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The Tories were members of two political parties which existed, sequentially, in the , the
and later the
from the 17th to the early 19th centuries.
The first Tories emerged in 1678 in , when they opposed the -supported
which set out to disinherit the
(who eventually became James II and VII). This party ceased to exist as an organised political entity in the early 1760s, although it was used as a term of self-description by some political writers. A few decades later, a new Tory party would rise to establish a hold on government between 1783 and 1830, with
followed by .
The Earl of Liverpool was succeeded by fellow Tory , whose term included the , which occurred mostly due to the election of
as a Catholic MP from Ireland. When the Whigs subsequently regained control, the
removed the , many of which were controlled by Tories. In the following general election, the Tory ranks were reduced to 180 MPs. Under the leadership of , the
was issued, which began to transform the Tories into the Conservative Party. However, Peel lost many of his supporters by repealing the , causing the party to break apart. One faction, led by
and , survived to become the modern , whose members are commonly still referred to as Tories.
The first Tory party could trace its principles and politics, though not its organization, to the
which divided England between the
(or "") supporters of King Charles I and the supporters of the
upon which the King had declared war. This action resulted from this parliament not allowing him to levy taxes without yielding to its terms. In the beginning of the Long Parliament (1641), the King's supporters were few in number, and the Parliament pursued a course of reform of previous abuses. The increasing radicalism of the Parliamentary majority, however, estranged many reformers even in the Parliament itself, and drove them to make common cause with the King. The King's party thus comprised a mixture of supporters of royal autocracy, and of those Parliamentarians who felt that the Long Parliament had gone too far in attempting to gain executive power for itself and, more especially, in undermining the episcopalian government of the Church of England, which was felt to be a primary support of royal government. By the end of the 1640s, the radical Parliamentary programme had become clear: reduction of the King to a powerless figurehead, and replacement of Anglican episcopacy with a form of Presbyterianism.
This prospective form of settlement was prevented by a
which shifted power from Parliament itself to the Parliamentary , controlled by . The Army had King
executed, and for the next eleven years the British kingdoms operated under .
produced a reaction in which the King regained a large part of the powe however, Charles' ministers and supporters in England accepted a substantial role for Parliament in the government of the kingdoms. No subsequent British monarch would attempt to rule without Parliament, and after the
of 1688, political disputes would be resolved through elections and parliamentary manoeuvring, rather than by an appeal to force.
Charles II also restored
in the . His first "" began as a strongly royalist body, and passed a series of acts re-establishing the Church by law and strongly punishing dissent by both Roman Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants. These acts did not reflect the King's personal views, and demonstrated the existence of a Royalist ideology beyond mere subservience to the Court.
A series of disasters in the late 1660s and 1670s discredited Charles II's governments, and powerful political interests (including some who had been identified with the Parliamentary side in the ) began to agitate for a greater role of Parliament in government, coupled with more tolerance for
dissenters. These interests would soon coalesce as the . As direct attacks on the King were politically impossible and could lead to execution for treason, opponents of the power of the Court framed their challenges as exposés of subversive and sinister . Although the matter of these plots was fictitious, they reflected two uncomfortable political realities: first, that Charles II had (somewhat insincerely) undertaken measures to convert the kingdom to Catholicism (in a 1670
with ); second, that his younger brother and , , had in fact converted to Catholicism, an act that many Protestant Englishmen in the 1670s saw as only one step below high treason.
painted in a Romanesque costume.
As a political term, Tory entered
during the
crisis of 1678–81. The
(initially an insult — 'whiggamore,' a cattle driver,) were those who supported the exclusion of
from the succession to thrones of
(the 'Petitioners'), and the Tories (also an insult, derived from the
word tóraidhe, modern
tóraí — , robber, from the Irish word tóir, meaning 'pursuit', since outlaws were "pursued men".) were those who opposed the
(the ). In a more general sense, the Tories represented the more conservative royalist supporters of Charles II, who endorsed a strong monarchy as a counterbalance to the power of Parliament, and who saw in the Whig opponents of the Court a quasi-Republican tendency (similar to that seen in the ) to strip the monarchy of its essential
powers and leave the Crown as a puppet entirely dependent upon Parliament. That the Exclusion Bill was the central question upon which parties diverged, did not hinge upon an assessment of the personal character of the Duke of York (though his conversion to Catholicism was the key factor that made the Bill possible), but rather upon the power of Parliament to elect a monarch of its own choosing, contrary to the established laws of succession. That the Parliament, with the consent of the King, had such po rather, it was the wisdom of a policy of creating a King whose sole title to the Crown was the will of Parliament, and who was essentially a Parliamentary appointee.
On this original question, the Tories were, in the short run, the Parliaments that brought in the Exclusion Bill were dissolved, Charles II was enabled to manage the administration autocratically, and upon his death the Duke of York succeeded without difficulty. The
of , the candidate of the radical Whigs to succeed Charles II, was easily crushed and Monmouth himself executed. In the long run, however, Tory principles were to be severely compromised.
Besides the support of a strong monarchy, the Tories also stood for the Church of England, as established in Acts of Parliament following the
of Charles II — both as a body governed by bishops, using the , and subscribing to a specific , and also as an exclusive body established by law, from which both Roman Catholics and
were excluded.
James II, however, during his reign fought for a broadly tolerant religious settlement under which his co-religionists could prosper—a position anathema to conservative Anglicans. James' attempts to use the government-controlled
to promote policies that undermined the church's own unique status in the state, led some Tories to support the
of 1688. The result was a King established solely by Parliamentary title, and subject to
established by Parliament, the principles that the Tories had originally "abhorred". The Tories' sole consolation was that the monarchs chosen were close to the main line of succession —
was James II's nephew, and William's wife
was James's elder daughter. The
also gave rights to Protestant dissenters that were hitherto unknown, while the elimination of a large number of bishops who
allegiance to the new monarchs allowed the government to pack the episcopate with bishops with decidedly Whiggish leanings. In both these respects the Tory however, the institutions of monarchy and of a state Church survived.
Despite the failure of their founding principles, the Tories remained a powerful political party during the reigns of the next two monarchs, particularly that of . During this time, the Tories fiercely competed with the Whigs for power, and there were frequent Parliamentary elections in which the two parties measured their strength.
William III saw that the Tories were generally more friendly to royal authority than the Whigs, and he employed both groups in his government. His early ministry was largely Tory, but gradually the government came to be dominated by the so-called . This tight-knit political grouping was opposed by the "Country Whigs", led by , who gradually merged with the Tory opposition in the later 1690s.
Although William's successor Anne had considerable Tory sympathies and excluded the Junto Whigs from power, after a brief and unsuccessful experiment with an exclusively Tory government she generally continued William's policy of balancing the parties, supported by her moderate Tory ministers, the
However, the stresses of the
(begun in 1701) led most of the Tories to withdraw into opposition by 1708, so that Marlborough and Godolphin were heading an administration dominated by the Junto Whigs. Anne herself grew increasingly uncomfortable with this dependence on the Whigs, especially as her personal relationship with the
deteriorated. This situation also became increasingly uncomfortable to many of the non-Junto Whigs, led by the
and the , who began to intrigue with
Tories. In early 1710, the prosecution by the Whig government of the ultra-Tory preacher Dr.
for sermons delivered the previous year, led to the
and brought the ministry into popular discredit. In the spring of 1710, Anne dismissed Godolphin and the Junto ministers, replacing them with Tories.
The new Tory ministry was dominated by , Chancellor of the Exchequer (later Lord Treasurer) and , Secretary of State. They were backed by a strong majority in the Parliament elected in 1710. This Tory government negotiated the
in 1713, which pulled Great Britain out of the War of the Spanish Succession (to the dismay of Britain's allies, including Anne's eventual successor, ); the peace was enacted despite a Whig majority in the , which Anne defeated by creating new Tory peers.
In 1714, following a long disagreement between the ministers, Anne dismissed H the arch-Tory Bolingbroke became in effect Anne's chief minister, and Tory power seemed to be at its zenith. However, Anne was extremely ill and died within a few days. Bolingbroke had not been able to formulate any coherent plans for dealing if he thought of proclaiming
(the Pretender) as king, he made no moves to do so. The Elector George succeeded to the throne entirely peacefully.
was the pretender during the
of 1715–16. Gaining some Tory support, it was thus used to discredit them by the Whigs.
In accordance with the laws of the time, the Queen's government was replaced by a Council of Regency until the new King should arrive from Hanover. Bolingbroke offered his services to the King but George I brought in a government composed entirely of Whigs, and the new Parliament, elected from January to May 1715, had a large Whig majority. With the Whigs now in a position to take revenge on their former political rivals, Bolingbroke fled to France and gave his service to the Pretender. The subsequent , though only a minority of Tories gave their adhesion to it, was used by the Whigs to completely discredit the Tories and paint them as traitors. It also gave the Whigs a pretext for various acts which greatly strengthened their power, including the
and the , the latter act unilaterally extending a Parliament elected for three years to seven years.
The remaining Tories were now dismissed from office, and as a party were confined to the wilderness for half a century, corresponding to the reigns of George I and , though occasionally individual Tories held office in these monarchs' Whig ministries. For most of this period (at first under the leadership of ), the Tories retained party cohesion, with occasional hopes of regaining office, particularly at the accession of George II (1727) and the downfall of the ministry of Sir
in 1742. They acted as a united, though unavailing, opposition to Whig corruption and scandals. At times they cooperated with the "Opposition Whigs", Whigs who were in opposition to the W however, the ideological gap between the Tories and the Opposition Whigs prevented them from coalescing as a single party.
The Whig government, backed by royal favour and controlling the levers of power, was able to maintain a series of majorities through the infrequent elections of the next several decades (only 7 in the 46 years of the first two Georges, as opposed to 11 in the 26 years from the Revolution to the death of Queen Anne). For much of the period, the Tories commanded a broad base of support in rural England, but the relatively undemocratic nature of the franchise and the
ensured that this popular appeal was never translated into a Tory majority in Parliament. The Tories would have won every general election between 1715 and 1747 had the number of seats obtained corresponded to the number of votes cast. The Tories were therefore an effectively null factor in practical politics, a permanent minority in Parliament and entirely excluded from government. The latter exclusion, and the rigid party politics played by the Whigs, played a significant role in the cohesion of the T the Whigs offered few opportunities for Tories who switched sides, and as a party the Tories found no possibilities for compromise with the Whigs.
The fall of Walpole removed the principal factor that had separated the government and opposition Whigs, and by the mid-1740s the Whigs were largely united on policy issues. Party organisation, however, was replaced by organisation by faction, and the individual followings of Whig leaders began to form the nucleus of new parties. In 1754, and again in 1757, the Tories gave limited support to the Whig governments of the , , and the . They remained, however, outside of government.
Dickinson reports that:
All historians are agreed that the Tory party declined sharply in the late 1740s and 1750s and that it ceased to be an organized party by 1760. The research of Sir Lewis Namier and his disciples... has convinced all historians that there were no organized political parties in Parliament between the late 1750s and the early 1780s. Even the Whigs ceased to be an identifiable party, and Parliament was dominated by competing political connections, which all proclaimed Whiggish political views, or by independent backbenchers unattached to any particular group.
Upon the accession of , the old political distinctions dissolved. The Whig factions became, in effect, distinct parties (such as the
and the ), all of whom claimed the Whig mantle, while the material distinction in politics was between the 'King's Friends' who supported the newly activist role of George III in government, and those who opposed the king.
The proscription on the employment of Tories in government offices ended, which resulted in the Tories dividing into several factions and ceasing to function as a coherent political party. Sentimental Toryism remained, as in the writings of , but in politics, 'Tory' was little more than an unfriendly epithet for politicians closely identified with George III. The label 'Tory' was, in this sense, applied to the Prime Ministers
(); but these politicians considered themselves Whigs. In his study of the debates in Parliament for , P. D. G. Thomas discovered that not a single politician labelled themselves a Tory.
similarly argues that "The history of the Tory party in parliament between the early 1760s and the late 1820s may be simply written: it did not exist".
Applied by their opponents to Parliamentary supporters of the younger
(, ), the term came to represent the political current opposed to the 'Old Whigs' and the radicalism unleashed by the American and French Revolutions. This was reinforced by the breakup of the Whig party in 1794 when the conservative group led by the Duke of Portland joined Pitt's ministry – leaving an opposition rump led by . The historian
has written of the 1790s: "It cannot be too clearly stressed that no public figure at that date accepted the title 'Tory', and that they had the best reasons for denying its appropriateness". Pitt rejected the Tory label, preferring to refer to himself as an 'Independent Whig', for, unlike the Tories of the first half of the eighteenth century, he believed in the current constitutional arrangement as being well balanced, without particular favour towards the royal prerogative.
The group surrounding Pitt the Younger came to be the dominant force in British politics from 1783 until 1830 and after Pitt's death (1806) the ministers in the
ministry () called themselves the "Friends of Mr Pitt" rather than Tories. Portland's successor,
(Prime Minister, ), never adopted the label of Tory and after his death (1812) the members of the government of
() firmly rejected it in a ministerial memorandum to the Prince Regent:
It is almost unnecessary to observe that the British Government had for more than a century been and could only be a Whig G and that the present administration is, as every administration in this country must necessarily be, a Whig administration. For a Whig Government means now, as it has all along meant, nothing else than a Government established by laws equally binding upon the King and the subject.
Generally, the Tories were associated with lesser gentry and the
(and in Scotland the ), while Whigs were more associated with trade, money, larger land holders (or "land magnates") and the
Protestant churches. Both were still committed to the political system in place at that time.
The new Tory party was distinct, both in composition and ideological orientation from the old. It consisted largely of former Whigs, alienated from the party that now bore that name. While it maintained a sentimental and conservative respect for the symbolic institutions of the British monarchy, in practice Tory ministries allowed the King no more freedom than Whig ones. The incompetence of George III's personal interventions in policy had been sufficiently shown in the American War (); henceforward his active role was limited to negations of government policies, such as . In foreign policy the differences w the old Tory party had been pacific and isolationist, whereas the new one was bellicose and imperialistic.
The Tories became associated with repression of popular discontent after 1815. But later, the Tories underwent a fundamental transformation under the influence of , who was an industrialist rather than a landowner. Peel in his 1834 '' outlined a new 'Conservative' philosophy of reforming ills while conserving the good. The subsequent Peel administrations have been labelled "Conservative" rather than "Tory", but the older term remains in use.
When the Conservative Party split in 1846 on the issue of Free Trade, the protectionist wing of the party rejected the term Conservative. They preferred to be known as Protectionists or even to revive the older term 'Tory' as an official name. However, by 1859, the
(Peel's Conservative supporters) joined the Whigs and Radicals to form the . The remaining Tories, under the leadership of the
(a former Whig), and
(once a Radical candidate for Parliament), adopted the 'Conservative' label as the official name of their party.
Cooke, Alistair (August 2008).
(). Conservative Research Department 2010.
It was originally a Scottish insult for the
faction in Scotland who opposed the
(a faction who supported
during the
and supported the
that took place in September 1648 (Samuel R. Gardiner. History of the great civil war
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Eveline Cruickshanks, Political U The Tories and the '45 (Duckworth, 1979), p. 5.
H T Dickinson," Tories: ," in David Loades, ed. Readers Guide to British History (9
I. R. Christie, Myth and Reality in Late-Eighteenth-Century British Politics (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 198.
J. C. D. Clark, ‘A General Theory of Party, Opposition and Government, ’, Historical Journal (Vol. 23, No. 2, 1980), p. 305.
J. C. D. Clark, English Society : Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice During the Ancien Regime (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 276, n. 222.
I. R. Christie, Wars and Revolutions. Britain
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(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)
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(11th ed.). 1911.
 "". . 1905.
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