Today we mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Stanley Monck (1819-94), MP for Portsmouth, 1852-7, who in 1861 found himself at the head of Britain’s North American colonies at a turbu…

With many settling back into university terms, in the latest post for the Georgian Lords, we welcome early career researcher, Amanda Westcott, considering the

Wyndham Lewis (1780-1838) is probably best remembered today for bankrolling the future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli’s election to Parliament. Lewis’s wife Mary, an aspiring society hostess with…

What do the following have in common: the site of the world’s largest Adélie penguin colony, one of Cape Town’s main streets and a car park in northern France? The curious answer is that they are a…

With this year marking the 150th anniversary of the passing of the Second Reform Act, our MP of the Month is one of the lesser known architects of this measure, the attorney-general, Sir John Rolt,…

Thomas Barrett Lennard’s career neatly captures some of the oddities and contradictions of early Victorian politics, especially the survival of older attitudes and beliefs alongside the emerg…

Peter Hoey came into radical politics during the agitation for the 1832 Reform Act. Born

Our latest blog from our Assistant Editor Dr Kathryn Rix uses our biography of the Wigan MP John Hodson Kearsley – a forgotten figure today but a well-known Commons character in his time – to explo…

For historians of the Victorian House of Commons, there is perhaps no richer source for throwing light on the political personalities of the day than the journals and diaries of nineteenth-century …

Following on from our post about James Abercromby’s highly-charged partisan election as Speaker in 1835, Philip Salmon explores the 1839 and 1841 elections of his successor Charles Shaw Lefev…

Over the past few years, we have highlighted several MPs who, quite apart from their involvement in parliamentary debates and legislation, had a significant personal role in the development of the …

Robert Spankie, who was returned for Finsbury in 1832, had an unusual pre-parliamentary career. Dr Martin Spychal, Senior Research Fellow on our House of

Legend told that the tower had been funded out of a fine levied on a judge for accepting a bribe. Whether that was so or not, during the reign of Henry VI

This post from our assistant editor Dr Kathryn Rix was first published on the Parliamentary Archives: Inside the Act Room blog, which has many more articles to read on parliamentary history, from t…

Philip Salmon examines who could vote following the changes made by the ‘Great’ Reform Act of 1832. This article covers the system which was in operation until the next major Reform Act in 1867.

Matthew Wood (1768-1843) represented London as a radical reformer between 1817 and 1843. From 1832 he was a committed advocate of metropolitan legislation and an active figure in the committee corr…

As the election results were declared in each constituency at this month’s general election, they were swiftly collated by the media to give an assessment of the overall balance of power with…

Dr Martin Spychal, Senior Research Fellow on our House of Commons 1832-1868 project, provides an overview of the electoral system and political affiliation in

September’s MP of the Month is Sidney Herbert, who was born on this day (16 September) in 1810 and widely expected to become a Victorian prime minister. Fate, however, cruelly intervened, as …

Our Victorian MP of the Month is Joseph Locke (1805-1860), who represented Honiton from 1847 until his death. With Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) and Robert Stephenson (1803-1859), Locke forme…

Following on from our post about James Abercromby’s highly-charged partisan election as Speaker in 1835, Philip Salmon explores the 1839 and 1841 elections of his successor Charles Shaw Lefev…

Following on from our post about James Abercromby's highly-charged partisan election as Speaker in 1835, Philip Salmon explores the 1839 and 1841 elections of

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Following on from our post about James Abercromby’s highly-charged partisan election as Speaker in 1835, Philip Salmon explores the 1839 and 1841 elections of his successor Charles Shaw Lefev…

One of the most illuminating aspects of our work for the Victorian Commons is the discovery of significant, but long-forgotten, parliamentarians. September’s MP of the Month, Charles Gilpin (1815-1…

For the first time in almost 1,000 years the Bayeux Tapestry has returned to Britain and is on display at the British Museum.

This month marks the anniversary of a completely new system of local elections being implemented throughout England and Wales. One hundred and eighty years ago, almost 180 boroughs in England and W…