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17th-century by-elections to the Parliament of England From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Recruiter elections were elections held during the seventeenth century to fill vacant seats in the House of Commons in England. The words 'recruit' and 'recruiter' meant nothing more than filling a vacancy, so, the contemporary phrase recruiter member of parliament, meant a member of the House of Commons who had been elected in a by-election.
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (January 2014) |
During the English Civil War and Interregnum, no national or general election was held in England for twenty years, from the 1640 elections to the Long Parliament, until the 1660 elections to Charles II's Convention Parliament. From 1645, the many vacant seats that arose in the Long and Rump Parliaments, by death and arbitrary expulsion (initially of many Royalist members, and later of many Leveller and Puritan members in Pride's military coup d'état) were filled by by-elections, or, so-called 'recruiter elections'.
It seems clear that there was some stage management of the recruiter elections;[1] indeed, it has been suggested that the recruiter elections during the period of the Civil War led to the change in character of elections from an Elizabethan model based on clientship and personality, to the beginning of system managed by party politics.[2][3][4]
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