The most commonly identified Whiggish position is that of Thomas Macaulay, a Liberal Party politician and popular historian. His attitudes, in fact, come from the historical cusp at which the Whigs became the Liberal Party; previously, one might say, they were a political faction, or grouping of various factions. Between 1688 and 1832, in British politics, to be a Whig was more a question of allegiance than ideology, for most politicians. Macaulay's History of England, coming at the end of this period, is mostly concerned with its beginning; but was placed in a setting in which the abdication of James II was a precondition of progress.
Preoccupation with the 'whiggish' was one aspect of the post-World War I re-evaluation of European history in general. Herbert Butterfield wrote, from one side, a celebrated critique of the so-called 'Whig theory of history'. Marxist historiography in general has emphasised the underside of history, as something blithely ignored by sweeping talk about 'progress' in the absence of discussion of its costs. In terms of British history the founding of the Whig party happens at the (somewhat ill-defined) end of the early modern period; and therefore discussion of the 'whiggish' bleeds over into discussion of 'the modern'. Self-identified whiggish historians (Butterfield was rather chary of identifying those in his sights) include J. H. Hexter.