The purpose of publishing this book is twofold: firstly, to provide data useful for family historians and, secondly, to use this data to explore why people voted in the way they did. The poll books give an important insight into the structure of landowning in Bedfordshire and the patterns of local allegiance and loyalty. Both county and parish historians should find the book useful. The data will also provide material that will assist social, economic and political historians with interests beyond Bedfordshire.

Sources for Family History 1671–1841

For family historians the period 1671–1841 is so often the bottomless pit, where they can lose their ancestors for ever. For 1671 there is the hearth tax, which covers the names of heads of most of the households in the county. The 1841 census lists all the people living in a household. Between them there is no comprehensive list. Having exhausted parish registers and wills, family historians can be at a loss what to do next.

For the poorer people the records, generated by parish poor relief, such as removal orders, settlement examinations, bastardy bonds and the like, can give important clues, especially now that the Bedfordshire Family History Society has published an excellent index. Unfortunately, the records do not cover every parish. A manuscript index in the Search Room of the Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service (BLARS) of such records held in Quarter Sessions supplements this. This second source covers the whole county.

Poll Books

For those in the middle ranks of society, neither very rich nor very poor, research is much more difficult. Poll books provide some answers, as they are a record of how people voted in parliamentary elections. Up to 1734 these occurred reasonably frequently, both for the Borough of Bedford and the Bedfordshire County seat. There is then a gap until 1774. There was at least one contested election in the period in the Borough (1768), but no poll book has survived. Poll books record the parish where the voter held property that entitled him to vote and, if resident elsewhere, the place of that residence. Many voters appear, for example, from Huntingdonshire, London and Middlesex. On one of the poll books for the 1727 election John Orlebar recorded whether a voter had died or sold his property between 1727 and 1734.