II.

Life

Locke was born in the village of Wrington, Somerset, on August 29, 1632. He was educated at the University of Oxford and lectured on Greek, rhetoric, and moral philosophy at Oxford from 1661 to 1664. In 1667 he began his association with the English statesman Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, to whom Locke was a friend, adviser, and doctor. Shaftesbury secured for Locke a series of minor government appointments. In 1669, in one of his official capacities, Locke wrote a constitution for the proprietors of the Carolina Colony in North America, but it was never put into effect. In 1675, after the liberal Shaftesbury had fallen from favour, Locke moved to France. He returned to England in 1679, but in view of his opposition to the succession of the king’s Catholic brother to the throne, he soon found it expedient to return to the Continent. From 1683 to 1688 he lived in Holland, and following the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the accession of a Protestant monarch, Locke returned once more to England. The new king, William III, appointed Locke to the Board of Trade in 1696, a position from which he resigned because of ill health in 1700. He died in Oates on October 28, 1704.