[f. LOYAL a. + -IST.] One who is loyal; one who adheres to his sovereign or to constituted authority, esp. in times of revolt; one who supports the existing form of government.
United Empire Loyalist (Amer. Hist.): see quot. 1897. For the quot. from Howell’s Vocal Forest (1640), given by Johnson to illustrate this word, see LOYOLIST.
[1647. The Royall, and the Royallist’s Plea (running title) The Royall and the Loyallists Plea.]
1685. J. Kettlewell (title), The Religious Loyalist: or, a Good Christian Taught How to be a Faithful Servant both to God and the King.
1712. E. Cooke, Voy. S. Sea, 294. The wounded were above 400 of the Loyalists.
1721. Wood’s Ath. Oxon. (ed. 2), II. 98/2. It was then the hap and fortune of one Dr. Tho. Bayly a great Loyallist, to meet with this Nobleman.
1781. S. Peters, Hist. Connecticut, 357. Colonel Street Hall, of Wallingford, a loyalist, was appointed General.
1812. Gen. Hist., in Ann. Reg., 205. The provinces of Spanish America were still the theatre of a sanguinary civil war between the two parties of independents and loyalists.
1852. Thackeray, Esmond, I. (1876), 2. This resolute old loyalist … was with the King whilst his house was thus being battered down.
1893. Times, 11 May, 9/3. The Loyalists in Ireland repudiated with one voice the Legislative Council proposed in the [Home Rule] Bill.
1897. J. G. Bourinot, Canada, xxi. 291. This event was the coming to the provinces of many thousand people, known as United Empire Loyalists, who during the progress of the war, but chiefly at its close, left their old homes in the thirteen colonies. Ibid., 297. Those loyalists, including the children of both sexes, who joined the cause of Great Britain before the Treaty of Peace in 1783, were allowed the distinction of having after their name the letters U. E. to preserve the memory of their fidelity to a United Empire.
