Norfolk was a County constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England from 1290 to 1707, 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. In 1832 the county was divided for parliamentary purposes into two new two member divisions – East Norfolk and West Norfolk.
History
Boundaries The constituency consisted of the historic county of Norfolk in the East of England, excluding the city of Norwich which had the status of a county corporate after 1404. (Although Norfolk contained four other parliamentary boroughs – Castle Rising, Great Yarmouth, King's Lynn and Thetford – each of which elected two MPs in its own right for part of the period when Norfolk was a constituency, these were not excluded from the county constituency: owning property within a borough could confer a vote at the county election. This was not the case, though, for Norwich.)
Franchise and electorate As in other county constituencies the franchise between 1430 and 1832 was defined by the Forty Shilling Freeholder Act, which gave the right to vote to every man who possessed freehold property within the county valued at £2 or more per year for the purposes of land tax; it was not necessary for the freeholder to occupy his land, nor even in later years to be resident in the county at all.
Except during the period of the Commonwealth, Norfolk had two MPs elected by the bloc vote method, under which each voter had two votes. In the nominated Barebones Parliament of 1653, five members represented Norfolk. In the First and Second Parliaments of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, however, there was a general redistribution of seats and Norfolk elected ten members, while the two smallest of the county's boroughs (Castle Rising and Thetford) lost their seats. The traditional arrangements were restored from 1659.
At the time of the Great Reform Act in 1832, Norfolk had a population of approximately 390,000, though only a fraction of these could vote: the highest recorded turnouts in Norfolk were at the 1802 and 1806 elections, at each of which under 12,000 votes were cast, even though each voter could cast two votes.
Political character Norfolk's electorate was predominantly rural, partly as an effect of the Norwich freeholders voting in the city rather than the county. It has been estimated from the pollbooks that in the early 19th century only around one in six of the voters lived in towns, with Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn contributing the largest numbers of these. Fittingly for such a constituency, the families of two of the best-known pioneers of the agrarian revolution, Coke of Holkham and "Turnip" Townshend, frequently provided the county's Members of Parliament.
Nevertheless, no one or two families controlled the constituency, and competition was fostered by the leading families lining up on different sides of the partisan divide. The leading Whig families around the turn of the 18th century were those of Walpole and Townshend, while the most important Tory interests were those of the Wodehouse and Astley families, until Sir Jacob Astley defected to the Whigs before the 1715 election. By the middle of the 18th century, the list of local peerage families who could expect to exert influence at Norfolk elections had grown to include the Hobart Earls of Buckinghamshire, the Earls Cholmondeley and the Lord Suffield, but these magnates remained divided, with contention between support for the "court" and "country" factions within the Whigs as well as between Whigs and Tories.
Consequently, the independent voters generally held the balance of power. But this did not prevent the various leading families from monopolising the representation between them, a process that accelerated in the 18th century: 16 different families represented Norfolk in the 22 Parliaments from 1660 to 1746, but only 7 in the 18 Parliaments from 1747 to 1832. The minor gentry could not expect to secure election for themselves, only to choose between the candidates of the major families. The Cokes of Holkham were generally regarded as the champions of the independent freeholders, and were frequently elected. Elections in Norfolk were therefore rarely a foregone conclusion, and often hard-fought at the canvassing stage even when the contest was not carried to a poll.
Elections were held at a single polling place, Norwich, and voters from the rest of the county had to travel to the county town to exercise their franchise. It was normal for voters to expect the candidates for whom they voted to meet their expenses in travelling to the poll, making the cost of a contested election substantial. Contested elections were therefore the exception rather than the rule, potential candidates preferring to canvass support beforehand and usually not insisting on a vote being taken unless they were confident of winning; at all but 8 of the 29 general elections between 1701 and 1832, Norfolk's two MPs were elected unopposed, with only two contests after 1768. But this was more frequent than in many other counties of Norfolk's size.
Members of Parliament
1290–1640
Constituency created (1290)
ParliamentFirst memberSecond member c1290–1327 Robert Baynard 1377 (Jan) Sir Stephen Hales 1379 Sir Thomas Gissing 1380 (Jan) Sir Stephen Hales 1380 Sir Thomas Gissing 1380 Sir Roger Walsingham 1381 Sir Stephen HalesSir Thomas Gerbridge 1382 (May) Sir Stephen HalesSir Thomas Gerbridge 1382 (Oct) Sir Stephen HalesSir Roger Walsingham 1383 (Feb) Sir Stephen Hales 1383 (Oct)Sir Stephen Hales 1383 Sir Roger Walsingham 1384 (Nov)Sir Stephen Hales 1386 Sir Stephen HalesSir Thomas Gerbridge 1388 (Feb) Sir John Strange Sir John White 1388 (Sep) Sir John Strange Sir John White 1390 (Jan) William Rees Sir John White 1390 (Nov) Sir Robert Berney Hugh Fastolf 1391 Sir Robert Berney Sir John White 1393 Sir Ralph Shelton Sir John Curson 1394 William Rees Sir John White 1395 Sir Robert Berney Sir John White 1397 (Jan) William Rees Sir John Curdon 1397 (Sep) Sir Nicholas Dagworth Sir Edmund Thorpe 1399 Sir Robert Berney John Gurney 1401 John Payn John Wynter 1402 Sir Ralph Shelton Sir Robert Berney 1404 (Jan) John Reymes John Wynter 1404 (Oct) John Gurney Sir Edmund Oldhall 1406 Sir Edmund Noon John Reymes 1407 Sir Edmund Thorpe John Wynter 1410 John Wodehouse John Wynter 1411 Sir Edmund Oldhall John Wynter 1413 (Feb) 1413 (May) Sir Edmund Oldhall John Wynter 1414 (Apr) Sir Robert Berney John Wynter 1414 (Nov) Sir John Ingoldisthorpe John Wodehouse 1415 1416 (Mar) Sir Edmund Oldhall John Wodehouse 1416 (Oct) 1417 Sir Edmund Oldhall John Wodehouse 1419 John LancasterHistory of Parliament Online: John Lancaster II, accessed November 2018. Oliver Groos 1420 Sir John Radcliffe Edmund Winter 1421 (May) John Lancaster John Wodehouse 1421 (Dec) John Lancaster Edmund Winter 1422 John LancasterEdmund Winter 1427 Edmund Winter 1429 Edmund Winter 1432Edmund WinterSir Thomas Tuddenham 1435Edmund WinterSir Thomas Tuddenham 1437 Edmund Winter 1442 Sir Thomas Tuddenham 1449 Thomas Shernborne 1450 Henry Gray 1460 John Paston 1461 John Paston 1463 William Knyvett 1467 John Paston 1467 William Knyvett 1470 William Knyvett 1491 __? Calthorpe 1492 Ralph Shelton 1495 Sir Thomas Lovell 1510–1523 No names known 1529 Sir Roger Townsend Sir James Boleyn 1536 ?Sir Roger Townsend ? 1539 Richard Southwell Edmund Wyndham 1539 ?Sir Nicholas Hare 1542 Sir Roger Townsend ?Sir Richard Southwell 1545 Sir Thomas Paston Christopher Heydon 1547 Sir Edmund Knyvet, died 1550 and repl.Jan 1552 by Sir Robert Dudley Sir Nicholas Lestrange 1553 (Mar) Sir Robert Dudley Sir Thomas Radcliffe 1553 (Oct) Sir Richard Southwell Sir Henry Bedingfield 1554 (Apr) Sir Richard Southwell Sir Henry Bedingfield 1554 (Nov) Sir Richard Southwell Sir John Shelton 1555 Sir John Clere John Appleyard 1558 Sir Henry Bedingfield Sir William Woodhouse 1558–59 Sir Robert Dudley Sir Edmund Wyndham 1562–63 Sir William Woodhouse Sir Edward Warner 1566 Both died and replaced 1566 by Clement Paston and Roger Townshend 1571 Sir Christopher HeydonSir William Butts 1572 Henry Woodhouse Francis Wyndham made judge and repl. 1581 by Sir Roger WoodhouseParliament of Oct 1584–1585 Sir Drue DruryNathaniel BaconParliament of 1586–1587Thomas FarmerWilliam GreshamChristopher Heydon was defeated, but the Privy Council ordered a fresh poll, which Heydon won; the House of Commons then challenged the Council's right to interfere in elections, and the second poll was quashed. See Capp, Bernard, Heydon, Sir Christopher (1561–1623), soldier and writer on astrology in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)Parliament of 1588–1589Sir Henry WoodhouseChristopher HeydonParliament of 1593Edward CokeNathaniel BaconParliament of 1597–1598 Henry GawdySir John TownshendParliament of 1601 Sir Bassingbourne GawdyParliament of 1604–1611Sir Nathaniel BaconSir Charles CornwallisAddled Parliament (1614)Sir Henry BedingfieldSir Hamon le StrangeParliament of 1621–1622Drue DruryHappy Parliament (1624–1625) Sir Thomas Holland Sir John Corbet, 1st BaronetUseless Parliament (1625) Sir Edward Coke Sir Edmund Bacon, 2nd Baronet, of RedgraveParliament of 1625–1626 Sir Anthony DruryParliament of 1626 Sir Edward Coke Sir Robert BellParliament of 1628 Sir Roger Townshend, 1st Baronet John Heveningham1629–1640No Parliaments summoned
1640–1832