Who were the Whigs?
to brand the opponents of James, duke of York. Whiggery thus began as a distinctly oppositional and populist ideology, which saw political authority stemming from the people, a ‘contract’ existing between them and their king, whom they might resist if he overrode their interests. Early Whig principles played a key part in shaping the 1689 revolution settlement. As firm supporters of the Hanoverian succession the Whigs presided over George I’s accession in 1714 and afterwards engineered the long-term proscription of their Tory rivals. The resulting ‘Whig oligarchy’ achieved a hitherto unseen stability in political life over the next few decades, with power concentrated in the hands of the great Whig families.
