The First Parliament of Great Britain Met
On this day · 23 October 1707
After two ancient kingdoms merged into one, a brand-new legislature gathered at Westminster for the very first time.
On 23 October 1707, the first Parliament of Great Britain assembled at the Palace of Westminster. It was the institutional offspring of the Acts of Union, which took effect on 1 May 1707 and fused the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland into a single state under Queen Anne. The separate parliaments at Westminster and Edinburgh were dissolved and replaced by one body.
There were no fresh elections across the new union. By a royal proclamation of 5 June 1707, Anne declared that Parliament would “meet and be holden” that October, with England’s sitting members continuing on. Scotland sent 16 representative peers to the Lords and 45 members to the Commons, joining their English counterparts in a chamber that now legislated for the whole island.
One parliament, one crown, one Great Britain.
The moment mattered far beyond ceremony. It created the legislative machinery through which a unified Britain would govern, tax, and trade for the next century, until further union with Ireland reshaped the kingdom again in 1801.
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