<P> Statutes passed in 1430 and 1432, during the reign of Henry VI, standardised property qualifications for county voters . Under these Acts, all owners of freehold property or land worth at least forty shillings in a particular county were entitled to vote in that county . This requirement, known as the forty shilling freehold, was never adjusted for inflation; thus the amount of land one had to own in order to vote gradually diminished over time . The franchise was restricted to males by custom rather than statute; on rare occasions women had been able to vote in parliamentary elections as a result of property ownership . Nevertheless, the vast majority of people were not entitled to vote; the size of the English county electorate in 1831 has been estimated at only 200,000 . Furthermore, the sizes of the individual county constituencies varied significantly . The smallest counties, Rutland and Anglesey, had fewer than 1,000 voters each, while the largest county, Yorkshire, had more than 20,000 . Those who owned property in multiple constituencies could vote multiple times; there was usually no need to live in a constituency in order to vote there . </P> <P> In boroughs the franchise was far more varied . There were broadly six types of parliamentary boroughs, as defined by their franchise: </P> <Ol> <Li> boroughs in which freemen were electors; </Li> <Li> boroughs in which the franchise was restricted to those paying scot and lot, a form of municipal taxation; </Li> <Li> boroughs in which only the ownership of a burgage property qualified a person to vote; </Li> <Li> boroughs in which only members of the corporation were electors (such boroughs were perhaps in every case "pocket boroughs", because council members were usually "in the pocket" of a wealthy patron); </Li> <Li> boroughs in which male householders were electors (these were usually known as "potwalloper boroughs", as the usual definition of a householder was a person able to boil a pot on his / her own hearth); </Li> <Li> boroughs in which freeholders of land had the right to vote . </Li> </Ol> <Li> boroughs in which freemen were electors; </Li>

The great reform act of 1832 represented a triumph for the agenda of which political ideology