| Staffordshire | |
|---|---|
| Formercounty constituency for theHouse of Commons | |
| County | Staffordshire |
| 1290–1832 | |
| Seats | Two |
| Replaced by | North Staffordshire andSouth Staffordshire |
Staffordshire was acounty constituency of theHouse of Commons of theParliament of England then of theParliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of theParliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832. It was represented by twoMembers of Parliament until 1832.
The constituency, which first returned members to Parliament in 1290, consisted of thehistoric county ofStaffordshire, excluding the city ofLichfield which had the status of acounty in itself after 1556. (Although Staffordshire also contained the boroughs ofStafford andNewcastle-under-Lyme, and part of the borough ofTamworth, each of which elected two MPs in its own right for part of the period when Staffordshire was a constituency, these were not excluded from the county constituency, and owning property within the borough could confer a vote at the county election. This was not the case, though, for Lichfield.)
As in othercounty constituencies the franchise between 1430 and 1832 was defined by theForty Shilling Freeholder Act, which gave the right to vote to every man who possessedfreehold property within the county valued at £2 or more per year for the purposes of land tax; it was not necessary for the freeholder to occupy his land, nor even in later years to be resident in the county at all.
Except briefly during the period of theCommonwealth, Staffordshire had two MPs, traditionally known asKnights of the Shire, elected by thebloc vote method, under which each voter had two votes. (In theFirst andSecond Parliaments ofOliver Cromwell's Protectorate, there was a general redistribution of seats and Staffordshire elected three members; the traditional arrangements were restored from 1659.)
In the Middle Ages Staffordshire was mainly an agricultural county, but was transformed by theIndustrial Revolution and had become significantly urbanised. By the time of theReform Act 1832, Staffordshire had a population of approximately 410,000, of which around 65,000 were inWolverhampton, 60,000 in the urban area roundStoke-on-Trent, and 15,000 inWalsall. Its principal industries were hardware and pottery manufacture, and it also drew prosperity from the importance of theRiver Trent as a means of transport and from the extensive canal network constructed in the county in the 18th century.
Nevertheless, the urban and industrial interests had no opportunity to develop political leverage in Staffordshire. Although the qualified electorate numbered some 5,000 in the 18th century, control of the representation was entirely in the hands of a small number of aristocratic families, most notably the Leveson-Gowers (Marquesses of Stafford) and theBagots. As in most counties of any size, contested elections were avoided whenever possible because of the expense. Elections were held at a single polling place,Stafford, and voters from the rest of the county had to travel to the county town to exercise their franchise; candidates were expected to meet the expenses of their supporters in travelling to the poll and to entertain them lavishly with food and drink when they got there. The MPs were generally chosen by and from among the principal families of the county, and it would have been futile as well as ruinously expensive for an outsider to fight an election. In fact there were only three contested elections in Staffordshire between 1700 and1747, and none at all afterwards: in 1753, the Leveson Gowers and the Bagots, despite their political differences (the former beingWhigs and the latterTories) reached a satisfactory compromise, and thereafter the Leveson Gowers nominated one MP and the remaining county gentry the other (who was frequently a Bagot).
The constituency was abolished by theReform Act 1832, which divided the county into two new two-member divisions,Northern Staffordshire andSouthern Staffordshire, and also created new boroughs from three of the larger towns previously in the county constituency (Stoke-upon-Trent,Walsall andWolverhampton).
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