Volume 2

Life of John Locke / by H. R. Fox Bourne.

  • Bourne, H. R. Fox (Henry Richard Fox), 1837-1909.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life of John Locke / by H. R. Fox Bourne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    -lit. 01. J THE DEGEADATION OF ENGLAND. 3 and Shaftesbury had only avoided the gibbet by going to die in Amsterdam. Eussell, Shaftesbury’s worthier associate, and Locke’s own friend to some extent, had, in defiance of the law, been beheaded a few. weeks before, heedless of the cruel warning of Locke’s more intimate friend Tillotson, that unless he submitted himself meekly to the God-sent king, he “ would leave the world in a delusion of false peace, and his eternal happiness would be hindered.” Algernon Sidney, also an acquaintance if not a friend of Locke’s, was now in the Tower waiting to be executed, in yet greateiv defiance of the law, a few weeks later. Lords Essex and Salisbury, other martyrs in the good cause, with whom Locke also had at any rate some acquaintance, had lately died in the Tower; the one of “ a fever on his spirits,” ^ the other either by his own or by an assassin’s hand*. “Fever on the spirits” was a common malady just then, for which neither Dr. Sydenham nor any other physician could prescribe a remedy; and Locke, with.so many political friends and allies dead or dying around,him,,himself spied upon and plotted against by his academic associates, in hope of finding some pretext for. making a martyr of him too, could not but be afflicted, with it. England had been ruined, though not quite past redemption, by that monarch at whose “happy return” he had rejoiced three-and-twenty years before. The “ divine-right ” king had Louis the Fourteenth for his god on earth, and prayed ^ See a narrative by Mrs. Hill, Stringer’s widow (Christie, ‘ Life of the first Earl of Shaftesbury,’ vol. ii., appendix pp. cxxiii.—cxxix.), who adds : “Dr. Sydenham was bis [Salisbury’s] physician, and Mr. Stringer often told him to do all in his power to save him ; and the doctor told him if he could cure him of thinking too much of the danger the nation was in of popery, etc., he could cure his fever; but Le laid that dancrer so much to heart that he lost his life for it.”