Steyning (UK Parliament constituency)

Steyning
Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons
1467–1832
Number of members	Two
Replaced by	New Shoreham

Steyning was a parliamentary borough in Sussex, England, which elected two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons sporadically from 1298 and continuously from 1467 until 1832. It was a notorious rotten borough, and was abolished by the Great Reform Act.

The borough comprised the small market town of Steyning in Sussex, which consisted of little more than a single long street; yet despite its size it not only elected its own two MPs but contained most of the borough of Bramber, which had two of its own. (Between the 13th and 15th centuries, Bramber and Steyning were a single borough returning MPs to most Parliaments, sometimes called by one name and sometimes by the other, but after 1467 both were separately represented. Until 1792 it was theoretically possible for a house to confer on its occupier a vote in both boroughs.) In 1831, the population of the borough was just over 1,000, and the town contained 218 houses.

At the time of the Reform Act, the right to vote was exercised by the constable and all inhabitant householders paying scot and lot and not receiving alms; this was a liberal franchise for the period, though it amounted to only around 118 voters by the time the borough was abolished. The householders seem historically to have had the right to vote, but the question was the subject of litigation through most of the 18th century. Between 1715 and 1792, the right was instead restricted to occupiers of "ancient houses" and of houses built on the site of ancient houses, in effect a burgage franchise; but the restoration of the householders' rights does not seem to have increased the electorate substantially, suggesting that most of the houses significant enough for their tenants to be rated for scot and lot had the status of burgage tenements.

For most of the borough's existence, the majority of the qualified voters were tenants of one or two landowners, who therefore had considerable influence if not total control of the choice of MP. (Indeed, Steyning was cited by Thomas Oldfield, the contemporary historian of electoral abuses in the unreformed House of Commons, as an example of a borough where tenancies were granted for the sole purpose of ensuring that the electorate consisted of pliable voters.)

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