The 4th Parliament of Great Britain was summoned by Queen Anne on 18 August 1713 and assembled on the 12 November 1713 (but was then prorogued until 16 February 1714). It was dissolved on 15 January 1715 and would be Queen Anne's last Parliament. [1]
The composition of the new House of Commons was the result of an even greater Tory landslide than at the previous election, with 369 pro-government Tories, 162 Whigs plus 13 Whig supporters and 14 others. Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bt, member for Suffolk, was installed as Speaker of the House of Commons.
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, Lord High Treasurer and Tory leader of the Queen's ministry had major problems in coping with the Tory faction, split as it was between Jacobite supporters and "Hanoverians". He also had to contend with the leadership ambitions of Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke. Eventually a number of factors (such as his heavy drinking and seeking a dukedom for his son) lead to his downfall and on 30 July 1714 he was stripped of his office in favour, not of Bolingbroke, but Charles Talbot, 1st Duke of Shrewsbury, a "Hanoverian". Queen Anne, who was quite ill at this time, died the following day.
After her death a Commission of Regency dominated by Hanoverian supporters, supervised the transition of the monarchy to George, Elector of Hanover, who in October 1714 would be crowned George I of Great Britain. Parliament reconvened for a second short session to complete formalities but was not dissolved until January 1715 as a precaution in the event of a Jacobite rebellion.
The Whigs were a political faction and then a political party in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and the 1850s, the Whigs contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs merged into the Liberal Party with the Peelites and Radicals in the 1850s. Many Whigs left the Liberal Party in 1886 to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which merged into the Conservative Party in 1912.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, and supported the Church of England politically despite his antireligious views and opposition to theology. He supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 which sought to overthrow the new king George I. Escaping to France he became foreign minister for James Francis Edward Stuart. He was attainted for treason, but reversed course and was allowed to return to England in 1723. According to Ruth Mack, "Bolingbroke is best known for his party politics, including the ideological history he disseminated in The Craftsman (1726–1735) by adopting the formerly Whig theory of the Ancient Constitution and giving it new life as an anti-Walpole Tory principle."
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, KG PC FRS was an English statesman and peer of the late Stuart and early Georgian periods. He began his career as a Whig, before defecting to a new Tory ministry. He was raised to the peerage of Great Britain as an earl in 1711. Between 1711 and 1714 he served as Lord High Treasurer, effectively Queen Anne's chief minister. He has been called a prime minister, although it is generally accepted that the de facto first minister to be a prime minister was Robert Walpole in 1721.
The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed Whig efforts to exclude James, Duke of York from the succession on the grounds of his Catholicism. Despite their fervent opposition to state-sponsored Catholicism, Tories opposed exclusion in the belief inheritance based on birth was the foundation of a stable society.
Sir William Wyndham, 3rd Baronet, of Orchard Wyndham in Somerset, was an English Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1710 to 1740. He served as Secretary at War in 1712 and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1713 during the reign of the last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne (1702–1714). He was a Jacobite leader firmly opposed to the Hanoverian succession and was leader of the Tory opposition in the House of Commons during the reign of King George I (1714–1727) and during the early years of King George II (1727–1760).
John Erskine, 23rd and 6th Earl of Mar, KT, was a Scottish Jacobite who was the eldest son of Charles, 22nd and 5th Earl of Mar, from whom he inherited estates that were heavily loaded with debt. He was the 23rd Earl of Mar in the first creation of the earldom. He was also the sixth earl in the seventh creation. He was nicknamed Bobbing John, for his tendency to shift back and forth from faction to faction, whether from Tory to Whig or Jacobite to Hanoverian. Deprived of office by the new king in 1714, Mar raised the standard of rebellion against the Hanoverians; at the battle of Sheriffmuir in November 1715, Mar's forces outnumbered those of his opponent, but victory eluded him. At Fetteresso his cause was lost, and Mar fled to France, where he would spend the remainder of his life in exile. The parliament passed a Writ of Attainder against Mar, for treason, in 1716 as punishment for his disloyalty, which was not lifted until 1824. He died in 1732.
The first Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain was established in 1707 after the merger of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. It was in fact the 4th and last session of the 2nd Parliament of Queen Anne suitably renamed: no fresh elections were held in England or in Wales, and the existing members of the House of Commons of England sat as members of the new House of Commons of Great Britain. In Scotland, prior to the union coming into effect, the Scottish Parliament appointed sixteen peers and 45 Members of Parliaments to join their English counterparts at Westminster.
The 2nd Parliament of Great Britain was the first British Parliament to actually be elected, as the 1st Parliament of Great Britain had been drawn from the former Parliament of England and Parliament of Scotland.
William Bromley of Baginton, Warwickshire, was an English Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1690 and 1732. He was Speaker of the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1710 to 1713 and Secretary of State for the Northern Department from 1713 to 1714.
James Murray, Earl of Dunbar was a Scottish Tory politician who became a Jacobite agent and courtier. He served as the Jacobite Secretary of State in exile in Rome from 1727 to 1747.
The Harleyministry was the British government that existed between 1710 and 1714 in the reign of Queen Anne. It was headed by Robert Harley and composed largely of Tories. Harley was a former Whig who had changed sides, bringing down the seemingly powerful Whig Junto and their moderate Tory ally Lord Godolphin. It came during the Rage of Party when divisions between the two factions were at their height, and a "paper war" broke out between their supporters. Amongst those writers supportive of Harley's government were Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Delarivier Manley, John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope who clashed with members of the rival Kit-Kat Club.
The Jacobite rising of 1715 was the attempt by James Edward Stuart to regain the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland for the exiled Stuarts.
Robert Monckton was an English landowner and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1695 and 1713. He took an active part supporting William of Orange in the Glorious Revolution, and was notable for his involvement in a number of exceptionally bitter and prolonged electoral disputes.
Richard Bulkeley, 4th Viscount Bulkeley, of Baron Hill, Anglesey, was a Welsh Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1704 and 1724. He was extremely hot-tempered and was involved in several personal and family disputes with local Whig leaders.
James Barry, 4th Earl of Barrymore was an Irish soldier and Jacobite politician.
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Worsley, of Compton, Hampshire, was an English Army officer, diplomat and politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons from 1705 to 1715, initially as a Whig, and later as a Tory. He was ambassador to Portugal from 1714 to 1722 and Governor of Barbados from 1722 to 1731.
The 3rd Parliament of Great Britain was summoned by Queen Anne on 27 September 1710 and assembled on the 25 November 1710. Under the Triennial Act, the Parliament was due to expire, if not dissolved sooner, at the end of the term of three years from the first meeting. In the event it was actually dissolved on 8 August 1713.
The 5th Parliament of Great Britain was summoned by George I of Great Britain on 17 January 1715 and assembled on the 17 March 1715. When it was dissolved on 10 March 1722 it had been the first Parliament to be held under the Septennial Act of 1716.
Hanoverian Tories were Tory supporters of the Hanoverian Succession of 1714. At the time many Tories favoured the exiled Jacobite James Francis Edward Stuart to take the British and Irish thrones, while their arch rivals the Whigs supported the candidacy of George, Elector of Hanover.
The Impeachment of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford was a legal process in the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1715 when the former First Minister Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford was impeached and sent to the Tower of London. Harley was accused of a number of crimes including high treason during his time in office, with charges particularly focusing on his role in the 1713 Peace of Utrecht which ended the War of the Spanish Succession.
