Hanoverian Tories were Tory supporters of the Hanoverian Succession of 1714. At the time many Tories favoured the exiled Jacobite James Francis Edward Stuart to take the British and Irish thrones, while their arch rivals the Whigs supported the candidacy of George, Elector of Hanover.
Following the Act of Settlement of 1701, the throne was intended to pass to the House of Hanover following the death of Queen Anne. However during the Tory government of Robert Harley after 1710, serious consideration was given by senior cabinet ministers led by Henry St. John to secure the throne for James instead. In preparation, army officers suspected of being pro-Hanover were purged from the service including both Whigs and Tories such as Henry Lumley. [1] The Duke of Marlborough, former Captain General and a moderate Tory, went into exile on the continent following his dismissal in 1711.
Tied up with the ongoing debate about the future of the throne, was a dispute over the end of the War of Spanish Succession. Pro-war Whigs joined with Hanoverian Tories under the banner "No Peace Without Spain", opposing the Treaty of Utrecht. As Hanover was a key ally of Britain in this conflict, and resented what was regarded as this abandonment, it naturally led George to prefer the Whigs. In spite of having about forty members in the House of Commons in early 1714, these were very unpredictable and could not be completely relied on by the Whigs in their challenge to the Harley government. [2]
As Anne grew increasingly weak in 1714, both Jacobites and pro-Hanoverians prepared to take measures to seize the throne if necessary by armed force. Hanoverian Tories worked with Whigs led by General James Stanhope to secure the country for George. In the event the Hanoverian Succession followed on relatively peacefully following Anne's death in August 1714, although George's coronation did provoke riots across the country which then continued into the following year. Whigs and Hanoverian Tories provided a solid bloc in Parliament to vote through the Succession. It has been suggested that many Tory figures wavered between the two factions at the Succession. [3]
Despite George I's distrust of the Tories, the first government of the new reign included Pro-Hanoverians such as Lord Nottingham. This continued after the failed 1715 Jacobite Uprising, although the Duke of Argyll a Whig with strong connections with the Hanoverian Tories was replaced as army commander in Scotland because it was considered he had been insuffienctly committed to defeating the Jacobites despite his victory at Sheriffmuir.
However, gradually the government began to be completely dominated by staunch Whigs, leading to the Whig Oligarchy. Tories were in opposition for several decades, and the name was often used as a synonym for Jacobite by their rivals. Nonetheless in 1727, when George I died, Hanoverian Tories again supported the succession of his son George II rather than the continued claims of James. In 1730 they were still active as a faction when Spencer Compton tried to organise a coalition between them and opposition Patriot Whigs in order to replace the long-standing Prime Minister Robert Walpole. [4]
Hanoverian Tories were active in the attempts to acquit former leader Robert Harley during his impeachment trial in 1715 and subsequent imprisonment in the Tower of London. He was eventually acquitted in 1717.
The Whigs were a political faction and then a political party in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and the 1850s, the Whigs contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs merged into the Liberal Party with the Peelites and Radicals in the 1850s. Many Whigs left the Liberal Party in 1886 to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which merged into the Conservative Party in 1912.
George II was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) and a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 (O.S.) until his death in 1760.
Anne was Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland from 8 March 1702 until 1 May 1707. On 1 May 1707, under the Acts of Union, the kingdoms of England and Scotland united as a single sovereign state known as Great Britain. Anne continued to reign as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland until her death in 1714.
George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 and ruler of the Electorate of Hanover within the Holy Roman Empire from 23 January 1698 until his death in 1727. He was the first British monarch of the House of Hanover as the most senior Protestant descendant of his great-grandfather James VI and I.
General John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, 1st Prince of Mindelheim, 1st Count of Nellenburg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, was an English soldier and statesman whose career spanned the reigns of five monarchs. From a gentry family, he served first as a page at the court of the House of Stuart under James, Duke of York, through the 1670s and early 1680s, earning military and political advancement through his courage and diplomatic skill.
James Stanhope, 1st Earl Stanhope was a British soldier, diplomat and statesman who effectively served as Chief Minister between 1717 and 1721. He is also the last Chancellor of the Exchequer to sit in the House of Lords.
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, KG PC FRS was an English statesman and peer of the late Stuart and early Georgian periods. He began his career as a Whig, before defecting to a new Tory ministry. He was raised to the peerage of Great Britain as an earl in 1711. Between 1711 and 1714 he served as Lord High Treasurer, effectively Queen Anne's chief minister. He has been called a prime minister, although it is generally accepted that the de facto first minister to be a prime minister was Robert Walpole in 1721.
The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed Whig efforts to exclude James, Duke of York from the succession on the grounds of his Catholicism. Despite their fervent opposition to state-sponsored Catholicism, Tories opposed exclusion in the belief inheritance based on birth was the foundation of a stable society.
Sir William Wyndham, 3rd Baronet, of Orchard Wyndham in Somerset, was an English Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1710 to 1740. He served as Secretary at War in 1712 and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1713 during the reign of the last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne (1702–1714). He was a Jacobite leader firmly opposed to the Hanoverian succession and was leader of the Tory opposition in the House of Commons during the reign of King George I (1714–1727) and during the early years of King George II (1727–1760).
The Whig Junto is the name given to a group of leading Whigs who were seen to direct the management of the Whig Party and often the government, during the reigns of William III and Anne. The Whig Junto proper consisted of John Somers, later Baron Somers; Charles Montagu, later Earl of Halifax; Thomas Wharton, later Marquess of Wharton, and Edward Russell, later Earl of Orford. They came to prominence due to the favour of Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland and during the reign of Queen Anne, Sunderland's son, the 3rd Earl succeeded his father. Opponents gave them the nickname "the five tyrannising lords". Other figures prominent around the edges of the Junto include Sir John Trenchard and Thomas Tollemache.
The Harleyministry was the British government that existed between 1710 and 1714 in the reign of Queen Anne. It was headed by Robert Harley and composed largely of Tories. Harley was a former Whig who had changed sides, bringing down the seemingly powerful Whig Junto and their moderate Tory ally Lord Godolphin. It came during the Rage of Party when divisions between the two factions were at their height, and a "paper war" broke out between their supporters. Amongst those writers supportive of Harley's government were Jonathon Swift, Daniel Defoe, Delarivier Manley, John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope who clashed with members of the rival Kit-Kat Club.
The Jacobite rising of 1715 was the attempt by James Edward Stuart to regain the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland for the exiled Stuarts.
The coronation riots of October 1714 were a series of riots in southern and western England in protest against the coronation of the first Hanoverian king of Great Britain, George I.
In the spring and summer of 1715 a series of riots occurred in England in which High Church mobs attacked over forty Dissenting meeting-houses. The rioters also protested against the first Hanoverian king of Britain, George I and his new Whig government. The riots occurred on symbolic days: 28 May was George I's birthday, 29 May was the anniversary of Charles II's Restoration and 10 June was the birthday of the Jacobite Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart.
Richmond Lodge was a historic property located near the River Thames in Richmond, London, in what is now known as Old Deer Park, lands belonging to the historic Richmond Palace. It was located close to the King's Observatory. It should not be confused with Pembroke Lodge or the White Lodge, both in Richmond Park, or a variety of other similarly-named properties.
The 4th Parliament of Great Britain was summoned by Queen Anne on 18 August 1713 and assembled on the 12 November 1713. It was dissolved on 15 January 1715 and would be Queen Anne's last Parliament.
No Peace Without Spain was a popular British political slogan of the early eighteenth century. It referred to the ongoing War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) in which Britain was a leading participant. It implied that no peace treaty could be agreed with Britain's principal enemy Louis XIV of France that allowed Philip, the French candidate, to retain the Spanish crown. The term became a rallying cry for opposition to the Tory government of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford and the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht.
The Whig Split occurred between 1717 and 1720, when the British Whig Party divided into two factions: one in government, led by James Stanhope; the other in opposition, dominated by Robert Walpole. It coincided with a dispute between George I and his son George, Prince of Wales, with the latter siding with the opposition Whigs. It is also known as the Whig Schism.
The Impeachment of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford was a legal process in the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1715 when the former First Minister Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford was impeached and sent to the Tower of London. Harley was accused of a number of crimes including high treason during his time in office, with charges particularly focusing on his role in the 1713 Peace of Utrecht which ended the War of the Spanish Succession.
Tamerlane is a 1701 history play by the English writer Nicholas Rowe. A tragedy, it portrays the life of the Timur, the fourteenth century conqueror and founder of the Timurid Empire. Rowe, a staunch Whig, used the historical story as an allegory for the life of William III who resembles his portrayal of Tamerlane while his opponent the Ottoman leader Bayezid I was equivalent to William's longstanding opponent Louis XIV of France. An earlier version of the story Tamburlaine was written by Christopher Marlowe during the Elizabethan era with a very different focus in the context of the English Renaissance.