ABSTRACT
Recent work on elections to the English House of Commons has shown that disputed elections became increasingly common from 1640, marking the beginnings of ideological electoral politics, based on a broadening franchise. 1 Although a case study suggested that this can be detected in the 1620s, it does not undermine the conclusion that contested elections became more familiar. 2 The traditional system, even where voters were numerous, involved a narrow elite presenting candidates for election by acclamation; Mark Kishlansky called this ‘selection’ to distinguish it from ‘election’, in which voters chose between opposing candidates. Since ‘elect’ simply means ‘choose’, this is an anachronistic distinction: Scottish burgh representatives were normally said to have been ‘electit’, not in an attempt to mislead, merely to describe what had happened. 3 The transformation which occurred in seventeenth-century England is barely apparent in Scotland because of the nature of its urban political system. Although not as bewilderingly various as those in France, England’s parliamentary boroughs exhibited a broad array of electoral systems, ranging from all male householders having the vote to restricted franchises incorporating a small number of proprietors, occasionally even placing the franchise in the hands of one individual. 4 In English terms, Scottish burghs were all ‘corporate’: the governing bodies were usually the electors. This was a characteristic they shared with the Italian states, the Netherlands, some states of the Empire and Castile, where procuradores were chosen by city councils. 5
