It has been endeavoured to give the salient features of the most remarkable election contests, from the time when seats began to be sought after until comparatively recent days. The “Spendthrift Elections,” remarkable in the annals of parliamentary and party warfare, are set down, with a selection from the literature, squibs, ballads, and broadsides to which they gave rise. The illustrations are selected from the pictorial satires produced contemporaneously upon the most famous electoral struggles. The materials, both literary and graphic, are abundant, but scattered; it is hoped that both entertainment and enlightenment may be afforded to a tolerant public by the writer’s efforts to bring these resources within the compass of a volume. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE The assembling of parliaments--Synopsis of parliamentary history--Orders for the attendance of members--Qualifications for the franchise: burgesses, burgage-tenures, scot and lot, pot-wallopers, faggot-votes, splitting--Disqualifications: alms, charity, “faggots,” “occasionality”--Election of knights of the shire, and burgesses--Outlines of an election in the Middle Ages--Queen Elizabeth and her faithful Commons--An early instance of buying a seat in the Commons--Returns vested in the municipal corporations; “Money makes the mayor to go”--Privileges of parliament--“Knights girt with a sword”--Inferior standing of the citizens and burgesses sent to Parliament--Reluctance of early constituencies to sending representatives to parliament--Paid members--Members chosen and nominated by the “great families”--The Earl of Essex nominating his partisans and servants--Exemption from sending representatives to the Commons esteemed a privilege--The growth of legislative and electoral independence--The beginning of “contested elections”--Coercion at elections--Lords-lieutenant calling out the train-bands for purposes of intimidation--Early violence--_Nugæ Antiquæ_; the election of a Harrington for Bath, 1658-9; the present of a horse to paid members--The method of election for counties, cities, and boroughs--Relations of representatives with their constituents--The “wages” of members of parliament--“Extracts from the Proceedings of Lynn Regis”--An account rendered to the burgesses--The civil wars--Peers returned for the Commons in the Long Parliament after the abolition of the House of Lords. 1 CHAPTER II.