LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
A HISTORY OF PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN THE OLD DAYS.
CHAPTER I.
CONCERNING EARLY PARLIAMENTS AND ELECTIONS OF KNIGHTS AND BURGESSES.
The subject of elections being so indissolubly bound up with that of parliamentary assemblages and dissolutions, it will not be out of place to glance at the progress of that institution. John was the first king recorded to summon his barons by writ; this was directed to the Bishop of Salisbury. In 1234 a representative parliament of two knights from every shire was convened to grant an aid; later on (1286) came the parliament of Merton; and in 1258 was inaugurated the assembly of knights and burgesses, designated the mad parliament. The first assembly of the Commons as “a confirmed representation” (Dugdale) was in 1265, when the earliest writ extant was issued; while, according to many historians, the first regular parliament met in 1294 (22 Edw. 1), when borough representation is said to have commenced. From a deliberative assembly, it became in 1308 a legislative power, without whose assent no law could be legally constituted; and in 1311, annual parliaments were ordered. The next progressive step was the election of a Speaker by the Commons; the first was Peter de la Mare, 1377. A parliament of one day (September 29, 1399), when Richard II. was deposed, is certainly an incident in the history of this institution; the Commons now began to assert its control over pecuniary grants. In 1404 was held at Coventry the “Parliamentum Indoctum” from which lawyers were excluded (and that must have offered a marked contrast to parliaments in our generation). In 1407 the Lords and Commons assembled to transact business in the Sovereign’s absence. Reforms were clearly then deemed expedient: in 1413 members were obliged to reside at the places they represented,—this enactment has occasioned expense and inconvenience in obeying “the letter,” but appears to have otherwise been easily defeated as regards “the spirit;”[1] in 1430 the Commons adopted the forty-shillings qualification for county members. A parliament was held at Coventry in 1459; this was called the Diabolicum. The statutes were first printed in 1483; in 1542 the privilege of exemption from arrest was secured to members; and in 1549 the eldest sons of Peers were admitted to sit in the Commons. With James I. commenced those collisions between the Crown and the representatives of the people which marked the Stuart rule. The Commons resisted those fine old blackmail robberies known during preceding reigns as “benevolences,” under which plea forced contributions were levied by the Crown, especially during Elizabeth’s reign. James I. pushed these abuses too far, in his greed for money.
The parliament of 1614 refused to grant supplies until grievances were redressed; James dismissed them, and imprisoned several members. This short session was known as the “Addled Parliament.” The “Long Parliament” assembled in 1640, and the House of Peers was abolished by it in 1649; and later on, a Peer sat in the Commons. This parliament, proving intractable, was dissolved by Cromwell in 1653. Under Charles II., with the restoration of monarchy, the Peers temporal resumed their functions, and in 1661 the Lords spiritual were allowed to resume their seats, and the Act for triennial parliaments was unwisely set aside by the Commons. The relations between the Crown and the Commons were again becoming strained in 1667, when an Act excluding Roman Catholics from sitting in either House was forced through the legislature. From this point the narrative of electioneering incidents may commence, the more appropriately since it was at this time there arose the institution of the familiar party distinctions of Whig and Tory.
The orders for the attendance of members and the Speaker were somewhat curious; for instance, among the orders in parliament regulating procedure, the following are noteworthy:—
Feb. 14, 1606.—The House to assemble at eight o’clock, and enter into the great business at nine.
May 13, 1614.—The House to meet at seven o’clock in the morning, and begin to read bills at ten.
Feb. 15, 1620.—The Speaker not to move his hat until the third congée.
Nov. 12, 1640.—Those who go out of the House in a confused manner before the Speaker to forfeit 10s.
May 1, 1641.—All the members that come after eight to pay 1s., and those that do not come the whole day to pay 5s.
April 19, 1642.—Those who do not come to prayers to pay 1s.
Feb. 14, 1643.—Such members as come after nine o’clock to pay 1s. to the poor.
March 21, 1647.—The Speaker to leave the chair at twelve o’clock.
May 31, 1659.—The Speaker to take the chair constantly every morning by eight o’clock.
April 8, 1670.—The back door in the Speaker’s chamber to be nailed up during the session.
March 23, 1693.—No member to take tobacco into the gallery, or to the table, sitting at committees.
Feb. 11, 1695.—No news-letter writer to presume to meddle with the debates, or disperse any in their papers.
Orders touching motions for leave into the country:—
Feb. 13, 1620.—No member shall go out of town without open motion and licence in the House.
March 28, 1664.—The penalty of £10 to be paid by every knight, and £5 by every citizen, etc., who shall make default in attending.
Nov. 6, 1666.—To be sent for in custody of the serjeant.
Dec. 18, 1666.—Such members of the House as depart into the country without leave, be sent for in custody of the serjeant-at-arms.
Feb. 13, 1667.—That every defaulter in attendance, whose excuse shall not be allowed this day, be fined the sum of £40, and sent for in custody, and committed to the Tower till the fine be paid.
That every member as shall desert the service of the House for the space of three days together (not having had leave granted him by the House, nor offering such sufficient excuse to the House as shall be allowed), shall have the like fine of £40 imposed on them, and shall be sent for in custody, and committed to the Tower; and that the fines be paid into the hands of the serjeant-at-arms, to be disposed of as the House shall direct.
April 6, 1668.—To pay a fine of £10.
A few words of explanation regarding technicalities will be found in place, since the qualifications of voters have a distinctive language of their own, used to indicate their various degrees of electoral privilege. The terms, “burgage tenures,” “scot and lot,” “pot-wallopers,” “splitting,” “faggot votes,” etc., occur constantly, and it may be desirable to indicate in advance the meanings attached to these enigmatical expressions.
Burgage tenures consist of one undivided and indivisible tenement, neither created, nor capable of creation, within time of memory, which has immemorially given a right of voting; or an entire indivisible tenement, holden of the superior lord of a borough, by an immemorial certain rent, distinctly reserved, and to which the right of voting is incident.
Another qualification determined the right of voting “to be in such persons as are seized in fee, in possession, or reversion, of any messuage, tenement, or corporal hereditament within the borough, and in such persons as are tenants for life or lives, and, for want of such freeholds, in tenants for years determinable upon any life or lives, paying scot and lot, and in them and in no other.”
Potwallers—those who, as lodgers, boil the pot. Pot-wallopers, or Pot-boilers.
The word Burgess extends to inhabitants within the borough.
The right of election being generally vested “in inhabitants paying scot and lot, and not receiving alms or any charity,” these terms require explanation. What it is to pay scot and lot, or to pay scot and bear lot is nowhere exactly defined. According to Stockdale’s “Parliamentary Guide,” compiled in 1784, it is probable that, from signifying some special municipal or parochial tax or duty, they came in time to be used in a popular sense, to comprehend generally the burdens and obligations to which the inhabitants of a borough or parish were liable as such. What seems the proper interpretation is, that by inhabitants “paying scot and lot,” those persons are meant whose circumstances are sufficiently independent to enable them to contribute in general to such taxes and burdens as they are liable to as inhabitants of the place. In Scotland, when a person petitions to be admitted a burgess of a royal borough, he engages he will scot and lot, i.e. watch and ward; and by statute (2 Geo. 1, c. 18, s. 9) it is ascertained that in the election of representatives for the city of London, the legislature understood scot and lot to be as here explained.
As to the disqualifications, alms means parochial collections or parish relief; and charity signifies sums arising from the revenue of certain specific sums which have been established or bequeathed for the purpose of assisting the poor. There are further nice distinctions in the latter; for on election petitions persons receiving certain defined charities were qualified to vote, while other charities disqualify for the identical return. The burgage tenement decision which defines the nature of this qualification as set down, arose on a controverted election in 1775 for Downeton or Downton, a borough in Wilts, the right of voting being admitted by both sides to be “in persons having a freehold interest in burgage tenements, holden by a certain rent, fealty, and suit of court, of the Bishop of Winchester, who is lord of the borough, and paying reliefs on descent and fines on alienation.” Thomas Duncombe and Thomas Drummer were the sitting members; and the counsel for the petitioners, Sir Philip Hales and John Cooper, objected to some twenty votes recorded for the candidates elected. “It was proved that the conveyances to some were made in 1768, i.e. the last general election, but that the deeds had remained since that time in the hands of Mr. Duncombe, who is proprietor of nearly two-thirds of the burgage tenements in Downton; so that the occupiers had continued to pay their rents to him, and expected to do so when they became due again, considering him as their landlord, and being unacquainted with the grants made by him to the voters; and that there were no entries on the court rolls of 1768 of those conveyances, nor of the payment of the alienation fines. The conveyances to others appeared to have been printed at the expense of Mr. Duncombe, and executed after the writ and precept had been issued, some of them being brought wet to the poll. The grantees did not know where the lands contained in them lay, and one man at the poll produced a grant for which he claimed a vote, which, on examination, appeared to be made to another person.” The practice of making such conveyances about the time of an election had long prevailed in the borough; the votes so manufactured were known by the name of faggots; and the petitioners contended such votes, although pertaining to obsolete “burgage” immunities, were “colourable, fraudulent, and void,” both by the common law of parliament, and the statute of William III. aimed at abuses, and commonly called the Splitting Act. Besides the general objection of “occasionally,” a proportion of the votes for the sitting members was impeached for reasons drawn from the nature of burgage tenements, as set forth in the definition of these terms. Whence it was decided that Mr. Duncombe had done his spiriting so clumsily that neither he nor his colleague could be considered duly elected as burgesses to serve in the parliament in question, and the petitioners ought to be returned in their places.
In 1826 the Earl of Radnor was patron of this same borough of Downton, Sir T. B. Pechall and the Hon. Bouverie being its representatives, and the votes being vested in the persons having a freehold interest in burgage tenures and held of the Bishop of Winchester; the number of voters is not given—possibly J. J. Stockdale (election agent), who compiled the “Election Manual,” was unable to discover any.
It seems that, while they were permitted to exist, those qualifications which surrounded burgage tenures were founded on shadowy premises; for instance, Horsham (Sussex) was summoned to send burgesses to parliament from the 28th of Edward I. According to Bohun, the Duke of Norfolk, as lord thereof, held the entire election in his own hands, the bailiffs, chosen by the duke’s steward in the court-leet held at Michaelmas, having been the principal officers which returned members to serve in parliament; while as to the constituents and their suffrages, the qualifications for these add a fresh and startling paragraph to the subject:—
“The house or land that pays twelve pence a year to the Duke, is called a whole burgership; but these tenancies have been splitted into such small parts, that he who has only so much land, or part of a house, as pays two pence a year, is now by custom entitled to vote for members to serve in parliament; but it is the tenant of the freehold, though not resident in the place, or occupier of the house, or land, that has the right to vote.”
The outlines of an election, when the state of “villainage,” approximating to feudal serfdom, was the condition of the labouring classes, have been sketched by Sir Francis Palgrave. From the pages of his “Truths and Fictions of the Middle Ages” we obtain a vivid picture of the manner of the quest for representatives to serve the king in parliament, as it might have presented itself to the faithful lieges in the fourteenth century, at the three annual seasons for summoning the chamber.
The sheriff, Sir Roger de Swigville, mounted on a noble steed worthy of so stout a knight, rides up to the county court, the scene of the elections of the period, where is gathered a goodly assemblage of mounted gentry; the sheriff’s javelin-men about him, his silken and broidered banner waving in the breeze; and forthwith is displayed the sacred scrap of parchment, the “king’s writ,” informing the estates of the realm in the learned Latin tongue, that a parliament is to be holden at Westminster, Winchester, York, or elsewhere. The baronage and freeholders are bidden to choose a worthy and discreet knight of the shire for the county, to aid the king with his advice,—duly providing for his expenses during the term while parliament may sit, and for his charges going and returning; but first taking due care to ascertain if the great baron of the county—De Clare or De Bohun—has not already signified, through his steward or attorney, whom he would have chosen. The name of Sir Fulke de Braose is mentioned—yonder handsome “chivaler” who, hawk on wrist, is watching the proceedings; but that gay knight preferreth the excitements of war or sport, and at the Words “election” and “parliament,” he hastily withdraws from the crowd, and spurreth off as fast as his good horse may carry him. The “Chiltern Hundreds” was a sanctuary where knights, anxious to avoid the honour of being sent to the senate, frequently sought refuge.
It was Elizabeth who took a practical course with her faithful Commons, and in businesslike fashion admonished them not to waste their time in long and vain discourses, but to apply themselves at once to their function—that of voting supplies, and, on occasions, of granting “benevolences,” that is, forced loans to the Crown.
According to some writers, the earliest recorded instance of corruption in electioneering matters occurred under date 1571, but the incident hardly comes under the description of bribery. In the “Parliamentary History” (i. 765), it is stated from the journals of 1571, that one Thomas Long was returned for the borough of Westbury, Wilts, who, “being found to be a very simple man, and not fit to serve in that place, was questioned how he came to be elected.” It seems that extreme simplicity was so unusual in the House that its presence was easily detected; in any case, Thomas Long acted up to his reputation, and replied with a frankness not commonly exhibited in the admissions made before election committees and their perquisitions: “The poor man immediately confessed to the House that he gave to Anthony Garland, mayor of the said town of Westbury, and one Watts of the same, £4 for his place in parliament.” This was certainly a modest consideration for a seat, when it is considered that famous electioneering tacticians, like the Duke of Wharton, in a later generation, exhausted ample fortunes in the traffic of constituencies. Moreover, this simple purchaser of a place in parliament, though he forfeited his bargain, did not lose his money; “an order was made that the said Garland and Watts should repay unto the said Thos. Long the £4 they had of him.” Although the actual briber escaped scot-free, the inquiry terminated with the infliction of a severe penalty on those who had been convicted of venality, “a fine of £20 being assessed for the queen’s use on the said corporation and inhabitants of Westbury for their scandalous attempt.” This precept was not without its use, and in the future history of this species of corruption it will be found that mayors and corporations—in whose influence once rested that “merchantable property,” the right of selecting representatives—grew more experienced in iniquitous ways, and exacted the highest tariff for the saleable commodity they offered, besides making choice of more cunning purchasers, and, moreover, generally managed to get not only the best of the bargain, but contrived to avoid being forced to disgorge their ill-gotten gains; the proverb still remains, a relic of the days in which it had its origin, “Money makes the mayor to go.”
The privilege of parliament which protected the persons of members was already sought after in Elizabeth’s days for its incidental advantages; thus, John Smith, whose name is mentioned in the “Parliamentary History,” presented himself to be elected for Camelford, for the purpose of defrauding his creditors—a ruse which was allowed to succeed by a tolerant chamber,—privilege, however, and the continuance of his seat were voted by 112 to 107.
Mr. Norton, in 1571, speaks of “the imperfection of choice, too often seen, by sending of unfit men;” and he notices as one cause, “the choice made by boroughs, for the most part of strangers.”
Interference in elections by the territorial lords, or by the Church, was resented about this time:—
“A penalty of £40 proposed upon every borough that should elect at the nomination of a nobleman, one great disorder, that many young men, not experienced, for learning sake were often chosen. Proposed that none under thirty years of age should be returned.”
From the “Parliamentary History” we secure the account of a disputed return for Buckinghamshire in the year 1603, set down by the sheriff as returning officer:—
“About eight o’clock he came to Brickhill; was there told by Sir George Throckmorton and others that the first voice would be given for Sir Francis Goodwin; he answered ‘he hoped it would not be so,’ and ‘desired every gentleman to deal with his freeholders.’ After eight went to the election.... After the writ was read, he first intimated the points of the proclamation, then jointly proposed Sir John Fortescue and Sir F. Goodwin. The freeholders cried, first, ‘A Goodwin, a Goodwin!’ Every Justice of the Peace on the bench said, ‘A Fortescue, a Fortescue!’”
Election proceedings began early in those days, and parliamentary hours were equally matinal. From the pamphlets, tracts, and broadsides of the Stuart era it may be noted that the Speaker took his place in the House at eight o’clock in the morning.
“The knights girt with swords by their sides,” as returned for the shires of the counties, were important personages, the influential families retaining this prerogative in their houses for generations; the names of the great county families may be traced, according to their respective localities, for more than a century in uninterrupted succession as the county members, as may be observed in the compendious lists of the knights, citizens, and burgesses of parliaments summoned in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Chaucer relates of his Frankleyn—
“Ful ofte tyme he was a knight of the schire.”
It was, as Hannay has expressed it, the great gentry who seem to have accepted the girding of the sword, in something like turns, as both a dignity and a duty. “From such men the House of Commons took that high, that gentle tone, which has often been so justly boasted of by its great men, and which it is to be hoped it will retain, through whatever changes are destined for it.” The dignity of representation in the earlier stages of parliamentary history does not appear to have extended beyond the knights of the shires; those of this select order might, if they had the ambition, contest among themselves, but it is difficult to imagine electoral contests among the representatives of a less exalted class—the citizens and burgesses, whose election was at first very much at the discretion of the sheriffs. When the real parliamentary strength lay in the baronage, the worthies who came up from the cities and boroughs to advise about taxation were not much regarded originally, and seem to have conducted themselves, during their brief visits to the Commons House, with a docility of demeanour, supposed to be in keeping with their native obscurity; as, for the most part, they were but nominees or placemen of Peers and Lords of parliament, of ecclesiastical hierarchs, of officers of State, or put forward by lords of manors, influential families, and dispensers of preferment of one kind or another, a retiring and deferential line of conduct was due from these mere parliamentary “pawns” to their patrons. This state of subjection appears foreign to the independence by presumption associated with the character of a member of parliament, and might be taken as belonging only to a feudal epoch; but with rare intervals of self-assertion on the part of the people, such as happened during the civil wars—when the equipoise of society was unsettled for a space—it must be admitted that at least a considerable portion of the Commons under the boroughmongering and patronage-monopolizing days, which reached to 1831, was not far removed from the condition of semi-vassalage as described, until the revision and extension of the representative system assimilated the constitution of the Commons in earnest to what by a plausible fiction it was “on trust” for generations assumed to be.
It is shown that in the early days of the representative system the high obligation of sending members to parliament was regarded as a burden instead of a privilege by many boroughs, and that exemption from this duty was a boon for which sacrifices were cheerfully made; moreover it was a “right” which constituencies managed to leave in abeyance, intermitting in many instances for a century or more. By the same rule, electoral bodies were relieved to get rid of their responsibilities, before the days of sordid trafficking, and while venal boroughmongering was still an undeveloped branch of gain: it was at first accepted by the cities and boroughs as a kindly service on the part of a great man to choose the citizens and burgesses for parliament; “influence” was not considered “undue” when it was exercised in dictating the choice of what by a traditional figment were considered the popular representatives. Thus, in Elizabeth’s reign, quite as a matter of course, Devereux, Earl of Essex, was busying himself in providing such nominees as he thought fitting for various places, as appears from the following letter, addressed to Richard Bagot, of Staffordshire, and printed with the “Memorials of the Bagot family,” 1592:—
“After my very hartie commendacions. I have written several letters to Lichfield, Stafford, Tamworth, and Newcastle for the Nomination and Election of certain Burgesses for the Parliament to be held very shortlie; having named unto them, for Lichfield, Sir John Wingfield and Mr. Broughton. For Stafford, my kinsman Henry Bourgcher, and my servant Edward Reynolds. For Tamworth, my servant Thomas Smith. For Newcastle, Dr. James. Whom because I do greatlie desire to be preferred to the said places, I do earnestlie pray your furtherance by the credit which you have in those towns.”
The mere dealing in “parliamentary interest” was still undeveloped as regarded its monetary aspect, but party strengthened its ranks by nominating candidates, first, because it was the “will and pleasure” of those who held the influence; secondly, when the possessor of several boroughs began to realize he could utilize his seats in many ways, electioneering science took a new departure, and boroughs and “burgage tenures” began to be cultivated for the market like any other trafficable commodity.
“Formerly,” says Waller, “the neighbourhood desired the member to sit, and there was an end; but now it is a kind of empire. Some hundred years ago, some boroughs sent not; they could get none to serve; but now it is a fashion, and a fine thing they are revived.”
The ancient system was shaken in the early Stuart days: under Charles I. we find ministers still writing of those “seats which were safe,” and where, such as in the “Cinque Ports,” patronage could secure the election of placemen; but opposition was ripe in the land, and when the stand was to be made against the Crown “in many places the elections were managed with much popular heat and tumult.” The strength of the Church was matched against dissent—“that incredible heresy;” then began Puritan corporations which exhibited a “factious activity” in the boroughs, and thus raised to white heat the indignation of territorial magnates; thence did lords of the manor bestir themselves for the assertion of traditional privileges, by easy degenerations swollen into prescriptive rights and oppressive tyrannies. Hence attempted coercions; “certain lord-lieutenants of the counties were accused of making an improper use of the Train-bands,” the beginning of the system of electioneering intimidation. Thus we are informed that, in the year 1639:—
“In many places the elections were managed with much popular heat and tumult by the countenance of those English nobility and gentry of the Scottish faction. At the County election for Essex, for instance, the Earl of Warwick made good use of his lord-lieutenancy, in sending letters out to the captains of the Train-bands, who having power to charge the people with arms, durst not offend, which brought many to his side. Those ministers who gave their voices for my Lord of Warwick, as Mr. Marshal and others, preached often out of their own parishes before the election. Our corporation of Essex, consisting most of Puritans, and having had their voices in electing their own burgesses, and then to come to elect knights, is more than the greatest lord of England hath in their boroughs; the multiplicity of the people are mean-conditioned, and most factious, and few subsidy-men; and therefore in no way concerned in the election.
“A man having but forty shillings a year freehold hath as great a voice in the election as any; and yet this man is never a subsidy-man, and, therefore, no way concerned in the election for his own particular; and when the statute was made two centuries earlier (in 1430) forty shillings, it was then twenty pound in value now. And it were a great quiet to the state if it were reduced to that; and then gentlemen would be looked upon, and it would save the ministers a great deal of pains, in preaching from their own churches.”
About 1640, although absolute intimidation was not common, it at least was resorted to in the case of one candidate, who suffered therefrom, and evidently entered a subsequent protest. In Nalson’s papers it is recorded:—“A paper sent to the Secretary of State by Mr. Nevil, of Cressing Temple, the unsuccessful candidate, whose life was threatened. ‘It was said among the people that if Nevil had the day they would tear the gentleman to pieces.’” Walpole, otherwise unscrupulous in his resort to corruption of various kinds, appears to have avoided downright violence; it was reserved for the Pelhams and the Duke of Grafton to bring armed force to the hustings by way of intimidating opposition—an unsatisfactory state of affairs which reached its most unconstitutional proportions under the administration of William Pitt, when those Court candidates selected from the two services received the support of both army and navy; when the guards and sailors surrounded the hustings, and menaced such as were prepared to record votes for candidates other than their employers. Much might be written of the struggles in which envenomed adversaries were led into personal encounters; and rival factions, as between the Cavaliers and Roundheads, went to great lengths in their hostilities: but when the excitement cooled down, the honour of sitting for a borough did not, as a rule, excite fierce competition, at least, anterior to the Revolution which dismissed the Stuarts; members were proposed and accepted in a half-hearted way, and the burgesses sent to Parliament seemed little ambitious of the honour.
The method in which a member was selected in the middle of the seventeenth century for the city of Bath, even then a place of importance,[2] which a short while after became a celebrated centre for election contests and ministerial and party intrigues, may be studied with all its simple minutiæ among the “Nugæ Antiquæ,” (vol. ii.) prepared from the family papers of the Harringtons, landed proprietors in the locality, who, from father to son, had represented the citizens in successive sessions:—
“To our much honoured and worthie Friend, J. Harrington, Esq., at his house at Kelston, near Bathe.
“Worthie Sir,
“Out of the long experience we have had of your approved worth and sincerity, our Cittie of Bathe have determined and settled their resolutions to elect you for Burgess of the House of Commons in this present Parliament, for our said Cittie, and do hope you will accept the trouble thereof: which if you do, our desire is you will not fail to be with us at Bathe on Monday next, the eighth of this instant, by eight of the morning at the furthest, for then we proceed to our election. And of your determination we entreat you to certifie us by a word or two in writing, and send it by the bearer to
“Your assured loving friends,
“John Bigg, the Mayor.
“William Chapman.“Bathe.”
There is some obscurity as to the dates; according to Willis, John Harrington sat for Bath 1658-9.
The progress of these negotiations is set down in the diary of the worthy gentleman selected to serve:—