In Daniel Defoe’s “Memoirs of the Church of Scotland,” (printed 1717,) p. 173, speaking of the Covenanters, he says:—“This is the first time that the name of a Whigg was used in the world—I mean as applied to a man or to a party of men; and these were the original primitive Whiggs—the name for many years being given to no other people. The word is said to be taken from a mixed drink the poor men drank in their wanderings, composed of water and sour milk.”
And Bishop Burnet, who lived nearer to the time in which the nickname was invented, gives the following explanation of it in the “History of his own Times,” (p. 26, imperial ed. 1837):—“The southwest counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to serve them round the year, and the northern parts producing more than they need, those in the west came in the summer to buy at Leith the stores that came from the north; and from a word Whiggam, used in driving their horses, all that drove were called Whiggamors; and, shorter, the Whiggs. Now, in that year, after the news came down of Duke Hamilton’s defeat, the Ministers animated their people to rise and march to Edinburgh; and they came up marching on the head of their parishes with an unheard-of fury, praying and preaching all the way as they came. The Marquis of Argyle and his party came and headed them, they being about 6,000. This was called the Whiggamors’ inroad; and, ever after that, all that opposed the court came, in contempt, to be called Whiggs; and from Scotland the word was brought into England, where it is now one of our unhappy terms of distinction.”
The following description of the Whigs, in some of their risings after the restoration of Charles II., is taken from a MS. copy of a doggrel poem, (by Cleland, it is thought,) which the editor presented some years ago to the Library of the Antiquarian Society of Edinburgh—
“It was in Januar or December,
When I did see the outlaw Whigs
Lye scattered up and down the riggs
Some had hoggers, some straw boots,
Some uncovered leggs and coots;
Some had halbards, some had durks,
Some had crooked swords, like Turks;