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Person1632 – 1704

John Locke

Also called: Locke

English philosopher whose Two Treatises of Government defended natural rights and the right of resistance, justifying the Glorious Revolution; he also systematised empiricism

Born into a Puritan family in south-west England, he studied at Oxford and trained in medicine. He entered politics as physician and secretary to the Earl of Shaftesbury, leader of the Whigs. When the earl fell, he went into exile in the Netherlands in 1683, returning after the Glorious Revolution on the same ship as Mary II. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding he held that the mind at birth is a blank slate (tabula rasa) and that all knowledge comes from experience, and in A Letter Concerning Toleration he argued for religious toleration.

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2 related events

  1. 1
    1651 – 1690Hobbes, Locke and the Social Contractauthor

    Hobbes in Leviathan (1651) and Locke in Two Treatises of Government (1690) argued that the state arises from a contract among the people. Hobbes drew from it a strong sovereign; Locke, natural rights and a right of resistance.

  2. 2
    1688 – 1689Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rightsrelated figure

    In 1688 the English Parliament drove out James II, who sought to restore Catholicism, and welcomed William III and Mary II as monarchs. With the Bill of Rights of 1689, constitutional monarchy — with Parliament above the king — took root.

People who appear alongside

  • Thomas Hobbes1588 – 1679

    English philosopher whose Leviathan held that people hand their rights to a sovereign by contract to end the “war of all against all”

  • William III1650 – 1702

    Dutch stadtholder who crossed to England in the Glorious Revolution and from 1689 reigned jointly with his wife Mary II, accepting the Bill of Rights

  • James II1633 – 1701

    King of England from 1685 to 1688 who tried to restore Catholicism and rule arbitrarily, and fled to France in the Glorious Revolution

Themes this person appears in

  • Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment and the English Revolutions1543 – 1796

    The Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton, parliamentary government in England won through the Puritan and Glorious Revolutions, and the Enlightenment that sought to remake society by reason — the groundwork of the civic revolutions and the Industrial Revolution