] While some seats were in the pocket of a patron, I wouldn't say it was most of them. Lots of the seats were to some extent open: as Jack says, all the county boroughs, and most large cities.

There were 80 English county seats and 405 English borough seats, plus the Scottish and Irish seats.

According to Halevy, of the 405 boroughs, 53 had a franchise where every male ratepayer ("scot and lot") or every male householder ("potwalloper") could vote. Of these 22 had fewer than 300 voters, and were open to bribery, to pressure, or some combination. Even where the number of voters was between 300 and 1,000 (19 boroughs), it was common for a patron to have substantial control through a combination of bribery and pressure. Only when the number of voters got over 1,000 could you fairly say that the constituency was open.

There were 37 boroughs where the vote went to persons holding property by "burgage" tenure. Where a single owner bought up all the burgage holdings, he owned the borough's vote outright. When this was not the case, the electorate still tended to be small.

There were 36 boroughs where the franchise belonged to the "corporation," i.e. the municipal governing body, and 77 where it belonged to men who were freemen of the city - a hereditary status that might be enjoyed by nonresidents. In freeman boroughs, as in the burgage, scot and lot or potwalloper boroughs, if the electorate was small, it was subject to control. Frequently, two competing patrons would agree to divide the two seats of a borough between them.

Halevy relies extensively on Oldfield, The Representative History of England, a 6 volume work, from the pro-reform perspective, published in 1816. According to Oldfield, of the 405 borough seats 14 were controlled by government patronage, 197 were nominated by private patrons, another 119 were heavily influenced by a private patron. That leaves 75 independent or "popular" borough seats.

Halvevy points out that in the boroughs where the patron did not have absolute control, a small electorate frequently sold the seat to the highest bidder, and the electors in the medium sized boroughs openly sold their votes. He regards such corruption as being, in many cases, the first sign of independence from the landlord. Since there was no secret ballot, and a voter stood up and declared his vote at the hustings, the payor could make sure he got what he paid for.

He also points out that open seats were very expensive to contest. According to Oldfield, contested borough elections could cost upwards of 10,000 pounds, especially if a candidate had to transport and pay the expenses of nonresident freemen at his own expense.

Contested county elections could also run into the tens of thousands of pounds. The candidates had to pay the transportation, board and lodging of their voters to the poll at the county town. That's in addition to what was spent on ingratiation. As Halevy puts it, "When in 1816 Brougham decided to defy the Earl of Lonsdale in his own county of Westmorland, he was amused to see this great nobleman, in preparation for the contest, `bleeding at every pore -- all the houses open -- all the agents running up bills -- all the manors shot over by anybody who pleases."

] In general they were expensive, but a popular candidate (and I don't think we're talking of Mr Palmer here) sometimes managed to get elected without any expense to himself if there were a fair number of people willing to donate something -- much as in modern elections, which aren't cheap.

True but very rare. Burke got elected from Bristol, before he decided that it would be more restful to sit for one of Lord Rockingham's pocket boroughs. Wilberforce got elected as a member for Yorkshire in 1807, in defiance of a deal that split the two county seats between the Harewoods (Tory) and the Wentworths (Whig). The three candidates spent more than 500,000 pounds. When Wilberforce was given a pocket borough in 1812, the Harewoods announced that they were prepared to spend 30,000 pounds defending "their" seat.

] Not necessarily. Again, there were more-or-less independent candidates, who relied on the contributions of a larger number of donors.

A few, but for the most part the unreformed House of Commons was composed of the younger sons of the great landowners and such lawyers and other politically useful bright young men as received their patronage. Unless one was an exceptionally popular figure, one needed either an outright patron or a very wealthy backer.