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1741 British general election

Election in Great Britain

Field	Value
country	Kingdom of Great Britain
type	parliamentary
ongoing	no
previous_election	1734 British general election
previous_year	1734
previous_mps	outgoing members
next_election	1747 British general election
next_year	1747
seats_for_election	All 558 seats in the House of Commons	majority_seats= 280
elected_mps	elected members
election_date
image1	Robert-Walpole-1st-Earl-of-Orford.jpg
leader1	Sir Robert Walpole
party1	Whigs (British political party)
leaders_seat1	King's Lynn
seats1	286
seat_change1	44
image2	Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, 3rd Bt by Michael Dahl.jpg
leader2	Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn
party2	Tories (British political party)
leaders_seat2	Montgomeryshire
seats2	136
seat_change2	9
image3	1stEarlOfBath.jpg
leader3	William Pulteney
colour3	FFFF00
party3	Opposition / Patriot Whigs
leaders_seat3	Middlesex
seats3	131
seat_change3	48
title	Prime Minister
posttitle	Prime Minister after election
before_election	Sir Robert Walpole
before_party	Whigs (British political party)
after_election	Sir Robert Walpole
after_party	Whigs (British political party)

The 1741 British general election returned members to serve in the House of Commons of the 9th Parliament of Great Britain to be summoned, after the merger of the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland in 1707. The election saw support for the government party increase in the quasi-democratic constituencies which were decided by popular vote, but the Whigs lost control of a number of rotten and pocket boroughs, partly as a result of the influence of the Prince of Wales, and were consequently re-elected with the barest of majorities in the Commons, Robert Walpole's supporters only narrowly outnumbering his opponents.

Fall of Walpole's government

Partly as a result of the election, and also due to the crisis created by naval defeats in the war with Spain, Walpole was finally forced out of office on 11 February 1742, after his government was defeated in a motion of no confidence concerning a supposedly rigged by-election. His supporters were then able to reconcile partially with the Patriot Whigs under William Pulteney in order to form a new government. The Tories remained excluded from any realistic hope of forming a government.

Summary of the constituencies

See 1796 British general election for details. The constituencies used were the same throughout the existence of the Parliament of Great Britain.

Dates of election

The general election was held between 30 April 1741 and 11 June 1741.

At this period elections did not take place at the same time in every constituency. The returning officer in each county or parliamentary borough fixed the precise date (see hustings for details of the conduct of the elections).

Results

Seats summary

References

British Electoral Facts 1832–1999, compiled and edited by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher (Ashgate Publishing Ltd 2000). (For dates of elections before 1832, see the footnote to Table 5.02).

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1741-in-politics 1741-in-great-britain elections-to-the-parliament-of-great-britain william-pulteney,-1st-earl-of-bath robert-walpole frederick,-prince-of-wales

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