Case Study

Constituencies

The Eighteenth-Century Political Participation & Electoral Culture project presents polling data for nineteen English constituencies: fourteen boroughs, four counties, and one university. These case studies have been selected as being representative of different kinds of constituencies in terms of their size and their franchise, as well as having a geographical spread, and a good amount of surviving data, particularly poll books.

Bath

Bath was eighteenth-century England’s most fashionable spa town, teeming with aristocrats, gentry ...

Bedford

Bedford was a large and populous market town, which owed its prosperity to trade on the River Ouse a...

Bedfordshire

Bedfordshire was an agricultural county, also known for its lace, straw, and thread manufacture. Not...

Bristol

For much of the eighteenth century, Bristol was England’s second largest city. Its prosperity was ...

Cambridge University

The University of Cambridge was a unique constituency, as its voterate was confined to the male grad...

Coventry

Coventry was a significant manufacturing town, in which trades in silk, watchmaking, and cordwaining...

Grampound

Grampound was a small Cornish village on the River Fal which became notorious as a ‘rotten borough...

Liverpool

Liverpool expanded rapidly during the eighteenth century to become the second largest town and port ...

London

London was the political, legal, commercial, and social hub of England with a population size that o...

Middlesex

The wealth and popularity of Middlesex may have been inextricably linked to its proximity to the eve...

Minehead

A small coastal market town on the Bristol Channel in Somerset, Minehead’s principal trades were i...

Mitchell

The small town of Mitchell in mid-Cornwall sat on the cross-roads of the main routes between St. Col...

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle was the commercial capital of north-east England, and even by the late seventeenth century...

Northampton

The market town of Northampton on the River Nene had been rebuilt with handsome stone buildings and ...

Northumberland

Northumberland was a large county with a relatively small electorate. About 800 voted in 1798, risin...

Oxfordshire

A strongly Tory agricultural county, dotted with manufactures at Bicester (leather), Henley (silk) a...

$Pontefract$

Pontefract

The Yorkshire market town of Pontefract was situated near River Aire and Calder. Pontefract was note...

Westminster

Westminster was simultaneously the most prestigious constituency, incorporating the Houses of Parlia...

Worcester

The cathedral city of Worcester experienced mixed economic fortunes during the eighteenth century. I...

Yorkshire

The colossal county of Yorkshire constituted the largest constituency in England by some distance, d...