ホイッグ史観
Whig history is also criticised as having an overly dualist view with heroes on the side of liberty and freedom against traditionalist villains opposing the inevitability of progress. It also casts an overly negative view of opposing parties to heroes described, taking such parties "to have contributed nothing to the making of the present" and at worst converting them into a "dummy that acts as a better foil to the grand whig virtues". Butterfield illustrated this by criticising views of Martin Luther and the Reformation which "are inclined to write sometimes as though Protestantism in itself was somehow constituted to assist [the process of secularisation]" and misconceptions that the British constitution was created by Whigs opposed by Tories rather than created by compromise and interplay mediated by then-political contingencies.