The medieval boroughs were enfranchised on very varied terms. In addition, there were 12 potwalloping and 6 manor boroughs, but the majority of the boroughs were corporation boroughs, and although in some the franchise was extended to freemen, the normal pattern was for a mayor (also known as a sovereign, portreeve or burgomaster and elected from the burgesses annually) and 12 burgesses (making 13 in all and stated as 13 or 12 depending on whether the mayor was counted electorally or as a burgess. the mayor was the returning officer and held a casting vote. By the end of the century this pattern was more theoretical than actual.
Unlike in the modern period, in Ireland in the eighteenth century elections to parliament were not held regularly. Irish parliaments could last for the life of the sovereign (e.g. George I and George II), until 1768 when the Octennial Act ensured an election every eight years. The death of an MP, and before the 1790s nothing else, created a by-election.
The Act of Union allowed for 100 Irish MPs: the counties and the cities of Cork and Dublin retained both members but Dublin University (Trinity College Dublin) and the larger towns were reduced to single members allocated by agreement or lot. There was no general election immediately following the union and the surviving MPs were simply transferred to Westminster where, as British MPs, they have biographical entries in the British History of Parliament.
The election tables presented in this section are a simple way to see who was elected for which county constituency and some of the larger boroughs from 1692 through to the first general election after the Act of Union, which was held in 1802.