 In 1819 , Lancashire was represented by two Members of Parliament ( MPs ) . Voting was restricted to the adult male owners of freehold land with an annual rental value of 40 shillings or more – the equivalent of about £ 80 in 2008 – and votes could only be cast at the county town of Lancaster , by a public spoken declaration at the hustings . Constituency boundaries were out of date , and the so @-@ called rotten boroughs had a hugely disproportionate influence on the membership of the Parliament of the United Kingdom compared to the size of their populations : Old Sarum in Wiltshire , with one voter , elected two MPs , as did Dunwich in Suffolk , which by the early 19th century had almost completely disappeared into the sea . The major urban centres of Manchester , Salford , Bolton , Blackburn , Rochdale , Ashton @-@ under @-@ Lyne , Oldham and Stockport , with a combined population of almost one million , were represented by either the two county MPs for Lancashire , or the two for Cheshire in the case of Stockport . By comparison , more than half of all MPs were returned by a total of just 154 owners of rotten or closed boroughs . In 1816 , Thomas Oldfield 's The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland ; being a History of the House of Commons , and of the Counties , Cities , and Boroughs of the United Kingdom from the earliest Period claimed that of the 515 MPs for England and Wales 351 were returned by the patronage of 177 individuals and a further 16 by the direct patronage of the government : all 45 Scottish MPs owed their seats to patronage . These inequalities in political representation led to calls for reform . 
