May
1734
liverpool
Contested
GENERAL ELECTION
In the general election of May 1734, 2018 people voted. There were 4 candidates, with Richard Gildart & Thomas Brereton elected.
Poll book data from:
Citation: An exact list of the persons who polled… (n.p., [1734])
Source: John Sims (ed.), A Handlist of British Parliamentary Poll Books (Leicester, 1984); Jeremy Gibson and Colin Rogers (eds.), Poll Books, 1696–1872: A Directory of Holdings in Great Britain (4th edn., Bury, 2008).
Timeline & Key Statistics
Contexts & Remarks
- In 1734 Thomas Brereton and Richard Gildart stood jointly as corporation candidates and ministerial Whigs, supported by Sir Robert Walpole. They defeated two anti-corporation candidates, Thomas Bootle and Foster Cunliffe.
- Ahead of the election, in March, Bootle secured a verdict at Westminster Hall against the validity of the elections of the previous two mayors and bailiffs of Liverpool for not receiving the sacrament within a year of taking up their offices. These were the mayoralties of Brereton and Gildart, who had together created more than 500 freemen (who, according to Bootle, had 'no right of freedom, consisting of custom house, excise, and salt officers, justices of peace, and such like dependents'). However, parliament was dissolved before any judgements could be made upon the verdict, so the pro-corporation mayor and bailiffs proceeded as returning officers at the election and accepted votes from the newly created freemen (HMC, 15th Rep. VII, pp. 121?3).
- The surviving poll book is highly partisan in favour of Bootle and Cunliffe. Its stated aim is to 'shew the extraordinary Means whereby the Majority was Obtained' by the ministerial candidates (p. 1). The poll book's compiler(s) separates what they consider to be legally qualified voters from those 'OCCASIONAL TOOLS' who had been made freemen 'without Right' during the mayoralties of Brereton and Gildart, for the alleged purpose of fixing the election (p. 11). It is the only Liverpool poll book to list voters as arranged by their trades.
- Bootle petitioned the result, supported by a petition from some Liverpool burgesses, claiming that Gildart and his agents had been 'guilty of several corrupt and illegal Practices' and that the mayor and bailiffs had admitted unqualified electors to vote. However, having also secured a seat at Midhurst during the same election, Bootle dropped his petition. (CJ, xxii, 364, 426).
Poll Book
Below is a digitised version of the poll book for this election:
