A HISTORY OF DORSET 



The eighteenth century was characterized by a number of disputed 

 elections, turning mainly on the struggle between the freeholders and the 

 mere householders as to the right to vote for members of Parliament. In 

 Lyme the charter of Charles II in 1684 had provided that 'the burgesses to 

 sit in Parliament for ever hereafter shall be elected by the mayor, capital 

 burgesses, or freemen, or greater part, as heretofore in times past has been 

 used and accustomed.' Ellis, writing of Weymouth in 1829, admits that ' the 

 inhabitants themselves have very little to do with the bona-fide election, as from 

 the numerous frauds and subterfuges resorted to . . . persons who are not at all 

 connected with the town are made, for a bounty averaging from 5/. to 30J., 

 to profess themselves as bona-fide voters.' ^ The number of voters, normally 

 200, was in 1704 increased by malpractices to 648. After a severely con- 

 tested election in 1830 counsel on both sides agreed to the extension of 

 the franchise to persons seised of freeholds within the borough, not being 

 in receipt of alms. But almost immediately the old close system was re- 

 verted to.' Bribery was apparently as rife at Corfe as at Weymouth : in 

 1784 the election expenses of John Bond, junior, and Henry Banks of 

 Kingston Hall included the two items: 'To 45 voters at i 3J. each, ^2() 5J.,' 

 and 'To two Persons to protect the Beer, 2s. 6d.' ^ Poole, owing to the 

 acuteness of this question, constantly suffered from double returns. In 

 1654, in the first Parliament assembled under the Instrument of Govern- 

 ment, Cooper was returned for three constituencies — Poole, Wiltshire, 

 and Tewkesbury. He elected to sit as member for Wiltshire.* In 

 1 66 1 the election was impeded by the claims of certain non-resident 

 burgesses. The question was referred to the House of Commons, who 

 decided against the candidates returned by the votes of the non-residents. 

 There was another double return in 1688. In the disputed election of 1774 

 Sir Eyre Coote and Joshua Manger were nominated by the one party, and 

 were opposed by Charles James Fox and John Williams, as candidates for 

 the householders' party, which was now termed 'the commonalty interest.' 

 At the election on 1 1 October 1 30 householders voted for Fox and 

 Williams, but their claims were not allowed by the sheriff, who accepted 

 and returned only the votes of adm.itted burgesses, and returned Coote and 

 Manger. Fox and Williams protested, alleging not only partiality of the 

 sheriff towards the sitting members, but that by the law and custom of the 

 land, as well as by the particular constitution of that borough, the right to 

 exercise the franchise lay with 'the inhabitants and householders of the borough 

 paying scot and bearing lot.' A committee of the House of Commons sat 

 in 1775 to try the case, and decided that, down to the charter of Elizabeth, 

 'burgenses' in Poole charters meant inhabitants : that that year, by the new 

 charter, the inhabitants were formed into a commonalty, as distinct from the 

 burgesses. At the next two elections, in 1780 and 1790, the returns were 

 however again disputed, and were each again followed by the adjudication 

 of a parliamentary committee, in 1780 with the same result as in 1775, in 

 1790 ending in a compromise. The election of 1791 led to the final 

 victory of the right of election by select burgesses only. This continued 

 till the Reform Act of 1832.' By that Act Corfe Castle was deprived of 



' Op. cit. 44. ' Ibid. 80. ' Somers. and Dors. Notes and Queries, vii, 65. 



* Christie, Shaftesbury, i, 1 12. ' Sydenham, Hist. Poole, 256-66. 



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