When Doctor Oliphant began to associate himself with the Tories, his Whig patients deserted him. When a prominent Tory, Lord Oxford, found the coach of an equally prominent Whig waiting beside a house door, he refused to enter the premises. London also had its own Whig and Tory hospitals – St Thomas’s for the former and Bart’s for the latter. Who would wish to be treated by a member of the wrong party? Eton College was divided between the two factions, which resulted in frequent fights and quarrels. When Swift passed through Leicester in 1707 he observed that ‘there is not a chambermaid, prentice or schoolboy in this whole town but what is warmly engaged on one side or the other’. The Spectator of 3 January 1712 noticed that ‘the Whig and Tory ladies begin already to hang out different colours, and to show their principles in their head-dress’. Four years later the Freeholder observed that ‘Whig and Tory are the words first learned by children’.

Peter Ackroyd, Revolution: A History of England Volume IV (2016)