The October Club was a group of

Tory A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. Th ...

Members of Parliament, established after the 1710 general election. The Club was active until approximately 1714. The group took its name from the strong ale they reportedly drank.Pat Rogers, �
October Club (''act''. 1711–1714)
��, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, May 2010, accessed 2 August 2010. The group has been characterized as having

High Church The term ''high church'' refers to beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, liturgy, and theology that emphasize formality and resistance to modernisation. Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term originate ...

tendencies. After the

Lord High Treasurer The post of Lord High Treasurer or Lord Treasurer was an English government position and has been a British government position since the Acts of Union of 1707. A holder of the post would be the third-highest-ranked Great Officer of State in ...

Robert Harley refused to set up an inquiry into the former administration's financial policies, on 5 February 1711 some Tories passed resolutions calling for inquires into suspected financial abuses. Initially 70 to 80 strong, the October Club attracted not just young and inexperienced

backbencher In Westminster and other parliamentary systems, a backbencher is a member of parliament (MP) or a legislator who occupies no governmental office and is not a frontbench spokesperson in the Opposition, being instead simply a member of the " ...

s but older Tories such as Ralph Freeman, Sir John Pakington, Sir

Justinian Isham Sir Justinian Isham, 2nd Baronet (1610 – 2 March 1675) was an English scholar and royalist politician. He was also a Member of Parliament and an early member of the Royal Society. Life He was admitted a fellow-commoner at Christ's College, ...

Peter Shakerley Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a sur ...

and Sir

Thomas Hanmer Sir Thomas Hanmer, 4th Baronet (24 September 1677 – 7 May 1746) was Speaker of the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1714 to 1715, discharging the duties of the office with conspicuous impartiality. His second marriage was the subject o ...

. The group grew to have "perhaps 200 members". The group were, according to H. T. Dickinson, "a major threat to the Harley administration".

Linda Colley Dame Linda Jane Colley, (born 13 September 1949 in Chester, England) is an expert on British, imperial and global history from 1700. She is Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University and a long-term fellow in history at ...

claims that the bulk of the membership were of

Royalist A royalist supports a particular monarch as head of state for a particular kingdom, or of a particular dynastic claim. In the abstract, this position is royalism. It is distinct from monarchism, which advocates a monarchical system of governme ...

ancestry.Linda Colley, ''In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party, 1714-60'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 87.

Notes

{{UK-poli-stub Clubs and societies in London Dining clubs Tory MPs (pre-1834)