1 Vide Sheridan’s election expenses for Stafford.

2 1642. “The Inhabitants of the Citie of Bathe express their great greifes in that they have little company this summer, the poor guides are now necessitated to guide one another from the alehouse, lest they should lose their practice. Pluto’s cauldron (the hot bath) had never less purboyled fleshe in it to please the palate of his Courtiers. The poor Fiddlers are ready to hang themselves in their strings for a pastime, for want of other employments.” (Certaine Intelligences from Bath, 1642. Pamphlets. Coll. Geo. III. B.M.)

3 1431. “So there is owing to them for their appearance for 73 days 6s. and 8d. for each day” (i.e. for two members).

1441-2.—“And it was the same day ordered by assent of the whole congregation that the Burgesses chosen for Parliament shall be allowed each of them two shillings a day, and by no means any more.” (Extracts from the Proceedings of the Corporation of Lynn Regis, 1430 to 1731. ArchÆologia, vol. xxiv.)

4 William Prynne was one of the great authorities upon parliamentary history and statistics. All subsequent compilers, who have written upon the subject of constituencies, quoted from his “Brevia Parliamentaria Rediviva.”

5 Andrew Marvell, who was made assistant-secretary to Milton, when he served the Protector, was, by Cromwell’s death, thrown out of employment. The burgesses of Hull, with whom he was deservedly popular, elected Marvell their representative to Parliament. The payment, of which so much has been made, for these services did not amount to a munificent retainer, the salary being fixed at two shillings a day for borough members; kindly remembrances in the form of acceptable gifts were, however, sent by constituents to those representatives who won their good wishes. Thus Marvell writes to the friends who sent him to parliament: “We must first give you thanks for the kind present you have pleased to send us, which will give occasion to us to remember you often; but the quantity is so great, that it might make sober men forgetful.”

6 Coleridge, “Northern Worthies.”

7 Campbell, “Lives of the Lord Chancellors.”

8 “DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM’S LITANY.

9

10 “The Petitioners, looking upon their adversaries as entirely devoted to the Court and the popish faction, gave them the name of Tories, a title given to the Irish robbers, villains, and cut-throats, since called Rapparees. (It will be remembered that James II. convened a Parliament in Dublin which attainted three thousand Protestants).

“The Abhorrers on their side, considering the Petitioners as men entirely in the principles of the reprobated parliament of 1640, and as Presbyterians, gave them the name of Whig, or ‘Sour-milk,’ formerly appropriated to the Scotch Presbyterians and rigid Covenanters.”

11 A second Convention Parliament met January 22, 1689, offered the Crown to William of Orange and Mary, February 13th, and dissolved a year later.

12 Published by the “Ballad Society.”

13 Alleged length of the petition for resummoning parliament.

14 This relates to Lord Shaftesbury’s Protestant Association, and his “green ribbon boys.”

15 H. Mildmay and J. L. Honeywood, members for Essex in Charles II.’s parliaments.

16 “Murdering Miles” Prance, the silversmith. Prance, the “Renegado,” one of the accusers of the popish Lords, and with Titus Oates, one of the discoverers of the popish conspiracy.

17 The popish Lords and the secretary of State, Lord Danby.

18 His name appears to have been Dancer, tanner and bailiff; he was also mayor at the time.

19 This ballad was written by Charles Blount, a prolific pamphleteer, second son of Sir Henry Blount, who attended Charles I. at Edge Hill.

20 In reply to the London and Wiltshire petitions against the vexatious prorogations—which Charles justified on the excuse “that the unsettled state of the nation made a longer interval necessary”—the king volunteered an audacious statement which was likely to astonish constitutional minds. He said that “he was the head of the Government, and the only judge of what was fit to be done in such cases, and that he would do that which he thought most for the good of himself and his people, desiring that they would not meddle with a matter that was so essential a part of his prerogative.” This brazen-faced assumption is so coloured by Carolian waggery, that we must fancy the Merry Monarch, if he saw the wit of his speech, making the reply in question with his “tongue in his cheek.”

21 Sir Thomas Mompesson had sat in the parliament in 1679 for New Sarum, and in the Oxford Parliament he sat for Old Sarum.

22 “The Presbyters.”

23 Thomas Thynne, whose estate was £9000 a year. He was an invaluable ally of the Duke of Monmouth. Assassinated by hired bravoes in the pay of Count KÖnigsmarck, who was in love with the rich heiress, a widow, to whom poor Thynne was (by the influence of her friends) betrothed, be it said, against the inclination of the lady herself.

24 The celebrated Philippe de Comines (1445-1509). “L’on voit dans Comines, mieux que partout ailleurs, ce qu’Étaient alors et les droits des rois et les privilÈges des peuples. Il tÉmoigne pour les Anglais, qui dÉjÀ savaient mieux que tout autre nation maintenir leurs libertÉs, une grande consideration.”

25 Frank Smith and Benjamin Harris, publishers of many tracts, satires, and so-called “libels” against the Court.

26 Commons Journals, March 26, 1681.

27 Lord Keeper and Chancellor.

28 The scapegoat, Fitz-Harris, who was promptly got rid of, for fear of revelations, being executed June 9, 1681.

29 That the Lords contested the claim of the Commons to impeach and condemn any one whom they might accuse of a crime was a grievance of the Lower House.

30 Mr. Samuel Lewen.

31 His seat was Long Ditton, near Kingston, which town had surrendered its charter to King Charles II. about a month before his death. King James appointed Sir Edward Evelyn one of the new corporation.

32 A Child was subsequently successful in getting returned for Middlesex. Child died in 1740, and was succeeded by Hugh Smithson, who later became known as the recipient of the honours of the Dukes of Northumberland.

33 The term “Tacker” was due to the chief member for Oxford University, William Bromley, having, in the session just closed, moved “That the Bill to prevent occasional nonconformity might be tacked to the Land Tax Bill.” The practice of tacking was condemned by the Lords, most of whom had signed a resolution to the effect they would never admit a “tack” to a money-bill. The party in the Commons strove vigorously to carry their point upon two bills being thus conjoined, whence they began to be known as “the Tackers.” In return, they stigmatized their opponents as “Sneakers.”

34 Tacks, otherwise Tackers, i.e. High-Church Tories, who were first so called from their efforts to tack the Occasional Conformity Bill on to a money bill, so that it could not be sent back by the Lords.

35 Jacobites.

36 “Memoirs of the Life of Thomas, Marquess of Wharton; to which is added his character by Sir Richard Steele.” London, 1715. 8vo.

37 Lord Grimston’s curious comedy, in five acts and in verse(!), “The Lawyer’s Fortune, or Love in a Hollow Tree,” was first published in 1704, as a quarto; being a foolish attempt, in fact, the merest trash, the author, it is said, suppressed it. The edition printed, as alleged, by the Duchess of Marlborough’s orders, is dated 1736. Besides the heading of an elephant performing on a rope, a satirical frontispiece was engraved, in which Lord Grimston is seen interrogating a sage, ensconced in the “hollow tree” of his play; a jackass is the most conspicuous object in the foreground; the animal wears a coronet, and is intended to typify the doltish author, who is farther ridiculed in a burlesque dedication “To the Right Sensible the Lord Flame.”

38 Queen Anne.

39 The Sacheverell riots.

40 “Catalogue of the Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum,” vol. iii.

41 “The Humours of an Election” seems to have inspired not only artists and balladists, but playwrights and opera composers also. “The Humours of the Town, a Dramatic Interlude,” referring to the contested election of 1774, is of this order. M.P. Andrews wrote “a new musical Interlude” under this title, 1774. “The Election,” a comedy in three acts, appeared in 1749; and “a new opera, called the Election,” was published in 1817. “The Country Election,” a farce in two acts, is due to D. J. Trusler, 1786; and “The Humours of an Election,” by F. Pilon, was published in 1780. Besides these and other plays, several poems were printed under this title, to some of which we have occasion to refer.

42 There were several variorum editions of this ballad, mostly amounting in substance to the same thing, “but with differences.” One entitled, “The Downfall of Sundon and Wager,” etc., commences with this verse:—

43 “Gentleman Harry” was Henry Pelham, the head of the Administration. He combined the offices of first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. His death occurred on the eve of the elections of 1754.

44 Sir John Soane secured these inimitable pictures from Mrs. Garrick.

45 Hogarth, in the first state of the engraving, has made the superscription in the youthful candidate’s letter to be Sir Commodity Taxem, Bart. Nichols is not correct in describing this gentleman as Thomas Potter. Lord Wenman and Sir James Dashwood were the Whig candidates; the Tory representatives were Lord Parker and Sir E. Turner.

46 In the original painting it is, “the Devil.”

47 Dr. Shebbeare, in his “6th Letter to the People of England,” audaciously abused the reigning dynasty, for which Lord Mansfield condemned him to stand in the pillory, to be imprisoned for three years, etc. Subsequently Lord Bute complimented him with a pension, which Shebbeare enjoyed to his death.

48 Marked “New Interest” in the original painting, which is necessarily easier to decipher than the engraving.

49 As concerned Churchill and the artist, they both departed, it may be said, “warring to the very verge of the grave,” in 1764. Less than a month before the painter’s death appeared Churchill’s familiar lines, treating his antagonist as already slain by his satire:—

Curiously enough, five weeks after these lines appeared, the poet was likewise gathered to those shades to which he had with sportive venom prematurely consigned his antagonist, in all probability without anticipating the literal fulfilment of his prophecy.

50 John Wilkes, Radical, 1290; George Cooke, Conservative, 827; Sir W. B. Proctor, the unsuccessful Whig candidate, polled 807 votes.

51 A less dignified view is taken of the lord mayor’s officious intervention, in the Political Register, 1768, where it states he had degraded, by his personal interference, “the dignity of his office to that of a petty constable;” and in a letter referring to the royal and ministerial favours conferred in return “for his active and spirited behaviour,” the new state official is, in his capacity of merchant-tailor, thus addressed:—

“And now, my lord, as we are brother tailors, how could you be so unkind as not to join eight of us to your right honourable self (nine tailors proverbially making one man), when you were dubbed the other day a Privy Councillor.”

52 The “cornuted” effect of these peculiarly fashioned wigs, especially when seen from the back, is, perhaps, accountable—with the pun on the parson’s Christian name of Horne—for the quotation engraved above the plate in question,—“Mine horn shall be exalted, like the horn of an Unicorn (Psalm 93).”

53 The Duke of Grafton was first lord of the treasury, 1767 to 1780.

54 John Wilkes.

55 George Fletcher, executed 1746.

56 Samuel Turner and Sir Robert Ladbrooke were unstable, and a few months later, “ratted” and becoming subservient to Court influence, did their best to betray the liberties of the citizens confided to their championship.

57 A mark being equivalent to 13s. 4d.

58 According to the return of 1826 there were three hundred voters.

59 Sheridan, according to Lord Byron’s dictum, had produced the three best compositions of his age in their respective lines: the best comedy, “The School for Scandal;” the best parliamentary philippic, the “Begum speech” against Warren Hastings; and pronounced the finest funeral oration, the monody on Garrick.

60 A necessary qualification, members being, by supposition, expected to reside in the places they represented.

61 Wilkes’s Address to the Middlesex Electors.

62 Lord Thurlow, who was frequently twitted by the satirists upon his penchant for the fair sex.

63 Lord Bute’s secretary, the great dispenser of “back-stairs influence,” afterwards Lord Liverpool.

64 For the screen of Carlton House Palace, see “Coriolanus addressing the Plebeians,” 1820; p. 338.

65 The bard of the “New Chevy Chase,” being truly national, makes the descendant of the Russells and his other personages express themselves vernacularly in “Scotticisms” when under the influence of strong emotions.

66 The bishop.

67 “Charles Dix,” lately driven from France.

68 Whose ministry caused the Bourbon downfall.

69 Much as Gillray made his royal father scrutinizing and blinking at the presentment of Oliver Cromwell.

70 Mr. J. Calcraft (W) succeeded in distancing Henry Bankes (W), but only lived a few months to enjoy his victory; a fresh election took place in October, 1831, vice Calcraft deceased, when Lord Ashley (afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury) secured the vacant seat.

71 Hobhouse was rejected by his Westminster constituents.

72 This is a reprehensible pun, barely to be tolerated even on such occasions, upon the name of Sir John Elley (C), an unsuccessful candidate, who was beaten by eight votes: Sir J. de Beauvoir (W), the second member, polling 239 to Elley’s 231. John Ramsbottom (W), was returned for Windsor at the top of the poll at the general elections of 1832, 1835, and 1837.

73 Sir John de Beauvoir.

74 i.e. Napoleon Buonaparte.

75 See “Reform,” page 372.

76 “Radicals” for “rapids.”