The Whigs were a political faction and then a political party in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and the 1850s, the Whigs contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs merged into the Liberal Party with the Peelites and Radicals in the 1850s. Many Whigs left the Liberal Party in 1886 to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which merged into the Conservative Party in 1912.
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford,, known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman and Whig politician who, as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons, is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, and supported the Church of England politically despite his antireligious views and opposition to theology. He supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 which sought to overthrow the new king George I. Escaping to France he became foreign minister for the Pretender. He was attainted for treason, but reversed course and was allowed to return to England in 1723. According to Ruth Mack, "Bolingbroke is best known for his party politics, including the ideological history he disseminated in The Craftsman (1726–1735) by adopting the formerly Whig theory of the Ancient Constitution and giving it new life as an anti-Walpole Tory principle."
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, KG PC FRS was an English statesman and peer of the late Stuart and early Georgian periods. He began his career as a Whig, before defecting to a new Tory ministry. He was raised to the peerage of Great Britain as an earl in 1711. Between 1711 and 1714 he served as Lord High Treasurer, effectively Queen Anne's chief minister. He has been called a prime minister, although it is generally accepted that the de facto first minister to be a prime minister was Robert Walpole in 1721.
The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed Whig efforts to exclude James, Duke of York from the succession on the grounds of his Catholicism. Despite their fervent opposition to state-sponsored Catholicism, Tories opposed exclusion in the belief inheritance based on birth was the foundation of a stable society.
Dame Linda Jane Colley, is an expert on British, imperial and global history from 1700. She is currently Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University and a long-term fellow in history at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. She previously held chairs at Yale University and at the London School of Economics. Her work frequently approaches the past from inter-disciplinary perspectives.
Abigail Masham, Baroness Masham, was an English courtier. She was a favourite of Queen Anne, and a cousin of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.
The 1768 British general election returned members to serve in the House of Commons of the 13th Parliament of Great Britain to be held, after the merger of the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland in 1707.
Thomas Willoughby, 1st Baron Middleton, was a Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1698 and 1711 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Middleton as one of Harley's Dozen.
William Bromley of Baginton, Warwickshire, was an English Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1690 and 1732. He was Speaker of the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1710 to 1713 and Secretary of State for the Northern Department from 1713 to 1714.
Francis Gastrell was Bishop of Chester and a writer on deism. He was a friend of Jonathan Swift, mentioned several times in A Journal to Stella, and chaplain to Robert Harley, when Harley was Speaker of the House of Commons.
Henry Paget, 1st Earl of Uxbridge, of Beaudesert, Staffordshire, and West Drayton, Middlesex, was a British landowner and Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons from 1695 until 1712 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Burton as one of Harley's Dozen. He was a Hanoverian Tory, supportive of the Hanoverian Succession.
The Harleyministry was the British government that existed between 1710 and 1714 in the reign of Queen Anne. It was headed by Robert Harley and composed largely of Tories. Harley was a former Whig who had changed sides, bringing down the seemingly powerful Whig Junto and their moderate Tory ally Lord Godolphin. It came during the Rage of Party when divisions between the two factions were at their height, and a "paper war" broke out between their supporters. Amongst those writers supportive of Harley's government were Jonathon Swift, Daniel Defoe, Delarivier Manley, John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope who clashed with members of the rival Kit-Kat Club.
Alexander Pendarves, MP was a Cornish landowner and Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1689 and 1725.
William Stephens, of Bowcombe, near Newport, Isle of Wight, and later Beaulieu, Savannah, Georgia, was an English Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1702 to 1727. He emigrated to Georgia and was governor of the Province of Georgia between 1743 and 1751.
The History of the Rebellion by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon and former advisor to Charles I and Charles II, is his account of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Originally published between 1702 and 1704 as The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, it was the first detailed account from a key player in the events it covered.
Sir James Dashwood, 2nd Baronet (1715–1779) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1740 to 1768.
Sir William Stapleton, 4th Baronet, of Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire, was an English Jacobite and Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1727 to 1740.
Thomas Cartwright (1671–1748), of Aynho Park, Northamptonshire was an English landowner and Tory politician, who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1695 and 1748. As the longest serving Member he eventually became Father of the House.
Harley's Dozen were twelve new peerages created in December 1711 by the British Tory government of Robert Harley which was struggling to gain a majority in the Whig-dominated House of Lords. This came at a time when the government were negotiating peace terms to end the ongoing War of the Spanish Succession, which were unlikely to pass the Lords where opposition Whigs and some Tories had joined together to block them under the slogan "No Peace Without Spain".
