tory

tory has two meanings: originally a specifically Irish term for an outlaw or a bandit of the 17th and early 18th centuries, it also became the name of a major British (and Irish) political party.

The word ‘tory’, from the Irish toraidhe (‘raider’), has been traced back to 1646. Later it was used largely interchangeably with ‘rapparee’, from Irish rapaire, a sort of pike. In both cases the reference was to a robber, operating either singly or as part of an outlaw band, who preyed on houses and travellers, in some cases extorting protection money from those wishing to be spared from attack. Leading tories of the period following the Restoration included Redmond O'Hanlon and the Brennan brothers, James, ‘little James’, and Patrick, who operated in Co. Kilkenny during 1683–5, before being recruited to hunt down other robbers. Tory activity remained widespread in the disturbed years immediately following the Williamite War, but continued into the early 18th century only in south Ulster and part of the south‐west, where areas of still largely impenetrable bog and mountain lay conveniently close to prosperous raiding grounds.

The original tories of the Restoration period were perceived as dispossessed Catholics waging a war of revenge against the new social order created by the land confiscations of the 1640s and 1650s. Yet it remains unclear how far all toryism, even in the Restoration period, was of this character, and how far some at least of what was so described should be seen as representing banditry of the kind found in remote and underpoliced regions throughout early modern Europe.

The use of ‘Tory’ in English politics goes back to the exclusion crisis of 1679–81. The Whigs who sought to exclude the future James II, as a Catholic, from the throne, applied the term derisively to James's supporters. After the revolution of 1688 ‘Tory’ re‐emerged as the generally accepted name for one of the two sides in an increasingly bitter party conflict. The Tory Party that thus took shape, in both Great Britain and Ireland, included a Jacobite minority loyal to James and his successors. The majority accepted the revolution as a regrettable necessity, but were alarmed by the Whig language of contract theory and the right of resistance. The other central Tory tenet was the defence of the established church against Protestant dissent, seen as a threat equal to or greater than that posed by the defeated Catholics. A Tory ministry held power 1710–14 but its abandonment of continental allies to make peace with France in the treaty of Utrecht (1713), along with the party's perceived ambivalence towards the revolution, led George I (1714–27) and George II (1727–60) to exclude it permanently from favour.

In Ireland the Tories formed a strong party among the clergy of the Church of Ireland and a minority among the Protestant gentry, as well as attracting conspicuous support from surviving Catholic and recent convert interests. After 1714, however, the party declined much more quickly than its English counterpart. The loss of the 2nd duke of Ormond was catastrophic for Tory morale. The taint of Jacobitism was also particularly damaging in an Irish context, while the discovery that most Irish Whigs had little real sympathy for Presbyterianism made the defence of the established church less urgent.

From the 1760s the new Whig Party branded its opponents ‘Tories’, though many of these, including their leader, the younger William Pitt, continued to call themselves Whigs. From the mid‐1830s Conservative became the usual party label, although ‘Tory’ is still often used, either as a synonym or to highlight the traditional aristocratic and landed (or, in Ireland, the Protestant sectarian) elements within the party.