Introduction

Summary

This volume is the third in the series published by the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society entitled How Bedfordshire Voted. The previous volumes covered the years 1685-1735, publishing the surviving poll books for the seats for the county of Bedfordshire and the borough of Bedford. The introduction to the first volume covering the years 1685-1715 described the value of poll books as a source for family historians and the background to their creation. The object of publishing these volumes is to make available in print the names of Bedfordshire voters and the parish in which they voted, which helps both family and local historian. The shifting pattern of politics locally is analysed and related to factors both local and national. A review in Archives suggested that the data should have been used to come to statistically based conclusions on occupation, religion etc. of voters. For the period up to 1740, Daniel Mitchell's as yet unpublished work will fill the gap.

The present volume covers the years from the fall of Walpole to the rise of William Pitt the younger. It was a period when Britain was constantly at war, when it suffered a dangerous Jacobite rebellion and when the American colonies were lost. Yet this constant warfare did not produce the revolutionary changes to the national and local economy of the later Napoleonic wars. Bedfordshire for example was very similar in 1740 to how it was in 1790. Despite the enclosure of fifteen parishes during that period, many parishes were still un-enclosed, arranged in the scattered strips in multiple ownership that had been the characteristic of the mediaeval open field system. Trade to the towns improved with better roads and an extended river navigation system but the changes were not revolutionary. The towns were small market towns with only Bedford having the status of a borough. Bedford's population in 1801 after a national population increase was only 3,948. The size of the town was determined by the boundaries of the large common fields round about it and it was contained within an area of one mile by half a mile.

Links with the national economy were all important. Coal came down the Ouse Navigation to Bedford and Bedfordshire corn was exported. Improved turnpike roads brought Biggleswade, Dunstable, Luton and Bedford into closer communication with London, the midlands and the north.