Ilchester (UK Parliament constituency)

Ilchester
Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons
1621–1832

Ilchester was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England, then of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832. It was represented by two Members of Parliament until 1832. It was one of the most notoriously corrupt rotten boroughs.

History

The constituency was a parliamentary borough in Somerset, first represented in the English Parliament in 1298 but thereafter returning MPs only occasionally until its right to representation was revived by a resolution of the House of Commons in 1621. The borough comprised the parish of Ilchester, originally a market town of some size but greatly declined by the 19th century; its former lace and silk industries were almost entirely extinct, and it subsisted mainly on trade arising from its position on the main road between London and Exeter. In 1831, the population of the borough was approximately 965, and contained 231 houses; the whole town, which extended slightly beyond the borough boundaries, had 248 houses.

Ilchester was a "potwalloper" borough, meaning that the right to vote was exercised all inhabitant householders not receiving alms (a household being theoretically defined by having a separate hearth on which a pot could be boiled); in the 18th century this amounted to a couple of hundred voters, who expected to receive full value in return for their votes, either at the time of election or later. This meant that elections were generally contested, and securing a seat was an expensive business. Bribery was widespread, and most of the elections at the start of the 18th century resulted in petitions by the losing candidates which the Commons had to investigate. Oldfield reports that the price of a vote was 2 guineas in 1702, but had risen to 30 guineas by 1768.

In 1702 one of the candidates at the previous year's election, John Webb, was arrested and committed to the custody of the sergeant at arms for bribery, as was the bailiff who (as returning officer) had asked for a £100 bribe to declare a candidate elected even if he had fewer votes than his opponents. A petition in 1709 stated that the sitting members had ordered two thousand pairs of shoes to keep all the shoemakers of the borough employed, although this petition was later withdrawn.

At the 1774 election a petition from the defeated candidates alleged bribery and treating against the sitting members as well as partiality by the returning officer and, after investigation, the Commons declared the election void and a writ for a new election was issued. (This indicated that they considered the petitioners as guilty as their opponents, since the Committee could otherwise have recommended to the House that they should be declared duly elected in the original poll.)

Even when there was no open scandal, considerable sums passed hands in Ilchester elections. In his study of the 1754 election, Lewis Namier mentions the government's arrangements to secure the election of its candidates there. The Whig interests in the borough at this time were managed by one of the MPs, Thomas Lockyer, nicknamed "Snowball" for the way in which he accumulated money, and the government spent £1000 on securing the election of John Talbot as the other member. It appears that Talbot was expected to produce £1000 of his own to purchase the seat, but whether this was in addition to the government's expenditure or merely to reimburse it is not clear. At around the same period Lord Chesterfield records in his Letters to His Son that he investigated buying him a seat in Parliament at Ilchester and was quoted a price of £1500.

At the turn of the 19th century, most of the property in the borough was bought by Sir William Manners (who later became Lord Huntingtower), who set about turning it into a pocket borough with the intention of becoming one of its MPs and nominating the other. At first the voters defied him, taking bribes from both sides, and at the election of 1802 he was defeated; but on petition evidence of "a system of corruption" was uncovered and the committee named 32 voters who had received bribes – a substantial proportion of the entire electorate – as well as finding the sitting MPs guilty of treating though not of bribery. The election was declared void, and a new election held; but this by-election produced yet another petition, and Manners himself was disqualified for bribery. After this reverse, however, he took more drastic action to secure his influence, having most of the houses in the town pulled down (their former occupiers thereby losing their votes), reducing the electorate to about 60. Oldfield records that he erected a workhouse in their place, where many of the former voters – having relied on selling their votes for their livelihood – ended up. The remaining voters were, predictably, somewhat more co-operative.

Ilchester was abolished as a separate constituency by the Great Reform Act of 1832. The voters not unnaturally resisted the reform, even defying their patron to do so, and after their MP James Hope-Vere had voted for the Reform Bill in the 1830 Parliament he had to be found another seat as he had no chance of re-election at Ilchester. After abolition, the town was placed in the new Western Somerset county division.

Members of Parliament

MPs 1298–1629

Parliament	First member	Second member
Ilchester's right to return Members restored, 1621
Parliament of 1621–1622	Richard Wynn	Arthur Jarvis
Happy Parliament (1624–1625)	Richard Alleyn	Nathaniel Tomkins Also elected for Christchurch In his place Edward Waller
Useless Parliament (1625)	Richard Wynn	Sir Robert Gage
Parliament of 1625–1626	Sir William Beecher	Robert Caesar
Parliament of 1628–1629	Sir Robert George	Sir Henry Berkeley
No Parliament summoned 1629–1640

MPs 1640–1832

Year			First Member	First Party	Second Member	Second Party
		April 1640	Edward Phelips		Sir Henry Berkeley
		November 1640[1]	Robert Hunt	Royalist
		1640 (?)			Edward Phelips	Royalist
		February 1644	Hunt and Phelips disabled to sit – both seats vacant
		1645	Colonel William Strode		Thomas Hodges
		December 1648	Strode and Hodges excluded in Pride's Purge – both seats vacant
		1653	Ilchester was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate
		January 1659	Richard Jones		John Barker
		May 1659	Not represented in the restored Rump
		April 1660	Robert Hunt		Henry Dunster
		1661	Edward Phelips
		1679	William Strode		John Speke
		1681	Sir John St Barbe		John Hody
		1685	Sir Edward Wyndham		Sir Edward Phelips
		1689			William Helyar
		1690			John Hunt
		1695	Sir Francis Wyndham
		1698			John Phelips
		Jan. 1701	Sir Philip Sydenham		James Anderton
		Nov. 1701	Sir Francis Wyndham
		1705	Edward Strode		John Webb
		1708	Edward Phelips		James Johnston
		1710			Samuel Masham
		1711			Sir James Bateman
		1715	William Bellamy		John Hopkins
		Mar. 1722	William Burroughs		Daniel Moore
		Dec. 1722	Thomas Paget
		1727	Charles Lockyer		Thomas Crisp
		1734			Sir Robert Brown
		1747	Francis Fane		Thomas Lockyer
		1754	Hon. John Talbot
		1754	Joseph Tolson Lockyer
		Mar. 1761			The Earl of Egmont[2]
		Dec. 1761			William Wilson
		1765	Peter Legh
		1768			Sir Brownlow Cust, Bt.	Tory
		1774[3]	Peregrine Cust		William Innes
		1775	Nathaniel Webb		Owen Salusbury Brereton
		1780	Peregrine Cust		Samuel Smith
		1784			Benjamin Bond-Hopkins
		1785	John Harcourt[4]
		1786	Captain George Johnstone	Independent
		1787	George Sumner
		1790	John Harcourt		Samuel Long
		1796	Sir Robert Clayton		William Dickinson
		1799	Lewis Bayly
		1802[5]	William Hunter		Thomas Plummer
		1803	Sir William Manners, Bt[6]	Tory	Charles Brooke
		1804	John Manners
		1806	Sir William Manners, Bt	Tory	Nathaniel Saxon	Whig
		1807	Richard Brinsley Sheridan	Whig	Michael Angelo Taylor	Whig
		1812	Hon. John Ward	Tory	George Philips	Whig
		1818	Sir Isaac Coffin, Bt.	Whig	John William Drage Merest	Whig
		1820			Stephen Lushington	Whig
		1826[7]	Richard Sharp	Whig	John Williams	Whig
		1827	Hon. Lionel Tollemache	Tory	Hon. Felix Tollemache	Tory
		1830	Michael Bruce	Whig	James Joseph Hope-Vere	Whig
		1831	Hon. Edward Petre	Whig	Stephen Lushington	Whig
		1832	Constituency disenfranchised

Notes

1. The election of Hunt and Berkeley was declared void, but Hunt was re-elected
2. Egmont was also elected for Bridgwater, which he chose to represent, and never sat for Ilchester
3. On petition the election of 1774 was declared void for bribery, all the candidates being disqualified and a new writ issued
4. On petition, Harcourt was declared not to have been duly elected and his opponent, Johnstone, was seated in his place
5. On petition, the election of 1802 was declared void for bribery and treating by the candidates and a new writ was issued
6. On petition, Manners' election was declared void for bribery
7. On petition, the return of 1826 was amended, and Huntingtower and Tollemache declared duly returned in place of Sharp and Williams

See also

• List of former United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies
• Unreformed House of Commons

References

• Robert Beatson, A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807) * Michael Brock, "The Great Reform Act" (London: Hutchinson, 1973)
• D Brunton & D H Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
• Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808)
• Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition – London: St Martin's Press, 1961)
• T. H. B. Oldfield, The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1816)
• J Holladay Philbin, Parliamentary Representation 1832 – England and Wales (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
• Edward Porritt and Annie G Porritt, The Unreformed House of Commons (Cambridge University Press, 1903)
• Henry Stooks Smith, The Parliaments of England from 1715 to 1847, Volume 3 (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co, 1850)
• Willis, Browne (1750). Notitia Parliamentaria, Part II: A Series or Lists of the Representatives in the several Parliaments held from the Reformation 1541, to the Restoration 1660 ... London. p. 1.