The Northites, also called the King's Men, Ministerialists, or Tories, were a faction of British politics in existence from 1770 to 1784, comprised of supporters of Prime Minister Frederick North. While North came from a Whig family, he and his supporters were branded "Tories" by the Rockingham Whigs and Foxites due to their support for King George III's intervention in parliamentary politics.
While the original Tory party had disintegrated by the 1760s as politics realigned around individual politicians like Bute, Bedford, Chatham, Rockingham, and Shelburne, a new Toryism developed from conservative Whiggism by the time the American Revolutionary War broke out. While mainstream Whiggism was intellectually divided as to how to deal with the American Patriots, the new Tories were united in their opposition to the claims of the Thirteen Colonies, even if they were divided over how to enforce the Stamp Act. Many leading Northites came from Whig families, but they were able to appeal to the ex-Tory "country gentlemen" who had largely joined other Whig factions under King George II or remained a small, independent grouping. The Tories were uncompromisingly hostile to America, voting near-unanimously to go beyond the 1774-1775 coercive legislation and initiate a de facto war with the colonies on 26 October 1775.
The countryside and small towns supported coercion rather than conciliation in America, and Old Tories were persuaded to support parliamentary supremacy by the Whig component of the Northites. Many contemporaries accused the Tories of supporting the war solely to relieve Tory purses from an over-burdening land tax, but the Tories would acquiesce to an increased land tax as the war went on. By the 1770s, Toryism had evolved from support for the divine right of the monarch towards the divine right of proper authority, adapting to the Glorious Revolution's ideals. Tories regarded the Patriots as "Sons of Anarchy" and "Mob and Rabble led by mad Enthusiasts and desperate Republicans," and American loyalists compared the Patriots to the Parliamentarians of Oliver Cromwell's time or the Anabaptists of Munster. The Anglican clergy used their age-old "Church in Danger" theme to attack the radical political sympathies of New Englander Dissenters, reviving "High Toryism." Tories argued that Dissenters wished to subvert the constitution, and they linked the domestic radicalism of John Wilkes to the Patriot cause.
Toryism came to be associated with British imperial supremacy, representing the country gentlemen and the broader body of provincial opinion. Their alliance with the court of King George III to coerce the Americans signified a growing identification of the governing class with the conservative values of the landed interest, and the New Tories' identification with the defense of unchanging church and state values would carry on under William Pitt the Younger and Lord Liverpool.
In 1774, Lord North's snap election - called with the goal of showing national confidence in North's coercive measures against the Thirteen Colonies - saw the Ministerialists overcome a divided and poorly organized opposition. Few Opposition leaders were ready to side with the Boston rioters against Britain lest they virtually renounce British sovereignty in America; instead, the election was fought over whether North should enforce American submission through military conflict. The issue of America featured in urban constituencies like Bristol, London, and Westminster, and radicals staunchly opposed the granting of rights to Canadian Catholics by the North ministry. Middlesex radicalism spread throughout the metropolitan area (where 5 out of 8 seats voted for John Wilkes' Radicals) and into some large provincial cities (including Southwark). The East India Company supported candidates who would oppose any investigations into their accumulation of wealth, but their bribery resulted in their Shaftesbury and Hindon candidates being unseated on appeal.
The failure of the British government to win the war against the Americans, even after capturing several major cities, played a key role in the 1780 election. North called the election after hearing of Henry Clinton's capture of Charleston, hoping it would bolster the government's support. While a pollster predicted that 343 Ministerialists and 215 Oppositionists would be returned, the actual results were 260 Ministerialists and 254 Oppositionists. Boroughs under patronage began to defect to the Opposition, while Yorkshiremen advocated for economic reform. The government only spent its war chest well when it was spent on well-organized party organizations like the one in Bristol, which unseated Edmund Burke and another Whig; otherwise, it threw away its money on races like Gloucester. In the five metropolitan constituencies, the Opposition won 11 of 12 seats. Radicals lost at Bristol, Worcester, and elsewhere in the provinces. Ultimately, 1780 saw the government suffer a thrashing in Greater London, English counties, and larger provincial boroughs. Medium and small English boroughs and Scotland helped North win a narrow majority, but many smaller borough MPs retained a degree of independence. When North lost their confidence, his premiership and faction collapsed.
While North was ultimately ousted from power at the end of the American Revolutionary War, the Pittites would serve as a new home for "New Tories" and eventually revive that term by the 1810s.
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