Tory Travails and Collegiate Confusion: The Oxford University Election of 1722*

In terms of the unreformed franchise operative in the early 18th century, the University of Oxford made up an unusual parliamentary constituency. Here it was the votes of non-resident members that could be decisive to the outcome if the seat was contested. In late Stuart and early Hanoverian Oxford, Tories were almost certain to be returned but, in the general election of 1722, the Tory vote was split between rival candidates offering a possible opening for Oxford Whigs. This essay considers the varieties of electoral behaviour inside the university at this time of exceptional political flux nationally, how the candidates confronted the practical problem of getting ‘outvoters’ into Oxford, and the extent to which the heads of the colleges could rely on a sufficiently stable corporate identity to have their resident members vote in an approved way. The 1722 general election again raised questions as to who exactly was entitled to vote in a university constituancy, how much illegal voting was going on, and whether it was in a candidate's best interests either to connive or draw attention to it. The eventual choices made by the Oxford electorate would signal where the university stood in the wider political picture of the early 1720s, how far it – and the varieties of toryism it contained – was prepared to endorse the legitimacy of the new Hanoverian order.