David Hume, 'liberal historian'

The "philosophical historian" was the tag commonly attached to David Hume during his lifetime, but it appears that he had acquired the label 'liberal historian'--a term to be associated later with such overtly Whig writers as Lords Acton and Macaulay--within a few decades of his death. William Hayley in his Life of Milton (1796) complained that historians had dealt unfairly with the poet's friend and patron, John Bradshaw, owing to the central role he played (as Lord President) in the indictment and sentencing of Charles I. Quoting extensively from Milton's eulogy of his colleague, Hayley suggests that the poet and the judge were 'in unison with the high-toned spirit' of their age,2 and shared an unimpeachable integrity, displayed in Bradshaw's case by his courageous resistance to Cromwell's initial bid to seize supreme power. Hayley's wholesale defence of Milton from the 'charge of servile flattery, which he is falsely accused of having lavished upon Cromwell' involves the salvage of Bradshaw's reputation. Here, Knox-Shaw examines Hayley's ausoicious choice of the catchword "liberal hirotian," tagging HUme.