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Acts of constitutional importance

Important Acts in constitutional history include:

• Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 - united England and Wales

• Bill of Rights 1689 - placed (or restated) limits on the monarch's power

• Act of Settlement 1701 - established a line of succession for the monarchy

• Act of Union 1707 - united England and Scotland into Great Britain

• Act of Union 1800 - united Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom

• Reform Act 1832 - with later Reform Acts and Representation of the People Acts, extended the franchise and removed rotten boroughs

• Parliament Act 1911 - allowed the House of Commons to overrule the House of Lords after a delay

• Statute of Westminster 1931 – gave constitutional independence to the British dominions overseas

• European Communities Act 1972 – made the UK part of what is now the European Union providing for the application of European Law

• Human Rights Act 1998 - Enshrined Convention rights in domestic law

• Scotland Act 1998 - established an autonomous Scottish Parliament

• Government of Wales Act 1998 - created a National Assembly For Wales

• Government of Wales Act 2006 conferring additional law making powers to the National Assembly for Wales

Act Overview:

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laws ~ wales ~ act

Laws in Wales Acts

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The Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 were a series of parliamentary measures by which the legal system of Wales was annexed to England and the norms of English administration introduced in order to create a single state and a single legal jurisdiction, which is frequently referred to as England and Wales. The Acts refer in particular to two Acts of Parliament passed in 1536 and 1543 during the reign of King Henry VIII of England, who came from the Welsh Tudor dynasty.

From the conquest Gwynedd in 1282–83 until the passing of the Laws in Wales Acts in 1535–1542, the administrative system of Wales had remained unchanged. By the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 the territory of the native Welsh rulers had been broken up into the five counties of Anglesey, Caernarfon, Cardigan, Carmarthen, and Merioneth. Even though the five counties were subject to English criminal law, the 'Principality' was the king of England's own personal fief and Welsh law continued to be used for civil cases. The rest of Wales, except for the county of Flint, which was part of the Principality, and the Royal lordships of Glamorgan and Pembroke, was made up of numerous small lordships, each with its own courts, laws and other customs.

When Henry VII came to the throne in 1485 no change was made to the system of governing the country. But he remained concerned about the power of the Marcher Lords and the lawlessness and disorder in the Welsh Marches. To deal with this there was a revival of the Council of Wales and the Marches, which had been established in the reign of Edward IV. After the deaths of many of the Marcher lords during the Wars of the Roses, many of the lordships had passed into the hands of the crown.

Henry VIII did not see the need to reform the government of Wales at the beginning of his reign, but gradually he perceived a threat from some of the remaining Marcher lords and therefore instructed his chief administrator, Thomas Cromwell, to seek a solution. His solution was the annexation or incorporation of Wales which, along with other significant changes at the same time, led to the creation of England as a modern sovereign state.

The Acts have been known as the "Acts of Union", but they were not popularly referred to as such until 1901, when historian Owen M. Edwards assigned them that name — a name which some regard as misleading as the Acts were concerned with harmonising laws, not political union.

Effects of the Acts

These Acts also had the following effects on the administration of Wales:

· the marcher lordships were abolished as political units and five new counties (Monmouthshire, Brecknockshire, Radnorshire, Montgomeryshire and Denbighshire) were established, thus creating a Wales of 13 counties;

· other areas of the lordships were annexed to Shropshire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Glamorgan, Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire and Merionethshire

· the borders of Wales were established and have remained the same since; this was unintentional as Wales was to be incorporated fully into England, but the status of Monmouthshire was still ambiguous until 1974;

· the courts of the marcher lordships lost the power to try serious criminal cases;

· the office of Justice of the Peace was introduced;

· Wales elected members to the English (Westminster) Parliament;

· the Council of Wales and the Marches was established on a legal basis;

· the Court of Great Sessions were establishhed, a system peculiar to Wales;

· a Sheriff was appointed in every county, and other county officers as in England.

These measures were not unpopular with the Welsh, who recognised that they would give them equality under law with English citizens. The reaction of the prominent Welsh of the day and down the centuries were very similar gratitude that the laws had been introduced and made Wales a peaceful and orderly country.

It was only much later that some of the Welsh started to feel, in the words of A. O. H. Jarman, "that the privileges of citizenship were only given to the Welsh on condition that they forgot their own particular past and personality, denied their Welshness, and merged with England."

Despite historians such as G. R. Elton, who treated the Acts as merely a triumph of Tudor efficiency, modern British and Welsh historians are more likely to investigate evidence of the damaging effects of the Acts on Welsh identity, culture, and economy. While the Welsh gentry embraced the Acts and quickly attempted to merge themselves into English aristocracy, the majority of the population could have found themselves adrift amidst a legal and economic system whose language and focus were unfamiliar to them.

The Acts and the Welsh language

An often quoted example of the effects on the Welsh language is the first section of the 1535 Act, which states: "the people of the same dominion have and do daily use a speche nothing like ne consonant to the naturall mother tonge used within this Realme" and then declares the intention "utterly to extirpe alle and singular sinister usages and customs" belonging to Wales.

Section 20 of the 1535 Act makes English the only language of the law courts and that those who used Welsh would not be appointed to any public office in Wales:

1. Also be it enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That all Justices, Comissioners, Sheriffs, Coroners, Escheators, Stewards, and their Lieutenants, and all other Officers and Ministers of the Law, shall proclaim and keep the Sessions Courts, Hundreds, Leets, Sheriffs Courts, and all other Courts in the English Tongue;

2. and all Oaths of Officers, Juries and Inquests, and all other Affadavits, Verdicts and Wagers of Law, to be given and done in the English Tongue;

3. and also that from henceforth no Person or Persons that use the Welsh Speech or Language, shall have or enjoy any manner Office or Fees within this Realm of England, Wales, or other the King's Dominion, upon Pain of forfeiting the same Offices or Fees, unless he or they use and exercise the English Speech or Language.

An effect of this language clause was to lay the foundation for creating a thoroughly Anglicised ruling class of landed gentry in Wales, which would have many consequences.

The parts of the 1535 Act relating to language were definitively repealed only in 1993, by the Welsh Language Act 1993, though anotations on the Statute Law Database copy of the act reads that sections 18–21 were repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1887.

bill of rights

Bill of Rights 1689

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The English Bill of Rights 1689 is an Act of the Parliament of England (1 Will. & Mar. sess. 2 c. 2) with the long title An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown and also known by its short title, the Bill of Rights. It is one of the basic documents of English constitutional law, alongside Magna Carta, the Act of Settlement and the Parliament Acts. It also forms part of the law of some other Commonwealth nations, such as New Zealand. A separate but similar document applies in Scotland: the Claim of Right.

The Bill of Rights 1689 is largely a statement of certain positive rights that its authors considered that citizens and/or residents of a constitutional monarchy ought to have. It asserts the Subject's right to petition the Monarch and the Subject's right to bear arms for defence. It also sets out (or in the view of its writers, restates) certain constitutional requirements where the actions of the Crown require the consent of the governed as represented in Parliament. In this respect, it differs from other "bills of rights," including the United States Bill of Rights, though many elements of the first eight amendments to the U.S. Constitution echo its contents. This is in part due to the uncodified constitutional traditions of the UK, whereby the English Bill of Rights forms a list of rights in respect of the people as represented in Parliament, in addition to those rights already provided for individuals as set out in Magna Carta.

Background

In the Glorious Revolution, William of Orange landed with his army in England on 5 November 1688. James II attempted to resist the invasion. He then sent representatives to negotiate but finally fled on 23 December 1688.

Before William and Mary were affirmed as co-rulers of England and Ireland, they accepted a Declaration of Rights drawn up by the Convention Parliament which was delivered to them at the Banqueting House, Whitehall, on 13 February 1689. Having accepted the Declaration of Rights, William and Mary were offered the throne, and were crowned as joint monarchs in April 1689. The Declaration of Rights was later embodied in an Act of Parliament, now known as the Bill of Rights, on 16 December 1689.

In the then separate Kingdom of Scotland, the 1689 Claim of Right of the Scottish Estates was expressed in different terms, but to a largely similar effect, declaring William and Mary to be King and Queen of Scotland on 11 April 1689.

Basic tenets

The basic tenets of the Bill of Rights 1689 are:

· Englishmen, as embodied by Parliament, possessed certain immutable civil and political rights. These included:

o freedom from royal interference with the law (the Sovereign was forbidden to establish his own courts or to act as a judge himself)

o freedom from taxation by royal prerogative, without agreement by Parliament

o freedom to petition the King

o freedom from a peace-time standing army, without agreement by Parliament

o freedom [for Protestants] to have arms for defence, as allowed by law

o freedom to elect members of Parliament without interference from the Sovereign

o the freedom of speech in Parliament, in that proceedings in Parliament were not to be questioned in the courts or in any body outside Parliament itself (the basis of modern parliamentary privilege)

o freedom from cruel and unusual punishments, and excessive bail

o freedom from fines and forfeitures without trial

· Certain acts of James II were specifically named and declared illegal on this basis.

· The flight of James from England in the wake of the Glorious Revolution amounted to abdication of the throne.

· Roman Catholics could not be king or queen of England since "it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince". The Sovereign was required to swear a coronation oath to maintain the Protestant religion.

· William and Mary were the successors of James.

· Succession should pass to the heirs of Mary, then to Mary's sister Princess Anne of Denmark and her heirs, then to any heirs of William by a later marriage.

· The Sovereign was required to summon Parliament frequently, later reinforced by the Triennial Act 1694.

act of settlement

Act of Settlement 1701

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The Act of Settlement (12 & 13 Wm 3 c.2) was an Act of the Parliament of England to settle the succession to the English throne on the heirs of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, a granddaughter of James I. It remains the main Act of Parliament governing the succession to the thrones of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth Realms, whether by deference to the Act as a British statute or as a patriated part of the particular Realm's constitution.

As such, the Act remains a key part of the constitutions of the United Kingdom and of the other Commonwealth Realms. The Act was originally filed in the Parliament of England in 1700, passed in 1701, and was later extended to Scotland by the terms of the Acts of Union 1707 before it was ever needed. It has since been incorporated in all such matters as noted above, including that establishing the United Kingdom.

Because of a change in the way bills are named, the Act is also sometimes referred to as the Act of Settlement 1700. The measure contains neither date in its title, making the minor name ambiguity in some references to it now a matter of mere interesting historical/clerical trivia. Today it is generally always referred to as Act of Settlement 1701.

Against an aging background

Originally an Act of the Parliament of England, it was passed formally in June 1701[1] during the late reign of King William III to set the succession and avoid a crisis. As the King was childless and his wife Mary II had died in 1694, the throne would pass to Mary's sister Princess Anne on the King's death.

Anne's last surviving child, William, Duke of Gloucester, died in 1700, inspiring the need to set the future succession as, given her age, she was unlikely to have any more children. Further, under the Bill of Rights 1689, the line of succession was limited to the descendants of Mary II and Anne, thus there was a need for a new law to allow the succession to continue in the Protestant line, and to avoid any crises and potential conflict as in the prior century by excluding any possible claims by the deposed James II or his son, James Francis Edward Stuart.

Act of Union

This Act was, in many ways, the major cause of the Union of Scotland with England and Wales to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Parliament of Scotland was not happy with the Act of Settlement and, in response, passed the Act of Security in 1704, which gave Scotland the right to choose its own successor to Queen Anne.

As a result, the Parliament of England decided that to ensure the stability and future prosperity of Great Britain, full union of the two Parliaments and nations was essential before Anne's death, and used a combination of exclusionary legislation (the Alien Act of 1705), politics, and bribery to achieve it within three years under the Act of Union 1707. This was in marked contrast to the four attempts at political union between 1606 and 1689, which all failed owing to a lack of political will in both kingdoms. By virtue of Article II of the Treaty of Union, which defined the succession to the British Crown, the Act of Settlement became part of Scots Law as well.

Sophia died before Anne, so the result of the Act was the succession of Sophia's son George as King George I, in preference to many of his cousins.

Pursuant to the Act of Settlement, several members of the British Royal Family who have converted to Roman Catholicism or married Roman Catholics have been barred from succeeding to the Crown, though since George I no individual has actually been excluded from the throne on the grounds of religion.

Current effects

Since the passing of the Act, the most senior royal to have married a Roman Catholic and thereby been removed from the line of succession is Prince Michael of Kent, who married Baroness Marie-Christine von Reibnitz in 1978. Prince Michael of Kent was 15th in the line of succession at the time of his marriage.

The current most senior living descendant of the Electress Sophia who is ineligible to succeed due to the Act is George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews, the eldest son of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, who married the Roman Catholic Sylvana Palma Tomaselli in 1988. He would be 23rd in the line of succession if he had not lost his place. His son, Lord Downpatrick converted to Roman Catholicism in 2003, and is the most senior descendant to be barred as a Catholic himself.

Only one member of the Royal Family (i.e. with the style Royal Highness) has converted to Roman Catholicism since the passing of the Act: The Duchess of Kent, wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. The Duchess converted to Roman Catholicism on January 14, 1994. Her husband, the Duke, did not lose his place in the succession, as the Duchess was an Anglican at the time of their marriage.

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Act of Union 1707

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The Acts of Union was a pair of Parliamentary acts passed in 1706 and 1707 that took effect on 1 May 1707 by the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, respectively. These Acts were the implementation of the Treaty of Union negotiated between the two countries.

The Kingdom of Great Britain was created by merging the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. Since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the two countries shared a monarch but retained separate and sovereign parliaments.

The Acts of Union dissolved both the parliaments of England and Scotland and replaced them with a new Parliament, called the Parliament of Great Britain. This new parliament is based in Westminster, the former home of the English Parliament. These Acts are referred to as the Union of the Parliaments.

Background

While there had been three attempts in 1606, 1667, and 1689 to unite the two countries by Acts of Parliament, these were the first Acts that had the will of both political establishments behind them, albeit for rather different reasons. In the English case, the purpose was to establish the Royal succession along Protestant lines in the same manner as provided for by the English Act of Settlement 1701, rather than that of the Scottish Act of Security 1704. The two countries had shared a king for much of the previous century. The English were concerned that an independent Scotland with a different king, even if he were a Protestant, might make alliances against England.

In the Scottish case, it was claimed that union would enable Scotland to recover from the financial disaster wrought by the Darien scheme through English assistance and the lifting of measures put in place through the Alien Act to force the Scottish Parliament into compliance with the Act of Settlement.

The treaty consisted of 25 articles, 15 of which were economic in nature. In Scotland, each article was voted on separately and several clauses in articles were delegated to specialised subcommittees. Article 1 of the treaty was based on the political principle of an incorporating union and this was secured by a majority of 116 votes to 83 on 4 November 1706. In order to minimise the opposition of the Church of Scotland, an Act was also passed to secure the Presbyterian establishment of the Church, after which the Church stopped its open opposition, although hostility remained at lower levels of the clergy. The treaty as a whole was finally ratified on 16 January 1707 by a majority of 110 votes to 69.

The ultimate securing of the treaty in the unicameral Scottish Parliament can be attributed more to the weakness and lack of cohesion between the various opposition groups in the House as opposed to the strength of pro-incorporationists[citation needed]. The combined votes of the Court party with a majority of the Squadrone Volante were sufficient to ensure the final passage of the treaty through the House. Many Commissioners had invested heavily in the Darien Scheme and they believed that they would receive compensation for their losses; Article 14, the Equivalent granted GBP398,085 10s to Scotland to offset future liability towards the English national debt. In essence, it was also used as a means of compensation for investors in the Darien Scheme.

Bribery was also prevalent. £20,000 (£240,000 Scots) was dispatched to Scotland for distribution by the Earl of Glasgow. James Douglas, 2nd Duke of Queensberry, the Queen's Commissioner in Parliament, received £12,325, the majority of the funding. To many Scots, this amounted to little more than a bribe. Robert Burns describing it as

Criticisms

For the very simple reason that the two parliaments had evolved along different lines, contradictions and teething troubles were frequent. For example, the English doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty in all aspects of national life did not exist in Scotland, and the Scottish Parliament was unicameral, not bicameral. Most of the pre-Union traditions of Westminster continued, while those of Scotland were forgotten or ignored.

Defoe drew upon his Scottish experience to write his Tour thro' the whole Island of Great Britain, published in 1726, where he actually admitted that the increase of trade and population in Scotland, which he had predicted as a consequence of the Union, was "not the case, but rather the contrary", and that the hostility towards his party was, "because they were English and because of the Union, which they were almost universally exclaimed against".

Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, a vehement critic of the Union, said in An Account of a Conversation, that Scotland suffered “the miserable and languishing condition of all places that depend upon a remote seat of government."

However by the time Samuel Johnson and James Boswell made their tour in 1773, recorded in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland Johnson noted that Scotland was: “a nation of which the commerce is hourly extending, and the wealth encreasing”, and Glasgow in particular had become one of the greatest cities of Britain.

act of union

Act of Union 1800

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The Act of Union 1800 also referred to as the Act of Union 1801, merged the Kingdom of Ireland and the unified Kingdom of Great Britain, (being itself a merger of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland under the Act of Union 1707), to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It is important to note that although the act itself was passed on July 2, 1800, it was not made effective until 1 January 1801, which creates confusion as to the actual date of the merger.

Prior to this act Ireland had been in personal union with England since 1541, when the Protestant Ascendancy dominating Irish Parliament passed the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, proclaiming King Henry VIII of England to be King of Ireland. Both Ireland and England had been in personal union with Scotland since the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

The Act

The Act had to be passed by both the Parliament of Great Britain (39 & 40 Geo. 3 c. 67) and the Parliament of Ireland (40 Geo. 3 c. 38). Contemporary laws excluded all non-Anglicans from membership, an exclusion that meant that over 90% of the Irish population who belonged to other faiths, most notably Roman Catholicism, the religion of the majority, were banned from membership. Catholics were denied the vote until the 1790s, and furthermore were not allowed to become Members of Parliament until Catholic Emancipation in 1829. This Irish Parliament was the central institution in what had become known by the 1780s as the Protestant Ascendancy. It was also responsible for a series of anti-Catholic discriminatory laws known as the Penal Laws. It had been given a large measure of independence by the Constitution of 1782, after centuries of being subordinated to the English (and later, British) Parliament. Thus, many members had guarded its autonomy jealously, including Henry Grattan, and had rejected a previous motion for Union in 1799. However, a concerted campaign by the British government, the uncertainty that followed the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and the fact that the Irish and British parliaments, when creating regency during King George III's "madness", gave the Prince Regent different powers, led Great Britain to decide to merge the two kingdoms and their parliaments. The final passage of the Act in the Irish Parliament was achieved with substantial majorities, achieved in part according to contemporary documents through bribery, namely the awarding of peerages and honours to critics to get their votes.[1] Whereas the first attempt had been defeated in the Irish House of Commons by 109 votes against to 104 for, the second vote in 1800 produced a result of 158 to 115

The Act had eight articles:

· Articles I–IV dealt with the political aspects of the Union which included Ireland having over 100 MPs representing it in the united parliament, meeting in the Palace of Westminster (more than would be proportionate according to population). Ireland gained 100 seats in the House of Commons and 32 seats in the House of Lords: 28 representative peers elected for life, and four clergymen of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland, chosen for each session.

· Article V created a united Protestant Church of England and Ireland.

· Article VI created a customs union in which British duties on some Irish goods would be removed but Irish duties on imports would remain.

· Article VII stated that Ireland would have to contribute two-seventeenths towards the expenditure of the United Kingdom. The figure was a ratio of Irish to British foreign trade.

· Article VIII formalised the legal and judicial aspects of the Union.

Part of the attraction of the Union for many Irish Catholics was the promise of Catholic Emancipation, thereby allowing Roman Catholic MPs (which had not been allowed in the Irish Parliament). However this was blocked by King George III who argued that emancipating Roman Catholics would breach his Coronation Oath; it was delayed until 1829.

immigration reform

Reform Act 1832

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The Representation of the People Act 1832, commonly known as the Reform Act 1832, was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of the United Kingdom. According to its preamble, the act was designed to "take effectual Measures for correcting diverse Abuses that have long prevailed in the Choice of Members to serve in the Commons House of Parliament."

The Reform Act was proposed by the Whigs led by the Prime Minister Lord Grey. The legislation met with significant opposition from the Tories, especially in the House of Lords. Nevertheless, as a result of public pressure, the bill eventually passed. The act granted seats in the House of Commons to large cities that sprang up during the Industrial Revolution, and took away seats from boroughs which had very small populations (these boroughs were often called "rotten boroughs"). The act also increased the number of individuals entitled to vote, increasing the size of electorate from between 50 to 80 percent. 653,000 adult males (around one in five) were able to vote after the passage of the act in a population of some 14 million. The Act also specifically disenfranchised women, sparking the British suffrage movement.

The act was, in full, entitled: "An Act to amend the representation of the people in England and Wales." Its formal short title and citation of the act was: "Representation of the People Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. IV, c. 45)." The act only applied in England and Wales; separate reform bills were passed for Scotland and Ireland Other reform measures were passed later during the 19th century; as a result, the Reform Act 1832 is sometimes called the First Reform Act, or the Great Reform Act.

Reform during the 1820s

Since the House of Commons regularly rejected direct challenges to the system of representation by large majorities, supporters of reform had to content themselves with more modest measures. The Whig Lord John Russell brought forward one such measure in 1820, proposing the disfranchisement of the notoriously corrupt borough of Grampound in Cornwall. He suggested that the borough's two seats be transferred to the city of Leeds. Tories in the House of Lords agreed to the disfranchisement of the borough, but refused to accept the precedent of directly transferring its seats to an industrial city. Instead, they modified the proposal so that two further seats were given to Yorkshire, the county in which Leeds is situated. In this form, the bill passed both houses and became law. In 1828, Lord John Russell suggested that Parliament repeat the idea by abolishing the corrupt boroughs of Penryn and East Retford, and by transferring their seats to Manchester and Birmingham. This time, however, the House of Lords rejected his proposals. In 1830, Russell proposed another, similar scheme: the enfranchisement of Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham, and the disfranchisement of the next three boroughs found guilty of corruption; again, the proposal was rejected.

Support for reform came from an unexpected source a faction of the Tory Party in 1829. The Tory government under Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, responding to the danger of civil strife in largely Roman Catholic Ireland, drew up the Catholic Relief Act 1829. This legislation repealed various laws that imposed political disabilities on Roman Catholics, in particular laws that prevented them from becoming members of Parliament. In response, disenchanted Tories who perceived a danger to the established religion came to favour parliamentary reform, in particular the enfranchisement of Manchester, Leeds, and other heavily Protestant cities in northern England.

Effects

Although it did disfranchise several rotten boroughs, the Reform Act did not address all the anomalies in the electoral system. A few small boroughs, such as Totnes in Devon and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, were spared. While nomination boroughs were largely swept away, bribery of the voters remained a problem. As Sir Erskine May observed, "it was too soon evident, that as more votes had been created, more votes were to be sold." Also, the vast majority of the population remained voteless; immediately after the passage of the Great Reform Act, only about 650,000 Englishmen possessed the franchise. The magnitude of the unreformed electorate is difficult to accurately determine, because of a lack of voter registration and because many boroughs were rarely contested. One estimate gives suggests that 400,000 were entitled to vote in 1831, meaning that the Reform Act enlarged the electorate by more than 60%.

Most of the pocket boroughs abolished by the Reform Act belonged to the Tory Party. These losses were somewhat offset by extending the right to vote to tenants-at-will paying an annual rent of £50. This clause, proposed by the Tory Marquess of Chandos, was adopted in the House of Commons despite opposition from the Government. The tenants-at-will enfranchised by the Chandos clause typically voted in accordance with the wishes of their landlords, who in turn normally supported the Tory party. This concession, together with the Whig Party's internal divisions and the difficulties faced by the nation's economy, allowed the Tories under Sir Robert Peel to make gains in the elections of 1835 and 1837, and to retake the House of Commons in 1841.

The Reform Act undoubtedly strengthened the House of Commons by reducing the number of nomination boroughs controlled by peers, but the Lords nonetheless remained powerful. Some aristocrats complained that, in the future, the government could compel them to pass a bill simply by threatening to swamp the upper House by creating new peerages. The Duke of Wellington lamented: "If such projects can be carried into execution by a minister of the Crown with impunity, there is no doubt that the constitution of this House, and of this country, is at an end. There is absolutely an end put to the power and objects of deliberation in this House, and an end to all just and proper means of decision." But the subsequent history of Parliament indicates that the influence of the Lords was largely undiminished. They compelled the Commons to accept significant amendments to the Municipal Reform Bill in 1835, forced compromises on Jewish emancipation, and resisted several other bills despite public opinion to the contrary.