Until legislation in the fifteenth century the franchise for elections of
knights of the shire to serve as the representatives of counties in the
Parliament of England was not restricted to forty-shilling freeholders. The Yale historian
Charles Seymour, discussing the original county franchise, suggested that "it is probable that all free inhabitant householders voted and that the parliamentary qualification was, like that which compelled attendance in the
county court, merely a 'resiance' or residence qualification". Seymour explains why Parliament decided to limit the county franchise: The
Parliament of England legislated the new uniform county franchise, in the '
(8 Hen. 6 c. 7). The ' (
10 Hen. 6 c. 2), which amended and re-enacted the 1430 law to make clear that the resident of a county had to have a forty-shilling freehold in that county to be a voter there. Over the course of time many types of property were accepted as being
forty-shilling freeholds and the residence requirement disappeared. According to Seymour: Because of the above interpretations and as the qualifying figure was not uplifted or based on backdated valuations (to take account of
inflation as in Scotland, where to be a shire elector required ownership of land worth forty shillings
of old extent) the number of qualified voters gradually expanded. Tempering this extension to the franchise were laws proposed by objectors (such as King
William IV in 1832) who deemed the non-landowning office holders and smallest landowners/investors as a dangerously large franchise. A disputed point, on which the Whig majority in the Commons prevailed, was that freeholders in boroughs who did not occupy their property should vote in the counties in which the borough was situated. The Tories objected that urban interests would affect the representation of agricultural areas. The Whigs pointed out this had always been the case with urban areas not previously represented as
borough constituencies (which had included major centres of wealth and population like
Birmingham,
Leeds and
Manchester as well as the rapidly growing suburbs of
London). This provision proved to be damaging to the
Liberal cause later in the century. It was found that about 70% of the county constituency electorate after passage of the
Reform Act 1832 (
2 & 3 Will. 4 c. 45) still qualified to vote. From 1885 the property-owning franchise became less important than the occupancy one. Only about 20% of the county electorate were freeholders in 1886 and the proportion declined to about 16% in 1902. In 1918, with the introduction of a full adult male franchise, property qualifications only affected some of the new women voters (who were not occupiers of a dwelling or the wife of an occupier, in the constituency) and
plural voting business property owners. They needed respectively a £5 and £10 qualification – the forty shilling qualification ended. Universal adult suffrage was enacted in 1928 and the remaining plural votes were abolished by the
Representation of the People Act 1948 so that by and since the
1950 United Kingdom general election no voters have qualified on the basis of the ownership of land. ==Ireland==