The constituency was first known to have been represented in Parliament in 1545 and continued to exist until the redistribution of seats in 1918. The constituency's most famous former representatives are John Stuart Mill and Charles James Fox. The most analogous contemporary constituency is Cities of London and Westminster.
1885-1918: The Westminster district, and Close of Collegiate Church of St. Peter.[1]
The constituency was formed in 1545 from part of the county constituency of Middlesex and returned two members of parliament until 1885.
The City of Westminster is a district of Inner London. Its southern boundary is on the north bank of the River Thames. It is today combined with Marylebone to the north. It is west of the diminutive City of London, fixed with four MPs in 1298, and the north part of Lambeth, created a broad constituency in 1832. It is south-west of Holborn and St. Pancras which in 1832 were both placed in a wider seat named Finsbury and to the east of Kensington and Chelsea which were dealt with similarly in a seat named Chelsea.
In the 1885 redistribution of seats the constituency (virtually identical to the Metropolitan Borough of Westminster which was created in 1900) was divided into three single-member seats. The south-eastern part, including the traditional heart of Westminster and such important centres of power as the Houses of Parliament and the seat of government in Whitehall, continued to be a constituency called Westminster. By official definition the areas retained were "the Westminster district and Close of the Collegiate Church of St Peter"; a seat named Strand was created in the north-east and a seat, St George's, Hanover Square, in the west.
In the 1918 redistribution the three seats were cut to two: Westminster St George's in the west and Westminster Abbey in the east, the latter wholly containing and slightly larger than the 1885–1918 Westminster seat (except for its Knightsbridge exclave which lay some way off in the west).
The Westminster constituency represented the centre of British government and had a large electorate so that it was independent of the control of a patron. Before the Reform Act 1832 the right to vote was held by the male inhabitants paying scot and lot (a kind of local property tax). The franchise was the largest of any borough in the kingdom, and only the county constituency of Yorkshire had more voters. Sedgwick estimated the electorate at about 8,000 in the first half of the eighteenth century. Namier and Brooke estimated that there were about 12,000 voters later in the century. The large size of the electorate made contested elections immensely expensive.
In the sixteenth century the Church officials associated with Westminster Abbey had a large influence in the area, but as the community became bigger that became less important. The Court (or His Majesty's Treasury) had some legitimate influence (by the standards of the age), because of the royal residences and government offices in the borough. The use of public funds to bribe the electorate was not unknown, during close elections (see the comments about the cost of the 1780 and 1784 contests below). Local landowners who were prepared to stir up ill-will by threatening to evict or raise the rents of tenants voting the wrong way, could also affect the result.
Unlawful means were sometimes used to make sure that the right candidates were elected. In 1722 the election of two Tories was declared void because of rioting which prevented some Whigs voting. In 1741 a Whig returning officer called upon the assistance of some troops to close the poll before the Tory candidates could catch up to the Whig votes.
The House of Commons declared the 1741 election void with the ringing resolution that "the presence of a regular body of armed soldiers at an election of members to sit in Parliament, is a high infringement of the liberties of the subject, a manifest violation of the freedom of election and an open defiance of the laws and constitution of this kingdom".
By the eighteenth century it was normal for the members to be Irish peers, the sons of peers or baronets, as it was thought appropriate for them to be of high social standing so as to be worthy to represent the seat.
The Treasury spent the enormous sums of more than £8,000 in 1780 and £9,000 in 1784, in unsuccessful attempts to defeat the opposition Whig leader Charles James Fox. So expensive were these contests that for the next general election in 1790, the government and opposition leaders reached a formal agreement for each to have one member returned unopposed. However, in the event a second Whig candidate did appear, but the Tory (the famous Admiral Lord Hood) and Fox were re-elected without too much difficulty.
The last MP for this constituency, William Burdett-Coutts, was connected with a family prominent in City of Westminster politics since the eighteenth century. He himself was born in the United States in 1851, his grandparents on both sides having been British subjects. After he married Baroness Burdett-Coutts in 1881 he changed his surname from Bartlett to Burdett-Coutts. He represented the area from 1885 until 1918 and continued to sit for the Abbey division until his death in 1921.
The English civil year started on 25 March until 1752 (Scotland having changed to 1 January in 1600). The years used in this article have been converted to the new style where necessary. Old style dates would be a year earlier than the new style for days between 1 January and 24 March. No attempt has been made to compensate for the eleven days which did not occur in September 1752 in both England and Scotland as well as other British controlled territories (when the day after 2 September was 14 September), so as to bring the British Empire fully in line with the Gregorian calendar.
Members of Parliament 1545–1660
Some of the members elected during this period have been identified. The year first given is for the initial meeting of the Parliament, with the month added where there was more than one Parliament in the year. If a second year is given this is a date of dissolution. Early Parliaments sometimes only existed for a few days or weeks, so dissolutions in the same year as the first meeting are not recorded in this list If a specific date of election is known this is recorded in italic brackets. The Roman numerals in brackets, following some names, are those used to distinguish different politicians of the same name in 'The House of Commons' 1509–1558 and 1558–1603.
Glynne disabled 7 September 1647 but restored 7 June 1648 Glynne and Bell both possibly secluded in Pride's Purge Westminster unrepresented in the Rump and Barebones Parliament
Westminster was the constituency of fraudulent businessman Augustus Melmotte, who gained election as a Conservative, in Anthony Trollope's satirical novel, The Way We Live Now (published 1875).
General notes
In multi-member elections the bloc voting system was used. Voters could cast a vote for one or two candidates, as they chose. The leading candidates with the largest number of votes were elected.
After 1832, when registration of voters was introduced, a turnout figure is given for contested elections. In two-member elections, when the exact number of participating voters is unknown, this is calculated by dividing the number of votes by two. To the extent that electors did not use both their votes this will be an underestimate of turnout.
Where a party had more than one candidate in one or both of a pair of successive elections change is calculated for each individual candidate, otherwise change is based on the party vote. Change figures at by-elections are from the preceding general election or the last intervening by-election. Change figures at general elections are from the last general election.
Candidates for whom no party has been identified are classified as Non Partisan. The candidate might have been associated with a party or faction in Parliament or consider himself to belong to a particular political tradition. Political parties before the nineteenth century were not as cohesive or organised as they later became. Contemporary commentators (even the reputed leaders of parties or factions) in the eighteenth century did not necessarily agree who the party supporters were. The traditional parties, which had arisen in the late seventeenth century, became increasingly irrelevant to politics in the eighteenth century (particularly after 1760), although for some contests in some constituencies party labels were still used. It was only towards the end of the century that party labels began to acquire some meaning again, although this process was by no means complete for several more generations.
Sources: The results for elections before 1790 were taken from the History of Parliament Trust publications on the House of Commons. The results from 1790 until the 1832 general election are based on Stooks Smith and from 1832 onwards on Craig. Where Stooks Smith gives additional information to the other sources this is indicated in a note.
Dates of Westminster general and by-elections 1660–1918
-2 Apr 1660 GE
-- Apr 1661 GE
27 Feb 1679 GE
19 Sep 1679 GE
15 Nov 1680 BE
10 Feb 1681 GE
23 Mar 1685 GE
21 Jan 1689 GE
13 Mar 1690 GE
-9 Nov 1691 BE
29 Oct 1695 GE
22 Jul 1698 GE
21 Jan 1701 GE
-9 Dec 1701 GE
-6 Aug 1702 GE
30 May 1705 GE
-7 Jul 1708 GE
-9 Oct 1710 GE
-- --- 1713 GE
24 Jan 1715 GE
27 Mar 1722 GE (1)
-3 Dec 1722 BE
15 Aug 1727 GE
22 Apr 1734 GE
-8 May 1741 GE (1)
31 Dec 1741 BE
-1 Jul 1747 GE
15 May 1750 BE
16 Jan 1753 BE
20 Apr 1754 GE
25 Mar 1761 GE
27 Apr 1762 BE
15 Mar 1763 BE
16 Mar 1768 GE
30 Apr 1770 BE
26 Oct 1774 GE
17 Dec 1776 BE
20 Apr 1779 BE
10 Oct 1780 GE
-3 Apr 1782 BE
12 Jun 1782 BE
-7 Apr 1783 BE
17 May 1784 GE
-4 Aug 1788 BE
-2 Jul 1790 GE
13 Jun 1796 GE
15 Jul 1802 GE
13 Feb 1806 BE
-7 Oct 1806 BE
19 Nov 1806 GE
23 May 1807 GE
-8 Oct 1812 GE
-5 Jul 1814 (2)
16 Jul 1814 BE
-4 Jul 1818 GE
-3 Mar 1819 BE
25 Mar 1820 GE
-- --- 1826 GE
-- --- 1830 GE
-- --- 1831 GE
-- Feb 1832 BE
-- --- 1832 GE
-4 Apr 1833 BE
11 May 1833 BE
-- --- 1835 GE
12 May 1837 BE
27 Jul 1837 GE
-1 Jul 1841 GE
19 Feb 1846 BE
30 Jul 1847 GE
-9 Jul 1852 GE
-- --- 1857 GE
-- --- 1859 GE
12 Jul 1865 GE
18 Nov 1868 GE
-7 Feb 1874 GE
11 Aug 1877 BE
-- --- 1880 GE
10 Feb 1882 BE
29 Jun 1885 BE
26 Nov 1885 GE
-- --- 1886 GE
-- --- 1892 GE
-- --- 1895 GE
-- --- 1900 GE
-- --- 1906 GE
-- Jan 1910 GE
-- Dec 1910 GE
Notes:
(1) Election declared void
(2) Date of expulsion from the House of Lord Cochrane
Election results (Parliament of England) 1660–1690
More information Party, Candidate ...
General Election 2 April 1660: Westminster (2 seats)
Note (1685): Vote totals unavailable. The candidate in this election is not the Gilbert Gerard elected in 1660, nor is he the Gilbert Gerard who was knight of the shire for Middlesex earlier in the century.
Note (1689): Vote totals unavailable. Matthews and Dewey are described by Henning as radical candidates, but should not be confused with the followers of John Wilkes in the late eighteenth century or the radicals of the nineteenth century.
Election results (Parliament of Great Britain) 1715–1800
After a scrutiny the member returned was unchanged and vote totals were amended to Trentham 4,103; Vandeput 3,933.
It was during the vote scrutiny, that is was noted that John London was a "Blackamoor" thereby recording the earliest known vote by a black person in Great Britain.
Lord Warkworth became known by the courtesy title of Earl Percy from 1766, when his father was advanced in the peerage from Earl to Duke of Northumberland
Note (1784): Poll 40 days; 12,301 voted. After a scrutiny the members returned were unchanged and vote totals were amended to the figures as above. Original votes Hood 6,694; Fox 6,234; Wray 5,998. (Source: Stooks Smith)
Resignation of Hobhouse, by accepting the office of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, after he left the Ministry in opposition to the House and Window taxes.
Note (1847): 14,125 registered (Craig's figure above used for the turnout calculation); 7,185 voted. Evans was classified as a Radical, Lushington and Cochrane as Whigs and Rous as a Tory. (Source: Stooks Smith)
"Chap. 23. Redistribution of Seats Act, 1885". The Public General Acts of the United Kingdom passed in the forty-eighth and forty-ninth years of the reign of Queen Victoria. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode. 1885. pp.111–198.
Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885–1972, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (Political Reference Publications 1972)
British Parliamentary Election Results 1832–1885, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (The Macmillan Press 1977)
British Parliamentary Election Results 1885–1918, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (The Macmillan Press 1974)
The House of Commons 1509–1558, by S.T. Bindoff (Secker & Warburg 1982)
The House of Commons 1558–1603, by P.W. Hasler (HMSO 1981)
The House of Commons 1660–1690, by Basil Duke Henning (Secker & Warburg 1983)
The House of Commons 1715–1754, by Romney Sedgwick (HMSO 1970)
The House of Commons 1754–1790, by Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke (HMSO 1964)
The House of Commons 1790–1820, by R.G. Thorne (Secker & Warburg 1986)
The Parliaments of England by Henry Stooks Smith (1st edition published in three volumes 1844–50), second edition edited (in one volume) by F.W.S. Craig (Political Reference Publications 1973)
Who's Who of British Members of Parliament: Volume I 1832–1885, edited by M. Stenton (The Harvester Press 1976)
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