whig approach to ancient history- is it possible?

Basically, I've been engrossing myself in my early modern history course at college where we are studying the English reformation, and have thus been reading works by A.G. Dickens, Eamon Duffy, J.J. Scarisbrooke and Christopher Haigh. All of these authors take either a moderate, "top down" or "bottom up" approach, meaning a concentration on either government policy sources or on the lives of individual people and social trends throughout history (also called the "marxist" interpreation if it has more of a socio-economic emphasis explictly above that of government in terms of importance). Obviously, since the early modern period, these defined approaches are probably more easy for historians as even in the medieval period, monks and scholars wrote thousands of treatises and chronicles, which thankfully many of which have been preserved through institutions such as the church and universities. For example, in the English reformation we have well documented churches like that of Morebath in Devon, and with the German reformation the various pseudo-humanist tracts that flooded Germany before the reformation; many of which also talk about some social issues. Obviously, however, there are many other examples. Historians since about c.1830 will have census returns, newspapers, wills, marriage and birth certificates that can obviously aid them in constructing a "grass roots" perspective of their respective period.