MDMD(2): Notes and Questions - Whiggery

[Steven Maas (CUTR)]

> 59.25 `English Whiggery' the Whig party grew initially from the
> supporters of Scots Presbyterianism and then from those opposed to the
> return of James II. In the C18 they were the party of reform and great
> supporters of parliamentary sovereignty (i.e. over the monarch). Why
> therefore the accusation of Whiggery? 

Mason: "Surely. . .we serve no master but Him that regulates the movements
of the Heav'ns. . . ."

Bonk (to himself): "[I]f Mason is acting so unrestrain'd with a Deputy
direct from the Castle itself, how much more dangerous may his rattling be
in the hearing of others,--even of slaves?"

It sounds to me like Bonk equates "Whiggery" with the belief that one
serves, or should serve, only god, not the monarch.  Therefore Mason's
statement about serving only god makes him sound like a Whig.  If the
V.O.C. is in a sense the "monarch" of Cape Town, then Whiggery is
dangerous indeed.

Interesting that Dixon understands the danger immediately, yet Bonk thinks
of Dixon as "harmless, indeed, in some Articles, simple. . . ."

	Steve Maas