Today the nation will be casting their votes in the 2024 General Election with most constituencies declaring their results in the early hours of the morning. However, as Dr Robin Eagles explains in our final Georgian Elections Project blog, 18th-Century voters would have had to wait for considerably longer to find out who their new MPs were…
Even in a snap election, polling day is the culmination of sometimes years of dedicated campaigning and cultivation of support which, in modern terms, can all be over in a matter of a few hours. Even in the eighteenth century, some were relieved to be freed of the pressures of having to keep in with the voter base. When Lord Hervey was elevated to the House of Lords in 1733, vacating the seat at Bury St Edmunds, which he had represented since April 1725, he was unashamed at his pleasure at being spared ‘all Corporation solicitation, hypocrisy, flattery and nonsense’. Even in a place like Bury, where the Hervey family possessed a dominant interest, candidates were expected to fulfil certain obligations and Hervey was only too glad to be rid of them.
This sort of careful cultivation was true of many candidates who worked hard to maintain a profile among their constituents against the day when they would call upon them for their votes. That said, the goal in many places was to avoid contests at election time, so this was well worth it if it resulted in the electors agreeing on candidates in advance and thus avoiding an unnecessarily costly vote. Where a contest could not be avoided, there was all the panoply of election day to be navigated and the considerable pressure of looking on while the votes were tallied.
John Wilkes, who had caused the administration so much trouble from 1768 to 1770, had finally been elected for Middlesex in 1774 without challenge, and been able to repeat that six years later. In the spring of 1784, though, in the general election called to cement Pitt the Younger’s premiership, he faced a contested poll for the first time in 15 years. As one of Pitt’s supporters, he had lost much of his appeal among reformers, even though he and his partner, William Mainwaring stood promising to seek their constituents’ views on matters of importance, while their opponent, George Byng (a Foxite) was vague about the reforms he was likely to advocate.
© The Trustees of the British Museum
In modern elections, one is used to the intense excitement of election night: polls closing at 10pm and by the early hours of the following morning the vast majority of results counted. There is then the ritual progression of candidates, successful and disappointed, trooping onto platforms to hear the results and to offer their speeches. Even where there are recounts, these do not normally hold matters up for more than a few hours.
Eighteenth-century elections were much more drawn out and there was often a considerable delay between the end of the poll and the final result being declared, so much less opportunity for the kind of line-up so familiar in contemporary elections. For Wilkes and the other candidates in 1784, it was almost a month before the result was known. Mainwaring had secured a clear plurality of votes (2,118) but Wilkes had only managed 66 more than his rival, Byng, who inevitably demanded a scrutiny. This meant that the officers in charge of the election trawled through the lists of voters and each party had an opportunity of questioning the validity of certain votes in the hopes of tipping the balance.
On Tuesday 11 May, Wilkes wrote to his daughter letting her know he had just returned from the London Guildhall, whence the sheriffs had adjourned the scrutiny and where the day had been spent agreeing on process. The various parties had initially met at another venue, but it had been decided it was too small to accommodate everyone. [Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 13 May 1784] Wilkes had been unhappy about the delay and noted that at that point, just 20 hours remained ‘to scrutinize 3000 voters’. He also anticipated there would be lengthy debates over each point in contest. That said, Wilkes assured his daughter he had secured for himself ‘acute and long-winded counsel’ to argue on his behalf. [Letters from the Year 1774, iii. 1-2]
In spite of Wilkes’s concerns, on Friday 14 May, it was all over. The various parties had gathered at 8am, and Byng’s counsel had at once opened the case of one John Decker, as Wilkes had it – at least one newspaper gave the name as John Darker [Morning Chronicle, 15 May] – whose right to vote they were questioning. Had this vote been discounted, it would have opened the way for many others, but after much deliberation the sheriffs decided that it should stand. No one named Decker or Darker appears in the poll books. There was, however, a voter named John Decks, one of five voters from Winchmore Hill, who did poll for Mainwaring and Wilkes, so it was presumably this man whose vote had proved to be so clinching. Realizing that the game was up, Byng’s counsel ‘desired to give a few valedictory words’, during which the sheriffs were abused. Byng himself threatened to take the matter to the House of Commons and lodge a formal petition against the result, but Wilkes was confident he would not do so. [Letters from the Year 1774, iii. 5-6]
The formal conclusion finally came on Monday 17 May, when Wilkes and Mainwaring were back at Guildhall to hear themselves at last ‘declared duly elected Knights of the Shire for Middlesex in the ensuing parliament’. Byng chose not to appear, ‘nor any of his friends’ and the papers noted that the overall turnout for what ought to have been an historic moment was fairly lacklustre: ‘Not above forty freeholders attended this last stage of the business’ [General Evening Post, 15-18 May 1784]. There was thus none of the modern paraphernalia of a line-up of candidates on a stage, just the two who had been accounted the winners and a handful of supporters. They then adjourned to the White Hart at Holborn for a celebratory dinner.
[Letters from the Year 1774, iii. 10-11]
RDEE
Further reading:
ecppec.ncl.ac.uk
Lord Hervey and his Friends 1726-38, ed. Earl of Ilchester (1950)
John Wilkes, Letters from the Year 1774 to the Year 1796 (1805) vol. III
