The 1768 British general election returned members to serve in the House of Commons of the 13th Parliament of Great Britain to be held, after the merger of the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland in 1707.
The election took place amid continuing shifts within politics which had occurred the accession of George III in 1760. The Tories who had long been in parliamentary opposition having not won an election since 1713 had disintegrated with its former parliamentarians gravitating between the various Whig factions, the Ministry, or continued political independence as a Country Gentleman. No Tory party existed at this point, though the label of Tory was occasionally used as a political insult by opposition groups against the government. Since the last general election the Whigs had lost cohesion and had split into various factions aligned with leading political figures. The leading figures around the period of the prior election, namely the Earl of Bute, the Duke of Newcastle and the Earl of Chatham, were all retiring from political life for various reasons. While Chatham remained the nominal figurehead leader of the Ministry, the administration was centred on the First Lord of the Treasury; the Duke of Grafton, and his leader in the commons; Lord North.
The election took place during a lull in political conflict, with there being a lack of any real political debate over policy or principle between the main factions. The major opposition factions, the Rockingham Whigs under the Marquess of Rockingham and the Grenvillites under George Grenville owed their origins and strength to the periods when their respective leaders had led Ministries in the early-to-mid part of the decade. Owing to these conditions the exact makeup of the new House of Commons was unclear, though estimates suggest that the opposition gained slightly on the Ministry in the months immediately after the election. Potentially the most important part of the election was the election of the radical John Wilkes in the metropolitan constituency of Middlesex. Wilkes's election triggered a major political crisis, and marked the beginning of political radicalism in Britain.
Background
During the lifetime of the 12th Parliament of Great Britain five men held office as Prime Minister leading to the description of the period as one of ministerial instability. By 1766 the successive ministries of Newcastle, Bute, Grenville and Rockingham had collapsed, resulting in the King, George III appointed William Pitt, subsequently created the Earl of Chatham as Prime Minister. George III in commissioning Chatham to form an administration had sought to find a stable Administration which would command the confidence of both the Crown and Parliament, something that Chatham appeared to possess unlike his two immediate predecessors. Despite enjoying the confidence of the Crown, Parliamentary goodwill, and genuine popularity for his role during the Seven Years' War, Chatham had squandered these opportunities amid poor health resulting in his First Lord, Grafton, taking on increasing responsibilities within government, despite his own reluctance to hold Ministerial power.
By 1767 Chatham had increasingly alienated the hitherto cordial Rockinghamites through his dismissal of Lord Edgcumbe as Treasurer of the Household. While some Rockinghamites, namely Henry Seymour Conway remained part of the Ministry, many others who did not hold cabinet-level offices resigned their positions in response. This, coupled with the replacement of these individuals by individuals formerly close to Bute assisted in increasing the unpopularity of the Ministry. To further complicate matters the Ministry was divided over what would become the Townshend Duties, proposed by Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend in relation to the American colonies. Chatham, who was sympathetic to the American colonists and their concerns, suffered a nervous breakdown in early 1767, prompting Grafton to assume increasing levels of authority within the government.