1.
British general election, 1796
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The members in office in Great Britain at the end of 1800 continued to serve in the first Parliament of the United Kingdom 1801–1802. Great Britain had been at war with France since 1792, the Prime Minister since 1783, William Pitt the Younger, led a broad wartime coalition of Whig and Tory politicians. The principal opposition to Pitt was a relatively weak faction of Whigs, for four years after 1797 opposition attendance at Westminster was sporadic as Fox pursued a strategy of secession from Parliament. Only a small group, led by George Tierney, had attended frequently to oppose the ministers, as Foord observes only once did the minority reach seventy-five, and it was often less than ten. The period between the first and last returns was 25 May–29 June 1796, monmouthshire is included in Wales in these tables. Sources for this period may include the county in England, (Types of constituencies - British Historical Facts 1760-1830, by Chris Cook and John Stevenson. List of Parliaments of Great Britain His Majestys Opposition 1714-1830, by Archibald S. Foord British Electoral Facts 1832-1999, compiled and edited by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher
2.
United Kingdom general election, 1802
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The United Kingdom general election,1802 was the election to the House of Commons of the second Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was the first to be held after the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the First Parliament of the United Kingdom had been composed of members of the former Parliaments of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland. The Parliament of Great Britain held its last general election in 1796, the final election for the Parliament of Ireland was held in 1797. The first united Parliament was dissolved on 29 June 1802, the new Parliament was summoned to meet on 31 August 1802, for a maximum seven-year term from that date. The Tory Prime Minister, Henry Addington, led a war time administration of pro-government Whigs, the previous Prime Minister, William Pitt the younger, had been out of office since 1801. King George III had forced Pitt to resign by refusing to agree to Catholic emancipation following the Union and his faction in Parliament was generally supportive of the Addington Ministry, but was semi-detached from it. On 25 March 1802 the Treaty of Amiens brought about peace with France, the international situation remained uneasy and a renewal of war was still possible. In the election the combination of the followers of Addington and Pitt comfortably defeated the Opposition Whigs of Charles James Fox, at this period there was not one election day. After receiving a writ for the election to be held, the returning officer fixed the election timetable for the particular constituency or constituencies he was concerned with. Polling in seats with contested elections could continue for many days, the election took place over a period of almost two months. The time between the first and last contested elections was 5 July to 28 August 1802, monmouthshire is included in Wales in these tables. Sources for this period may include the county in England, source, Dates of Elections - Footnote to Table 5.02 British Historical Facts 1760-1830, by Chris Cook and John Stevenson. Source, Types of constituencies - Great Britain His Majestys Opposition 1714-1830, by Archibald S. Foord Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1801-1922, source, Types of constituencies - Ireland
3.
House of Commons of the United Kingdom
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The House of Commons of the United Kingdom is the lower house of the countrys parliament. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster, officially, the full name of the house is, The Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. The House is a body consisting of 650 members known as Members of Parliament. Members are elected to represent constituencies by first-past-the-post and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved, under the Parliament Act 1911, the Lords power to reject legislation was reduced to a delaying power. The Government is primarily responsible to the House of Commons and the prime minister stays in office only as long as he or she retains the support of a majority of its members. Although it does not formally elect the prime minister, the position of the parties in the House of Commons is of overriding importance, by convention, the prime minister is answerable to, and must maintain the support of, the House of Commons. Since 1963, by convention, the minister is always a member of the House of Commons. The Commons may indicate its lack of support for the Government by rejecting a motion of confidence or by passing a motion of no confidence, confidence and no confidence motions are sometimes phrased explicitly, for instance, That this House has no confidence in Her Majestys Government. Many other motions were considered confidence issues, even though not explicitly phrased as such, in particular, important bills that form a part of the Governments agenda were formerly considered matters of confidence, as is the annual Budget. Parliament normally sits for a term of five years. Subject to that limit, the minister could formerly choose the timing of the dissolution of parliament. By this second mechanism, the government of the United Kingdom can change without a general election. In such circumstances there may not even have been a party leadership election, as the new leader may be chosen by acclaim. A prime minister may resign if he or she is not defeated at the polls. In such a case, the premiership goes to whoever can command a majority in the House of Commons, in practice this is usually the new leader of the outgoing prime ministers party. Until 1965, the Conservative Party had no mechanism for electing a new leader, when Anthony Eden resigned as PM in 1957 without recommending a successor and it fell to the Queen to appoint Harold Macmillan as the new prime minister, after taking the advice of ministers. By convention, all ministers must be members of the House of Commons or of the House of Lords, a handful have been appointed who were outside Parliament, but in most cases they then entered Parliament either in a by-election or by receiving a peerage. Since 1902, all ministers have been members of the Commons
4.
Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth
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Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, PC was a British statesman who served as Prime Minister from 1801 to 1804. He is best known for obtaining the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, when that treaty broke down he resumed the war but he was without allies and conducted a relatively weak defensive war, ahead of what would become the War of the Third Coalition. He was forced from office in favour of William Pitt the Younger, Addington is also known for his ruthless and efficient crackdown on dissent during a ten-year spell as Home Secretary from 1812 to 1822. He is the longest continuously serving holder of office since it was created in 1782. Henry Addington was the son of Anthony Addington, Pitts physician, and Mary Addington, as a consequence of his fathers position, Addington was a childhood friend of William Pitt the Younger. Addington studied at Reading School, Winchester and Brasenose College, Oxford, Addington is a relative of Robert Sharrock who collaborated with Robert Boyle. Addington is the relative of John Sharrock of the Visitation Family of Cornwall, david Sharrock, Heralds’ Visitation of Cornwall He was elected to the House of Commons in 1784 as Member of Parliament for Devizes, and became Speaker of the House of Commons in 1789. Both Pitt and the King insisted that Addington take over as Prime Minister, despite his own objections, foreign policy was the centerpiece of his term in office. Some historians have been highly critical saying it was ignorant and indifferent to Britains greatest needs, addingtons domestic reforms doubled the efficiency of the Income tax. In foreign affairs he secured the Treaty of Amiens, in 1802, at the time and ever since Addington has been criticized for his lackluster conduct of the war and his defensive posture. However without allies, Britains options were limited to defence and he did increase the forces, provide a tax base that could finance an enlarged war, and seize several French possessions. To gain allies, Addington cultivated better relations with Russia, Austria, and Prussia, Addington also strengthened British defences against a French invasion through the building of Martello towers on the south coast and the raising of more than 600,000 men at arms. Although the king stood by him it was not enough because Addington did not have a strong hold on the two houses of Parliament. Addingtons greatest failing was his inability to manage a majority, by cultivating the loyal support of MPs beyond his own circle. This combined with his speaking ability, left him vulnerable to Pitts mastery of parliamentary management. Pitts parliamentary assault against Addington in March 1804 led to the slimming of his majority to the point where defeat in the House of Commons was imminent. Addington remained an important political figure, however, and the year he was created Viscount Sidmouth. He served in Pitts final Cabinet as Lord President of the Council to 1806 and he returned to government again as Lord President in March 1812, and, in June of the same year, became Home Secretary
5.
Charles James Fox
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His father Henry, a leading Whig of his day, had similarly been the great rival of Pitts famous father. He rose to prominence in the House of Commons as a forceful and eloquent speaker with a notorious and colourful life, though his opinions were rather conservative. Fox became a prominent and staunch opponent of George III, whom he regarded as a tyrant, he supported the American Patriots. Briefly serving as Britains first Foreign Secretary in the ministry of the Marquess of Rockingham in 1782, he returned to the post in a coalition government with his old enemy Lord North in 1783. After Pitts death in January 1806, Fox served briefly as Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of All the Talents of William Grenville, before he died on 13 September 1806, aged 57. Fox was born at 9 Conduit Street, London, the surviving son of Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland, and Lady Caroline Lennox. Henry Fox was an ally of Robert Walpole and rival of Pitt the Elder and he had amassed a considerable fortune by exploiting his position as Paymaster General of the forces. Foxs elder brother, Stephen became 2nd Baron Holland and his younger brother, Henry, had a distinguished military career. The stories of Charless over-indulgence by his father are legendary. It was said that Charles once expressed a desire to break his fathers watch and was not restrained or punished when he duly smashed it on the floor. In later life he was always to have carried a copy of Horace in his coat pocket. On this trip, Charles was given an amount of money with which to learn to gamble by his father. These three pursuits – gambling, womanising and the love of things and fashions foreign – would become, once inculcated in his adolescence, Fox entered Hertford College, Oxford, in October 1764, although he would later leave without taking a degree, rather contemptuous of its nonsenses. For the 1768 general election, Henry Fox bought his son a seat in Parliament for the West Sussex constituency of Midhurst, though Charles was still nineteen, thus he spent much of his early years unwittingly manufacturing ammunition for his later critics and their accusations of hypocrisy. A supporter of the Grafton and North ministries, Fox was prominent in the campaign to punish the radical John Wilkes for challenging the Commons and he thus opened his career by speaking in behalf of the Commons against the people and their elected representative. Consequently, both Fox and his brother, Stephen, were insulted and pelted with mud in the street by the pro-Wilkes London crowds, however, between 1770 and 1774, Foxs seemingly promising career in the political establishment was spoiled. Behind these incidents lay his familys resentment towards Lord North for refusing to elevate the Holland barony to an earldom, but the fact that such a young man could seemingly treat ministerial office so lightly was noted at court. George III, also observing Foxs licentious private behaviour, took it to be presumption and he drifted from his rather unideological family-oriented politics into the orbit of the Rockingham Whig party
6.
William Pitt the Younger
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William Pitt the Younger, PC was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 and he left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806. He was also the Chancellor of the Exchequer throughout his premiership, born William Pitt, he is known as the Younger to distinguish him from his father, William Pitt the Elder, who had previously served as Prime Minister. The younger Pitts prime ministerial tenure, which came during the reign of George III, was dominated by events in Europe, including the French Revolution. Pitt, although referred to as a Tory, or new Tory. He is best known for leading Britain in the wars against France. Pitt was an administrator who worked for efficiency and reform. He raised taxes to pay for the war against France. To meet the threat of Irish support for France, he engineered the Acts of Union 1800, Pitt created the new Toryism, which revived the Tory Party and enabled it to stay in power for the next quarter-century. Historian Asa Briggs points out that his personality did not endear itself to the British mind, for Pitt was too solitary, too colourless and his greatness came in the war with France, with the adversary setting the pace. Pitt reacted to become what Lord Minto called the Atlas of our reeling globe and his integrity and industry and his role as defender of the threatened nation allowed him to inspire and access all the national reserves of strength. William Wilberforce said that, For personal purity, disinterestedness and love of this country, for this he is ranked highly amongst British Prime Ministers. The Honourable William Pitt, second son of William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, was born at Hayes Place in the village of Hayes, Pitt was from a political family on both sides. His mother, Hester Grenville, was sister to former prime minister George Grenville, according to biographer John Ehrman, Pitt inherited brilliance and dynamism from his fathers line, and a determined, methodical nature from the Grenvilles. Suffering from occasional poor health as a boy, he was educated at home by the Reverend Edward Wilson, an intelligent child, Pitt quickly became proficient in Latin and Greek. In 1773, aged fourteen, he attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, at Cambridge, Pitt was tutored by George Pretyman, who became a close personal friend. Pitt later appointed Pretyman Bishop of Lincoln then Winchester and drew upon his advice throughout his political career, while at Cambridge, he befriended the young William Wilberforce, who became a lifelong friend and political ally in Parliament. Pitt tended to socialise only with students and others already known to him
7.
Addington ministry
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It is most notable for the Peace of Amiens which marked a brief cessation in the Napoleonic Wars. Lord Pelham succeeds Portland as Home Secretary, july,1802 – Lord Castlereagh succeeds Lord Dartmouth at the Board of Control. August,1803 – Charles Philip Yorke succeeds Lord Pelham as Home Secretary
8.
Tories (British political party)
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The first Tories emerged in 1678 in England, when they opposed the Whig-supported Exclusion Bill which set out to disinherit the heir presumptive James, Duke of York. This party ceased to exist as a political entity in the early 1760s. A few decades later, a new Tory party would rise to establish a hold on government between 1783 and 1830, with William Pitt the Younger followed by Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool. When the Whigs subsequently regained control, the Representation of the People Act 1832 removed the rotten boroughs, in the following general election, the Tory ranks were reduced to 180 MPs. Under the leadership of Robert Peel, the Tamworth Manifesto was issued, however, Peel lost many of his supporters by repealing the Corn Laws, causing the party to break apart. One faction, led by the Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, survived to become the modern Conservative Party and this action resulted from this parliament not allowing him to levy taxes without yielding to its terms. In the beginning of the Long Parliament, the Kings supporters were few in number, the increasing radicalism of the Parliamentary majority, however, estranged many reformers even in the Parliament itself and drove them to make common cause with the King. By the end of the 1640s, the radical Parliamentary programme had become clear, reduction of the King to a powerless figurehead, and replacement of Anglican episcopacy with a form of Presbyterianism. This prospective form of settlement was prevented by a coup détat which shifted power from Parliament itself to the Parliamentary New Model Army, the Army had King Charles I executed and for the next eleven years the British kingdoms operated under military dictatorship. Charles II also restored episcopacy in the Church of England and these acts did not reflect the Kings personal views and demonstrated the existence of a Royalist ideology beyond mere subservience to the Court. These interests would soon coalesce as the Whigs, as a political term, Tory entered English politics during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678–81. The Whigs were those who supported the exclusion of James, the Duke of York from the succession to thrones of Scotland and England & Ireland, and the Tories were those who opposed the Exclusion Bill. The Whigs tried to link the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Ormonde, with the foremost Irish Tory, Redmond OHanlon, in a supposed plot to murder Titus Oates. The Whig Bishop of Meath, Henry Jones, offered OHanlon a pardon and a bribe if he would testify to Parliament that Ormonde was plotting a French invasion. In December 1680, the government seized these letters and the plan collapsed. they call me names, Jesuit, Papish, Tory. I hear further since that this is the distinction they make instead of Cavalier and Roundhead, now they are called Torys, the rebellion of Monmouth, the candidate of the radical Whigs to succeed Charles II, was easily crushed and Monmouth himself executed. In the long run, however, Tory principles were to be severely compromised, James II, however, during his reign fought for a broadly tolerant religious settlement under which his co-religionists could prosper—a position anathema to conservative Anglicans. James attempts to use the church to promote policies that undermined the churchs own unique status in the state
9.
Devizes (UK Parliament constituency)
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Devizes /dᵻvaɪzᵻz/ is a constituency in Wiltshire, England, which is represented in the House of Commons of the U. K. Parliament and includes four towns and many villages in the middle, the areas representative has been a Conservative since 1924. The Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 abolished the borough, and created a new county constituency of the same name, covering a wider area. It has returned a Conservative MP at every election since 1924 and its most notable MP was Henry Addington, who held the seat during his term as Prime Minister, as well as when he was Speaker of the House of Commons. 1885-1918, The Municipal Boroughs of Devizes and Marlborough, the Sessional Divisions of Devizes, Everley, Pewsey, Marlborough, and Ramsey, and part of the Sessional Division of Pewsey. 1918-1950, The Municipal Boroughs of Devizes and Marlborough, the Rural Districts of Devizes, Marlborough, Pewsey, and Ramsbury, 1950-1983, The Municipal Boroughs of Devizes and Marlborough, and the Rural Districts of Devizes, Highworth, Marlborough and Ramsbury, and Pewsey. 1983-1997, The District of Kennet, and the Borough of Thamesdown wards of Blunsdon, Chiseldon, Covingham, Highworth, Ridgeway, St Margaret, St Philip, 2010–present, The District of Kennet, and the District of Salisbury wards of Bulford and Durrington. The Devizes constituency covers Devizes in Wiltshire and the surrounding former Kennet district, Devizes has been a safe Conservative seat since 1945. The current Member of Parliament is Claire Perry who was first elected at the 2010 general election, succeeding Michael Ancram and he was portrayed by actor Michael Troughton. General Election 1939/40, Another General Election was required to place before the end of 1940. General Election 1914/15, Another General Election was required to place before the end of 1915
England
Scotland
