The Worcester Election of 1747

In 1747, Britain held a general election. Its role in broader patterns of eighteenth-century politics have been studied by generations of British historians and are relatively well known. Where we still have much more to learn is in our understanding of how people experienced elections on the ground, especially the political culture of provincial urban centers throughout Britain (just a shout out here to Kathleen Wilson, Elaine Chalus, Peter Borsay, and Nicholas Rogers, who are just a few of the scholars who have done important work on the political culture of provincial urban centers).

I am currently working on an article about the 1747 election in Worcester, which I’m titling "Corruption, Disenfranchisement, and Political Culture: The Worcester Election of 1747.” Linda Colley once recognized Worcester as the pinnacle of Tory influence and corruption in the provinces in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. My article offers Worcester as a case study of political culture at mid-century. In it, I link national politics to local affairs by analyzing the practices of enfranchisement and disenfranchisement as well as the cultural objects generated in response to the election, including poems, prints, porcelain, and architecture.

To give just a little background on the scale of corruption in Worcester in 1747 (and one of the reasons that this event makes such a good case study): soon after the election was called, the Corporation began creating new freemen, empowering over 200 new individuals to vote in the days leading up to the poll. In fact, new freemen were created even as the sheriff was counting the votes.

There were three individuals running for the borough’s two parliamentary seats: Thomas Vernon, Thomas Geers Winford, and Robert Tracy. Vernon and Tracy were aligned with the Whigs while Winford was associated with Tory interests.

The interactive visualizations below (which I will publish with the article) demonstrate the scale and speed at which new freemen were added to the rolls in the days leading up to the election. The data shows that the overwhelming majority of these new freemen voted for Winford and Vernon, leading Tracy to appeal the election in the House of Commons.

In addition to dividing the data into party affiliations, I provide information on the freemen’s trade or social rank as well as the location of their residences. Considering that this was a borough election, a substantial number of the new freemen lived outside of the city—and quite a few lived outside of the county.

As I continue to develop my article, which is fairly well along at this point, I’ll drop a few more blog posts about what I’ve found.

If you’re interested in the political culture of the eighteenth century, I encourage you to have a look at the massive AHRC-funded project, “Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture” led by Matthew Grenby and Elaine Chalus.