Whig Party, Britain

The Whig Party in Britain was dominant from 1688 to 1760, and again in the 1830s and 1840s. It was the name of a coalition of like-minded leaders of Parliament, and was not organized among voters.

The term “Whig” was originally an abusive term for the country party under Shaftesbury in 1679. It was based on the aristocracy and from businessmen from the trading community and the City of London. It upheld parliamentary supremacy and toleration for nonconformist Protestants (but not for Catholics). The Whigs were primarily responsible for the Glorious Revolution 1688, and the Whig Junto was a powerful faction during the reigns of William III and Anne. The Whigs were united in opposition to the “Jacobites” (the followers of exiled James II) and put the Hanoverian George I in power. Tories at that time were suspected of disloyalty, so the Whigs under Walpole had a monopoly of power until George III became king in 1760. Then the Whigs were largely in opposition with the Tories dominant. In the 18th century they were not organized as a party in the modern sense and consisted largely of personal groups contending for power among themselves, kept together by friendship and patronage rather than policies and principles. They were eclipsed by the new toryism of the younger Pitt from 1783 and after the French Revolution many became Tories. They began to recover unity by supporting moral reforms, especially the abolition of slavery and emancipation of the Catholics. They triumphed in 1830 as champions of Parliamentary reform. Between 1830 and 1841 they effected some major reforms and acquired many followers of Robert Peel after the Tory party split in 1846. Increasingly the term “Liberal” replaced “Whig”, so that by the late 1860s it was in disuse. See Liberal Party, Britain

Bibliography

• John Carswell; The Old Cause: Three Biographical Studies in Whiggism. 1954 online edition
• H. T. Dickinson; Walpole and the Whig Supremacy. 1973 online edition
• Warren M. Elofson. The Rockingham Connection and the Second Founding of the Whig Party 1768-1773 1996
• Keith Feiling; A History of the Tory Party, 1640-1714, 1924 online edition; The Second Tory Party, 1714-1832, 1938 online edition
• J. R. Jones; The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis, 1678-1683, 1961 online edition
• L. G. Mitchell. Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party, 1782-1794, (1971)
• George Otto Trevelyan/ The Early History of Charles James Fox (1880) online edition

• Basil Williams and C. H. Stuart; The Whig Supremacy, 1714-1760, 1962 online edition