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January 19, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Whigs and Tories

Parliament (from Old French: parlement; Latin: parliamentum) is the original legislative assembly of England, Scotland, or Ireland and successively of Great Britain and the United Kingdom.  The British Parliament consists of the sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons.

Originally meaning a talk, the word was used in the 13th century to describe after-dinner discussions between monks in their cloisters.

In the 13th century, King Edward I (1272–1307) called joint meetings of two governmental institutions: the Magnum Concilium, or Great Council, comprising lay and ecclesiastical magnates, and the Curia Regis, or King’s Court, a much smaller body of semiprofessional advisers.

The parliament called in 1295, known as the Model Parliament and widely regarded as the first representative parliament, included the lower clergy for the first time as well as two knights from each county, two burgesses from each borough, and two citizens from each city.

Early in the 14th century the practice developed of conducting debates between the lords spiritual and temporal in one chamber, or “house,” and between the knights and burgesses in another.

Eventually, under King Henry VI (reigned 1422–61; 1470–71), the assent of both the House of Lords (a body based largely on heredity) and the House of Commons was also required.

Strictly speaking, there were, and still are, three houses: the king and his council, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons.  (Britannica)

In January 1679 Charles II dissolved what was known as the Cavalier Parliament, which he had first summoned in May 1661, and summoned another one for May 1679. For the last years of the Cavalier Parliament a loose grouping of Members, known as the Country party, had opposed the Court’s influence in Parliament, particularly its attempts to secure votes through bribes and patronage.

From 1679, in the wake of the Popish Plot allegations, a section of this opposition took on a more obviously religious dimension. Those who fought most vigorously against the Court’s corruption and its foreign policy also strongly opposed the Church’s persecution of Protestant Nonconformists and the possibility of the Catholic Duke of York’s succession to the throne.

This group became known as the ‘Whigs,’ and they showed their flair for organization and propaganda through their overwhelming victories in the elections for the three ‘Exclusion Parliaments’ of 1679-81. In reaction, a ‘Tory’ ideology had developed by 1681 which equally loudly supported the monarchy and the Church. (UK Parliament)

“Whig” and “Tory” are political party labels that have been in use in England since around 1681 – and their specific meaning has varied somewhat with changing historical circumstances.

In the late 17th century Toryism became identified with Anglicanism and the squirearchy (landowners collectively, especially when considered as a class having political or social influence) and Whiggism with the aristocratic, landowning families and the financial interests of the wealthy middle classes. (Britannica)

Thomas Babington Macaulay opined that the political labels “Whig” and “Tory” are “two nicknames which, though originally given in insult, were soon assumed with pride, which are still in daily use, which have spread as widely as the English race, and which will last as long as the English literature”.  (George Mason University)

As political labels, the terms derive from the factional conflict of the Exclusion Crisis (1679-81), Whigs being supporters of Exclusion (of the Catholic James, Duke of York, brother of the king and next in line for the English throne) and Tories being their Royalist opponents.

By extension, then, the Whigs were seen as asserting the primacy of Parliament over the monarch, while the Tories were seen as asserting the inverse.

Through the rest of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth centuries, the terms “Whig” and “Tory” would continue to carry the weight of the Civil War conflicts even as the two factions came to be defined and redefined, first, in the Exclusion Crisis itself, then, in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1688.

British Parliament and the American Revolution

For much of the 17th century Parliament had little direct involvement in the growing colonies in America.  Most had royal origins – through either chartered trading companies (such as the Virginia Company), royal grants to favorite individuals (William Penn’s Pennsylvania) or direct royal control (Barbados).

Parliament’s largely hands-off policy towards America later became known as salutary neglect. (UK Parliament)  Due to debt from the French and Indian War Parliament started to tax the colonies by raising import duties on certain goods. The colonists continued to insist that they could not be taxed by the British Parliament without proper representation, even indirectly by customs duties.

Then on December 16, 1773 a group of protesters in Boston boarded a ship and dumped £10,000 worth of tea in the harbor, an event immortalized in the United States as the Boston Tea Party.  In angry response, Parliament passed in 1774 a series of punitive measures, known in America as the Intolerable Acts, which closed Boston harbor and strengthened the power of the royal governor over the rebellious Massachusetts legislative assembly.

The crisis of 1774 soon tipped over into armed confrontation between British troops and American colonists at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts on19 April 1775. Eventually it led to war, after representatives of the colonies meeting in the first Continental Congress in Philadelphia formally declared their independence from Britain on 4 July 1776.

Following a protracted war, Britain formally recognized the independence of the thirteen colonies as the United States of America in the treaty of 1783. The only parts of its former North American possessions which remained were the colonies of Nova Scotia, Quebec and Newfoundland – none of which had joined the rebellion and which had received many loyalists fleeing the war-torn colonies.  (UK Parliament)

Whigs and Tories and the American Revolution

The early American activists referred to themselves as Patriots, or Whigs.  Colonists who stayed loyal to King George III were known as Loyalists, or Tories.  (LeeAnne Gellety)

Patriots, also known as Whigs, were the colonists who rebelled against British monarchial control.  The Whigs did not believe that Parliament had the right to tax the American colonies.

Their rebellion was based on the social and political philosophy of republicanism, which rejected the ideas of a monarchy and aristocracy – essentially, inherited power. Instead, the philosophy favored liberty and unalienable individual rights as its core values.

Republicanism would form the intellectual basis of such core American documents as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Loyalist (they were also known as King’s Men, Tories and Royalists) were colonist loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolution.  They considered themselves to be British citizens and therefore believed revolution to be treason.  Loyalists constituted about one-third of the population of the American colonies during that conflict.

They were not confined to any particular group or class, but their numbers were strongest among the following groups: officeholders and others who served the British crown and had a vested interest in upholding its authority.

The most common trait among all loyalists was an innate conservatism coupled with a deep devotion to the mother country and the crown.  Loyalists were most numerous in the South, New York, and Pennsylvania, but they did not constitute a majority in any colony. New York was their stronghold and had more than any other colony. New England had fewer loyalists than any other section. (Britannica)

Click the following link to a general summary about Whigs and Tories:

Click to access Whigs-and-Tories.pdf

© 2023 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: American Revolution Tagged With: American Revolution, Whigs, Tories, Parliament, America250

December 22, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Early Colonial Towns

For centuries, the feudal structure of northern Europe had been based on well-demarcated villages with open-field agricultural land held in common.

The era of enclosure, in which common land was divided into private holdings and the peasantry scattered across the landscape, was beginning to revolutionize the English countryside, shattering old forms of rural life that had previously bound people closely to both the land and the social patterns that land supported.

When the early settlers first sailed for North America, they left England at just the moment when two ancient forms of geographic organization — the manorial town and the parish — were disintegrating.

The first colonists brought with them premodern templates of village organization, and infused them with 17th-century ideas about theocratic utopianism and municipal incorporation, leading to a geographic order in the form of nucleated settlements —  they were clustered around a central point, both physically compact and socio-politically bound together. (National Humanities Center)

The physical environment also reinforced their ideological bias for clustered communities: New England was poorly suited for large-scale agriculture, with few opportunities for the mass natural-resource exploitation that had motivated earlier waves of European imperialism in the New World.

In addition, the colonists were well aware of the threat of raids from native confederations and fortified themselves against the Wampanoags, Narragansetts, and Pequots.

For all these reasons, the New England town developed early on as a distinct kind of socio-spatial unit: a political, religious and social community laid out as a single cell: physically compact and institutionally bound together. (Places Journal)

In 1700 Jamestown was 93 years old, Charleston 37 years old, and Philadelphia only 19 years old. There were two Jerseys but only one Carolina, and Georgia wouldn’t be settled until 33 years later.

From 260,000 settlers in 1700, the colonial population grew eight times to 2,150,000 in 1770. (In comparison, the French colonial population grew from 15,000 to 90,000 in 1775, i.e., just 4% of the English total.) In fact, the English colonial population doubled almost every 25 years in the 1700s.  (National Humanities Center)

Early Colonial town laws governed not only proper moral behavior, but also decisions about land use, the siting of houses, and the allocation of common resources.  Many early settlements were forts surrounded by walls for protection from the natives as well as other colonial powers like France and Spain.

 Layout of Towns

The layout of towns or villages differed. Towns typically started on a river – they needed a water source, it was also used to turn the mill.  Many were on the coast where the harbor was an important place of trade and business.

Early land records used the phrase “common lands” to signify both ungranted, undeveloped land and shared land that was used for pasture or agriculture.  In addition, the term was used to describe open spaces, although public gathering areas were also called greens.

The early central town commons were used for burying grounds and grazing land, in some cases with a pen or “close” for enclosing animals brought in from pasture (also to gather cattle in the event of Indian attack.  (National Gallery of Art)

Meetinghouse

One of the first buildings built in many early colonial American towns was the meetinghouse.

The meetinghouse served both as the church and as the meeting place for the citizens to discuss issues and make plans. Everyone in the town was responsible for helping to build and maintain the meetinghouse.

Larger cities would often have a courthouse where the local judge would oversee disputes and punish crimes. After hearing the evidence and testimony, the judge would quickly make his ruling and any punishments could be carried out immediately.

Church

The church was often the center of the town. Everyone in the town was expected, sometimes by law, to attend church on Sunday. Churches in Colonial America were generally fairly simple buildings.

Houses

The houses built by the first English settlers in America were small single room homes. Many of these homes were “wattle and daub” homes. They had wooden frames which were filled in with sticks. The holes were then filled in with a sticky “daub” made from clay, mud, and grass.

The roof was usually a thatched roof made from dried local grasses. The floors were often dirt floors and the windows were covered with paper.

Inside the single room home was a fireplace used for cooking and to keep the house warm during the winter.

The early settlers didn’t have a lot of furniture. They may have had a bench to sit on, a small table, and some chests where they stored items such as clothes. The typical bed was a straw mattress on the floor.

Governor’s House

Each colony had a special house where the governor lived. This was usually the largest home in the town. The governor’s home was where town leaders often met to discuss issues and make new laws.

Gaol

The gaol was the town jail. The word “gaol” is pronounced just like “jail.” People were held in the gaol while they awaited their trials or punishment. Prisoners might include criminals, debtors, and runaway slaves.

Magazine

The magazine was a building designed to hold the town’s weapons including muskets, swords, pikes, and gunpowder. The magazine was often a stone or brick building to help make it fireproof as it stored the town’s gunpowder.

Tavern

Most larger towns had a number of taverns. Taverns were places to get a cooked meal and a drink. They were also important meeting places. Men would go to the tavern after work to discuss business and politics. A lot of plans for the American Revolution were made by patriots in taverns across the colonies.

Market Square

At the center of the town was often a large open square where people could meet and trade goods. Farmers could set up booths to sell produce and small merchants could peddle their goods. Major outdoor events took place at the market square including holiday celebrations and athletic contests.

Coffeehouse

The coffeehouse was sort of an elite form of the tavern. Only gentlemen were allowed inside the coffeehouse where they would drink mostly non-alcoholic beverages such as coffee, tea, and chocolate. It was a place where wealthy and educated men made business deals and discussed intellectual topics.

Shops

Colonial towns had plenty of shops to buy all sorts of items such as shoes, tools, food, candles, clothing, paper, and furniture. Most shops specialized in one area like the wigmaker who made custom wigs or the apothecary who made medicines. (Technological Solutions)

Plymouth Grew Beyond its Bounds

When an early Colonial town became too large to maintain its spatial and social integrity, it would undergo a split, breaking up into separate towns, each with their own full set of religious and political institutions.  (Places Journal)

When the Pilgrims arrived at Cape Cod on November 19, 1620 they did not find a suitable place to place their community until December 19.

They chose a site with a protected harbor and high grounds, suitable for defense, and christened their plantation New Plymouth.

Click the following link to a general summary about early Colonial Towns:

Click to access Colonial-Towns.pdf

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: American Revolution Tagged With: Green, Meeting House, American Revolution, Colonial Town, Common, America250

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Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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