Fortunately for the candidate the freeholders, who were entitled to vote and could at a pinch put their own price upon their votes, and get it, were not numerous. The poll for the county of Cambridge would, at a General Election, now, I suppose, be about 25,000, but in 1802, at a very warm contest, the poll was only 2,624. In the General Election that year, which was contested in Cambridgeshire, the parish of Great Abington, out of 47 inhabited houses, sent three freeholders to record their votes at Cambridge, and Little Abington, out of 34 inhabited houses, polled four freeholders at the same election.
In the old days of "vote and interest" the canvass was regarded as a much more certain criterion than to-day. Thus in 1796 a Hertfordshire candidate issued an address in which he candidly stated, "After a success upon my first Day's Canvass equal to my most sanguine Expectations, I had determined to stand the Poll, but finding myself yesterday less fortunate, I have resolved to decline," &c., &c.
One advantage about an old fourteen days' contest was therefore that if a candidate found that he could not secure enough votes he could retire from the contest and "needn't buy any."
Before the passing of the Reform Bill, Elections were not only protracted and attended with open bribery, revelry, rowdyism, and popular excitement, but the machinery for arriving at the wish of the constituency was also of a very rough and ready kind. If, for instance, a voter was objected to, the sheriff's assessor, a barrister, was found sitting in a room adjoining the hustings for the pin-rose of hearing and deciding the claim, the objecting and affirming party being allowed to appear before such assessor by counsel. The following incident is, I imagine, almost, if not quite, unique in electioneering annals, and could only have been possible under the protracted contests, and the system of revision of claims which has just been mentioned. It occurred in the Cambs. contested election for 1802, and is thus recorded in the Cambridge Chronicle for that year.
"At the late election for this county a very singular circumstance happened. A voter died immediately after his return home, and his son came the third day [of the Election] and voted for the same freehold, which was allowed by both parties."
The condition of the rural peasantry a hundred years ago fell immeasurably short of the opportunities for recreation afforded at the present time, but there were not a few bright spots in the year, which, whatever we may think of the manner of the enjoyment, did afford very pleasant anticipations and memories to even the peasant folk in the villages. By custom these periodical feasts, for they generally resolved themselves into that, became associated with certain seasons, and of these none held a more important place than the annual Michaelmas "Statty," that is, the annual statute fair, of some central village or town where, to quote an old Hertfordshire ballad,
There's dancing and singing
And fiddling and ringing,
With good beef and pudding,
And plenty of beer.
Hither came the lads and lasses just free from a year's hiring and—the lads with whip-cord or horse-hair banding round their hats to indicate their accomplishments with horses, &c.—ready to enter upon a fresh engagement with the old or with a new master for the coming twelve months. Sturbitch fair is not the only place which has been proclaimed by dignified officials, for in the old time many country fairs, which had no Mayor and Corporation to fall back upon, were thought of sufficient importance to engage the services of the Town Crier or Beadle, and in some places this was the kind of proclamation that ushered in the fair:—
O yez! O yez! the fair is begun,
There shall be no arrest, till the fair is done.
Arrest for debt should, I suppose, be understood, for the Stocks invariably received as much company as they could hold on such occasions.