Abstract
AbstractHistorians have rarely considered the political views of electorates in small constituencies with strong proprietorial interests, or ‘pocket’ boroughs. However, through a detailed case study of the Cornish borough of Mitchell, this article reveals a rural settlement with a multifaceted and divided community, which experienced a high degree of partisan conflict during the later Stuart period as its inhabitants engaged in an ongoing struggle over the nature of the franchise. A group of often‐disenfranchised inhabitants launched a sustained and independent assault on the lord of the borough's limited franchise, in favour of an inhabitant‐based vote; they were opposed by a group which oscillated between loyalty to the borough's patron and attempts to secure its own influence. Party allegiances and political ideologies can occasionally be identified on both sides, but the franchise dispute did not always align with these divisions. The article argues that while partisan conflict occurred in ‘pocket’ boroughs, it took extraordinary circumstances for this to boil over and facilitate change – in Mitchell's case, these circumstances were the frequent elections to the Exclusion Parliaments, and the patron's self‐imposed exile in France. Yet even once a popular inhabitant‐based vote was established, the widened electorate still found it difficult to determine the outcome of elections, as the borough's patron and local gentry families soon reasserted their authority. Therefore, while the electorates of boroughs such as Mitchell were not supine or monolithic, their ability to actively participate in the electoral process was ultimately fragile.
Highlights
Historians have rarely considered the political views of electorates in small constituencies with strong proprietorial interests, or ‘pocket’ boroughs
Through a detailed case study of the Cornish borough of Mitchell, this article reveals a rural settlement with a multifaceted and divided community, which experienced a high degree of partisan conflict during the later Stuart period as its inhabitants engaged in an ongoing struggle over the nature of the franchise
If we take two runs of three poll sheets, 1679–89 and 1698–1713, we find that in both sets of elections about 20% of voters appeared at all three polls, and 57% at two
Summary
Knights himself admits that he is referring primarily to ‘English civic communities’.9 It is unclear whether a popular political culture existed in small, rural communities like Mitchell, and, if it did, how it manifested. He stood for election at Mitchell six times between 1660 and 1681,succeeding only once at a by-election in 1673.Yet,despite his ill fortunes,Borlase’s indenture at a double return in 1661 was signed by 30 inhabitants.27 His ability to generate wide support among Mitchell’s inhabitants for a larger electorate would prove a worrying portent for Arundell’s interest in the borough. It was not until the three fraught elections to the Exclusion Parliaments of 1679–81 that an opportunity arose for a serious assault on the traditional franchise. Humphrey Borlase Charles Smythe SIR JOHN ST AUBYN WALTER VINCENT Humphrey Borlase
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