Whiggism

Beginning with the Titus Oates plot and Exclusion Crisis of 1679–1681, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689, Whiggism dominated English and British politics until about 1760, after which the Whigs splintered into different political factions. In the same year, King George III was crowned and allowed the Tories back into the Government. Even so, some modern historians now call the period between 1714 and 1783 the, "age of the Whig oligarchy".^[3]

Even after 1760, the Whigs still included about half of the newest noble families in England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, as well as most merchants, dissenters, and the

Quickly following the adoption of "Whig" as the name of a political faction, the word "Whiggism" arose from the appendage of the suffix "-ism", creating a term for the Whigs' political ideology. It was already in use by the 1680s. In 1682, Edmund Hickeringill published his History of Whiggism.^[5] In 1702, writing satirically in the guise of a Tory, Daniel Defoe asserted: "We can never enjoy a settled uninterrupted Union and Tranquility in this Nation, till the Spirit of Whiggisme, Faction, and Schism is melted down like the Old-Money".^[6] The name probably originates from a shortening of Whiggamore referring to the Whiggamore Raid.^[7]

The word "Whiggery", deriving from "Whig" and the suffix "-ery", has a similar meaning and has been used since the late 17th century.^[8]

The true origins of what became known as Whiggism lie in the

From Popery came the notion of a standing army and arbitrary Power... Formerly the Crown of Spain, and now France, supports this root of Popery amongst us; but lay Popery flat, and there's an end of arbitrary Government and power. It is a mere chimera, or notion, without Popery.^[10]

Although they were unsuccessful in preventing the accession of the Duke of York to the throne, the Whigs in alliance with

The great Whiggish achievement was the Bill of Rights of 1689.^[12] It made Parliament, not the Crown, supreme. It established free elections to the Commons (although they were mostly controlled by the local landlord), free speech in parliamentary debates, and asserted the prohibition of "cruel or unusual punishment".^[13]

Lee Ward (2008) argues that the philosophical origins of Whiggism came in James Tyrrell's Patriarcha Non Monarcha (1681), John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689) and Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government (1698).^[14] All three were united in opposing Sir Robert Filmer's defence of divine right and absolute monarchy. Tyrrell propounded a moderate Whiggism which interpreted England's balanced and mixed constitution "as the product of a contextualized social compact blending elements of custom, history, and prescription with inherent natural law obligations".^[15] Sidney, on the other hand, emphasised the main themes of republicanism and based Whig ideology in the sovereignty of the people by proposing a constitutional reordering that would both elevate the authority of Parliament and democratise its forms. Sidney also emphasised classical republican notions of virtue.^[16] Ward says that Locke's liberal Whiggism rested on a radically individualist theory of natural rights and limited government.^[17] Tyrrell's moderate position came to dominate Whiggism and British constitutionalism as a whole from 1688 to the 1770s.^[18] The more radical ideas of Sidney and Locke, argues Ward, became marginalised in Britain, but emerged as a dominant strand in American republicanism. The issues raised by the Americans, starting with the Stamp Act crisis of 1765, ripped Whiggism apart in a battle of parliamentary sovereignty (Tyrrell) versus popular sovereignty (Sidney and Locke).^[19]

Whiggism took different forms in England and Scotland, even though from 1707 the two nations shared a

There were also Whigs in the North American colonies and while Whiggism there had much in common with that in Great Britain, it too had its own priorities. In the unfolding of the American Revolution such Whiggism became known as republicanism.^[21]

In India, Prashad (1966) argues that the profound influence of the ideas of Edmund Burke introduced Whiggism into the mainstream of Indian political thought. The Indians adopted the basic assumptions of Whiggism, especially the natural leadership of an elite, the political incapacity of the masses, the great partnership of the civil society and the best methods of achieving social progress, analysing the nature of society and the nation and depicting the character of the ideal state.^[22]

• Carswell, John, The Old Cause: Three Biographical Studies in Whiggism (London: The Cresset Press, 1954) deals with Thomas Wharton, George Dodington, and Charles James Fox ^{[ISBN missing]}
• H. T. Dickinson, Walpole and the Whig Supremacy (University of London Press, 1973) ^{[ISBN missing]}
• Dickinson, H. T. "Whiggism in the eighteenth century", in John Cannon, ed., The Whig Ascendancy: Colloquies on Hanoverian Britain (1981), pp. 28–44 ^{[ISBN missing]}
• William Herbert Dray, "J. H. Hexter, Neo-Whiggism and Early Stuart Historiography" in History and Theory, vol. 26 (1987), pp. 133–149
• Goldie, Mark, "The Roots of True Whiggism, 1688–94", in History of Political Thought 1 (1980), pp. 195–236
• Guttridge, George Herbert, English Whiggism and the American Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1942) ^{[ISBN missing]}
• Mitchell, Leslie, Whig World: 1760–1837 (2006) ^{[ISBN missing]}
• O'Gorman, Frank, The Rise of Party in England: The Rockingham Whigs 1760–1782 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1975) ^{[ISBN missing]}
• Robbins, Caroline. The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (1959, 2004). ^{[ISBN missing]}
• Smith, Ernest Anthony, Whig principles and party politics: Earl Fitzwilliam and the Whig party, 1748–1833 (Manchester University Press, 1975) ^{[ISBN missing]}
• Ward, Lee, The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America (Cambridge University Press, 2004) ^{[ISBN missing]}
• Williams, Basil, and C. H. Stuart, The Whig Supremacy, 1714–1760 (Oxford History of England) (2nd ed. 1962) ^{[ISBN missing]}
• Womersley, David, Paddy Bullard, Abigail Williams, Cultures of Whiggism: New Essays on English Literature and Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century (University of Delaware Press, 2005) ^{[ISBN missing]}

• Burke, Edmund, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791)
• De Quincey, Thomas. "Dr. Samuel Parr: or, Whiggism in its relations to literature" in Works of Thomas de Quincey, vol. v, from p. 30
• Disraeli, Benjamin, ed. William Hutcheon, Whigs and Whiggism: political writings (new edition, 1971) ^{[ISBN missing]}
• Hickeringill, Edmund, The history of Whiggism: or, The Whiggish-plots, principles, and practices (London: Printed for E. Smith, at the Elephant and Castle in Cornhill, 1682)

• Whig history
• Patriot Whigs
• Radical Whigs
• Rockingham Whigs
• True Whig Party
• Whig Party (United States)
• Patriot (American Revolution)