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An introduction to what happened at a typical eighteenth-century English election [15-minute read] Elections were a key component of a continual cycle of renewing and maintaining relationships between politicians and their constituents in the eighteenth century. The years between elections provided opportunities for politicians and political families to generate goodwill with their local communities through […]
A beginner’s guide: would you have the vote in the 18th century? [10-minute interactive] […]
Explore how many elections took place, and how many were contested [15-minute interactive] […]
An introduction to how many people could, and did, vote in the eighteenth century [5-minute read] The ‘electorate’ is the group of individuals who were entitled to vote in an election. This is different from the number of people who actually cast their votes at a poll, a group which we might call the ‘voterate’. […]
Rotten boroughs became synonymous with the England’s unreformed electoral system [15-minute read] In use as a term from the middle of the eighteenth century, ‘rotten boroughs’ describes constituencies in which very few voters resided, yet two MPs were still returned to the House of Commons at each election. Generally, these were tiny villages. In some […]
‘Minors’, under 21 years old, were not allowed to vote. But did they? [15-minute read] Today, the minimum age for voting in parliamentary elections is set at 18. This was lowered from 21 only in 1969. What is less well known is when limitations on voting age were first introduced. Going back to the early […]
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 […]
A short introduction to poll books, and how they have survived [5-minute read] In their most fundamental manifestation, poll books are simply lists of voters’ names, recording the candidates for whom they polled. Prior to the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872, electors had to attend elections in person and verbally state their vote. […]
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 […]
Penelope J. Corfield charts the steps on Britain’s long road to democracy [20-minute read] Democracy is not a flawless form of government. Nor do all democracies survive for all time. Nonetheless, representative democracies uphold the ideal notion of a rational politics, in which all citizens have an equal vote – all exercise their judgment in […]
