On 1 August 1714, Elector Georg Ludwig's designated regents, an overwhelmingly Whig group, took over the government of Great Britain from the Tory administration that had ruled under Queen Anne. In early 1715, this Whig ascendancy was reinforced by the large majorities the party won in the parliamentary elections consequent upon the accession of the new monarch. This hold on power would not be relinquished for nearly half a century. Conventionally, therefore, the succession of the house of Hanover and the ensuing 1715 election are considered a dividing line in British political history, separating the turbulent ‘age of party’ from that of the more staid ‘Whig oligarchy’.

While the Whig ascendancy was an important change in eighteenth-century politics, this narrative suggests a discontinuity at the election of 1715 that did not exist. Indeed, despite the different outcome, the election of 1715 was actually quite similar to its predecessors of 1710 and 1713. In all three elections both Tories and Whigs used the framework of the Glorious Revolution to organise and present their beliefs to voters. And like the ideological contestations of the so-called ‘rage of party’ under Queen Anne, the politics of the Hanoverian Succession continued to be articulated and presented under the rubric of the Revolution. Reflecting on the two events, an anonymous author affirmed in 1714, ‘they may well bear the same Name, viz. THE REVOLUTION’. The election, then, did not mark a new politics, but rather a shift in the balance of power within existing politics. The Whigs triumphed because voters in 1715 sided with their version of the Revolution.

This argument adjusts specific historical accounts of the 1715 election and larger narratives about the Whig oligarchy. Despite many important revisions, the most influential work on the Whig supremacy remains J.H. Plumb's The Growth of Political Stability in England. Plumb describes a number of elements that prepared English society for the political dominance of one group, but argues the decisive feature ensuring Whig dominance was the emergence of a leader in Sir Robert Walpole who was ‘willing to discard all those vestiges of old Whig principles that had clung to him during his early career’. The argument that the Whigs secured power by abandoning or reversing their principles is commonplace. In place of principles, according to these accounts, Whigs ruled through patronage and a variety of corrupt practices.