For instance, the borough or city of Old Sarum, in Wiltshire, which
had once been an important place, had, at an early period, gradually
declined through the growth of New Sarum, or Salisbury, near by. (See
map, p.436.) In the sixteenth century the parent city had so
completely decayed that not a single habitation was left on the
desolate hilltop where the caste and cathedral once stood. At the
foot of the hill was an old tree. The owner of that tree and of the
field where it grew sent (1830) two members to Parliament,--that
action represented what had been regularly going on for something like
three hundred years!
In Bath, on the other hand, none of the citizens, out of a large
population, might vote except the mayor, alderman, and common
council. These places now got the significant name of "rotten
boroughs" from the fact that whether large or small there was no
longer any sound political life existing in them. Many towns were so
completely in the hands of the squire or some other local "political
boss" that, on one occasion when a successful candidate for Parliament
thanked the voters for what they had done, a man replied that he need
not take the trouble to thank them; for, said he, "if the squire had
zent his great dog we should have chosen him all one as if it were
you, zur."[1]
[1] See Hindon, in Murray's "Wiltshire."