"The ‘old Presbyterians’. This was the oldest section of the party in two senses: it derived from the minority which had opposed the Clarendon code in the 1660's, and its members were veterans, survivors from an earlier age. They were to be distinguished from the majority of the Whigs by a genuine and positive zeal for religious reform and Protestant unity. All Whigs constantly talked of this, but most meant it largely in a negative sense, as much political as religious, meaning hostility to Popery and to those stigmatised as crypto-Papists. But this section, sincerely sympathetic to the dissenters although few of its members personally attended conventicles, tried to effect toleration and a wide measure of comprehension as real objectives and not merely a tactical or vote-catching moves."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
J. R. Jones, The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis, 1678–1683 (1961), p. 10
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Whigs_(British_political_party)
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Whigs (British political party)
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