S two himdred and fifteen fi*eemen, most of them non-residents, were so made, all after the date of the teste of the wrii^. The election was disputed, and the resident freemen peti- tioned against this wholesale invasion of their rights. The House of Commons was in a virtuous mood, like that of 1748, when it denied the right of the honorary freemen to vote at Worcester ; and the exposure of the practice of making non-resident freemen at Durham led to the unseating of the member in whose interests the freemen had been made ; and between the S5th of February and the 21st of March, 1768^ a bill intended to check this abuse ^^

passed all its stages in the House of Commons. It was passed by \^

the House of Lords, and became a law which is as memorable in the history of the old representative system as the Act of 1786, which was the outcome of the loose interpretation of the deter- mination of 1661, under which every tramp who was in town could, ^ until 1786, vote at an election in Preston.

By the Durham Act' the right to vote was withheld from The Durham honorary freemen who had been admitted within twelve months of ^^' the first day of an election. The right of the ordinary freemen, those who were admitted by the custom of the borough, was not interfered with; and to the last these freemen could be admitted at any time previous to an election, and could take up their fi^eedom while an election at which they were to vote was proceeding. As admission to the freedom was, in the eighteenth and nineteenth ooituries, chiefly with a view to what the commissioners, who in

^ Northampton^ Borough Records, n. 501.

< Hist. M8S. Comm. 15th Sep., App.^ pt vii. 122.

^H.ofC. Journals, xxiz. 332.

^H.o/a Joumais, zzix. 500, 599.

» 3 Geo. Ill, c. 15.

/

66 The Unreformed House of Commons.

1834-85 inquired into the conditions of the municipal corpora- tionSy described as ^^the lucrative exercise of the franchise,^ the admissions were abnormally swelled whenever a Parliamentary election was about to take place. At Bristol, in 181S, seventeen hundred and twenty freemen were admitted with a view to an election in the autumn of that year. At Maiden, in 18^, one thousand freemen were admitted during an election ; and that admission »at election times or when elections were pending was general in all che freeman boroughs is conclusively shown by the statistics of fre^^nan admissions, which were collected and compiled for presentattm to Parliament while the Reform Bill of 1832 was pending^ The Act of 1763, which first went into effect at Bewdley in 1769*, was one of the many half-measures which Parliament from this time began to pass for dealing with electoral irregularities and anomalies, and for punish- ing incorrigibly corrupt boroughs. The Act left imdisturbed the right which many corporations had usurped, of making honorary freemen, and it left untouched the right of non-resident freemen to return after years of absence to vote at Parliamentary elections, a practice which was as much without any constitutional warrant, as was that of making honorary freemen by the corporation. Honorary After the Durham Act honorary freemen continued to be made

Freemen Ju gg large numbers as heretofore, but usually they were so made as to comply with the conditions now imposed. At Bedford, in 1769, where at this time there were only five himdred and forty house- holders, five hundred freemen were made, " most of them strangers and foreigners,^ who "never served any corporate ofBce, nor exercised any trade, nor contributed to any rate^ ; but were made for the sole purpose of voting at elections for members of Parlia- ment'. At Gloucester in 1779, five himdred and thirteen freemen were made in one day ; a gross abuse of the power of the corpora- tion which led to a petition from the citizens and burgesses of Gloucester, and to the introduction of a bill to check the abuse. The citizens of Gloucester in their petition asked for the exclusion of "all honorary freemen and others than such as are free by birth and servitude*.*" At Derby, a borough long controlled by the Cavendish family, largely by the aid of honorary freemen', in 1779,

^ Mirror qf ParHament, ISS5, ii. 1474. *H,ofC. Journals, xxxii. 136. 3 H,ofC, JoumaUy xxxv. 316.

* E.ofC, Journals, xxxvii. 391.

* mrror of Parliament , 1836, u. 126a

7%^ Borough Franchises. 67

four hundred and twenty-six freemen were simileu*ly made for election purposes ; and a complaint like that fr*om Gloucester was lodged with the House of Commons*.

But the corporations which exercised the right of making Unsucceesful honorary freemen had nearly as many friends in Peu*liament as Reform, burgage boroughs, and boroughs in which the corporations were exclusively possessed of the right to elect members. In 1T78 there was an abortive attempt to set up a residential qualification in all freeman boroughs'. In 1779, the year of the Gloucester petition, and growing out of it, a bill was introduced in the House of Commons to stop the making of honorary freemen. It was read a second time', but did not make any further progress. In 1780 there was a proposal that a stamp duty should be imposed when honorary freemen were made. This proposal was embodied in a bill which also went no ftuiher than second reading stage*. In 1787 there was a bill to prevent occasional freemen frY>m voting at elections. This biU was, however, withdrawn*; and the Durham Act was the only one between 1768 and 1882, passed with the object of correcting the abuses which had become rooted in the freeman boroughs since the reign of Cheu*les I ; and to the last the outsitters, as the honorary and non-resident freemen were called, swamped the resident electors in many of the boroughs in which the freemen were in possession of the franchise.

Until 1882 Peu*liamentary elections at Cambridge, one of the Persistence last boroughs to be invaded by outsitters, were controlled by the ^^^^^ Abuse, honorary freemen, who had first made their appearance in large numbers only in 1783', At the general election which preceded the reform of 1882, two himdred and thirty-five out of the four himdred and twenty-six freemen who voted at Coventry were non- resident'. Out of five hundred freemen who poUed at the same general election at Barnstaple, only two hundred and seventy -eight lived at Barnstaple, or within twenty miles of the borough'; while

1 H.ofC, Joumahy xxxvii. 399, 407. ^H.ofC, Joumahy xxxiv. 202. ^H,ofC. Joumais, xxxvii. Wl, ^H.ofC. Joumais, xxxvn. 624, 920. * H. ofC. Joumak, xlii. 703.

^H,ofC. JourruUs, xxxix. 176 ; Pryme, Autobiographic RecoUectums, 138, 139.

7 Hansard, 3rd Series, i. 128.

8 Gribble^ Hist, of Barnstaple, 264.

5—2

68 The Unreformed House of Commons.

at Colchester, where honorary freemen in large numbers were made as early as 1706S at the same general election in 1881 there were nine hmidred of these outsitters". Local Safe- Not all the freeman boroughs were swamped at Parliamentary

giiards to the elections by honorary or non-resident freemen. In twenty-four out Franchise. ^^ *^® sixty-two boroughs in which fr-eemen exercised the Parlia- i mentary franchise, there were either residential or rate-paying qualifications which usually excluded the honorary and non-resident freemen. In these boroughs the qualifications were due to usages which . were in keeping with the conditions under which the franchise was exercised in the days before seats in the House of Commons were in demand ; and in keeping also with the medieval usage by which, if a freeman were absent fr*om his borough for a year and a day, he forfeited the privileges that went with the freedom. In some boroughs these qualifications had only usage to uphold them. In others the usages had come to have all the force of enactments, because they had been confirmed by determinations of the House of Commons in controverted election cases. In some of the boroughs the usages as to freemen had been embodied in local Acts of Parliament. The Fran- Lichfield was a good example of a borough where outsitters

UcMeld ^®^ excluded by a last determination. In 1718 non-resident freemen voted there. The election, however, was disputed, and the member who had. been returned sought to justify the votes of the non-resident freemen which had been polled in his favour. It was the usage at Lichfield at this time that freemen who voted at Peu*- liamentary elections must have paid scot and lot. The outside freemen had not paid scot and lot ; but to make good their votes, the plea was advanced that they had paid scot and lot in the places in which they were living. The House of Commons refused to accept this plea. The committee which heard the case came to the determination that the right was in the bailiffs, the magistrates, the forty-shilling freeholders, in all that held by burgage tenure, and ^^ in such freemen only of the said city as are enrolled, paying scot and lot there'.*" After this determination the sitting member waived his election; and although fit)m 1718 to 1882 Lichfield had the most composite electorate of any borough returning

* H, qfC. Joumais, xvi. 470. ' Hansard, drd Series, iv. 962. ^ H, qfC. Journals, xiz. 35.

The Borough Franchises. 69

members to the House of Commons, it was not sufficiently compre- hensive to admit of the exercise of the franchise bj freemen who had ceased their connection with the city.

The City of London was a good example of a freeman con- London and stituency in which some of the old democratic conditions of the ^^ ^* early franchise were preserved intact by an Act of Parliam^t,i>nBy an Act of 17S4^, an Act which, imfortimately for the reputation and the more wholesome social life of the freeman boroughs, was special to the City of London, no freeman could vote who had received alms ; nor could he vote, unless he swore before he polled that he hiad been a freeman for twelve calendar months. The freeman usages at Coventry were confirmed by a last determination of the House of Commons in 1722', and by an Act of Parliament in 1781. Under these measures, both of equal importance as r^ards their statutory value, the franchise was in such freemen as had served seven years' apprenticeship to one and the same trade, and did not receive alms or weekly charity. The Coventry Act of 1781 fiuther strengthened the determination of 1722 by the declaration that none were to be admitted freemen without pro- ducing their deeds of apprenticeship*. The Coventry usages and the subsequent enactments protected the borough from the inroads of honorary freemen; but did not, as has been shown by the election figures for 1831, piptect the constituency against the practice of freemen, who had left the borough, swamping the resident freemen at elections.

One of the most remarkable usages connected with freeman Freemen boroughs, perpetuated by an Act of Parliament, was at Norwich, voting from where from 1780* it was legal for the representatives of the returning officer to go into the city jail to take the votes of freeman prisoners. It did not need the authority of an Act of Parliament to secure to freemen, who happened to be in jail at the time of an election, opportunities to vote. If the free- men, thus unable to be at large, could be counted upon by the corporation and the magistrates who were associated with the corporation in the Parliamentary control of the borough, they were parolled to vote. As late as 1816 two of the magistrates of Carlisle, one a doctor of divinity and the other of medicine, both active partisans in the Lowther interest, ^^ permitted a felon to

1 11 Geo. I, c. 18. < H, ofC, JaumaU, xx, 60.

> 21 Geo. Ill, c. 54. * 3 Geo. II, c. 8.

70 Hie Unreformed Hotise of Cormnons.

Corporations and the Freeman Franchise.

Oxford and Cambridge.

Cambridge Freemen.

come out of Carlisle jail, to give his vote in favour of a Lowther candidate against the renowned Whig, John Christian Curwen*.'' Similar usages must have existed in other freeman boroughs; for when the Municipal Reform Act of 1835 was before the House of Commons, and the Tory Opposition was seeking to secure to the freemen their old right to the mimicipal franchise. Sir John Campbell, Attorney-General of the Melbourne Administration, objected. He urged that ^ in various places the majority of the freemen pay no rates, have no property, do not pay scot or bear lot."" " Some instances there arp,^ Campbell added, " of freemen having no home except the common jail, in which they pass the greater part of the year, and from which they are withdrawn on the approach of a contested election, municipal or Parliamentary, for the purposes of giving their votes for a bribe'.''

- The freeman boroughs which were controlled by corporations can be divided into two groups. In the first were the boroughs in which corporations made freemen wholesale. In the second were the boroughs in which corporations restricted the number of free- men, and had been so restricting the nimiber from the time members of the municipal bodies found it to their advantage to turn over a borough to. a patron, or to market its Parliamentary repre- sentation without the intervention of a patron.

Professor Maitland, in summing up his story of the decline and fall of the old municipal corporations, a story which he charac- terises as "curious, if not di^raceful,'' describes the condition of the boroughs of Oxford and Cambridge in the decades which preceded the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. " The constitutions of Oxford and Cambridge,'' he writes, "were closely similar on paper. They went to the bad in different ways. The freemen of Oxford were numerous ; the freemen of Cambridge few. Too many of the Oxford corporators lived in the workhouse ; too many of the Cambridge corporators lived near Cheveley. It is of beer and mob rule that we read in the one town; in the other of oligarchy and wine — * excellent wine,' said an unregenerate alder- man, * and plenty of it*.' "

Cambridge was one of the freeman boroughs in which the outsitter had a dominating influence; but the outsitter came in only during the last half-century of the unreformed House of

1 Lonsdale^ lAfe of John Heysham, M,D., 99. • Mrror of ParHamerU, 1835, ii. 1602. ^ Maitland, Towiuhip and Borough, 95.

The Borough Franchises. 71

Commons. An outsider had been brought in as early as CromwelPs time\ and honorary freemen were made there in the reigns of Ciharles 11 and James II*. These, however, seem to have been exceptional instances ; and at Cambridge, outsitters never swarmed in as they did for more than a century at Colchester, or at Carlisle. There was none of the squalid electioneering at Cambridge which marked electioneering at Norwich or Liverpool. During the greater part of the time when outsitters were dominating Parlia- mentary elections at Cambridge, the borough was managed by a local banker named M ortlake, first in the interest of the Duke of Portland ; later in that of the Duke of Rutland. This Cambridge borough manager had no sympathy with the kind of electioneering which necessitated the making of freemen in alehouses and from among alehouse frequenters. Fox, who was a fi'eeman of Cam- bridge, was one of his creations' ; and Mortlake kept his honorary freemen down to such a manageable number, seldom more than eighty, and these mostly chosen from the tenants and friends of the Duke of RutlandS that he was not driven to the necessity of conferring the freedom on men who were so needy that they had to be carried to the elections at the expense of the candidates, and paid in one form or another, but always paid, for the trouble they took in going to vote. Cambridge was not of the freeman boroughs in which men were taken out of jail to vote, and in which the alehouses at election times were thronged with outsitters.

Oxford and Cambridge, as characterised by Professor Maitland, Withholding may be taken as tjrpical of the freeman boroughs in which the F>'«edoms. corporations had control through the outsitters, and of the boroughs in which the corporations controlled the representation by reducing the electorate. On the eve of the Reform Act the electors in the freeman boroughs varied in number from six at Rye and fourteen at Dunwich — where the seventeenth century method of swamping the constituency by large creations of outside freemen had long been abandoned in favour of quieter and more certain methods of control — to six thousand at Bristol and twelve thousand in the City of London. When the freemen were few the corporations retained control by keeping the electorate stationary in numbers or by reducing it; and the most common method of keeping it stationary

1 Sandford, Qreai BebeUUmy 267. « H, ofC, JaumaU, xvi. 300, 301. > Oldfield, III. 126. * Fryme, RecoliecHons, 130.

72 The Unreformed Hotcse of Commons.

was by throwing obstacles in the way of men who, by birth or servitude, were entitled by the custom of the borough to their freedom. This method of securing control seems to have been adopted later than the plan of malting honorary freem^, which was in frequent use soon after the Restoration. It does not seem possible to find traces of the restrictive method of freeman borough control earlier than the close of the seventeenth century. It was in use in 1698 at Ludlow', and at East Retford in 1701*. InstancM. ^ At Ludlow the right of election in 1698 was in the municipal "^^ body, and in the resident common burgesses ; in other words in the freemen ; and the sons of burgesses and men who married the daughters of burgesses had a right to the freedom. In accordance with a by-law made in 1668 the burgess-right was conferred on demand by petition, a petition which the claimant had to lodge with the head bailiff, who submitted it to the corporation, in which body a majority of nineteen was necessary on the motion to confer the buigess-ship. Until the time of James II these petitions were seldom refused; but in 1698, as a witness informed an election committee, "there was about three-score pocketed, and not pre- sented by the head bailiff'.*" Petitions for the fi^eedom were being similarly treated by the bailiffs at East Retford in 1701^. At Pljrmpton, where there were only about forty freemen in the last twenty years of the borough^ the magistrates began as early as 1702 to refuse the freedom to freemen's sons,' because they would not vote as desired'; and at Launceston, about the same time, the members of the corporation took upon themselves to refuse "all but their own party, and to swear those they admitted never to be against the mayor and corporation'."" At Hastings, in 1708, there is on record an agreement between the mayor and jiutits and the justices of the peace that " only two freemen be made in each year, the one nominated by the mayor, and the other by the majority of the bench".'' The LegBl Men from whom the freedom was withheld in this way might

^^Bon»dy. haye appealed to the courts. They might have obtained a mandamus

H, of C. JaumaU, xii. 537.

H. of a JmmaU, ziii. 494.

H, qfC, JmmaUy xii. 637.

H. ofC. Journals, xiii. 494.

Oldfield, m. 324.

H. qfC. JoumaUy xiv. 149.

Merewetlier and Stephens^ Hi9t, of Boroughs , m. 2007.

BUL M88. Gomm. ISih Rep., App.^ pt. iv. 363.

The Bor(mgh Franchises. 78

compelling compliance with the custom and usage of the borough*. But this remedy was hopelessly out of reach of the men who were denied their freedom ; and although much the same procedure as that at Ludlow, East Retford, Plympton, Launceston, and Hastings was adopted in other freeman boroughs as the eighteenth centinry went on, there are few recorded cases in which the law courts were appealed to for intervention.

Where the number of fr^men was small, much pressure could Pressure on

be put by corporations on men whom it was not possible to Voters.

manoeuvre out of the franchise. Corporations could threaten men,

who were indisposed to vote in their interest, with impressment for

the naval or the military forces. Threats of a similar kind, threats

to press the servants and carts of voters acting contrary to the

wishes of the bailiff of East Grinstead, were used as early as 1640".

East Grinstead was a burgage borough. But what was possible on

the part of a municipal oligarchy in a burgage borough, was just

as possible in a freeman borough ; and at Okehampton, which was

a freeman borough, a case occurred in which, in 1705, a man was

forced into the army, and offered his discharge if he would vote

for Sir Simon Leach, who subsequently represented the borough in

the House of Commons'. At this time, and throughout the

eighteenth century, a man who was a voter, a freeholder in a

county, a fi-eeman, or a voter on any other franchise in a borough,

had statutory protection against impressment for the army^. But

this protection was not invariably a safeguard against threats ; for

corporations which were sufficiently daring to keep men out of

municipal privileges to which they were entitled by birth or

servitude, would not hesitate to take the small and uncertain risk

of treating a voter as the fr-eeman of Okehampton was treated in

1705 to secure his vote for Sir Simon Leach.

In the smaller as well as in the larger freeman boroughs, and Charitieeand in feet in most of the boroughs in which corporations were P®^®**^*'" seeking or maintaining control of Parliamentary elections, the corporations usually had it in their power to use the local charities to buttress their electoral influence. Charities were so used at Shrewsbury as early as 1707*. At Guildford, in 1710, money,

> In 1772^ by 12 Geo. III^ c. 21, the common law was reinforced by a statute making procedure easier and giving costs to a successful plaintiff. ^ H.ofC, JoumaU, n. 10. > H.o/C. Journals, xv. 73.