294 Malmesbury Election Petition, 1807. 



Now these thirteen electors (the alderman and capital burgesses) 

 were elected for life, the capital burgesses being chosen by them 

 from the twenty-four assistants, and the assistants out of thirty-one 

 landholders of about an acre of land by inheritance. There was also 

 a high steward of the borough, elected by the corporation ; an 

 office filled at the time of this election by Mr. Edmund Estcourt, 

 of the well-known old Wiltshire family which is said to have been 

 settled in the neighbourhood for many centuries. Mr. Spackman, 

 in common with other electors, who was the alderman and re- 

 turning officer on the present occasion, admitted that he had never 

 seen the members who were returned, either before or since the 

 election, and did not know if he had ever seen them in his life, and 

 that the only knowledge he had of them was that they were 

 mentioned to him by Colonel Kingscote, who lived a few miles 

 from Malmesbury, two or three days before the election. 



It further appeared that on the day of the election Mr. Estcourt, 

 Colonel Kingscote, and the ten electors who were — as it is said — in 

 Mr. Estcourt's interest, paraded with a band to the polling place, 

 that the electors were then called over by the deputy high steward, 

 the alderman first, and then the youngest burgess, and after five 

 of the electors had voted for Ladbrook and Colbourn, Messrs. 

 Bouverie and Panton, who alone of the candidates were present, 

 said they would not put the electors to further trouble, and would 

 retire from the contest. Thus concluded a not very solemn farce. 

 These are the facts appearing about the actual election which 

 have an engaging simplicity about them, when we consider how 

 complicated is the machinery at the present day to enable us to 

 be represented in parliament. But I must now direct your at- 

 tention to the story leading up to this election, of which the 

 petitioner unsuccessfully complained. The controversy raged round 

 the acts of the high steward, who seems to have held the borough in 

 his pocket. It appears that down to shortly before his death 

 in 180-4 this post was held by a man called Wilkins, and 

 the main part of the case put forward by the petitioner 

 before the committee consisted of his behaviour during many 

 years as high steward of the borough. It appeared that he 



