Definition
An oath formerly administered to voters at elections for members of Parliament in England, by which the voter swore that he had not received, and had not been promised, any bribe, reward, or inducement in exchange for his vote. The oath was a mechanism to deter and expose electoral corruption at the point of voting. It was abolished by statute in 1854.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a historical artifact with no surviving legal force. Researchers encountering it in primary or secondary sources should understand it as a relic of English parliamentary electoral law predating the Corrupt Practices Act of 1854, which restructured the legal treatment of electoral bribery and rendered the oath obsolete.
The abolition date — 1854 — is a useful anchor. Any source citing the oath against bribery as operative law must predate that year, or the source itself is in error. Researchers working in 19th-century English electoral law, parliamentary history, or the broader history of anti-corruption mechanisms should treat the term as a marker of the pre-reform era. It does not appear in American legal practice; no equivalent oath was institutionalized in U.S. federal or state election law under this name, though analogous sworn declarations have existed in various forms in American election administration.
Because the term appears in only a narrow band of historical sources, researchers should not expect extensive treatment in general legal encyclopedias or American reference works. Cross-referencing with materials on the Corrupt Practices Acts and parliamentary reform will be more productive than searching under this term alone.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in full agreement on this entry — both define the term identically as an oath that could have been administered to a voter at an election for members of Parliament, and both cite its abolition in 1854, with Wharton's Law Lexicon noted as the underlying authority. The entries are so brief as to be nearly identical, suggesting both compilers drew from the same source and considered the term too narrow and obsolete to warrant elaboration.
Neither Black's nor Bouvier's provides the statutory basis for abolition, the precise content of the oath's language, or the procedural mechanism by which it was administered. Researchers wanting substance beyond the bare definition will need to consult Wharton's Law Lexicon directly, along with parliamentary records and treatises on English election law from the first half of the 19th century. The historical dictionaries treat this as a reference entry rather than a working legal term — a signal that even at the time of their compilation, the oath was understood as a closed chapter.
Jurisdictional Note
Exclusively English in origin and application. The oath against bribery was a creature of parliamentary election law and has no recognized counterpart in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions under this name. Researchers should not assume any transatlantic relevance.