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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
The emergence of majority rule in English parliamentary elections has a twofold interest. On the one hand it concerns the history of parliamentary government in England, and in that respect it is primarily an English affair. On the other hand, however, it is relevant also to a much broader theme. Maitland once said that one of the great books that remain to be written is The History of the Majority. There are a large number of historical phenomena which could illuminate that manysided subject. One such phenomenon is the election of representatives for the Englishand subsequently for the Britishparliament. Those elections have been going on with astonishing regularity for close upon seven hundred years. So they provide for the history of the majority one thread of development which, though only single, is at any rate both long and strikingly continuous.
page 175 note 1 Maitland, F. W., Township and Borough (Cambridge, 1898), p. 34.Google Scholar
page 176 note 1 Stat[utes] of the Realm, 2, pp. 243–44Google Scholar, conveniently reprinted in Chrimes, S. B. and Brown, A. L., Sel. documents of English Const. Hist. (London, 1961), p. 267.Google Scholar The petition on which the statute was based is in Rot[uli] Parl-[iamentorum], 4, p. 350.Google Scholar
page 177 note 1 Rot. Parl., 2, p. 355Google Scholar (Chrimes and Brown, p. m). See Appendix below.
page 177 note 2 Stat. of the Realm, 2, p. 156Google Scholar (Chrimes and Brown, p. 226); the petition is in Rot. Parl., 3, p. 601.Google Scholar
page 179 note 1 Const. Hist, of England, 3 (5th edn), p. 435.Google Scholar
page 180 note 1 Op. cit. (2nd edn), pp. 65, 83, 159.Google Scholar The figure of 37 contested boroughs in 1761 is calculable from the figures assembled on those pages: the total number of contested constituencies is reckoned to have been 41, of which 4 were county constituencies.
page 180 note 2 Namier, L. B. and Brooke, John, History of Parliament: the House of Commons, 1754–1790 (London, 1964) 3 vols.Google Scholar The portion which is of particular interest for our present purpose is the section devoted to ‘Constituencies’, vol. 1, pp. 205–521Google ScholarPubMed, statistically summarized in the tables, pp. 514–21. Those statistics naturally include all contests, whether in general elections or in by-elections. For the purposes of the present discussion it is more realistic to take account only of the contests in general elections. Owing mainly to the operation of the Place Act, by-elections were relatively numerous, but their incidence was necessarily patchy, and their inclusion would therefore tend to have a distorting effect upon statistics. It is clear, however, that contests in by-elections were proportionately less numerous even than they were in general elections.
page 181 note 1 The figure 41 is a revision, in the light of additional evidence, of the 37 calculated in The Structure of Politics.
page 181 note 2 In the counties, 14 constituencies polled only once and 8 polled twice; in the boroughs, 39 constituencies polled only once, and 44 polled twice.
page 182 note 1 The contests in which there were more than four candidates for two seats totalled only eight in the six general elections in question. All eight contests were in borough constituencies: 3 with five candidates, 3 with six candidates, and 2 with seven candidates.
page 183 note 1 Op. cit., p. 70.
page 183 note 2 Ibid., p. 255.
page 183 note 3 Ibid., p. 69.
page 184 note 1 Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., Fourth Series, 26, pp. 56–63.Google Scholar
page 186 note 1 Gash, N., Politics in the Age of Peel (London, 1953), pp. 19, 440–41.Google Scholar
page 186 note 2 Hanham, H. J., Elections and Party Management (London, 1959), p. 197.Google Scholar
page 186 note 3 Butler, D. and Freeman, Jennie, British Political Facts, 1900–1960 (London, 1963), pp. 122–24.Google Scholar
page 188 note 1 The case is reported by Plowden, Edmund, Les Commentaries ou Reports de Edmund Plowden (1684 edn), pp. 118–31.Google Scholar Translation in Commentaries or Reports of Edmund Plowden (1779 edn), pp. 118–31.Google ScholarPubMed
page 189 note 1 ‘… moy semble que le count est assets bone sans monstre le number de les esliors. Car election poit estre fait per voices, ou per maines ou per auter tiel voy, en quel il est facile a discerner que auoit le greinder number, et uncore trope dure a scier le certeine number de eux. … Et issint si election fuit in ascun tiel manner (come nous ne poiomus prendre autrement mes que fuit) per tout entendement le plaintiff ne poit scier le number. Et de metter luy a dire certeinty, ou per tout intendement ou possibilitie il ne poiet scier ou remember certeinty, il nest pas reasonable, ne est require in nostre ley …’ (Les Commentaries, p. 128).
page 189 note 2 Neale, , op. cit., pp. 86–88.Google Scholar
page 190 note 1 ‘… Et ieo fuy eslieu en Loundres per maines teigne suis, mes ieo ne puissoy dire quant fueront en number que teignont lour maines suis …’ (Les Commentaries, p. 128).
page 191 note 1 Neale, , op. cit., pp. 88.Google Scholar
page 192 note 1 P.R.O., Writs and Returns of Members to Parliament, C.219/16/Part I (I). The report or ‘certification’ was printed—not immaculately, and omitting the names of the 124 forty-shilling freeholders—by Prynne, in Brevia Parlementaria Rediviva (London, 1662), pp. 157–59.Google Scholar Prynne unaccountably treats the report as a ‘complaint’ against the sheriff for refusing to ‘examine’ the supporters of Stoneham and Styuecle; but the document makes no such complaint. Indeed, Prynne himself prints the sheriff's indenture, to which the report was originally annexed, returning Stoneham and Styuecle as having been duly elected. Evidently the sheriff decided that the outcome of the election was sufficiently clear, even though the poll which had been begun had not been completed.
page 193 note 1 Neale, op. cit., ch. iii, and the citation from Coke on p. 88.
page 193 note 2 Above, p. 177, n. 1 and 2.
page 194 note 1 It is noteworthy that Saunders, one of the judges in Buckley versus Thomas, mentioned the election of a coroner as an example of a ‘general’ majority. Coroners had been elected in the shire court since the first quarter of the thirteenth century, if not earlier; Gross, C., Sel. Cases from the Coroners' Rolls (Selden Soc., 1896), p. 20.Google Scholar
page 194 note 2 Maitland, , Township and Borough, p. 34.Google Scholar
page 195 note 1 Op. cit., 1st edn, ii (1875), pp. 227, 433, 618; iii (1878), pp. 400, 406; Library edn (1880), ii, pp. 249, 470, 673; iii, pp. 432, 439.
page 195 note 2 Riess, L., Geschichte des Wahlrechts zum englischen Parlament im Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1885), p. 38Google Scholar; trans. Wood-Legh, Kathleen L., The History of English Electoral Law in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1940), pp. 38–39.Google Scholar
page 195 note 3 Op. cit., ii (4th edn, 1887, reprinted 1906), pp. 239, 453, 650; iii (5th edn, 1903), pp. 414, 420.
page 196 note 1 Report on the Dignity of a Peer (reprint of 1826), Appendix to 1st Report, p. 667.
page 196 note 2 Ibid., p. 661.
