Winchelsea (UK Parliament constituency)

Winchelsea
Former Cinque Port constituency for the House of Commons
1366–1832
Number of members	Two

Winchelsea was a parliamentary constituency in Sussex, which elected two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons from 1366 until 1832, when it was abolished by the Great Reform Act.

Winchelsea was a Cinque Port, which made it technically of different status from a parliamentary borough, but the difference was purely a nominal one, and it was considered an egregious example of a rotten borough. The constituency consisted of the town and parish of Winchelsea, once a market town and port but by the 19th century much reduced in importance, a mile-and-a-half inland with its harbour destroyed. In 1831, the population of the constituency was estimated at 772, and the town contained 148 houses.

The right to vote was exercised by the freemen of the town, of whom by 1831 there were just 11, even though in theory the custom was that every son of a freeman and every freeholder in the town was entitled to his freedom. With so small a number of voters, bribery was often the rule rather than the exception, though occasionally it became so blatant that the authorities were able to take steps against it. In 1700 an election at Winchelsea was declared void, an agent of one of the candidates arrested for bribery by order of the House of Commons, and the representation of the borough suspended until the end of the session. At another controversial election in 1712, the Commons committee which investigated was told that voters had been bribed with £30 each to vote for the sitting MPs, and their female connections received additional payments of half a guinea each.

Nor was the expense confined to bribing the voters. Oldfield records that in 1811, with only 11 voters to poll, the Mayor demanded – and received – a fee of £200 for his services as returning officer. However, he presumably carried out his duties more satisfactorily than his predecessor in 1624, who was "brought to the bar [of the House of Commons], and on his knees severely reprimanded, and sentenced to be committed to prison" for threatening some of the voters and corruptly excluding some others from casting their votes.

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