What is "tories"

Tory \To"ry\, n.; pl. Tories. [ Properly used of the Irish bogtrotters who robbed and plundered during the English civil wars, professing to be in sympathy with the royal cause; hence transferred to those who sought to maintain the extreme prerogatives of the crown; probably from Ir. toiridhe, tor, a pursuer; akin to Ir. & Gael. toir a pursuit.]

1. (Eng. Politics) A member of the conservative party, as opposed to the progressive party which was formerly called the Whig, and is now called the Liberal, party; an earnest supporter of existing royal and ecclesiastical authority.

   Note: The word Tory first occurs in English history in 1679, during the struggle in Parliament occasioned by the introduction of the bill for the exclusion of the duke of York from the line of succession, and was applied by the advocates of the bill to its opponents as a title of obloquy or contempt. The Tories subsequently took a broader ground, and their leading principle became the maintenance of things as they were. The name, however, has for several years ceased to designate an existing party, but is rather applied to certain traditional maxims of public policy. The political successors of the Tories are now commonly known as Conservatives.
   --New Am. Cyc.

2. (Amer. Hist.) One who, in the time of the Revolution, favored submitting to the claims of Great Britain against the colonies; an adherent to the crown.

n. (tory English)

The Tories were members of two political parties which existed, sequentially, in the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Great Britain and later the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from the 17th to the early 19th centuries.

The first Tories emerged in 1678 in England, when they opposed the Whig-supported Exclusion Bill which set out to disinherit the heir presumptive James, Duke of York (who eventually became James II of England and VII of Scotland). This party ceased to exist as an organised political entity in the early 1760s, although it was used as a term of self-description by some political writers. A few decades later, a new Tory party would rise to establish a hold on government between 1783 and 1830, with William Pitt the Younger followed by Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.

The Earl of Liverpool was succeeded by fellow Tory Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, whose term included the Catholic Emancipation, which occurred mostly due to the election of Daniel O'Connell as a Catholic MP from Ireland. When the Whigs subsequently regained control, the Representation of the People Act 1832 removed the rotten boroughs, many of which were controlled by Tories. In the following general election, the Tory ranks were reduced to 180 MPs. Under the leadership of Robert Peel, the Tamworth Manifesto was issued, which began to transform the Tories into the Conservative Party. However, Peel lost many of his supporters by repealing the Corn Laws, causing the party to break apart. One faction, led by the Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, survived to become the modern Conservative Party, whose members are commonly still referred to as Tories.