Who were the Whigs and Tories?

[macwilkin]

Class, your homework assigment is to read Kevin Phillip's "The Cousin's Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America" which explains how the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution tie into American History.

Cheers,

Todd

[Sylvain]

In Canada, we kept on using the term "Tories" as a nickname for the Conservative Party, which used to be rightist (like the US Republicans), pro-British Crown (they fought long to keep the old Canadian flag, with the Union Jack in the corner, as in Australia).
(The current Canadian Conservative party is quite different.)

[An t-Ileach]

Talking about Canada; Ron Dart and others among the Red Tories point out that the origins of the Tories predate the Civil War in Britain - they refer to Sir Keith Feiling who starts his book on the History of the Tory Party with a statement that like the Church of England, the Tory Party began with the wedding of K. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn - which places it in the l500s: and given that it's principal ideologues include Jewel and Hooker that would seem to be sound.

Lots of Tories went to America in exile after the defeat of K. Charles the Martyr to take up their land grants. The Tories were really the Court Party, and were loyal to the legitimate succession - after the Exclusion crisis, they grudgingly accepted the House of Orange. The problem with the '14 and '45 was that "the Old Pretender" had a more direct claim than the Empress - even though he was a Papist. Tories were split on the issue, but most supported the direct line over the religion even against their better judgment. So, eventually, after the failure of the '45, most Tories accepted the Hanoverian succession - a sort of quasi-mediaeval "trial by combat".

It was the American Whigs who had changed position, rather than the Tories.

Part of the tragedy of the American Revolution was that the American Party in London was the Tory Party, and they were in the political wilderness after the '45 - even the Rockingham Whigs, like Edmund Burke, were identified with them. And this lasted until Pitt.

The story of Toryism in Britain and Canada is closely linked, and is very different from the conservatives in American politics, even to the outlooks of Disraeli and Macdonald, and including the present incumbents of the "Not the Tory/Conservative Party" (as Christopher Booker terms them) on both sides of the Atlantic -Harper and Cameron - both of whom would be more comfortable politically in DC.