In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party 1714-60Cambridge University Press, 1985 M11 28 - 384 pages In English history the years between 1714 and 1760 are peculiar in two ways. They have received only scant attention from historians, and they witnessed the exclusion of the tory sector of the nation's landed elite from all central as well as from prime local offices. In this book Linda Colley explores the fate of the tory party which has dominated both Parliament and the constituencies throughout of the reigns of William III and Anne. She refutes any simple identification of the party with cryto-Jacobitism, and explains both the ideological, electoral, and organisational factors which enabled it to survive under the early Hanoverians, and the circumstances which prevented it from regaining total or limited access to the political centre. Like canaries down a mine, the proscribed tories are also used to gauge the atmosphere of their high-and low-political environment. By examining the tory party's persistent if unavailing parliamentary lobbies and opinion, Dr Colley brings into question many of the current orthodoxies about England's political stability under George I and George II, and casts doubt on the repidity and novelty of political and social developments thereafter. |
Contents
The Nature of the Challenge | 3 |
The Tory Response to Proscription | 25 |
The Tory Party in Parliament | 53 |
The Content of Toryism | 85 |
The Tory Party in the Constituencies | 118 |
The Fabric of the Tory Appeal | 146 |
A Dark Hole with Blind Guides 171424 | 177 |
The Twisted Threads of Party 172541 | 204 |
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administration Anglican Atterbury B.L. Add Bathurst Bill Bishop Bodleian Library Bolingbroke borough Bristol Cambridge Charles Church constituencies contest Court diary Dissent dissident whigs division duke earl Edward election electoral England English Excise favour February freeholders gentry Geoffrey Holmes George George II Gower Hanoverian Harley Henry Henry Pelham Herefordshire Hist independent J. H. Plumb Jacobite James January Journal King landed Leicester House London Lord Lord Gower March Minister ministerial Namier Newcastle Old Corps opposition whig opposition's organisation Oxford pamphlet Parl parlia Parliament partisan party's Patriot Patriot whigs patronage Pelham Pitt political popular Prince proscription Pulteney reform reign royal Sedgwick Septennial Sir Robert Walpole Sir William Sir William Wyndham social Society Somerset Stuart Thomas Carew tion tory candidates tory M.P.s tory parliamentary tory party tory peers tory politicians toryism unpub vols vote voters Walpole's Westminster whig and tory whig M.P.s William Pulteney wrote Wyndham