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The Origins of ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ in English Political Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Robert Willman
Robert Willman
Affiliation:
Bowdoin College
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Extract

Although ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ are among the most historic words in the language of English politics, their origins have never been subjected to modern scholarly study. Modern historians of the Exclusion Crisis are attracted by other aspects of the period; we find in the words little of die immediate relevance or historical continuity which Macaulay saw when he wrote glowingly of ‘two nicknames which, diough originally given in insult, were soon assumed with pride, which are still in daily use, which have spread as widely as the English race, and which will last as long as the English literature’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 247 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

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10 Sir George Reresby Sitwell, The First Whig (Scarborough, privately printed, 1894), Appendix; for Sitwell's influence, cf. Trevelyan, G. M., England Under the Stuarts (1904), 411; Mengel, E. F. Jr, ed., Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660–1714, II (New Haven, 1965)Google Scholar, xxiv. Defoe's version was quoted in extenso in the Edinburgh Review, L (1829), 403ff., and Macaulay must have seen it; but no trace of it is to be found in the History of England. Macaulay distrusted Defoe as a historian: ‘ The “ History of the Plague ” and the “ Memoirs of a Cavalier ” are … wonderfully like true histories; but, considered as novels, which they are, there is not much in them ’: Trevelyan, G. O., The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (New York, 1875), II, 383.Google Scholar

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35 H.M.C. Ormonde MSS., v, 473–74; 530–31; 535–37; CSPD 1680–1681, 623–25; briefly discussed in Prendergast, J. P., Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution (1887), 115.Google Scholar I hope to pursue the details of this curious incident in a forthcoming article.

36 H.M.C. Ormonde MSS., v, 471.

37 The True Protestant Mercury, # 5, n Jan. 1681; Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome, # 36, 11 Feb. 1681.

38 Heraclitus Ridens: or, A Discourse between Jest and Earnest, # 3, 15 Feb. 1681.

39 State Trials, III, 361.

40 Feiling, K. and Needham, F. R. D., ‘ The Journals of Edmund Warcup’, E.H.R., XL (1925), 251–52,Google Scholar where the date given is ‘ 12° [Feb.] ’; but March must be correct. The warrant for Fitzharris's arrest was dated 26 Feb. (CSPD 1680–1681, 184), and the King ordered Fitzharris to the Tower after hearing him testify before the Council on March it (H.M.C. Ormonde MSS., v, 609).

41 The Loyal Protestant and True Domestick Intelligencer, # 9, 5 April, 1681.

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45 Heraclitus Ridens, # 3, 15 Feb. 1681.

45 The Observator in Question and Answer, # 13, 14 May 1681. L'Estrange had no corner on vulgarity; cf. Henry Care's response to the first numbers of the Observator: ‘Some indeed say, That as formerly he pretended a Patent for Fart-Cracking; so not to go too far out of his old Road, he now intends a Monopoly, for supplying all the Bog-houses in Town with Bum-Fodder.’ (Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome, # 46, 22 April 1681).

46 The Observator, # 13, 14 May 1681.

47 The Impartial Protestant Mercury, # 18, 24 June 1681; The Observator, # 28, 29 June 1681. Janeway was a well-known Whig publisher who had recently issued Tyrell's Patriarcha Non Monarcha and Neville's Plato Redivivus.

48 Heraclitus Ridens, # 23, 5 July 1681; # 24, 12 July 1681.

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