¹ O'Gorman, Frank, “Electoral Deference in ‘Unreformed’ England,” Journal of Modern History 56 (1984): 393Google Scholar.

² Hill, B. W., British Parliamentary Parties (London, 1985), p. 9Google Scholar.

³ Namier, Lewis, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (London, 1929)Google Scholar, England in the Age of the American Revolution (London, 1930)Google Scholar; Porritt, E. and Porritt, A. G., The Unreformed House of Commons, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1909)Google Scholar; Hogarth, William, “Four Prints of an Election,” 1755–58Google Scholar. One might trace the debate by looking at the following: Walcott, Robert, English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brooke, John, The Chatham Administration (London, 1956)Google Scholar; Namier, Lewis and Brooke, John, The House of Commons, 3 vols. (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Owen, John B., The Rise of the Pelhams (London, 1957)Google Scholar; Plumb, J. H., The Growth of Political Stability in England (London, 1967)Google Scholar, “The Growth of the Electorate in England from 1600 to 1715,” Past and Present, no. 45 (1969) p. 116Google Scholar; Holmes, Geoffrey, British Politics in the Age of Anne (London, 1967)Google Scholar, The Electorate and the National Will (Lancaster, 1976)Google Scholar; Ginter, Donald, Whig Party Organization in the General Election of 1790 (Berkeley, 1967)Google Scholar; O'Gorman, Frank, The Whig Party and the French Revolution (London, 1967)Google Scholar, The Rise of Party in England, 1760–1782 (London, 1975)Google Scholar, The Emergence of the British Two-Party System (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Brewer, John, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), p. 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The Common People and Politics, 1750–1790s (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar.

⁴ Clark, J. C. D., English Society, 1688–1832 (Cambridge, 1985), p. 84Google Scholar.

⁵ Ibid., p. 84, n. 136. Ironically, the “ancien régime” cart is under attack just as Clark is trying to attach the English horse to it. William Hagan has called into question the degree of social control in that most autocratic of places, Prussia. Hagan, William, “The Junkers Faithless Servants: Peasant Insubordination and the Breakdown of Serfdom in Brandenburg, 1763–1811,” The German Peasantry, ed. Evans, R. J. and Lee, W. R. (London, 1985)Google Scholar.

⁶ Clark is careful to note his new interpretation in his footnotes, p. 17, nn. 36, 38.

⁷ Copies of the resulting data detailing municipal and parliamentary electoral behavior in Maidstone between 1761 and 1802 are available at cost in versions to meet any specifications from the Laboratory for Historical Research, Department of History, University of California, Riverside, Calif. 92521. The algorithm used to link the original parliamentary poll book data (all of which was in published form except the year 1796) is described in Phillips, John A., Nominal Record Linkage and the Study of Individual-Level Electoral Behavior, a technical report from the Laboratory for Political Research (Iowa City: University of Iowa, Department of Political Science, 1976)Google Scholar. The same algorithm governed linkage decisions involving the municipal poll books, but the process was assisted considerably by the existence of the linked parliamentary files.

⁸ Phillips, John A., Electoral Behavior in Unreformed England (Princeton, N.J., 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “The Many Faces of Reform,” Parliamentary History 1 (1982): 115–35Google Scholar.

⁹ The Webbs, e.g., wrote of “patches of exuberant, low-grade Democracy” well in advance of the Reform Act. More recently, John Money has shown that “the meaning of politics was already changing” with “the progressive broadening of articulate political consciousness … from the late 1760s onwards.” Webb, Sidney and Webb, Beatrice, English Local History (London, 1908), 2:295Google Scholar; Money, John, “Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–93,” Midland History 1 (1971): 5Google Scholar. Evidence from “open” corporations like Norwich and “closed” corporations like Leicester could be presented to bolster these arguments for meaningful popular behavior. For Norwich, see Jewson, C. B., Jacobin City (Glasgow, 1975)Google Scholar. For Leicester, see Greaves, R. W., The Corporation of Leicester (Leicester, 1970)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Proceedings at the Contested Election for a Citizen to Serve the Office of Sheriff of Norwich (Norwich, 1781), pp. 5, 17Google Scholar.

¹¹ The adjusted return rate at parliamentary elections during this period ranged between 58 percent and 72 percent. A substantially higher return rate marked common council elections. Phillips, , Electoral Behavior, p. 94Google Scholar.

¹² Kentish Gazette (October 15, 1774).

¹³ Kent Archives Office (KAO), TB/355, Maidstone Borough Records, Broadside, July 11, 1788.

¹⁴ By the 1790s, the local parties were strong enough and sufficiently well organized to recruit candidates at very short notice. The abrupt withdrawal of Clement Taylor in 1796, a few days before the poll, left the Whigs without a candidate. They promptly recruited Christopher Hull from London. Taylor's withdrawal seems to have been forced by his impending bankruptcy. Jones, John Gale, Sketch of a Political Tour through Rochester, Chatham, Maidstone, and Gravesend (London, 1796), pp. 80–81Google Scholar. Public Record Office (PRO), Register of Bankrupts, B6 9 206 (October 17, 1798).

¹⁵ See the argument in Nossiter, T. J., “Elections and Political Behavior in County Durham and Newcastle, 1832–74” (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1968), p. 165Google Scholar. Also see Nossiter, , Influence, Opinion, and Political Idioms in Reformed England (Brighton, 1975)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Necessary plumping in Maidstone rose from 1.6 percent in 1768 to 28.2 percent in 1790 and 24.0 percent in 1796. Phillips, , Electoral Behavior, p. 225Google Scholar.

¹⁷ For example, William Windham's party shift in 1796 in Norwich led most of his former supporters to vote against him. A number expressed their dismay directly. Edward Astley voted against Windham because he could not “conceive this war [with France] as just and necessary.” Similarly, Samuel Cooper shifted to Windham's camp now that his principles were “reconcilable with the principles of the constitution.” British Library (BL) Additional (Add.) MS 37908, fol. 84. For examples of similar opinions in Bristol, see Cornwall Record Office (CRO), Vyvyan MS, DDV/BO/61.

¹⁸ House of Commons, Municipal Corporation Report, Parliamentary Papers, 1835, 24:749–70Google Scholar.

¹⁹ The manuscript poll books for the Common Council elections from 1764 until the reform era form the basis for this research. They are deposited in KAO, Md/AEb2/2-24. With the exception of 1796, all of the parliamentary pollbooks were printed immediately following the election. The manuscript pollbook for the 1796 election is deposited in the Kent Archives Office also.

²⁰ Maidstone was not chosen by the Webbs as one of the five open constituencies (Norwich, Morpeth, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Ipswich, and London) for close treatment. There were some twenty to forty “open” constituencies, depending on one's definition, and about 40 percent of all the corporations extended membership in the corporation in some fashion to their “freemen,” or to those serving apprenticeships in the town. Webb and Webb, 2:295, 2:263, n. 1.

²¹ Most of the voters at municipal elections voted at parliamentary elections. A very small proportion, usually less than 10 percent of the individuals on municipal lists, could not be found on the poll books for the immediately preceding or succeeding parliamentary election. Only 3 percent of the voters in 1774 could not be found in another year, 4 percent in 1788, and between 6 percent and 10 percent in the other nine years for which municipal elections were examined. For a fuller discussion, see Phillips, John A., “Electoral Polarization in the Reign of George III,” in The Transformation of Political Culture, ed. Birke, Adolph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press)Google Scholar. Since these figures are unadjusted for the mortality certain to have affected continuity and for slightly different turnout rates at parliamentary and local elections, they strongly support the assumption of identical electorates. Efforts in Maidstone in 1825 to interpret the charter's use of “commonality” as meaning the inhabitant householders paying scot and lot also suggest that only freemen were accorded the vote at that time and previously.

²² James, William Roberts, The Charters and Documents of Maidstone (London, 1825), pp. xxvii–xxixGoogle Scholar.

²³ Russell, J. M., History of Maidstone (London, 1809), p. 212Google Scholar; Rowles, W., History of Maidstone (London, 1881), p. 13Google Scholar.

²⁴ A number of Maidstone municipal contests over these years are omitted from this discussion because of the number of vacant seats being filled and the small number of candidates. Elections in 1775, 1794, and 1795 filled single vacancies, and elections in 1771, 1772, 1774, and 1782 filled only two or three seats. Partisan voting also marked these elections, but the small number of candidates made the elections less appropriate for a demonstration of growing partisanship. See Phillips, , Electoral Behavior, p. 110Google Scholar.

²⁵ Altogether, Maidstone experienced at least fifteen Common Council elections between 1764 and 1801 with an average of four seats and eight candidates.

²⁶ The number of possible vote combinations at a multiple-seat, multiple-candidate election can be determined by applying the formula

where n is the number of candidates and r is the number of seats. The symbol “!” indicates the number as a factorial, i.e., multiplied by the whole numbers below it in sequence. Thus 3! means 3 × 2 × 1 = 6, and 5! means 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 120. If each voter at an eighteen-man, nine-seat election casts all nine votes, this formula yields 48,619 variations, but the possibility of plumping in a nine-seat contest creates 8!, or 40,320 additional possibilities, for a total of 88, 939.

²⁷ The candidates were listed on the manuscript poll book in two slates separated by a heavy double line running down the page. In the one exceptional election (1768), the two slates were augmented by an extra candidate who was set apart in the middle of the page between the two slates (KAO, Md/AEb2/4).

²⁸ The municipal election of 1768 contained an extra candidate. Seven Common Council seats were being filled, and two slates of seven candidates were presented at the election, but a fifteenth candidate, William Wall, also stood for election. His votes at previous and subsequent elections marked him as a genuine “independent,” a status demonstrated on the polling book by his listing between the two slates of seven in his own column separated from the other candidates by solid double lines. Not surprisingly, given the degree of slate voting in Maidstone, his nonpartisan bid for office failed miser-ably; he stood at the bottom of the poll.

²⁹ This impressive party solidarity is detailed in Phillips, “Electoral Polarization.” Only 40 percent of the voters in Maidstone cast strictly partisan ballots at the Common Council elections of 1764 and 1768, but in both instances virtually all of those who failed to cast a straight party vote cast only one deviant vote, and that deviation could be explained politically. Plumping account s for the fact that the split voting reported in Electoral Behavior in Unreformed England (n. 8 above, p. 221, n. 12) and the slate voting reported in “Electoral Polarization” do not total to 100 percent.

³⁰ For a detailed explanation of the local political considerations prompting many of these single deviations in 1764 and 1768, see Phillips, “Electoral Polarization.”

³¹ Namier, Lewis and Brooke, John, History of Parliament (London, 1964), 1:313–14Google Scholar. Lord Romney was Maidstone's only resident peer.

³² Kentish Gazette (October 15, 1774).

³³ Newcastle Papers, BL Add. MS 32989, fol. 304. Also see BL Add. MS 32920, fol. 121.

³⁴ Canterbury Journal (September 13, 1780). The Kentish Gazette, on September 9, 1780, noted that “the interest of the Earl of Aylesford, whose family have long considered Maidstone as little better than an appendage to their estate, is now … completely overthrown.”

³⁵ Newcastle Papers, BL Add. MS 32930, fol. 121.

³⁶ The full table from which table 3 is drawn is presented in somewhat simplified form here. The Common Council votes are presented as opposition and Corporation votes, including those wh o cast all but one of their votes for one party, and genuinely split votes.

Parliamentary Election, 1761

³⁷ Newcastle Papers, B L Add. MS 32989, fols. 29–30. Apparently based only on Namier and Brooke, Hoffman assumed that Gregory owed his election to Rockingham's influence, but such was not the case (Hoffman, R. J. S., The Marquis [New York, 1973], p. 192)Google Scholar.

³⁸ Newcastle to Polhill, March 5, 1768, KAO, Polhill MS U1007/c46.

³⁹ This phrase actually was used to describe the candidacy of Sir Horace Mann in 1780 (Kentish Gazette [September 9, 1780]). He stood as an independent, as did Marsham.

⁴⁰ Table 4 is drawn from the following cross-sectional comparison. As in n. 36 above, the votes have been collapsed into overall opposition, split, and corporation.

Parliamentary Election, 1768

⁴¹ An opinion poll in 1963 reported that 75 percent of the electorate had always voted for the same party. See Rose, Richard, Electoral Behavior (New York, 1973), p. 498Google Scholar; Przeworski, Adam, “Contextual Models of Political Behavior,” Political Methodology 1 (1974): 44–50Google Scholar. Also see Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (New York, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Kendall's τ, the “most commonly used measure of association at the ordinal level,” resembles Pearson's r but is more appropriate for ordinal-level data, which these votes have become through transformation; τ_cis the appropriate measurement in this instance instead of the more customary τ_b because of the number of ties possible with the limited range of choices and because the scales were seldom of equal size. Even with the largest scaled comparison (± 9: ± 7), a comparison of several hundred individuals results in quite a few ties. See Blalock, Hubert, Social Statistics (New York, 1979), pp. 439–43Google Scholar. Also see Bowen, B. D. and Weisberg, H. F., Introduction to Data Analysis (San Francisco, 1980), p. 75Google Scholar.

⁴³ BL Add. MS 32989, fols. 29–30. Rockingham recommended Gregory to Newcastle and also pushed Lord Aylsford into setting him up as a candidate in 1768. Marsham's father, Earl Romney, supported his son's election in an effort to “revive his family interest” (Namier, and Brooke, , House of Commons, 1:313)Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Kentish Gazette (October 15, 1774). The voting at the election continued the polarization evident in 1761 and 1768.

Parliamentary Election, 1774

⁴⁵ O'Gorman, Frank, The Emergence of the British Two Party System (London, 1982), pp. 5–12Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ The division of the electorate is apparent even if the voters are held rigidly to a straight-party ballot and even in the face of a large number of candidates. In 1764 and 1768 between one-third and one-half of the voters cast strictly party ballots. If, however, a single deviation from a strict slate is permitted (and in both 1764 and 1768 solid political reasons justified such a deviation), slate voting approached or exceeded 80 percent. See Phillips, “Electoral Polarization.”

⁴⁷ For Bloxam's conduct, see Maidstone Journal (May 18, 1790). For the political sketch of 1796, see Jones (n. 14 above), pp. 79–80.

⁴⁸ Religion may have underlain early local party attachments. Selley suggested that “the names Whig and Tory were mere labels for local religious parties” (Selley, W. T., England in the Eighteenth Century [London, 1952], p. 345)Google Scholar. Rowles claimed that nearly half of the residents were nonconformists (Rowles [n. 23 above], p. 5). Unfortunately, the evidence to test such assertions does not exist. Also see Two Letters on the Test Act Printed in the Gazeteer (Maidstone, 1790)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Rudé, George, The Crowd in History (London, 1964), p. 221Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Donoghue, Bernard, British Politics and the American Revolution (London, 1964), p. 195Google Scholar.

⁵¹ A Short Treatise on the Institution of the Corporation and an Enquiry into the Conduct of the Bench and the Corporation of Maidstone from the year 1757 to the Present Time (Maidstone, 1786), pp. 12–30Google Scholar.

⁵² Kentish Gazette (February 25, 1784).

⁵³ Jones, p. 79.

⁵⁴ Clarke, P. F. C., “Electoral Sociology of Modern Britain,” History 57 (1972): 31–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁵ Clark (n. 4 above), p. 37.