To talk of a Tory today is to speak exclusively of the UK Conservative Party, the right-wing party of some of Britain’s most successful prime ministers such as Baroness Margaret Thatcher and Sir Winston Churchill, and the party which dominated the 19th and 20th centuries more than any other. But in fact the Conservatives developed from a party or movement that was officially known as the Tories until 1834 and which can be traced back as far as the English Civil War.

Tory, Tory, Tory!
In describing why he uses the term Tory rather than Conservative, David Blunkett, the former Labour Home Secretary, told BBC News the term ‘places them somewhere backward-looking, negative and reactionary… Conservative sounds more positive; it’s about preserving and protecting. “Tory” is shorter and easier to say and it has more negative connotations…’

In fact Blunkett is using the word as it was originally intended, as an insult, a term of abuse bandied around by the Tories’ political opponents, the Whigs. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is an anglicised version of the Irish word tóraidhe, originating in the 17th century, which meant ‘one of the dispossessed Irish, who became outlaws, subsisting by plundering and killing the English settlers and soldiers; a bog-trotter, a rapparee; later, often applied to any Irish Papist or Royalist in arms’. It is perhaps an odd way to describe a party which has so often been associated with Anglicism and the Church of England. Yet the obvious and disparaging Catholic connotations of the word do offer us an insight into the origins of the movement. That is to say the Tories were a loose gathering of royalists who supported the right of the Catholic James, Duke of York, to ascend the throne and in the right of the monarch to assert his or her authority, without interference.

The exclusion crisis
Many historians argue that we can see how the two opposing sides of the English Civil War trickled down into modern politics: from Cavalier and Roundhead to Tory and Whig and then to Conservative and Liberal. While this is a slight generalisation and perhaps too simplistic, it is correct to assert that the Tories shared a deep allegiance to the continuation of the Stuart monarchy. It is said that the symbol of the Tory Party, based on the oak tree and which lives on in altered form as the logo of the Conservative Party, represents the tree that Charles II supposedly used to hide in during the Civil War, before making good his escape into exile.

When the monarchy was restored in 1660 after 11 years of increasingly authoritarian Puritan rule by Parliament and Cromwell as Lord Protector, it was a time of national celebration and it appeared the royalists had triumphed, albeit it with the proviso that Charles II would never be allowed to rule like his father.

Yet a little over 10 years later, an air of uneasiness began to fall over the country once again. Charles II had no legitimate heir, so the throne was due to fall to his brother James. But James been ousted as a Catholic following the passing of the Test Act, which barred Catholics from holding a public office and forced him to quit as Lord High Admiral.

By 1678-9, hysteria gripped the country. Rumours of a Catholic plot in which Charles II was to be assassinated and replaced by James who might well undo the Protestant settlement and return Britain to being a Catholic country – known as the Popish Plot – gripped the nation. Although the allegations turned out to be complete fiction – orchestrated by the ex-priest, compulsive liar, petty criminal and general malcontent Titus Oates – the fear that such a plot might be real cannot be understated. The failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 would still have been etched on the national psyche, as would the accounts of the last time a Catholic monarch came to power: the burnings of heretics earned Mary I the nickname Bloody Mary. More than two dozen people were executed on suspicion of being involved in the plot and Parliament put forward a bill to have James excluded from the line of succession.

After it passed its second reading, Charles II quickly prorogued (suspended) parliament. But when Parliament reassembled, it tried again and this time the bill reached all the way to the House of Lords, who rejected it (before the 20th century, the House of Commons did not have ‘primacy’ ie the power to continue with bills voted down by the Lords).

Managing the House
The main proponent of exclusion was Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who was noted for his management of the House of Commons – an early attempt at the whip system – though it would be wrong to think there were strict political parties in this era. He was supported by William Gregory, who was elected speaker and regarded as ‘doubly worthy’ on a list Shaftesbury drew up, noting the political positions of each house in relation to exclusion. Another influential member of this pro-exclusion grouping was William Russell, the MP for Bedfordshire, who had five members of the House of Lords impeached for being ‘papists’.

This informal grouping became known as the country party, the suggestion being that those at ‘Court’, who became the Tories, were only representing the self-interests of the monarchy and the establishment whereas members of the country party were the true proponents of the wider nation.

Most Tories or those in the court party, however, were pro-monarchy and in favour of James’s right to succeed, believing that the continuity of monarchy was more important than any perceived Catholic threat. They did not support the exclusion bill. Prominent early Tories included Sir John Ernle, MP for a number of seats in the south of England and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Although those who opposed exclusion evidently didn’t command a majority in the House of Commons – and perhaps this in itself is down to the meticulous way the Whigs managed the House for the first time – the Tories ultimately won in the short term as exclusion failed and James did successfully accede to the throne in 1685. But the victory was short lived. James was such an unsuccessful monarch he was effectively forced off the throne three years later, as his daughter Princess Mary and her Dutch husband Prince William of Orange were invited to take the throne.

The Hanoverian succession
The Tories had backed the wrong side and now suffered the consequences. Throughout this period, Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751) was one of the leading Tories to face a serious dilemma. Having backed the Stuart continuation of the monarchy, did he then go further and back the Jacobite cause to restore James II to the throne? Doing so might be beneficial for his personal ambition. It was assumed for a while that James’s son James Francis Stuart, known as the ‘Old Pretender’, would eventually be offered the throne, on the proviso that he gave up his Catholicism. Shoring up his position with him would guarantee Bolingbroke high office. Yet that was a significant gamble and could alienate him and other Tories from power for a generation. More to the point was that the Tory school of thought was not one of specifically supporting James or the right of Catholics to take the throne but of being loyal to the monarch. As HT Dickinson says, Bolingbroke:

‘…remained a staunch supporter of the royal prerogative. He never challenged the monarch’s right to choose his or her own ministers and accepted that he or she would have a considerable role in the shaping of government policy. The doctrine of hereditary succession appealed to him only in so far as it had the utilitarian advantage of preventing disputes after the death of every monarch.’

Queen Anne ascended the throne in 1702 and it became clear she was staunchly Tory – at this point also known as the Church Party – and Bolingbroke was soon appointed Secretary of State. Bolingbroke, under the instructions of the Tory leader, Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, was also involved with negotiations for James, the ‘Old Pretender’, to succeed Queen Anne upon her death. James, however, refused to convert from Catholicism and in March 1714 the negations broke down. Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover, acceded the throne as King George I.

George I was pro-Whig and was determined to clear out all of his Tory ministers. Oxford was imprisoned in the Tower of London while Bolingbroke broke rank and joined the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, leading to his attainder (forfeiting of land and civil rights) for treason in his absence, though he was later allowed back to fight the Whigs in opposition.

The Tamworth Manifesto
Oxford and his allies became so powerful that he is sometimes credited with the title of being the first prime minister, but traditionally that title is applied to Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, the powerful Whig minister of the 1720s and 30s, highlighting the growth of political power away from the monarch and towards Parliament which took place during this period.

Like a lot of terms in the parliamentary lexicon, the phrase ‘prime minister’ started out as an insult and was not officially recognised until 1905.

By the 19th century, the transition of power from monarch to Parliament was virtually complete. With Parliament now firmly in control of running the country, there were moves to try to extend the franchise, reform the electoral system and formally emancipate religious minorities such as the Catholics and the Jews.

The Tory vote collapsed, due to factionalism and being at the heart of opposing these reforms. The 1832 general election saw the Tories suffer one of their worst defeats, winning less than 200 seats, and matched only by the 1997 general election since.

In 1834, after the Whig Lord Melbourne had been removed as prime minister, a new political consensus was needed. Robert Peel, a more junior member of the party guided by the grandee the Duke of Wellington, put together his Tamworth Manifesto, named after his constituency seat.

In it Peel described the Great Reform Act, which had been designed to outlaw so called ‘rotten boroughs’ – constituencies with as little as one or two voters – and reform the electoral system , as ‘a final and irrevocable settlement… which no friend to peace would attempt to disturb’. This was imperative as rioting had broken out across the country after the House of Lords had initially blocked the bill. The turmoil that engulfed France during the revolution of the 1790s and during the 1830s brought home to Peel what could happen in Britain if the Tories continued to be seen as the party of elites determined to cling on to power, no matter what the cost.

The name ‘Conservative’ was also adopted, to underline the fact that the Tories had to move on and to re-enforce their values; they would preserve the status quo and ‘conserve’ what was good about Britain. Yet at the same time party grandees realised that they had to adapt and reinvent themselves or risk being on the wrong side of history.

It is this trait for reinvention, more than any other, which has characterised the UK Conservative Party ever since.