United Kingdom general election, 1812
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
All 658 seats to the House of Commons 330 seats needed for a majority |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The election to the 5th Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1812 was the fourth general election to be held after the Union of Great Britain and Ireland.
The fourth United Kingdom Parliament was dissolved on 29 September 1812. The new Parliament was summoned to meet on 24 November 1812, for a maximum seven-year term from that date. The maximum term could be and normally was curtailed, by the monarch dissolving the Parliament, before its term expired.
Following the 1807 election the Pittite Tory ministry, led as Prime Minister by the Duke of Portland (who still claimed to be a Whig), continued to prosecute the Napoleonic Wars.
At the core of the opposition were the Foxite Whigs, led since the death of Fox in 1806 by Earl Grey (known by the courtesy title of Viscount Howick and a member of the House of Commons 1806-07). However, as Foord observes "the affairs of the party during most of this period were in a state of uncertainty and confusion". Grey was not the commanding leader Fox had been. After Grey inherited his peerage and went to the House of Lords in 1807, the party leadership in the House of Commons was extremely weak.
The Grenvillites, associated with the Whig Prime Minister before Portland, William Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville were also in opposition but were of less significance than the Foxites. Despite this Grenville was recognised as the first Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords.
...
Wikipedia