Before the 1832 Reform act voting was limited in British parliamentary elections to resticted categories of people. One of these categories is customarily referred to as the "40 shilling freeholders" - ie owners of property "worth" at least 40 shillings (ie 2 pounds) a year.
Various interpretations of what it meant to have "property worth at least 40 shillings a year" can be found on the web, including:
(1) That the annual rental income from the property was 2 pounds. This would make sense for landowners of estates, receiving a rental income from tennants living in anything from cottages to outlying farms. However, we know the franchise even pre-1832 was around 10% of the (male) population, and there simply would not have been enough large landowners to achieve this number. (2) that the annual tax on the property was 2 pounds (if so, how was this tax computed, and was it on the property itself or on income from the property in the sense of (1)?).
Can anyone clarify this topic, and ideally provide a reference to a definitive answer?
Thanks in advance.
The 40 shillings rule applied for Counties, the MPs of which were primarily meant to represent land-holders. In the early 19th c. the Boroughs had varying rules, in some all men over 21 had the vote, in others the MP would be selected by the Corporation and some large towns and cities had no MPs at all- whether you had the vote, if you were an adult male and lived in a Borough, was largely a geographic lottery.
The 40 shillings land value/tax discrepancy is because of the 1745 County Elections Act which stipulated that as well a free-hold worth at least 40 shillings the land owners also need to have been assessed for the land-tax (which had been introduced in 1692) and they had to have held the free-hold for at least one year.
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/takingliberties/staritems/111832reformact.html
Thanks for response. I particularly like the succinct summary of county vs borough MPs.
I am though still slightly unclear about what precisely was a "40s freeholder". I am not a historian and maybe there are certain things taken as read by those familiar with the early nineteenth century of which I am unaware.
To complicate matters, the first of the above two links (www.bl.uk) baldly states "At county level all adult men could vote if they owned land worth 40 shillings". This suggests the property qualification was met merely by owning a property worth 40s in absolute value. Surely they meant 40s per year?
Assuming 40s a year is what we are discussing, my basic question was whether this referred to the yearly income from the property or something else, such as the annual tax paid on it. The 2nd link (new.surrycc.gov.uk) is clearer on this point, with quotes from original sources. In particular, it says that under the act of 1429 electors were to be "persons dwelling and resident in the same Counties, whereof every one of them shall have free Land or Tenement to the Value of Forty Shillings by the Year at least, above all Charges". It also says that the act of 1745 "also laid down that the value of 40s was to be the clear yearly value over and above all rents and charges payable out of or in respect of the freehold".
The implication is that the 40s per annum is the amount of cash generated by the property and received by the landowner. This raises two questions:
(a) Did the 40s have to be in cash or could it be in kind, such as services rendered or goods provided? (b) who decided if the 40s threshold had been met?
Question (a) becomes relevant if you consider, for example, a largely self sufficient estate where labourers laboured in exchange for housing & sustenance without cash changing hands.
Question (b) may be partially answered by a point mentioned by i-t and in the second link, that following the 1745 act "assessment to the Land Tax, and not the land itself, was a qualification to vote".
We are further forward in answering my question, but there are still some obscurities in all this!