Ilchester was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England, then of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832. It was represented by two Members of Parliament until 1832. It was one of the most notoriously corrupt rotten boroughs.
History
The constituency was a parliamentary borough in Somerset, first represented in the English Parliament in 1298 but thereafter returning MPs only occasionally until its right to representation was revived by a resolution of the House of Commons in 1621. The borough comprised the parish of Ilchester, originally a market town of some size but greatly declined by the 19th century; its former lace and silk industries were almost entirely extinct, and it subsisted mainly on trade arising from its position on the New Direct Road, the main road between London and Exeter (now the A303) and the Fosse Way. In 1831, the population of the borough was approximately 965, and contained 231 houses; the whole town, which extended slightly beyond the borough boundaries, had 248 houses.
Ilchester was a "potwalloper" borough, meaning that the right to vote was exercised all inhabitant householders not receiving alms (a household being theoretically defined by having a separate hearth on which a pot could be boiled); in the 18th century this amounted to a couple of hundred voters, who expected to receive full value in return for their votes, either at the time of election or later. This meant that elections were generally contested, and securing a seat was an expensive business. Bribery was widespread, and most of the elections at the start of the 18th century resulted in petitions by the losing candidates which the Commons had to investigate. Oldfield reports that the price of a vote was 2 guineas in 1702, but had risen to 30 guineas by 1768.
In 1702 one of the candidates at the previous year's election, John Webb, was arrested and committed to the custody of the sergeant at arms for bribery, as was the bailiff who (as returning officer) had asked for a £100 bribe to declare a candidate elected even if he had fewer votes than his opponents. A petition in 1709 stated that the sitting members had ordered two thousand pairs of shoes to keep all the shoemakers of the borough employed, although this petition was later withdrawn.
At the 1774 election a petition from the defeated candidates alleged bribery and treating against the sitting members as well as partiality by the returning officer and, after investigation, the Commons declared the election void and a writ for a new election was issued. (This indicated that they considered the petitioners as guilty as their opponents, since the committee could otherwise have recommended to the House that they should be declared duly elected in the original poll.)
Even when there was no open scandal, considerable sums passed hands in Ilchester elections. In his study of the 1754 election, Lewis Namier mentions the government's arrangements to secure the election of its candidates there. The Whig interests in the borough at this time were managed by one of the MPs, Thomas Lockyer, nicknamed "Snowball" for the way in which he accumulated money, and the government spent £1000 on securing the election of John Talbot as the other member. It appears that Talbot was expected to produce £1000 of his own to purchase the seat, but whether this was in addition to the government's expenditure or merely to reimburse it is not clear. At around the same period Lord Chesterfield records in his Letters to His Son that he investigated buying him a seat in Parliament at Ilchester and was quoted a price of £1500.