Hence it is that the lungs of the tobacconist are rotted.—Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair.
But let it be of any truly said,
He’s great, religious, learned, wise or staid,
But he is lately turned tobacconist,
Oh what a blur! what an abatement is’t!
Sylvester, Tobacco Battered.
Tory. It is curious how often political parties have ended by assuming to themselves names first fastened on them by their adversaries in reproach and scorn. The ‘Gueux’ or ‘Beggars’ of Holland are perhaps the most notable instance of all; so too ‘tories’ was a name properly belonging to the Irish bogtrotters, who during our Civil War robbed and plundered, professing to be in arms for the maintenance of the royal cause; and from them transferred, about the year 1680, to those who sought to maintain the extreme prerogatives of the Crown. There is an Act of the 6th of Anne with this title: ‘For the more effectual suppressing Tories and Rapparees; and for preventing persons becoming Tories or resorting to them.’ For the best account of the ‘tories’ see Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, pp. 163-183; and compare Carte’s Life of the Duke of Ormonde, vol. ii. p. 481.
That Irish Papists who had been licensed to depart this nation, and of late years have been transplanted into Spain, Flanders, and other foreign parts, have nevertheless secretly returned into Ireland, occasioning the increase of tories and other lawless persons.—Irish State Papers, 24th January, 1656.
Let such men quit all pretences to civility and breeding. They are ruder than tories and wild Americans.—Glanville, Sermons, p. 212.
In the open or plain countries the peasants are content to live on their labour; the woods, bogs, and fastnesses fostering and sheltering the robbers, tories, and woodkerns, who are usually the offspring of gentlemen, that have either misspent or forfeited their estates; who, though having no subsistance, yet contemn trade, as being too mean and base for a gentleman reduced never so low.—MS. Account of the State of the County of Kildare, of date 1684, in Trinity College Library, Dublin.