The two terms evolved towards the end of Charles II’s reign. The Cavalier Parliament which was dissolved in 1679 contained a loose grouping of MPs known as the Country party who were opposed to the king’s influence over parliament and the court’s attempt to secure the decisions it wanted through bribery and patronage. They weren’t very happy about religious policy either – in particular the way in which the Church persecuted Non-Conformists. Oh yes, and they didn’t want the Duke of York, who was known to be Catholic, to inherit his brother’s throne. In time this group became known as the Whigs – a somewhat derogatory term from the Gaelic meaning a horse thief.
The Tories, by contrast, believed that James should inherit the throne by right of his birth. They believed that the only way for society to be stable was to follow an order based on inheritance and birth. It should be added that they weren’t overjoyed that the Duke of York was Catholic. To start off with the Tories were more inclined to accept the concept of divine right – based on the premise of birthright.
However, in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 both parties accepted the concept of a constitutional monarch with limited rights but the Tories still weren’t happy about religious toleration – they became aligned with the idea of Anglicanism. In the eighteenth century the Tories became associated with the Jacobite cause – which didn’t ultimately do them any favours at all.
It should also be added that even by the reign of George III there were two parties as such, there were connected groups linked by family, social class, and sympathy. They could perhaps be better described as factions. As the Eighteenth Century progressed, the Tories grew to be associated with the landowning classes while the Whigs tended to represent religious dissent, industrialists and those who sought electoral reform. However, it was increasingly apparent that the monarch could not rule without the support of a Whig or Tory leader who could raise sufficient votes from within their faction to pass laws or approve taxation. In time this leader would be known as the prime minister.
The French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century muddied the waters still further until the term Conservative, to which the term Tory still applies, and Liberal became the norm. The word ‘Whig’ ceased to have current political meaning. But that is an entirely different journey to the one I am making at the moment!
I’m still wandering around Colchester – which was a borough. The mayor was the returning officer who also controlled the creation of free burgesses or ‘freemen’, who had the right to vote…From the Glorious Revolution of 1688 up until 1728 there were Whig mayors and this meant that the members of parliament returned by the borough were also Whigs. The most important of Colchester’s political figures was Sir Isaac Rebow who served as the town’s mayor and MP. It was he, in pursuit of continued office, who began the practice of effectively selling free burgess status to political supporters from outside the town.
Inevitably things got nasty. There were court cases and contested elections which did nothing for Colchester’s finances at a time when its cloth trade was in decline. In 1712 the Whigs had to mortgage Kingswood Heath, or the Severalls Estate as it was called by then, to meet their costs. And it just so happened that the man who took out the 99 year lease on behalf of his daughter was none other than Daniel Defoe. For those of you who recall these things Moll Flanders had an eventful childhood until the age of 7 before being taken in by the Mayor of Colchester who raises her as though she was part of his family. Not that the writings of Defoe were any help to the mayor and corporation who continued to struggle with the borough’s finances.
From 1728 until 1740 the mayor was a Tory sympathiser. Colchester’s trade was still in decline and the Exercise Bill was not popular – five tories were elected by the disgruntled freemen as aldermen. Four of them starting with John Blatch in 1728, would become Colchester’s mayor. In order to ensure that in future Tories would represent the borough in parliament the mayor created new freemen in 1728 and more again the following year. In 1735 there was a by-election and a Tory was returned to Parliament.
The year I’m really interested in is 1741. Meet Jeremiah Daniel – Gent. He was the Whig mayor of Colchester and thus the borough’s returning officer. His appointment as mayor was not without its difficulties. In March 1741, an assembly was called to elect a mayor. Two of the town’s aldermen were dead, four were subject to legal proceedings, and one stayed away (and quite frankly who could blame him). The remaining five aldermen, all Whigs, refused to accept nominations of two Tories and chose Jeremiah Daniel as mayor.
The result was that one of the Tory candidates took Jeremiah Daniel to court along with Colchester’s aldermen. He argued that they had ‘been chosen into their respective offices in a manner not exactly consonant to the directions in the … charters’. This prevented the confirmation of Daniel to his office . The result was that the court dissolved the corporation saying that none of them were properly elected. This meant that the town’s charter of 1693 ceased to function -there was no mayor and no town council until 1763 when Colchester regained its charter.
And just in case – the 1693 charter provided for 12 aldermen, 18 assistants, and 18 common councilmen, who together formed the assembly. One of the aldermen was nominated mayor. So far so good. The mayor was elected annually by the aldermen from two of their number, who had been nominated by the freemen of the borough.
https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/constituencies/colchester
Phillips, Andrew. Colchester a History.