First Parliament of the United Kingdom

Co-option of members to the first House of Commons of the United Kingdom, 1801

1 January 1801

All 658 seats to the House of Commons 330 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Henry Addington	Charles James Fox	William Pitt
Party	Tory	Whig	Pittites
Leader's seat	Devizes	Westminster	Cambridge University
Seats won	-	-	-

Prime Minister before election

William Pitt
Tory

Subsequent Prime Minister

Henry Addington
Tory

In the first Parliament to be held after the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 January 1801, the first House of Commons of the United Kingdom was composed of all 558 members of the former Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain and one hundred of the members of the House of Commons of Ireland.

The Parliament of Great Britain had held its last general election in 1796 and had last met on 5 November 1800. The final general election for the Parliament of Ireland had taken place in 1797, although by-elections had continued to take place until 1800.

The other chamber of the Parliament, the House of Lords, consisted of the members of the pre-existing House of Lords in Great Britain, in addition to 28 representative peers elected by members of what had been the Irish House of Lords.

By a proclamation dated 5 November 1800, the members of the new united Parliament were summoned to a first meeting at Westminster on 22 January 1801. At the outset, the Tories led by Addington enjoyed a majority of 108 in the new House of Commons.

Political situation

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, led by Charles James Fox. For four years after 1797 opposition attendance at Westminster had been 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".

In Integrity retiring from Office! (1801), James Gillray caricatured the resignation of Pitt's Ministry in 1801.

The Act of Union 1800 created the United Kingdom by merging the previous Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. The first Parliament of the United Kingdom was composed of all the members of the last Parliament of Great Britain and some of the members of the final Parliament of Ireland.

Pitt wished to grant Catholic emancipation (the right for Roman Catholics to sit in Parliament), to help reconcile the Irish Catholic majority with the Union. King George III was opposed to that policy, so Pitt was compelled to resign in March 1801.

The new Tory Prime Minister was Henry Addington. He led another wartime administration of pro-government Whigs and Tories. This was however weaker than Pitt's Ministry as Pitt and his faction did not join the new government.

The younger opposition Whigs also became more involved in Parliamentary opposition. Charles Grey, on 25 March 1801 tried to persuade the House of Commons to set up a Committee on the State of the Nation. His motion was lost, but it attracted 105 supporters. The Foxite leaders gradually ended their secession from Parliament.

Pitt was generally supportive of the Addington Ministry, but was semi-detached from it. As the well known couplet tellingly observed "Pitt is to Addington, as London is to Paddington", which indicates the contemporary view of the relative abilities of the two Prime Ministers.

Dates of co-option

All British MPs and those Irish members representing constituencies which retained two members after the Union (the thirty-two Irish counties and the cities of Dublin and Cork) automatically retained their seats when the Union took effect on 1 January 1801.

Those members of the Irish House of Commons to sit at Westminster, who represented constituencies still enfranchised after the Union but reduced from two members to one (the remaining thirty one most considerable Irish boroughs and Dublin University), were selected by drawing lots. If one of the seats in the Irish Parliament was vacant, then the remaining member for the constituency was automatically chosen for the Westminster Parliament. If both seats were vacant a by-election was held.

Summary of the constituencies

"Two Pair of Portraits;" – presented to all the unbiassed Electors of Great Britain, an anti-Whig caricature published 1798 by James Gillray showing Fox as the personification of vice next to a portrait of Pitt as the embodiment of honesty, followed by portraits of their fathers, Lord Holland and William Pitt senior displayed below. The title is an allusion to a pamphlet by John Horne Tooke.

Key to categories in the following tables: BC - Borough/Burgh constituencies, CC - County constituencies, UC - University constituencies, Total C - Total constituencies, BMP - Borough/Burgh Members of Parliament, CMP - County Members of Parliament, UMP - University Members of Parliament.

Monmouthshire (1 County constituency with 2 MPs and one single member Borough constituency) is included in Wales in these tables. Sources for this period may include the county in England.

Table 1: Constituencies and MPs, by type and country

Country	BC	CC	UC	Total C	BMP	CMP	UMP	Total MPs
England	202	39	2	243	404	78	4	486
Wales	13	13	0	26	13	14	0	27
Scotland	15	30	0	45	15	30	0	45
Ireland	33	32	1	66	35	64	1	100
Total	263	114	3	380	467	176	5	658

Table 2: Number of seats per constituency, by type and country

Country	BCx1	BCx2	BCx4	CCx1	CCx2	UCx1	UCx2	Total C
England	4	196	2	0	39	0	2	243
Wales	13	0	0	12	1	0	0	26
Scotland	15	0	0	30	0	0	0	45
Ireland	31	2	0	0	32	1	0	66
Total	63	198	2	42	72	1	2	380

References

British Electoral Facts 1832-1999, compiled and edited by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher (Ashgate Publishing Ltd 2000). Source: Dates of Elections - Footnote to Table 5.02
British Historical Facts 1760-1830, by Chris Cook and John Stevenson (The Macmillan Press 1980). Source: Types of constituencies - Great Britain
His Majesty's Opposition 1714-1830, by Archibald S. Foord (Oxford University Press 1964)
Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1801-1922, edited by B.M. Walker (Royal Irish Academy 1978). Source: Types of constituencies - Ireland)

Elections and referendums in the United Kingdom

General elections	1801 co-option 1802 1806 1807 1812 1818 1820 1826 1830 1831 1832 1835 1837 1841 1847 1852 1857 1859 1865 1868 1874 1880 1885 1886 1892 1895 1900 1906 1910 (Jan) 1910 (Dec) 1918 1922 1923 1924 1929 1931 1935 1945 1950 1951 1955 1959 1964 1966 1970 1974 (Feb) 1974 (Oct) 1979 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005 2010 2015 Next

Local elections	1889 1890 1892 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

European elections	1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2014 2019

Referendums	1975 2011 2016

Elections and referendums in England (1264–1705) Scotland (Pre-1707) Great Britain (1708–1796) Ireland Northern Ireland Scotland Wales

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First Parliament of the United Kingdom

Political situation

Dates of co-option

Summary of the constituencies

See also

References