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Nigel Aston on the peculiar representation of Oxford and Cambridge universities [15-minute read] University constituencies and their distinctive characteristics The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had each been granted two parliamentary seats by James I in 1604 and stood apart from the customary county/borough divide. They existed, in the words of the great jursit Sir […]
The canvass aimed to get the vote out, but also linked candidates to communities [25-minute read] Canvassing was, according to David Eastwood, ‘the critical electoral institution of later-Hanoverian England’, or, as Frank O’Gorman has argued, the ‘critical point of contact’ between the electoral system and the voters prior to Reform.[1] Canvasses were organized by local […]
Edmund Green gives the definitive guide to their varieties, formats and contexts [40-minute read] Voting is a means of aggregating individual preferences into collective decisions, and through which the authority to enforce those decisions is legitimated.[1] The point of voting is to have one’s vote counted. This makes the study of historical voting unusual, in […]
The 1807 Yorkshire election was the most expensive prior to the 1832 Reform Act [25-minute read] Context The colossal county of Yorkshire constituted the largest constituency in England by some distance, divided into East, West, and North ridings. The West Riding alone had a population of almost a million people by 1831 (71 per cent […]
Though excluded from the franchise, women found many ways to influence the vote [20-minute read] Five months before the 1768 general election, Lord Breadalbane complained to his daughter, Marchioness Grey, that the ‘Rage of Electioneering’ had already infected Scotland, and that the ‘epidemical Madness’ of the upcoming elections was more virulent than ever. At the […]
Steve Poole looks at the theatre and occasional violence of chairing ceremonies [20-minute read] At the conclusion of the extremely violent and contentious election for Coventry in 1780, the victorious Tory candidates, Lord Sheffield and Edward Yeo were hoisted onto wooden chairs and triumphantly paraded through the streets. It had been a tough contest, fought […]
Robin Eagles asks why certain elections were contested, while others were not [20-minute read] In May 1741 the Nottinghamshire gentlewoman Gertrude Savile (sister of Sir George Savile, bt. MP for Yorkshire), commented with relief on the conclusion of the recent elections. She reported: Great struggles and mob[b]ing in several places espeshily [sic] Westminster, yet thank […]
Mark Knights discusses attitudes to bribery and patronage in 18th-century elections [30-minute read] The corruption of electoral politics took two forms: one, of the process of an election itself, and the other, more endemically, of the electoral system as a whole, particularly relating to the prevalence of ‘rotten boroughs’ which enabled the wealthy, the influential […]
Read More… from Electoral Corruption in the Long Eighteenth Century
Jon Rosebank argues that very few wanted to replace the unreformed electoral system [15-minute read] It would be easy, from our modern perspective, to imagine that the eighteenth-century electoral system was increasingly dysfunctional. There was, after all, much evidence of growing discontent with it. Indeed, its critics complained about the electoral system under a succession […]
Jon Rosebank explains why proceeding to a vote could be seen as something to avoid [15-minute read] Poll books represent not the moments when eighteenth-century politics functioned properly, but the times when it faltered. They offer a first, invaluable step towards untangling the complexities of the most bitter of the constituency struggles. Faced with inviting […]
