The strength of the party was the new aristocracy created by Henry VIII with the spoils of the monasteries, of which the Cavendishs, Russells, and other houses were the leaders.[25] They were naturally strongly Protestant: and their immense power dates from the Revolution in 1688. Their rivals, the Tories, were in opposition till the accession of George III; and, as their sympathies were all on the side of the exiled Roman Catholic Stuarts, they had little or no influence. When, however, George III, a prince born in England, ascended the throne, the Tories, who bore him no grudge for his treatment of the exiled royal family, rallied to the young monarch, who was resolved not to submit, as his grandfather had done, to the tyranny of the Whig oligarchy. Henceforward the Tories were on the side of the Crown, whilst their opponents resisted its encroachments. The revolt of the American colonies, provoked by Mr. Grenville’s Stamp Act, made the Whigs oppose the King, who was determined to coerce his disaffected subjects. When the French Revolution broke out, this party sympathised with the republicans; and were opposed to the war which began in 1792. Their following consisted of the dissenters and intellectuals: the former drawing their strength from the commercial classes, and the latter consisting of young men, enamoured with the cult of reason and extremely susceptible to new ideas. The bulk of the nation, however, the Church, the country gentry, the farmers, profiting by war prices, and even the lower orders, was Tory. The non-aristocratic members of the Whig party were often great sufferers. They were exposed to mob violence, as in the case of Dr. Priestley, to social ostracism, and to vindictive prosecutions by the government. But the great houses maintained their position and were too strongly entrenched in it to be seriously disturbed. Thus we have the spectacle of liberal ideas being championed by a coterie of great families, haughty, withdrawn from common folk, and so exclusive that it was almost impossible to gain admission to their circle. Hereditary exercise of power extending over fully a century made them skilled politicians; and when they recruited talent from the middle classes, the Whigs made their allies feel their dependence upon the ruling caste. Neither the philosophy of Edmund Burke in one generation, nor the versatility of Henry Brougham in another, prevented either from the sense of being in a state of dependence on their patrons.