were to _plume_, or pluck the feathers of a bird to the bare skin.[48]
Sure I am we first heard of it in the Swedish wars; and if the name and
thing be sent back from whence it came few English eyes would weep
thereat." All England had wept at the introduction of the word. The
_rump_ was the filthy nickname of an odious faction--the history of this
famous appellation, which was at first one of horror, till it afterwards
became one of derision and contempt, must be referred to another place.
The _rump_ became a perpetual whetstone for the loyal wits,[49] till at
length its former admirers, the rabble themselves, in town and country,
vied with each other in "_burning rumps_" of beef, which were hung by
chains on a gallows with a bonfire underneath, and proved how the
people, like children, come at length to make a plaything of that which
was once their bugbear.

Charles the Second, during the short holiday of the restoration--all
holidays seem short!--and when he and the people were in good humour,
granted anything to every one,--the mode of "Petitions" got at length
very inconvenient, and the king in council declared that this
petitioning was "A method set on foot by ill men to promote discontents
among the people," and enjoined his loving subjects not to subscribe
them. The petitioners, however, persisted--when a new party rose to
express their abhorrence of petitioning; both parties nicknamed each
other the _petitioners_ and the _abhorrers_! Their day was short, but
fierce; the _petitioners_, however weak in their cognomen, were far the
bolder of the two, for the commons were with them, and the _abhorrers_
had expressed by their term rather the strength of their inclinations
than of their numbers. Charles the Second said to a _petitioner_ from
Taunton, "How _dare_ you deliver me such a paper?" "Sir," replied the
petitioner from Taunton, "my name is DARE!" A saucy reply, for which he
was tried, fined, and imprisoned; when lo! the commons petitioned again
to release the _petitioner_! "The very name," says Hume, "by which each
party denominated its antagonists discovers the virulence and rancour
which prevailed; for besides _petitioner_ and _abhorrer_, this year is
remarkable for being the epoch of the well-known epithets of _whig_ and
_tory_." These silly terms of reproach, whig and tory, are still
preserved among us, as if the palladium of British liberty was guarded
by these exotic names, for they are not English, whi