Preoccupation with the individual and his rights began in the seventeenth century, with the rise of the bourgeoisie, whose existence and development as a class depended on the freedom of the individual capitalist to buy, and of the individual proletarian to sell, labour power. The rebellion of the rising bourgeoisie against the economic shackles of feudalism found its political, social and ideological expression in opposition to arbitrary political power, to arbitrary restraints on personal liberty, to the violation of human dignity and to clerical obscurantism. The fight was seen as a struggle between reason and unreason.
~Peter Fryer1
The Puritan alternative to the established church hierarchy presented a democratic challenge to the feudal political system as a whole. At the end of the 16th century not much electoral activity took place. “…the wishes of the bulk of the population counted for little…”2 Along with restrictions on the aristocracy, the Tudor promotion of centralization in government affected town governments as well. Royal charters frequently anointed local burgesses as the sole electors, who consequently either elected those of their own circle, or candidates favored by local aristocrats.3
Because reform of the English church required government action, Puritans began to seek government offices through popular election, often successfully. In 1586, a Puritan activist forced a town oligarchy to admit him to the local government or face the people’s long-disused electoral right.4 The Tudors had kept the franchise limited on the grounds that “‘the people must be governed, not pleased,’” as an oligarchic candidate told an upstart contender for Parliament in 1584.5 Set by law in 1430, only freeholders worth 40 shillings were qualified to vote.6 This “excluded smaller freeholders, copyholders, cottagers, leaseholders, and paupers,” i.e., the overwhelming bulk of the rural population.7 Even freeholders in the 16th century were unlikely to travel long distances to vote, and “humble tradesmen” were not going to challenge the nominee of their betters unless some great issue was at stake.8 By the early 17th century, more towns were represented in Parliament by county gentry than otherwise.9
Thus the franchise was “a privilege attached to particular types of property.” Without sufficient property a man was not free.10 But by the 1620s, due to the inflation, someone worth only 40 shillings was now considered poor, and this expanded downward the number of eligible rural voters under the law.11 The early Stuarts’ chronic financial difficulties, and multiple disputes with their parliaments, necessitated the convoking of more parliaments “to replace the ones that had failed before.” The greater number of elections by itself raised interest and awareness among the electorate.12 Further, those areas in which the greatest electoral interest occurred were also those undergoing brisk economic changes, and strongly Puritan.13
Beginning with a county election dispute in 1604, the House of Commons entered a course of wresting control over elections away from the king’s government.14 “The efforts of the gentry were aided by indigenous pressures building up in many communities, which culminated in domestic challenges to unpopular urban oligarchies.”15 In the boroughs (towns), now quite larger than a century before, uncertainty about who was eligible to vote, as well as the prestige associated with representing them, increased the number of disputes referred to the Commons.16 The rebellious House resolved many election disputes during the politically turbulent and economically depressed 1620s, usually to the benefit of the voters. This had the effect of widening the franchise, especially in the boroughs.17
The efforts of the Puritans and the Commons effected a slow but steady expansion of voting rights for those of the common people (“‘men with no shirts,’ a disgruntled noble called them”)18 who were becoming eligible to vote: “yeomen and poorer peasants in the counties and the shopkeepers and craftsmen and some of the poor in many towns.”19 Conservative and royalist gentry, as “men of quality,” attempted to resist this trend; their distaste for acknowledging political differences comported with the emphasis in feudal ideology on social order and the immutability of rank. They not infrequently found ways of accommodating local sentiment without the necessity of an open contest.20
Such subterfuges were facilitated by the fact that no bill was ever passed codifying electoral eligibility, despite some declarations by the Commons’ Committee on Privileges. The concerns of most MPs were to insure honest elections, free from interference by the crown and oligarchs, and less a belief in a democratic franchise per se. A proposed franchise reform bill in 1621 actually raised the amount of property needed to vote in rural counties21 (the gentry’s home turf). But opposition to the Stuarts, and divisions within the gentry over religion and government matters, made an electoral base of voters an asset to many gentlemen.22 “Besides the principled desire for honest elections, the anti-Court group in the Commons wished to strengthen their numbers, and aspiring gentry hoped to win seats in Parliament by appealing to the populace.”23
In particular, the gentry were quite aware of their power over taxation, and of that power’s singular status in Europe. The monarchy’s use of monopoly patents, forced loans and increased customs duties called into question “the future survival of representative institutions…”24 If the crown could tax on its own authority, what was the purpose of having a parliament? “Fears lest parliaments should be discontinued, already voiced in 1610 and 1614, were stronger: they were to be repeated in every parliament of the [1620s] decade.”25 Stressing their responsibility to their constituents was a rationale for resisting the absolutist tendencies of the monarchy,26 while expanding the electorate was believed to be a way of limiting outside influence.27
Dominating families in the countryside now had to face actual contests in many places rather than just specifying candidates or assuming the seats themselves. That the increased electorate so often returned anti-court, or at least those who appeared to be anti-court, candidates28 is easily explained by the political struggles, driven by local and national controversies, taking place in many localities during this time.
…Parliament, and in particular the Commons, was frequently seen as standing for a purified Protestant commonwealth and the defense of liberties against the corruption and tyranny sometimes associated with “the Court.”29
For reforming and/or Puritan gentry there was thus a programmatic basis to their campaigns that, in addition to local issues or gentry rivalries, involved national issues to an important degree, particularly religion.30 “…increasingly in the 1620s it was associated with godliness, opposition to popery and a willingness to speak in defence of the subject’s liberties.” Candidates who stood on this platform were regarded as “patriots.”31
The unpopularity of Charles’ chief minister, the Duke of Buckingham, who had imprisoned opposition MPs, played a role in the elections of 1626, as did the campaign against popery.32 The Puritan MP Thomas Scott claimed “‘that it is contrarie to the lawe of God, nature and reason, that any king should usurp, or any free state ordaine, absolute and unlimited and lawlesse dominion.’”33 In the clothing towns of Yorkshire, freeholders “had to be wooed with political arguments. …very large crowds assembl[ed] on election day, with estimates as high as 10,000 in 1628.”34
In 1640, “with the Crown making a particularly concerted effort to get its nominees into Parliament almost regardless of the difficulties,”35 at least 70 constituencies had rival contestants running for a seat in the Commons, with real issues in dispute. “…one of the candidates nominated by the oligarchy was opposed on the grounds that he had promoted the collection of shipmoney, suppressed preaching, and discouraged the education of poor children.”36 Overall 85 returns were referred to the House Committee on Privileges for adjudication.37 As earlier however, no franchise bill was passed, at least in part because it would have no hope of support in the House of Lords or by the king.38
1 “Freedom of the Individual,” Labour Review 3, no. 4 (August-September 1958): 121, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/lr/vol03/v03n04-aug-sep-1958-lr.pdf Accessed 1 May 2020.
2 Hirst, Representative?, 1
3 Richard L. Bushman, “English Franchise Reform in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of British Studies 3, no. 1 (November 1963): 40, https://www.jstor.org/stable/175047 Accessed 29 September 2018
4 J. H. Plumb, “The Growth of the Electorate in England from 1600 to 1715,” Past & Present, no. 45 (November, 1969): 94, https://www.jstor.org/stable/650049 Accessed 24 April 2020. Reprinted in Seventeenth-Century England: Society In An Age of Revolution, ed. Paul S. Seaver (New York: New Viewpoints, 1976).
5 Plumb, “Growth of the Electorate,” 94
6 Hirst, Representative?, 13
7 Hill, Century, 36
8 Plumb, “Growth of the Electorate,” 94
9 Hill, Century, 36
10 Hill, Century, 37-38; Reformation, 32
11 Hirst, Representative?, 31
12 Hirst, Representative?, 2
13 Richard Cust, “Politics and the Electorate in the 1620s,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England, eds. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (London: Longman Group, 1989), 160-161
14 Plumb, “Growth of the Electorate,” 95. For a detailed description, see Derek Hirst, “Elections and the Privileges of the House of Commons in the Early Seventeenth Century: Confrontation or Compromise?,” The Historical Journal 18, no. 4 (December 1975), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638517 Accessed 11 April 2020
15 Hirst, Representative?, 2
16 Hirst, Representative?, 25, 91
17 Hirst, Representative?, 11-12; Plumb, “Growth of the Electorate,” 95-97, 100
18 Hill, World, 21; Hirst, Representative?, 33-34
19 Manning, English People, 13-14
20 Cust, “Politics and the Electorate in the 1620s,” 139; Hirst, Representative?, 14-16
21 Bushman, “English Franchise Reform,” 39; Hirst, Representative?, 31; Plumb, “Growth of the Electorate,” 96
22 Plumb, “Growth of the Electorate,” 103-104
23 Bushman,“English Franchise Reform,” 43
24 Hirst, Representative?, 8; Tyacke, “Revolutionary Puritanism,” 757
25 Hill, “Parliament and People in 17th-Century England,” 109
26 Hirst, Representative?, 9
27 Hirst, Representative?, 11
28 Richard Cust, “Election and Selection in Stuart England,” Parliamentary History 7, no. 2 (October 1988): 346
29 Cust, “Politics and the Electorate in the 1620s,” 142
30 Hirst, Representative?, 145
31 Cust, “Election and Selection in Stuart England,” 349-350
32 Cust, “Politics and the Electorate in the 1620s,” 142-143
33 Tyacke, “Revolutionary Puritanism,” 755
34 Cust, “Politics and the Electorate in the 1620s,” 151
35 Cust, “Politics and the Electorate in the 1620s,” 154
36 Manning, English People, 13-14
37 Hirst, Representative?, 111, 216-222
38 Hirst, Representative?, 17 fn. 32