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One of the biggest financial problems faced by government in the early Hanoverian period was the escalating size of the national debt. Britain’s wars with France in the late seventeenth century had cost upwards of £130 million.
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Examples of twins sitting in Parliament at the same time are extremely rare. The first time it happened, so far as we can establish, was at the 1774 election, when even more unusually, two Grenville twins took the two places at Buckingham.
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In 1717, as a result of growing disunity among senior Whig members of the government, a sizeable association of leading MPs and peers broke away from the ruling Whig administration, and until 1720 acted with the opposition. Historians often refer to this political rupture as the ‘Whig schism’.
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The War of Jenkins' Ear with Spain is said to have been provoked by the display of a mutilated ear at a Commons' Committee in 1738. The war contributed to the decline of Walpole's power in Parliament.
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The 1798 rebellion in Ireland brought to a head British government concerns over the state of constitutional relations between the two countries. After negotiations and parliamentary proceedings at Westminster and in Dublin, where considerable bribery and corruption were deployed, a legislative...
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In November they played a crucial role in Wellington’s downfall, when they voted with the Whigs and other opposition groups to inflict a defeat on him over the civil list. Unfortunately for the Ultras, their act of revenge was achieved at a heavy political price.
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In late Ju1y 1809 the duke of Portland’s ministry sent 39,000 troops to the Dutch island of Walcheren in the mouth of the River Scheldt. The ensuing military disaster contributed to the collapse of the ministry. The chancellor of the exchequer Spencer Perceval became prime minister and formed a...
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George IV’s determination, following his succession to the throne in 1820, to finally obtain a divorce from his estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, sparked an opposition campaign, both in Parliament and in the country, which threatened the survival of Lord Liverpool’s Tory administration.
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A recurrence of George III’s mental illness in February 1801 delayed the formalities of the replacement of William Pitt as prime minister by Henry Addington, and raised the prospect of a regency or even a new reign. The heir apparent, George, prince of Wales, started to plan an administration...
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From 1792, as the French revolution took an increasingly violent course, posing a threat to monarchical Europe and raising the prospect of war, the more conservative section of the opposition Whig party, under the leadership of the 3rd duke of Portland, gradually moved closer to Pitt’s ministry...
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The order of the Royal Oak (or knight of the Royal Oak) was a new order of knighthood planned during the early part of Charles II’s reign as a reward to royalist supporters, but it was never actually instituted. Knowledge of the proposal derives from a list of 675 gentry who were to be members or...
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By the eighteenth century, if not before, the palace of Westminster was considered insultingly inadequate as the home of Parliament. It consisted of a ramshackle set of decaying structures, connected by narrow lanes and dark corridors, with a mixture of new and old chambers set on different...
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In the 1760s the mock election at Garrat, which had originated in the late seventeenth century, changed from being a harmless carnival to being a theatre of radical politics. Thereafter, the mock election mimicked national politics, with the issues of the day being raised and the most popular...
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The required maiden speech of the early nineteenth century was of a different type to its predecessor of the eighteenth. During the previous hundred years, when only a minority of Members aspired to be considered orators, the theatrical maiden speech was de rigueur for any Member with...
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Under the Hanoverian monarchs it became almost the norm for princes of Wales and their households to provide a focus of opposition to the king and his ministers. A ‘prince’s party’ was active in Parliament during 1717-20, 1737-42, 1747-51 and 1755-57.
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One of the most serious social problems to perplex parliamentarians in the early Hanoverian period was the excessive consumption of gin by the lower classes. Gin drinking was seen as one of the root causes of poverty, crime, idleness, immorality and impiety, and was regarded as a threat to the very...
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The committee that investigated the conditions of London main gaols during the 1729 and 1730 sessions was one of the first great ‘social’ inquiries by the House of Commons. The committee’s exposure both of the horrors of the prison underworld and the ill-treatment of debtors by the...
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Conservative Whigs gravitated towards the government in response to the violent excesses of the French revolution, and resulted in the junction of the Portland Whigs with Pitt’s ministry in July 1794. From December 1792 Fox was left with a rump of about 55 steady followers in the Commons.
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In the first quarter of 1809, public attention was distracted from the recent British military humiliation in Spain by the scandal of the alleged involvement of the duke of York, the king’s second son and commander-in-chief of the army, in the sale of commissions by his former mistress, Mrs. Mary...
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The Committee of Elections – which also deliberated in occasional cases where individual MPs’ claimed infringement of their rights of ‘privilege’ – was, at least in theory, a judicial body acting to judge each case impartially on its merits. In reality, however, proceedings...
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The civil list division of 1830 resulted in defeat for the duke of Wellington's Tory administration, and paved the way for the formation of Lord Grey's ministry and the introduction of the reform bill.
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The introduction of the cider tax in 1763 provoked a minor political row, particularly in the West Country, which was suggestive of significant future changes. The furore was not on the scale of the excise crisis of 1733, but it foreshadowed developments in the expanding scope of popular,...
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The 'New Opposition' originated in opposition by a group of former ministers to the terms of the peace preliminaries negotiated with France by Pitt's successor Henry Addington. By early 1804 Grenville and his allies were co-operating with Charles James Fox’s Whigs to form a combined...
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In March 1797, when William Pitt’s ministry was grappling with a national financial crisis, a group of about 30 disgruntled backbenchers, led by the Scotsman Sir John Sinclair, formed a self-styled ‘armed neutrality’ with the object of ending the Pitt-Fox polarization of politics and securing...
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On 16 Aug. 1819, there were 11 fatalities in St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester, when the local magistrates sent in the military to arrest Henry `Orator’ Hunt, who had drawn a large crowd to hear him call for radical parliamentary reform. The leading Whigs condemned the episode, but were divided...
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On 22 March 1831 the second reading of the Grey ministry’s parliamentary reform bill for England and Wales was carried by the narrowest of margins, 302-301. However, the following month the leading figures in the Tory opposition united behind an amendment which precipitated a general election.
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There was a high degree of overlap between the country gentlemen, the county Members and the ‘Country’ politicians, but these terms were not identical. In the mid-eighteenth century a good example was Sir George Savile (1726-84), who owned estates in Nottinghamshire and in Yorkshire.
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George Canning (1770-1827) was the most talented Member of the House of Commons of his generation, but his political career, which took him (briefly) to the pinnacle, was chequered and controversial. He entered the House in 1793 as a devoted Pittite, and by 1798 had there a band of ten personal...
