ELECTIONS AND ELECTIONEERING IN THE OLD DAYS***


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A HISTORY OF PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
AND ELECTIONEERING IN THE OLD DAYS


[Illustration: “THE RIGHTS of WOMEN” or the EFFECTS of FEMALE
ENFRANCHISEMENT]


A HISTORY OF PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
AND ELECTIONEERING IN THE OLD DAYS

Showing the State of Political Parties and Party
Warfare at the Hustings and in the House of
Commons from the Stuarts to Queen Victoria


[Illustration: CANDIDATES ADDRESSING THEIR CONSTITUENTS.]


Illustrated from the Original Political Squibs, Lampoons
Pictorial Satires, and Popular Caricatures of the Time

by

JOSEPH GREGO

Author of “James Gillray, the Caricaturist: His Life, Works, and Times”
“Rowlandson, the Caricaturist: His Life, Times, and Works,” etc.







London
Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly
1886

[The right of translation is reserved]



    “I think the Tories love to buy
      ‘Your Lordships’ and ‘Your Graces,’
    By loathing common honesty,
      And lauding commonplaces....
    I think the Whigs are wicked Knaves
      (And very like the Tories)
    Who doubt that Britain rules the waves,
      _And ask the price of glories_.”

  W. M. PRAED (1826).

    “A friend to freedom and freeholders--yet
      No less a friend to government--he held
    That he exactly the just medium hit
      ’Twixt place and patriotism; albeit compell’d,
    Such was his sovereign’s pleasure (though unfit,
      He added modestly, when rebels rail’d),
    To hold some sinecures he wish’d abolish’d,
    But that with them all law would be demolish’d.”

  LORD BYRON.




PREFACE.


Apart from political parties, we are all concerned in that important
national birthright, the due representation of the people. It will be
conceded that the most important element of Parliaments--specially
chosen to embody the collective wisdom of the nation--is the legitimate
method of their constitution. Given the unrestricted rights of
election, a representative House of Commons is the happy result;
the opposite follows a tampering with the franchise, and debauched
constituencies. The effects of bribery, intimidation, undue influence,
coercion on the part of the Crown or its responsible advisers, an
extensive system of personal patronage, boroughmongering, close or
pocket boroughs, and all those contraband devices of old to hamper
the popular choice of representatives, have inevitably produced a
legislature more or less corrupt, as history has registered. Bad as
were the workings of the electoral system anterior to the advent
of parliamentary reform, it speaks volumes for the manly nature of
British electors and their representatives that Parliaments thus basely
constituted were, on the whole, fairly honest, nor unmindful altogether
of those liberties of the subject they were by supposition elected to
maintain; and when symptoms of corruption in the Commons became patent,
the degeneracy was not long countenanced, the national spirit being
sufficiently vigorous to crush the threatened evils, and bring about a
healthier state of things.

The comprehensive subject of parliamentary elections is rich in
interest and entertainment; the history of the rise, progress, and
development of the complex art of electioneering recommends itself to
the attention of all who have an interest in the features inseparable
from that constitution which has been lauded as a model for other
nations to imitate. The strong national characteristics surrounding, in
bygone days, the various stages of parliamentary election--peculiarly a
British institution, in which, of all people, our countrymen were most
at home--are now, by an improved elective procedure, relegated to the
limbo of the past, while the records of electioneering exist but as
traditions in the present.

With the modifying influence of progress, and a more advanced
civilisation, the time may come when the narrative of the robustious
scenes of canvassing, polling, chairing, and election-feasting, with
their attendant incidents of all-prevailing bribery, turbulence, and
intrigue, may be regarded with incredulity as fictions of an impossible
age.

It has been endeavoured to give the salient features of the most
remarkable election contests, from the time when seats began to
be sought after until comparatively recent days. The “Spendthrift
Elections,” remarkable in the annals of parliamentary and party
warfare, are set down, with a selection from the literature, squibs,
ballads, and broadsides to which they gave rise. The illustrations
are selected from the pictorial satires produced contemporaneously
upon the most famous electoral struggles. The materials, both literary
and graphic, are abundant, but scattered; it is hoped that both
entertainment and enlightenment may be afforded to a tolerant public by
the writer’s efforts to bring these resources within the compass of a
volume.




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER I.

                                                                    PAGE

    The assembling of parliaments--Synopsis of parliamentary
    history--Orders for the attendance of members--Qualifications
    for the franchise: burgesses, burgage-tenures, scot and lot,
    pot-wallopers, <DW19>-votes, splitting--Disqualifications:
    alms, charity, “<DW19>s,” “occasionality”--Election of knights
    of the shire, and burgesses--Outlines of an election in the
    Middle Ages--Queen Elizabeth and her faithful Commons--An
    early instance of buying a seat in the Commons--Returns
    vested in the municipal corporations; “Money makes the
    mayor to go”--Privileges of parliament--“Knights girt with
    a sword”--Inferior standing of the citizens and burgesses
    sent to Parliament--Reluctance of early constituencies to
    sending representatives to parliament--Paid members--Members
    chosen and nominated by the “great families”--The Earl of
    Essex nominating his partisans and servants--Exemption
    from sending representatives to the Commons esteemed
    a privilege--The growth of legislative and electoral
    independence--The beginning of “contested elections”--Coercion
    at elections--Lords-lieutenant calling out the train-bands for
    purposes of intimidation--Early violence--_Nugæ Antiquæ_; the
    election of a Harrington for Bath, 1658-9; the present of a
    horse to paid members--The method of election for counties,
    cities, and boroughs--Relations of representatives with their
    constituents--The “wages” of members of parliament--“Extracts
    from the Proceedings of Lynn Regis”--An account rendered to the
    burgesses--The civil wars--Peers returned for the Commons in
    the Long Parliament after the abolition of the House of Lords.     1


  CHAPTER II.

    Influence of administration under Charles I.--Ballad on
    the Commonwealth--House of Commons: “A General Sale of
    Rebellious Household Stuff”--The Parliament under the
    Restoration--Pepys and Prynne on the choosing of “knights
    of the shire”--Burgesses sent up at the discretion of the
    sheriffs--The king’s writ--Evils attending the cessation of
    wages to parliamentary representatives--Andrew Marvell’s ballad
    on a venal House of Commons--The parliament waiting on the
    king--Charles II. and his Commons--“Royal Resolutions,” and
    disrespect for the Commons--The Earl of Rochester on Charles
    II.’s parliament--Interference in elections--Independence
    of legislators _versus_ paid members--The Peers as “born
    legislators and councillors”--“The Pensioner Parliament”
    coincident with the remission of salaries to members of the
    Commons--“An Historical Poem,” by Andrew Marvell--Andrew
    Marvell as a paid member; his kindly relations with his Hull
    constituents--Writ for recovering arrears of parliamentary
    wages--Uncertainty of calling another parliament--