Rotten borough
The term
"rotten borough" refers to a parliamentary borough or
constituency in the
Kingdom of England (pre-1707), the
Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1801), the
Kingdom of Ireland (1536–1801) and the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (from 1801 until their final abolition in 1867) which due to size and population, was "controlled" and used by a patron to exercise undue and unrepresentative influence within parliament. Rotten boroughs existed for centuries, although the term
rotten borough only came into usage in the
18th century. Typically rotten boroughs were boroughs which once had been flourishing cities with remarkable population, but which had deteriorated, declined and deserted during the centuries (see
ghost town).
The true
rotten borough was a borough of a ridiculously small electorate. A similar type of corrupt constituency was the
pocket borough — a borough constituency with a small enough electorate to be under the effective control of a major landowner.
For many years, constituencies did not change to reflect
population shifts, and in some places the number of electors became so few that they could be bribed. A
member of Parliament for one
borough might represent only a few people (or even just one — the buyer), whereas entire cities (such as
Manchester) might have no separate representation at all (eligible city residents were, however, able to vote in the corresponding county constituency — in this case
Lancashire). Examples include:
Old Sarum in
Wiltshire had eleven voters,
Dunwich in
Suffolk had 32 voters (the bulk of the settlements in the borough having fallen into the sea),
Plympton Earle with 40 voters, and
Newtown on the
Isle of Wight with 23 voters (all figures for
1831). All of these boroughs could elect two MPs. At one point, out of 405
elected MPs, 293 were chosen by fewer than 500
voters each. Many such rotten boroughs were controlled by peers who 'gave' the seats to their sons, thus having influence in the House of Commons while also holding seats themselves in the House of Lords. The
Duke of Wellington, prior to being awarded a peerage served as MP for the rotten borough of
Trim in
County Meath in the
Irish House of Commons.
Rotten boroughs were usually places which had once played a major role in England's politics, but had fallen into insignificance. For example, Old Sarum was a flourishing town as long ago as in the
twelfth century. The qualification "rotten" seemed to refer both to "corrupt" and "in decline for a very long time".
In addition, there were boroughs where
parliamentary representation was in the control of one or more 'patrons' by their power to either nominate or other machinations, such as
burgage. Patronage and
bribery were rife during this period, partly because there was no
secret ballot. In some cases,
wealthy individuals could "control" multiple boroughs — the
Duke of Newcastle is said to have had seven boroughs "in his pocket".
The pocket boroughs were seen (particularly by their owners) in the early 19th century as a valuable method of ensuring the representation of the landed interest in the House of Commons.
Among the few members in the House of Commons calling for parliamentary reform was Sir Francis Burdett (see External link below).
In the
19th century measures began to be taken against rotten boroughs, notably the
Reform Act 1832 which disenfranchised the 56 rotten boroughs listed below and spread the representation across parliamentary seats aligning to population centres and significant industries.
*Aldborough, North Riding of Yorkshire
*Aldeburgh, Suffolk
*Amersham, Buckinghamshire
*Appleby, Westmorland
*Beeralston, Devon
*Bishop's Castle, Shropshire
*Bletchingley, Surrey
*Boroughbridge, North Riding of Yorkshire
*Bossiney, Cornwall
*Brackley, Northamptonshire
*Bramber, Sussex
*Callington, Cornwall
*Camelford, Cornwall
*Castle Rising, Norfolk
*Corfe Castle, Dorset
*Downton, Wiltshire
*Dunwich, Suffolk
*East Grinstead, Sussex
*East Looe, Cornwall
*Fowey, Cornwall
*Gatton, Surrey
*Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire
*Haslemere, Surrey
*Hedon, East Riding of Yorkshire
*Heytesbury, Wiltshire
*Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire
*Hindon, Wiltshire
*Illchester, Somerset
*Lostwithiel, Cornwall
*Ludgershall, Wiltshire
*Milborne Port, Somerset
*Minehead, Somerset
*New Romney, Kent
*Newport, Cornwall
*Newton, Lancashire
*Newtown, Isle of Wight
*Okehampton, Devon
*Old Sarum, Wiltshire
*Orford, Suffolk
*Plympton Erle, Devon
*Queenborough, Kent
*Saltash, Cornwall
*Seaford, Sussex
*St Germains, Cornwall
*St Mawes, Cornwall
*St Michael's, Cornwall
*Steyning, Sussex
*Stockbridge, Hampshire
*Tregony, Cornwall
*West Looe, Cornwall
*Wendover, Buckinghamshire
*Weobley, Herefordshire
*Whitchurch, Hampshire
*Winchelsea, Sussex
*Wooton Bassett, Wiltshire
*Yarmouth, Isle of Wight>
Pocket boroughs were finally abolished by the
Reform Act of 1867. This considerably extended the borough franchise, and established the principle that each constituency should hold roughly the same number of electors. A Boundary Commission was set up by subsequent Acts of Parliament to maintain this principle as people moved about.
The introduction of the
secret ballot in the 1880s helped prevent patrons from controlling districts, as they could no longer find out how a person had voted. An elector thus became free to vote as he himself, rather than his landlord, wished. At the same time the practice of 'treating' the electorate (by giving money or providing entertainment) was outlawed, and election expenses fell dramatically.
Today, "rotten borough" is sometimes used to refer to a parliamentary constituency in which one particular political party has such massive support that its candidate is effectively uncontested; a more polite term is "
safe seat". Sometimes this term is used for an individual or family who have represented the same area for a long period of time, particularly when changing party allegiance whilst retaining the support of their constituency.
It is also used to refer to allegedly corrupt branches of local government —
Private Eye has a column entitled
Rotten Boroughs which lists stories of municipal wrongdoing.
In the episode
Dish and Dishonesty of the
BBC comedy
Blackadder the Third,
Edmund Blackadder attempts to bolster the support of the
Prince Regent in
Parliament by having the incompetent
Baldrick elected to the rotten borough of Dunny-on-the-Wold. This was easily accomplished since the constituency had only one voter. Baldrick ends up being tricked into voting the wrong way once he reaches Parliament and spends £400,000 in
bribe money on a giant
turnip.[
1]
In the
Aubreyâ€"Maturin series of seafaring tales, the pocket borough of Milport (also known as Milford) is initially held by General Aubrey, the father of protagonist Jack Aubrey. In the twelfth novel in the series,
The Letter of Marque, Jack's father dies and the seat is offered to Jack himself by his cousin Edward Norton, the "owner" of the borough. The borough has just seventeen electors, all of whom are tenants of Mr Norton.
In
George MacDonald Fraser's
Flashman series, the eponymous antihero, Harry
Flashman, mentions in the first novel that his father, Sir Buckley Flashman, had been in Parliament, but "they did for him at Reform," implying that the elder Flashman's seat was in a rotten or pocket borough.
In the satirical novel
Melincourt, or Sir Oran Haut-Ton (1817) by
Thomas Love Peacock, an
orang-utan named Sir Oran Haut-ton is elected to parliament by the "ancient and honourable borough of Onevote". The election of Sir Oran forms part of the hero's plan to persuade civilisation to share his belief that orang-utans are a race of human beings who merely lack the power of speech. "The borough of Onevote stood in the middle of a heath, and consisted of a solitary farm, of which the land was so poor and intractable, that it would not have been worth the while of any human being to cultivate it, had not the Duke of Rottenburgh found it very well worth his to pay his tenant for living there, to keep the honourable borough in existence." The single voter of the borough is Mr Christopher Corporate, who elects two MPs, each of whom "can only be considered as the representative of half of him".
* "[Borough representation is] the rotten part of the
constitution." —
William Pitt the Elder*
See also:
gerrymander* From
H.M.S. Pinafore by
Gilbert and Sullivan: :Sir Joseph Porter: I grew so rich that I was sent::By a pocket borough into Parliament.::I always voted at my party's call,::And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.:Chorus: And he never thought of thinking for himself at all.:Sir Joseph: I thought so little, they rewarded me::By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
* From
Iolanthe by
Gilbert and Sullivan:::Fairy Queen: Let me see. I've a borough or two at my disposal. Would you like to go into Parliament?
* From
The Letter of Marque by
Patrick O'Brian:: 'Could you not spend an afternoon at Milport, to meet the electors? There are not many of them, and those few are all my tenants, so it is no more than a formality; but there is a certain decency to be kept up. The writ will be issued very soon.'
Also in the parliamentary novels of
Anthony Trollope rotten boroughs are a recurring theme. John Grey, Phineas Finn, and Lord Silverbridge are all elected to rotten boroughs.
The Borough of Queen's Crawley in
Thackeray's
Vanity Fair is a rotten borough eliminated by the Reform Act of 1832:
"When Colonel Dobbin quitted the service, which he did immediately after his marriage, he rented a pretty country place in Hampshire, not far from Queen's Crawley, where, after the passing of the Reform Bill, Sir Pitt and his family constantly resided now. All idea of a peerage was out of the question, the baronet's two seats in Parliament being lost. He was both out of pocket and out of spirits by that catastrophe, failed in his health, and prophesied the speedy ruin of the Empire."
*
Spielvogel,
Western Civilization — Volume II: Since 1500 (
2003) p.493
*
Sir Francis Burdett
