Q: "tories" -- what did William Wood mean in 1634?

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Wed Mar 24 16:00:55 UTC 2010


David Hackett Fischer has a footnote in _Liberty and Freedom_
(Oxford, 2005), p. 760, n.192, that says:

"The earliest American use of _Tory_ as a political term is in a work
of New England literature, which in 1634 referred to "King Charles
his tories." See William Wood, _New England's Prospect_, ed. Alden
Vaughan (1634; Amherst, Mass., 1977), pt. 2, ch. 18, p. 110."

(1)  If this is political, and it surely is anti-papist, it would
seem to relate to Tory, n., sense 2, "With capital T: A nickname
given 1679-80 by the Exclusioners (q.v.) to those who opposed the
exclusion of James, Duke of York (a Roman Catholic) from the
succession to the Crown."  The OED dates that sense from 1681.  But
of course in 1634 it refers to Charles I, not James (II) and the
Exclusion crisis.  (The lower case "tories" is Fischer's
error.  Vaughan's edition can be seen, limited view, in GB, and
confirms the quotation, with a capital T.)

(2)  If this is a reference to "the name of one of the two great
parliamentary and political parties in England", sense 3.a., the OED
dates that from 1705.  But I don't think Wood meant this.

(3)  OED sense 4. refers to loyalists during the American
Revolutionary period.  Not Wood's sense, clearly.

(4)  That leaves me with OED sense 1,a., "In the 17th c., one of the
dispossessed Irish, who became outlaws, subsisting by plundering and
killing the English settlers and soldiers; a bog-trotter, a rapparee;
later, often applied to any Irish Papist or Royalist in arms. Obs.
exc. Hist."  Wood doesn't mean the "dispossessed Irish".

      But might he have meant "Royalist in arms"?  The OED doesn't
separate the Irish outlaws from the royalist armed (and I'm not sure
without additional context), but in any case its earliest quotation
under sense 1.a is 1646.  Is Wood an antedating?

Joel

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