ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the Whig inheritance of the accompanying 'revolution' in the understanding of, and regard given to history. It shows that Whiggish history has survived, predominantly through the Whig approach of Plumb and his school. Whig history has been an influential in English historiography. Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Whiggish approach to history was to be employed to good effect in his History of England where he argued that history must recover from the novelist the recording of ordinary lives alongside narratives that deal only with power. In 1904 a great nephew to Macaulay and a worthy successor in the Whig tradition, published his well-received survey called England under the Stuarts. The Whig interpretation of history skewed the selection of evidence that was important to this narrative, and implied a causation between events that may only have existed in the mind of the historian. 'British history' has been seen as problematic in the sense that Whig history was concerned more with England.
