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] […]
Slavery and abolition could be contentious platform issues in 18th-century England [15-minute read] Understandings of Slavery In eighteenth-century political discourse, ‘slavery’ was a potent but often imprecise term, used across the century to describe many kinds of personal, political or religious oppression rather than specifically the ownership of people as property, as we now generally […]
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’. […]
Disputed results were common, often taking months of legal wrangling to resolve [10-minute read] The majority of eighteenth-century elections went uncontested, which is to say that an agreement had been reached in the constituency not to put up rival candidates, allowing the nominated candidates to be returned unopposed. However, when an opposition did materialise, and […]
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 […]
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 […]
‘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 […]
