Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T08:12:33.793Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

English Franchise Reform in the Seventeenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Richard L. Bushman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The roots of franchise reform in the seventeenth century are of interest to historians both of Britain and of America. In the new world and in England important steps toward democratic suffrage were taken in the first half of the century. The Virginia charter of 1619 granted voting privileges to all adult male inhabitants regardless of property. Later governments qualified this liberality, but an important precedent was established. In England Leveller tracts and the classic Putney Debates aired arguments that bore no immediate practical fruits but that foreshadowed later reforms. Both developments are startling enough to raise urgent questions about origins. Where did such striking innovations come from? Were they altogether unprecedented, or were they, as seems more probable, modifications of already existing ideas about suffrage?

In both cases tentative explanations have been proposed. The generous provisions of the Virginia charter have been accounted for by the desire of the colony's sponsors to attract settlers. Unusual political privileges were a lure to draw Englishmen to the new world. The soldiers' insistence on a wider franchise has been attributed to three factors: the confidence they derived from their large role in Cromwell's victories, the logical development of the natural right and contract theory of government, and the democratic impulse implicit in Puritan Independency. Heady with military successes and religious zeal, the soldiers boldly carried the conception of contract to its conclusion and demanded that Parliament be elected by the people to whom it was theoretically responsible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , November 1963 , pp. 36 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1963

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Probably apprentices but not servants were excluded. Andrews, Charles M., The Colonial Period of American History (New Haven, 1934), I, 184Google Scholar.

2. Craven, Wesley Frank, The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1689 (n. p., 1949), p. 136Google Scholar; Zagorin, Perez, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (London, 1954), pp. 13–17Google Scholar; Gooch, G. P., English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1927), p. 122Google Scholar; Haller, William, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1955), pp. 298–300Google Scholar; Coates, Wilson H., “An Analysis of Major Conflicts in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Aiken, William A. and Henning, Basil D. (eds.), Conflict in Stuart England: Essays in Honour of Wallace Notestein (London and New York, 1960), pp. 30–32Google Scholar. For a recent discussion of seventeenth-century franchise, see Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962), pp. 107–160Google Scholar.

3. Notestein, Wallace, Relf, Frances H., Simpson, Hartley (eds.), Commons Debates, 1621 (New Haven, 1935), II, 42Google Scholar; III, 411-12; IV, 421-22.

4. The boroughs were of larger importance, and they subsequently received more attention. Boroughs not only supplied four-fifths of the House of Commons, but their franchise was often narrower than the franchise in shires. In many boroughs a closed corporation of a dozen or two men were the sole electors of parliamentary burgesses. The remainder of the freemen, not to mention the other inhabitants, had no voice in elections. In the shires, by contrast, every forty shilling freeholder could vote.

5. Notestein, Relf, and Simpson, , Commons Debates, 1621, II, 47–48;Google Scholar IV, 32-33.

6. Journals of the House of Commons, I, 513, 572, 641, 649–50, 686, 759, 818, 885–86Google Scholar.

7. Glanville, John (ed.), Reports of Certain Cases, Determined and Adjudged by the Commons in Parliament in the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Years of the Reign of King James the First (London, 1775)Google Scholar, passim; cf. the 1623 Case, Dover, Commons Journals, I, 748.Google Scholar

8. Glanville, , Reports of Certain Cases, pp. 33ff.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., p. 107; Commons Journals, I, 708, 792Google Scholar.

10. Commons Journals, I, 715Google Scholar.

11. Ibid., I, 882, 893, 876, 907.

12. Ibid., I, 893; cf. I, 882. It is possible, of course, that the Parliament referred to town freemen when they said commoners. In that case ownership of property and admission to the town would be voting requirements in most places. But in light of the declarations of the committee in 1624-25, it is more likely that commoners was used here in the broader sense of inhabitants and householders. By either definition the resolve of the Parliament implied a radical reform in many boroughs.

13. Moir, Thomas L., The Addled Parliament of 1614 (Oxford, 1958), pp. 42, 53–54Google Scholar.

14. Commons Journals, I, 468Google Scholar.

15. Notestein, Relf, and Simpson, , Commons Debates, 1621, II, 277.Google Scholar

16. Glanville, , Reports of Certain Cases, pp. 54–55Google Scholar; Notestein, Relf, and Simpson, , Commons Debates, 1621, III, 411–12Google Scholar.

17. Glanville, , Reports of Certain Cases, pp. 54–55Google Scholar.

18. Green, Mary A. E. (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, of the Reign of James I, 1623-1625 (London, 1859), p. 192Google Scholar; Commons Journals, I, 748Google Scholar.

19. Green, , Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1625-1625, p. 162Google Scholar.

20. Mitchell, William M., The Rise of the Revolutionary Party in the English House of Commons (New York, 1957), pp. 106–07, 116Google Scholar; Hill, Christopher, Oliver Cromwell, 1658-1958 (London, 1958), p. 12Google Scholar; de Villiers, Evangeline, “Parliamentary Boroughs Restored by the House of Commons,” E. H. R., LXVII (1952), 195CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. De Villiers, , “Parliamentary Boroughs,” E. H. R., LXVII (1952), 183–85, 190, 196Google Scholar; Neale, J. E., The Elizabethan House of Commons (New Haven, 1950), p. 247Google Scholar; cf. pp. 140-52.

22. Hill, , Cromwell, p, 12Google Scholar; De Villiers, , “Parliamentary Boroughs,” E. H. R., LXVII (1952), 195Google Scholar.

23. Notestein, Relf, and Simpson, , Commons Debates, 1621, VII, 567–72Google Scholar.

24. Ibid., VII, 593-96, 567-70.

25. Ibid., VII, 567-70.

26. At the outset an objection was raised to the election writ because it did not say the “Cominalty, to make the choyse ….” Ibid., VII, 567-70.

27. Ibid., VII, 567-70; IV, 181. Sandys' election was validated because for some reason the commons had been permitted to vote for him.

28. Probably it was partly through Sandys' influence that the Committee on Privileges restored the right to vote to Sandwich commoners. Though he could not obtain the dissolution of the London monopoly, Sandys tried to help Sandwich merchants by limiting transport fees on goods going to Sandwich. Commons Journals, I, 568, 572Google Scholar. Sandys also asked the Archbishop of Canterbury for permission to send Brownists and Separatists to Virginia. Craven, Wesley Frank, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, the Failure of a Colonial Experiment (New York, 1932), pp. 277–78Google Scholar.

29. Commons Journals, I, 624Google Scholar.

30. Forster, John, Sir John Eliot, A Biography, 1590-1632 (London, 1864), II, 271–74Google Scholar.

31. Craven, , Dissolution of the Virginia Company, pp. 277–78Google Scholar.

32. The establishment of popular government in Virginia was probably connected with the Company's attempt to get a bill through Parliament directing corporate towns to send their surplus poor to Virginia. Both were part of the campaign to increase migration. Andrews, , The Colonial Period of American History, I, 134.Google Scholar

33. Commons Journals, II, 14–15, 47, 117Google Scholar; cf. ibid., IX, 585-86; Sacret, J. H., “Restoration Government and Municipal Corporations,” E. H. R., XLV (1930), 244–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Commons Journals, II, 16, 333Google Scholar.

35. Coates, Willson H. (ed.), The Journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes (New Haven, 1942), p. 260Google Scholar.

36. Kershaw, R. N., “The Elections for the Long Parliament, 1640,” E. H. R., XXXVIII (1923), 506CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. Sacret, , “Restoration Government and Municipal Corporations,” E. H. R., XLV (1930), 236CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. Hill, , Cromwell, pp. 12–14Google Scholar.

39. Woodhouse, A. S. P. (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty, Being the Army Debates (1647-9) from the Clarke Manuscripts (London, 1938), pp. 407–08Google Scholar.

40. Gardiner, Samuel R., The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-60 (Oxford, 1906), p. 317Google Scholar.

41. Lilburne, John, London's Liberty in Chains Discovered (London, 1646), p. 53Google Scholar.

42. Haller, William (ed.), Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, 1638-47 (New York, 1934), III, 370, 399Google Scholar.

43. Ibid., III, 353, 357-59, 399; Frank, Joseph, The Levellers, a History of the Writings of Three Seventeenth-Century Social Democrats: John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn (Cambridge, 1955), pp. 61–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Woodhouse, , Puritanism and Liberty, p. 454Google Scholar.

45. Ibid., pp. 69-70.

46. Their exception of servants is understandable if one remembers that the original grounds for enlarging the franchise were to prevent undue influence in elections. The Levellers explained themselves by saying that servants were too likely to be influenced by their masters. Ibid., p. 83.

47. Zagorin, , A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution, pp. 139, 158–60Google Scholar; Hill, Christopher and Dell, Edmund, The Good Old Cause, The English Revolution of 1640-60 (London, 1949), pp. 141–42Google Scholar; Harrington, James, The Oceana and other Works, ed. Toland, John (London, 1747), p. 479Google Scholar.

48. Davies, Godfrey, “The Election of Richard Cromwell's Parliament, 1658-9,” E. H. R., LXIII (1948), 497CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Commons Journals, VII, 806–07Google Scholar.

49. Ogg, David S., England in the Reign of Charles II (Oxford, 1952), pp. 480–82, 461Google Scholar.

50. Commons Journals, IX, 297, 308, 310, 322, 374, 383, 385, 411, 585, 639, 649, 650Google Scholar; X, 35, 364, 524; XI, 338, 344. This reform fervor faded after 1688 as prominent Whigs brought borough after borough into their orbits of influence. It seemed increasingly inexpedient thereafter to curb practices which the Whigs themselves now followed.

51. Commons Journals, I, 513Google Scholar.

52. Ibid., I, 641, 649.

53. Notestein, Relf, and Simpson, , Commons Debates, IV, 421–22Google Scholar; III, 411-12.

54. Commons Journals, I, 686Google Scholar.

55. Ibid., I, 818.

56. Ibid., I, 885-86.

57. Ibid., IX, 308, 310.

58. Ibid., IX, 322.

59. Ibid., IX, 374.

60. Ibid., IX, 385.

61. Ibid., IX, 411.

62. Ibid., IX, 585.

63. Somers Tracts (London, 1748), Pt. 1, I, 63–66Google Scholar.

64. Commons Journals, IX, 649Google Scholar.

65. Ibid., IX, 650.