The 1796 British general election returned members to serve in the 18th and last

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

of the Parliament of Great Britain. They were summoned before the

Union of Great Britain and Ireland The Acts of Union 1800 (sometimes incorrectly referred to as a single 'Act of Union 1801') were parallel acts of the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland which united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ire ...

on 1 January 1801. The members in office in Great Britain at the end of 1800 continued to serve in the first

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

(1801–02).

Political situation

Great Britain had been at war with France since 1792. The Prime Minister since 1783,

William Pitt the Younger William Pitt the Younger (28 May 175923 January 1806) was a British statesman, the youngest and last prime minister of Great Britain (before the Acts of Union 1800) and then first prime minister of the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Ire ...

, led a broad wartime coalition of Whig and

Tory A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The ...

politicians. The principal opposition to Pitt was a relatively weak faction of Whigs, led by

Charles James Fox Charles James Fox (24 January 1749 – 13 September 1806), styled ''The Honourable'' from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned 38 years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the arch-riv ...

. 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 George Tierney PC (20 March 1761 – 25 January 1830) was an Irish Whig politician. For much of his career he was in opposition to the governments of William Pitt and Lord Liverpool. From 1818 to 1821 he was Leader of the Opposition in the ...

, 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".

Dates of election

The period between the first and last returns was 25 May to 29 June 1796.

Summary of the constituencies

Monmouthshire (One County constituency with two members 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 Members, by type and country''British Historical Facts 1760–1830'', by Chris Cook and John Stevenson (The Macmillan Press 1980). Table 2: Number of seats per constituency, by type and country

Results

Seats summary

References

{{British elections (1707-1800) 1796 elections General election