Abstract
The culture of elections and election campaigns acquired a continuous existence in England when elections became a regular and necessary part of the political system. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries parliament was dissolved and elections held at the personal whim and political convenience of the monarch. The management of parliament was essential to effective royal government. To avoid opposition in parliament monarchs would simply try to govern without it for as long as they could rather than risk an appeal to the political nation. Consequently, for example, there were no elections in England between 1629 and 1640, but then there were two in 1640 and 1641. To take another example, elections were not held between 1661 and 1679, but between 1679 and 1681 there were three. In these circumstances it was difficult for electoral traditions to develop. Elections were exceptional appeals to the country to resolve deadlocks within the parliamentary classes. They were not yet regular and integral elements of the political and social process.
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Notes
For the Triennial Act see E.N. Williams, The Eighteenth Century Constitution (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 49–50. In fact, a Triennial Act had been passed in 1664 but Charles II had simply ignored it. The intention of the Act of 1694 was clearly to restrict the king’s ability to summon and dissolve parliament. After the passing of the Act ‘the country remained almost continually in the grip of election fever’. See J. Miller, The Glorious Revolution (London, 1983), p. 71.
M. Kishlansky, Parliamentary Selection: Social and Political Choice in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), p. 64.
J. Carter, ‘The Revolution and the Constitution’, in G. Holmes (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution (Basingstoke, 1969), p. 45.
These rituals and ceremonies, together with some attempt to interpret them, are the subject of my ‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies: the Social Meaning of Elections in England, 1780–1860’, Past and Present, no. 135 (May 1992), pp. 79–115.
Mock chair ings are discussed in ibid., pp. 111–12.
This ‘conservative’ interpretation of electoral culture is given at some length in ibid., pp. 108–11.
See, for example, J. Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815–1867 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 99–104.
This point was first raised in the extended introduction to D. E. Ginter, Whig Organization at the General Election of1790 (Berkeley, 1967).
The argument is treated authoritatively in P. Borsay, ‘All the Town’s a Stage: Urban Ritual and Ceremony, 1600–1800’, in P. Clark (ed.), The Transformation of English Provincial Towns (London, 1974), pp. 246–8.
Examples of both types of entry may be found. At Lancaster and at Somerset, the entry was entirely symbolic and lacked any political significance; An Impartial Statement... of the Late Election (London, 1818), pp. 164, 281. At sedate North Derbyshire in 1837, however, the entry was marked with flags and banners making political statements. J. Roberts (ed.), Poll Book for the Northern Division (Chesterfield, 1837).
There are some interesting examples of politicised nomination speeches at the (largely uncontroversial) general election of 1802. See, for example, the speech of John Scudamore at Hereford which dealt with Habeas Corpus, Parliamentary Reform, the politics of Ireland, etc. At Norfolk, too, nomination speeches concentrated on the past records of the sitting members. At Hull they were full of political references. The Picture of Parliament or a History of the General Election of1802 (London, 1802), pp. 33, 91, 156–7. Indeed, at the Kent nomination in 1818 there was much questioning of the candidates. One persistent questioner ‘conceived that the candidates came there for the purpose of being catechized’. And at Middlesex in the same year the crowd began to catechise one of the candidates on his support for the Corn Laws and Habeas Corpus Suspension. See An Impartial Statement, pp. 160–224.
See my ‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies’, pp. 112–3.
See my Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electorate of Hanoverian England, 1734–1832 (Oxford, 1989), chapter six.
‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies’, pp. 112–13.
Ibid., p. 98.
For the gradual abandonment of Chairing, see ibid., p. 124. See also Vernon, Politics and the People, pp. 231–32.
For these effects on the 1832 Reform Act, see Vernon, Politics and the People, pp. 99–102.
Charles Seymour, Electoral Reform in England and Wales (New Haven, 1915), pp. 430–1.
See my ‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies’, p. 115.
This is noticed in Vernon, Politics and the People, but for a more detailed treatment see the unpublished Ph.D. dissertation by H. B. Raymond, ‘English Political Parties and Electoral Organization, 1832–67’, University of Harvard, 1952.
See my Voters, Patrons and Parties, pp. 117–26.
A. P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (Chichester, 1985).
‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies’, p. 107.
There seems nothing surprising in this fact. As Professor David Underwood has shown, the common people in the seventeenth century were capable of exhibiting enormous interest in contemporary political matters. See his Revel, Riot and Rebellion (Oxford, 1985), pp. 3–6.
At the Westminster election of 1818 an unpopular candidate, Sir Murray Maxwell, was the subject of stone-throwing. One stone hit him painfully in the eye. He did not flinch, preferring to bow, as if in gratitude. At the end of the poll he gave a speech which included the following words: ‘The so nearly fatal consequences to myself I most sincerely forgive, and consider it an honour of inestimable value to have received these indignities’... An Impartial Statement, pp. 366, 375.
There is a good example in Liverpool in 1790 when committee men penned rhymes ridiculing the entire election campaign of which they were the most essential exponents. See the rhyme ‘Lord Penrhyn’s the Man for Me’, in T. Johnson (ed.), The Poll for the Election (Liverpool, 1790), p. 63.
P. Shaw, American Patriots and the Rituals of Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), p. 67.
Ibid., p. 188.
N. Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).
G. A. Almond and S. Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, 1963).
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O’Gorman, F. (1996). The Culture of Elections in England: From the Glorious Revolution to the First World War, 1688–1914. In: Posada-Carbó, E. (eds) Elections before Democracy: The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America. Institute of Latin American Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24505-5_2
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