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  • 7 - Quo Warranto and the Borough Office Holder, 1700–1792

  • Edited by David Capper, Queen's University Belfast, Conor McCormick, Queen's University Belfast, Norma Dawson, Queen's University Belfast
  • Book:
    Law and Constitutional Change
    Published online:
    26 September 2025
    Print publication:
    16 October 2025, pp 122-146
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  • Summary

    Throughout the eighteenth century, hundreds of borough officers – mayors, aldermen, burgesses – were prosecuted in the Court of King’s Bench by quo warranto. The purpose of the process was political: to remove these officers from the parliamentary electoral register. The Municipal Offices Act 1711 provided a legislative foundation for the remedy, and secured it against the objection that it was interference with the exclusive right of the House of Commons to determine the eligibility of electors. While the 1711 Act provided litigants with a judicial alternative to petitioning the partisan Committee on Elections, there were abuses. Litigation was sometimes secretly funded by the government, borough officers were intimidated into disclaiming their office by fear of unsupportable costs, and officers who, for years, had innocently assumed that their titles were secure, were ejected for concealed historic defects. An effort to rebalance the process in favour of the interests of borough officers was made by Charles James Fox’s Quo Warranto Act 1792.