The Court Party or the Family Compact

The reformers' opponents were the network of early Loyalists and their descendants known as the "Family Compact," a term that can be misleading. Although there were plenty of family connections among the socially prominent Loyalist families, it would be more accurate to refer to the political leaders who worked closely with the lieutenant-governor, holding most of the positions on the Executive Council and the appointed Legislative Council, as a "court party" or an incipient Tory party. Many of the Tory opponents of democratic reform who served on these appointed bodies were social upstarts, and their power was based more on their control of economic institutions such as the Bank of Upper Canada--a private bank with a state-created monopoly over the issuing of credit--and the Canada Land Company than on their family pedigree.

--Peter H. Russell, Canada's Odyssey: A Country Based on Incomplete Conquests (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 98.