Before 1832 the House of Commons had 658 members chosen under rules frozen for centuries. County voters needed freehold land worth 40 shillings a year under a statute from 1430, leaving about 200,000 county electors. Boroughs used local tests such as paying scot and lot, holding a burgage deed, or, in potwalloper boroughs, owning a hearth big enough to boil a pot. Old Sarum was a ruined hill of 13 plots of grass sending two MPs, Gatton had seven voters, and the Duke of Norfolk controlled 11 seats. Charles Grey’s 1793 call for an inquiry lost by 200 votes, the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in August 1819 left 18 dead and brought the Six Acts, and the 1829 Roman Catholic Relief Act split the Duke of Wellington’s Tories.
As prime minister, Grey’s first reform bill passed its second reading by a single vote, a 1831 election delivered a landslide, and the House of Lords killed the second bill. Rioters burned Nottingham Castle and held Bristol for three days. When William IV refused to create new peers, Grey resigned and Wellington failed to form a government during the Days of May. Placards urged Londoners to Stop the Duke, go for gold, and £1.8 million, about a quarter of the Bank of England’s gold, was withdrawn within days. The king secretly agreed to create peers, Tory lords abstained, and the Act became law in June 1832. Fifty-six rotten boroughs were abolished and 130 new seats created, including Manchester and Birmingham.
- The electorate rose from about 400,000 to 650,000 men, still only about 7 percent of the population.
- The new £10 borough threshold admitted shopkeepers but shut out factory workers earning £30 or £40 a year.
- The Act defined a voter as a male person, closing loopholes that had let some propertied women vote.
- The Chandos Clause enfranchised £50 tenants at will, who voted openly and could be evicted by their landlords.
- Tories regained the Commons by 1841, while excluded workers built the Chartist movement.
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