Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, was another scandalous and typical “pocket-borough” which obtained notoriety, especially at the time of the passing of Lord Grey’s Reform Bill, Sir Charles Wetherell being turned into satiric capital by Doyle (HB), in his versions of the “Last of the Boroughbridges.” The right of election was in the burgage-holders--a “pocket-borough” tenure, thus denounced by Charles James Fox: “If a man comes into parliament as the proprietor of a burgage tenure, he does not come there as the representative of the people,” as explained in the eloquent speech of the great Whig chief, on Grey’s motion for Reform, 1797. The Duke of Newcastle was the patron, and sixty burgage-holders returned two members. The constituency of Helston, where the franchise was originally invested in a corporation, under the Old Charter, had in 1790 dwindled down to one elector, to whose lot it fell to nominate two representatives. The case of a “controverted election” at Hindon, Wilts, where the right of election was of an easy order, viz. “inhabitants of houses within the borough, being housekeepers and parishioners, not securing alms,” raised an altogether pretty scandal in the way of revelations on corrupt treating. The sitting members, returned in 1774, being Richard Smith and T. Brand Hollis, the unsuccessful candidates, James Calthorpe and Richard Beckford, were the petitioners on the ground that the former, by the bribery of themselves and their agents, had procured an illegal return. On the hearing of the petition it was discovered that all or the major part of the voters for all four candidates had been bribed, and the committee pronounced the election void. The candidates themselves had not only bribed, but thirteen electors, acting as agents, had also been employed to corrupt their fellow-voters. The committee resolved to disfranchise these electors:-- “A bill was then ordered to incapacitate from voting at elections of members of parliament 190 persons, besides the thirteen above-mentioned, out of 210 who had polled at the election.”