INTRODUCTION.

THE Editor of the following pages was employed professionally to search for documentary evidence relative to the Borough of Huntingdon, with the view of ascertaining whether the members of the select corporation alone have uniformly, and at all times, been exclusively the electors of the Parliamentary Representatives of the Borough; or whether the rateable inhabitant householders, either solely or with the corporation, have not heretofore acted as such electors, and the present collection of records is the result of the investigation.

Few objects of political science are perhaps involved in greater obscurity, or at least are less generally understood, than municipal bodies. Those who have bestowed the most attention upon them, have been in general rather the advocates of a particular system, than the patient, unprejudiced investigators of antiquity and facts. The origin of some of the most ancient Boroughs is now perhaps not to be discovered; but the

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light of knowledge soon dawns on their early progress, and from the time of King John the means of information as to all of them are in a great measure within reach. Time and accidents, sinister design, and ignorant spoliation, have done much, it is true, in depriving us of many valuable records, particularly those of a private nature; yet there is a great mass of information to be drawn from existing documents, especially such as are in the public offices. It is therefore remarkable that, in this age of universal inquiry, so little pains should have been bestowed in the general investigation of municipal history, a subject intimately affecting the personal rights of all residents in Cities and Boroughs, and generally interesting to the community, when connected with parliamentary representation.

Although a collective history of all Cities and Boroughs is the great desideratum, and would do much in illustrating any obscurities which may arise in the individual history of each, still a collection of documents, applicable to a single place, may not be altogether useless in assisting the mind to form general conclusions. The Editor moreover ventures to predict that more relative consistency and harmony will be found in their history, than the discrepancies at present existing among them seem to indicate. The same principles belong to them all; and when those principles are clearly established in one case, we may fairly presume in favour of their applicability to all others. The history of one place satisfactorily made out

will, in some measure therefore, illustrate the history of every other. It may be also observed, that few but lawyers and antiquaries are aware how much information can be obtained on the ancient history of Boroughs: those, therefore, in general, who are most interested, scarcely think of seeking for that which they have no idea is anywhere to be found. The portion of historical information and evidence obtainable as to one place, will shew what may be expected from a similar investigation into the history of any other. From these considerations alone, and without reference to many others which might be adduced, it may be presumed, that the records relating to the Borough of Huntingdon are not altogether destitute of general interest *.

It is necessary to state that a Committee of the House of Commons sat on the Huntingdon election in March, 1825, on the petition of Samuel Wells, Esq., against the election of James Stuart, Esq., when the petitioner's statement of the right of election for which he contended, was, "That the right of election in the "Borough of Huntingdon, in the County of Hunting

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don, is in the Commonalty or Burgesses of the said Borough, being the inhabitant householders, paying "scot and lot." And the statement of the sitting member was, "That the right of election is in the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the Borough

* A collection of records relating to the Borough of Maidstone has lately been edited by Mr. James, and published by Joseph Butterworth, Fleet Street.

" of Huntingdon, being members of the corporation.” The former in fact claiming it to be an open or common law right, and the latter an exclusive or corporate one; upon these statements the committee determined that the right of voting, as set forth in the statement of the sitting member, was the right of voting for the said Borough.

Against this determination Mr. Wells appealed, and a second Committee of the House again came to the same resolution on such appeal. On these occasions some of the documents here abstracted were given in evidence by the petitioner, and others by the sitting member.

After these determinations it may be thought an act of pertinacious temerity, to edit the present publication, with a view of insisting that the rateable inhabitants of the place were formerly the Burgesses of Huntingdon, and that the members for the Borough were formerly elected by such Burgesses.

In extenuation, however, of this temerity, it is submitted, that a partial view of a part only of these documents was laid before the respective Committees, and it is not pretended that from any one, or even many of them, the conclusion insisted upon can be safely arrived at; it is by a careful comparison of them with one another, and by the relative consistency of the whole, that the proposition is to be established. A chain of circumstantial evidence is more to be trusted than a single proof, however positive.

The collection includes every document which has