PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

'From 1430 we have the important act (8 Hen. VI, c.7) which regulated the county franchise for the next four centuries:--the electors are to be persons resident in the county, each of whom shall have freehold to the value of 40 shillings per annum at the least, above all charges ... the forty shilling freeholder had a vote, the copyholder, the leaseholder, had none, no matter how valuable his land might be'. (F. W. Maitland,Constitutional History of England, p. 173). The requirement as to residence in the county fell into desuetude and was abolished by statute in 1774; the property qualification remained unaltered until the 1832 Reform Act, which brought in various other classes of voters. Later Acts further extended the franchise.

Before 1832 there were no regular registers of electors. A voter had to swear an oath, at the poll, that he had the requisite qualification as a freeholder. In 1710 an attempt was made to check fraudulent voting by prescribing that no person might vote who had not been charged to

public taxes for property worth forty shillings per annum. Statutes of 1745 and 1780 reinforced this by arranging for duplicates of the land

tax assessments to be deposited with the clerk of the peace as evidence of qualification, while a statute of 1762 debarred persons from voting

in virtue of an annuity or rent-charge unless a certificate of the particulars had previously been lodged with the clerk of the peace.