Hanoverian Tory

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.

During the Tory-dominated Harley ministry (1710-1714), senior cabinet ministers led by Henry St. John intended to secure the throne for James. In preparation, army officers suspected of being pro-Hanover were purged from the service. Both Hanoverian Whigs and Hanoverian Tories were targeted. In the matter of the ongoing War of Spanish Succession, pro-war Whigs joined forces with the Hanoverian Tories under the banner "No Peace Without Spain", opposing the Treaty of Utrecht. While Queen Anne was approaching her death in 1714, the Hanoverian Tories worked with Whigs led by General James Stanhope to secure the country for George. The Hanoverian Succession followed on relatively peacefully following Anne's death in August 1714, although George's coronation did provoke riots across the country.

Despite George I's distrust of the Tories, the first government of the new reign included a number of Hanoverian Tories. After the failed 1715 Jacobite Uprising, the Duke of Argyll (a Whig with strong connections with the Hanoverian Tories) was replaced as army commander in Scotland due to his supposedly insufficient loyalty. During the Whig Oligarchy, the Tories were in opposition for several decades, and the name was often used as a synonym for Jacobite by their rivals. In 1727, when George I died, the 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 the Patriot Whigs in order to replace the long-standing Prime Minister Robert Walpole.