suffrage. Since suffrage (the right to vote) can be the key to political power, it has been contentious since representative institutions came into being. The original county franchise seems to have included all freemen, whether freeholders or not. But an Act of Henry VI's reign in 1429 declared that ‘great, outrageous and excessive numbers of people … of small substance and of no value’ were voting at elections, and went on to limit the franchise to freeholders with land worth 40 shillings a year, free of all charges. This remained the franchise until 1832. But the effect of inflation, particularly in the Tudor period, was to weaken the qualification and increase the total electorate. The issue became lively after the Civil War. At the Putney army debates, Cromwell and Ireton opposed Rainborough and the radicals who pressed for a great extension of the franchise: where would it end, demanded Cromwell, if men ‘who have no interest but the interest of breathing’ were given the vote? In fact the subsequent Commonwealth regime cut the franchise dramatically to £200 p.a. property, though the old franchise was restored in 1660. Shaftesbury was still complaining in 1679 that ‘men of mean and abject fortune’ were voting.

In parliamentary boroughs the franchise had always varied but there were four main groups—corporation, freeman, burgage, and inhabitant householder. They ranged from Westminster, Bristol, and Coventry with thousands of voters, to Gatton, a rotten borough with two voters, and Malmesbury, where the thirteen members of the corporation elected the two MPs. The Scottish representation was extremely narrow, before and after the Union of 1707. The burgh electorate totalled some 1,250, the counties about 2,500. In the whole country, there were fewer voters than in Suffolk.

In the 18th cent. arguments for extending the franchise were heard with increasing frequency without quite getting onto the political agenda. Wilkes argued in 1776 that ‘the meanest mechanic, the poorest peasant and day labourer’ was entitled to a vote, but nobody supported him and Lord North retorted that he was surely ‘not serious’. From 1832 onwards, however, a number of measures, several of them claiming to be final, enlarged the suffrage to full democracy. By the Great Reform Act the urban franchise was made uniform at the £10 householder level, and in the counties the £50 copyholder was brought in to join the freeholders. The Scottish electorate rose from some 5,000 to 65,000. Radicals were far from satisfied and within a few years manhood suffrage was one of the six points of the charter. It was strenuously opposed, Macaulay insisting in 1842 that universal suffrage was ‘utterly incompatible with the very existence of civilization’. The second Reform Act of 1867 moved one step closer, giving the vote to borough householders, including many working men, and the 1884 Act, by extending the same franchise to the counties, brought the total electorate to well over 5 million. The introduction of secret ballot in 1872 had freed voters from landlord or employer influence, though many continued to vote deferentially.

By the later 19th cent. the campaign to give the vote to women was well under way, though they had to wait until 1918, and then were given the vote only if they were over 30. The electorate was more than doubled and, at 22 million, was fast approaching that universal suffrage Macaulay had so much feared. Women under 30 gained the vote in 1929 and in 1969 the inclusion of persons between 18 and 21 brought in another 3 million new voters. The electorate in 2001 was estimated at more than 44 million (England and Wales just over 39 million, Scotland just under 4 million, Northern Ireland just over 1 million) out of a population of 56 million. Of these, 32,800,000 or some 75 per cent cast their votes. The vote is not available to convicted felons or certified lunatics, but is granted to resident citizens of the Republic of Eire.

J. A. Cannon