Read Online The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce by Hallie Rubenhold - Free Book Online
Authors: Hallie Rubenhold
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response was merely ‘to laugh at the scandal’.
By the end of that year, the ever-reliable Sir Richard Worsley was being asked to lend even more time and funds to sustain the increasingly troubled administration of Prime Minister Lord North. When the parliamentary seat for the county of Hampshire unexpectedly fell vacant in November, His Majesty’s government, wielding a purse of £2,000, proposed that Sir Richard stand for it in a by-election. This he did, and was duly beaten by those who resented the idea of returning a paid ‘placeman’ (or a plant) to represent their interests in Parliament. Having contributed a further £6,000 to his own election campaign, the baronet found himself out of pocket but he was
nonetheless prepared to rally his resources when, less than year later, the 1780 general election was called.
In the eighteenth century, few things were grubbier and more dishonourable than politics. For all of the era’s impassioned rhetoric and pamphleteering about liberty and the rights of freeborn English men, the country’s system of government could not, at the time, be regarded as a functioning democracy. By 1800 only 15 per cent of the male population over 21 was enfranchised. The criteria determining who was permitted to vote was haphazard and varied from borough to borough. In some areas a voter had to be a property-owning freeman or a householder who paid the poor rates. In other places, a voter might broadly be defined as someone who could maintain himself independently of charity or who possessed a hearth on which he could boil his own pots. Although enfranchised, these small property-holders rarely had the luxury of casting their votes as their consciences demanded. As cogs in society’s great machine, they were more often than not turned one way or the other by the interests of landlords and employers. Open ballots ensured that no man’s vote was secret. A signature placed against the local lord might mean that an elector and his family were turned out of their leased homes or, like those in the pay of the Earl of Sandwich at the Portsmouth Docks, told ‘if they did not obey his Lordship’s mandate on the day of the election’ that their master ‘would see fit to no longer employ them’. Those who could not be cajoled into casting their votes appropriately could usually be bribed. At the start of any campaign candidates and their supporters prepared a pool of ‘election funds’ to lubricate the decision-making process in their favour. The King himself participated in this practice and is believed to have spent £62,000 in 1780 securing the seats of those favourable to his Tory administration. At election time, obedient servants of His Majesty’s wishes would find themselves, like Sir Richard, rewarded with ‘honours, patronage, or court favour’.
On a local level, money and promises exchanged hands for votes just as readily. Men could buy and sell certain electoral privileges or, in advance of a ballot, agree among themselves who they would send as their member elect to Westminster. Such ‘pocket boroughs’ dominated by the exclusive interest of one or more land-owning patrons and ‘rotten boroughs’ which contained a meagre handful of voters with a disproportionate representation in Parliament were becoming notorious by the end of the century. The Isle of Wight was a festering nest of corrupt constituencies of both descriptions. The political reformer T.B.H. Oldfield complained that the borough of
Newton alone consisted ‘of only a few cottages’ which ‘paying no more than 3 shillings and 8 pence to the land tax, may be ranked with Old Sarum, Gatton and Midhurst [the country’s most infamous rotten boroughs], yet sends as many members to parliament as the entire county of Middlesex!!’
With the assistance of the island’s election-fixing Holmes family, an extended network of Worsley cousins were able to reign as the region’s dominant political force in all three of
By the end of that year, the ever-reliable Sir Richard Worsley was being asked to lend even more time and funds to sustain the increasingly troubled administration of Prime Minister Lord North. When the parliamentary seat for the county of Hampshire unexpectedly fell vacant in November, His Majesty’s government, wielding a purse of £2,000, proposed that Sir Richard stand for it in a by-election. This he did, and was duly beaten by those who resented the idea of returning a paid ‘placeman’ (or a plant) to represent their interests in Parliament. Having contributed a further £6,000 to his own election campaign, the baronet found himself out of pocket but he was
nonetheless prepared to rally his resources when, less than year later, the 1780 general election was called.
In the eighteenth century, few things were grubbier and more dishonourable than politics. For all of the era’s impassioned rhetoric and pamphleteering about liberty and the rights of freeborn English men, the country’s system of government could not, at the time, be regarded as a functioning democracy. By 1800 only 15 per cent of the male population over 21 was enfranchised. The criteria determining who was permitted to vote was haphazard and varied from borough to borough. In some areas a voter had to be a property-owning freeman or a householder who paid the poor rates. In other places, a voter might broadly be defined as someone who could maintain himself independently of charity or who possessed a hearth on which he could boil his own pots. Although enfranchised, these small property-holders rarely had the luxury of casting their votes as their consciences demanded. As cogs in society’s great machine, they were more often than not turned one way or the other by the interests of landlords and employers. Open ballots ensured that no man’s vote was secret. A signature placed against the local lord might mean that an elector and his family were turned out of their leased homes or, like those in the pay of the Earl of Sandwich at the Portsmouth Docks, told ‘if they did not obey his Lordship’s mandate on the day of the election’ that their master ‘would see fit to no longer employ them’. Those who could not be cajoled into casting their votes appropriately could usually be bribed. At the start of any campaign candidates and their supporters prepared a pool of ‘election funds’ to lubricate the decision-making process in their favour. The King himself participated in this practice and is believed to have spent £62,000 in 1780 securing the seats of those favourable to his Tory administration. At election time, obedient servants of His Majesty’s wishes would find themselves, like Sir Richard, rewarded with ‘honours, patronage, or court favour’.
On a local level, money and promises exchanged hands for votes just as readily. Men could buy and sell certain electoral privileges or, in advance of a ballot, agree among themselves who they would send as their member elect to Westminster. Such ‘pocket boroughs’ dominated by the exclusive interest of one or more land-owning patrons and ‘rotten boroughs’ which contained a meagre handful of voters with a disproportionate representation in Parliament were becoming notorious by the end of the century. The Isle of Wight was a festering nest of corrupt constituencies of both descriptions. The political reformer T.B.H. Oldfield complained that the borough of
Newton alone consisted ‘of only a few cottages’ which ‘paying no more than 3 shillings and 8 pence to the land tax, may be ranked with Old Sarum, Gatton and Midhurst [the country’s most infamous rotten boroughs], yet sends as many members to parliament as the entire county of Middlesex!!’
With the assistance of the island’s election-fixing Holmes family, an extended network of Worsley cousins were able to reign as the region’s dominant political force in all three of
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