Seats were openly bought and sold, and a candidate had either to find a patron who would provide him with a seat, or, failing a patron, to purchase a seat himself.

Fox first entered Parliament for the pocket borough of Midhurst, and Sir George Trevelyan has described how it took place.

Midhurst was selected by the father of Charles James Fox as "the most comfortable of constituencies from the point of view of a representative; for the right of election rested in a few small holdings, on which no human being resided, distinguished among the pastures and the stubble that surrounded them by a large stone set up on end in the middle of each portion.

These burbage tenures, as they were called, had all been bought up by a single proprietor, Viscount Montagu, who when an election was in prospect, assigned a few of them to his servants, with instructions to nominate the members and then make back the property to their employer.

This ceremony was performed in March, 1768, and the steward of the estate, who acted as the returning officer, declared that Charles James Fox had been duly chosen as one of the burgesses for Midhurst, at a time when that young gentleman was still amusing himself in Italy." Three years earlier Burke had entered Parliament as a nominee of Lord Rockingham's.