Week 7

The Tories

The Tories, a name given to them by the Whigs, were first led by Danby when Charles II was king. The party was formed in the last months of the Cavalier Parliament and the Exclusion Crisis. The names ‘Tory’ or ‘Tories’ were initially terms of abuse used by Whigs – also initially a term of abuse – and it meant ‘Irish Catholic Bandits’. However, under the effective leadership of Danby the name was adopted by the party.

Danby was a master at management and he used the position he had in politics to advance those who he felt would best support his policies.

The Tories believed in Divine Right, the king’s prerogative and hereditary succession. They were also strong supporters of the Anglican Church against Catholics and Dissenters.

Such beliefs as a whole were challenged in the reign of James II. His drive to push the country to Catholicism was bound to conflict with the Tory belief in upholding the Anglican Church. There were those Tories who sided with James simply because he was king, but there were also those who sided with the Whigs in the 1688 Revolution that removed James from the throne. He was replaced by the Protestant William of Orange and Mary.

Even the settlement caused upset in the ranks of the Tories. Some, clinging to the belief of divine right, thought that William and Mary should act as regents until the time that James could make some form of peace with the government and people. Other Tories believed that Mary should have supremacy over William simply because she was a blood relation to James whereas William was not. William insisted on full regal powers and such was the memory of the recent civil war that politicians were content to accept this so that the monarchy and country appeared once again to be stable.

The 1688 settlement ended up splitting the Tories into the Court Tories and the Country Tories. The Court Tories did all that was expected of those who wished to be influential at court. The Country Tories tended to be more radical especially in the area of religion. They believed scientific advances weakened the Church and threatened society. They also believed that the so-called ‘financial revolution’ would also destabilise society as it could allow those from a less than noble social position to climb the social ladder and dilute the social elite. There were Country Whigs who shared some of these beliefs and both united to become the Country Party led by Harley.

Court and Country Tories reunited in the reign of Anne – the last of the Stuart monarchs. She was seen as the legitimate monarch and a figure all could rally behind. However, the party was severely weakened by a bitter rivalry between Harley and another leading Tory, Bolingbroke. Their rivalry was such that on August 1st, 1714, when Anne died, the party was so disorganised and lacking focus that the Whigs took the lead in the Hanoverian succession. George I became inextricably associated with the Whigs when Bolingbroke fled abroad to involve himself in the Old Pretender’s campaign. The Whigs were able to persuade George that the Tories were associated with the 1715 Jacobite rebellion. This was to condemn the party to many years in the political wilderness as the Whigs held the power in Georgian England.

The Whigs

The term Whig was initially a term of political abuse used by the Tories. It was meant to discredit those who held different beliefs to the Tories and roughly translated it meant ‘Scottish Presbyterian rebels’. First used in the reign of Charles II, by the time of the Exclusion Crisis (1679 to 1681) it had become an accepted political label. The first Whig ‘leader’ was Shaftsbury and his opponent in the Tories was Danby.

The first Whigs were a difficult group to summarise in terms of their wholesale beliefs. However, such a disparate group all shared one value at this time – that the future James II should be excluded from the throne as a result of his Catholicism. 

The first Whigs were curious political bedfellows. They included former Roundheads who were opposed to the Royal Court on ideological grounds; former Cavaliers who had become disillusioned with Charles II; Presbyterians who disliked the Restoration religious settlement; backbench gentry who opposed the Royal Court for its licentious behaviour and extravagance and career politicians who saw the Whigs as their best passport to political advancement. Such an interesting group proved difficult to manage but the fact that they covered so many different parts of society was also a strength.

What were the ideological beliefs of the Whigs?

They believed that the consent of the people was the source of political power and authority and that monarchs were in power only as a result of a contract with the community. If the community believed that the reigning monarch had failed them, they had the right to resist him/her.

Their other main belief was that Dissenters should be tolerated.

In the reign of James II this was clearly an issue when it became clear that the king wanted nothing more or less than a Catholic society – history would have informed the Whigs that a fervent Catholic was highly unlikely to tolerate Dissenters. The Whigs played a fundamental role in the 1688 Revolution that removed James from the throne and placed on it the more tolerant William and Mary.

In the reign of William and Mary, the Whigs split in two. Two separate groups were formed: the Court Whigs and the Country Whigs. Their titles give away their allegiance and it was to the Country Whigs that the more radical elements of the party drifted. The Country Whigs aligned with the Country Tories to form the New Country Party led by Robert Harley.

The Court Whigs took office under William III and between 1694 and 1698 they developed a series of traits that stayed with them for over a century. The Whigs were seen to be the party of privilege where money counted. They were the richer gentry, noblemen who had made fortunes out of the financial revolution. They were keen supporters of patronage as a means of ensuring that ‘their men’ were in high places both centrally and in the localities. Even at the end of Queen Anne’s reign they maintained their link to the monarchy by effectively organising the accession of George I in 1714. Their association with the crown became, for them, an accepted right and it was during the reign of George I that they managed to discredit the Tories with Jacobitism – a charge that kept the Tories out of political power for most of the C18th, especially in the wake of the last Jacobite uprising in 1745. For many people in power, the Whigs were considered to be the established party of order.

Important Terms: 

Divine Right: a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from the will of God.

Jacobitism:was a political movement in Great Britain and Ireland that aimed to restore the Roman Catholic Stuart King James II of England and his heirs to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Whiggamor: Cattle Driver 

Tóraidhe: Outlaw (Irish Gaelic)

Additional Resource: Whigs and Tories History