John Locke
John Locke lived to become the most influential people in England, and perhaps one of the most influential people in the seventeenth century. He was born in Wrington, a village in Somerset County, on August 29, 1632. He was named after his father, and was a country lawyer and a small landowner who served on the Puritan side in the early stages of the English civil war. Locke's father later died in 1661. His mother was thirty-five years old when he was born and died when he was twenty-two. In 1647, Locke went to Westminster School in London, were he was a part of a small group of special boys who had the privilege of living in the school and who received a stipend for two or three years before standing for election for either Christ Church, Oxford or Trinity College Cambridge. Locke stayed there until 1650. At the age of twenty, Locke attended the Christ Church, Oxford University, in 1652. Although Locke would rather have learned philosophy from Descartes instead of Aristotle, he still satisfied authorities. One of Locke's friends from Westminster school, Richard Lower, introduced Locke to medicine and the experimental philosophy being pursued by the virtuosi at Wadham. Locke received his B.A. in February 1656. Locke was
The idea that the power to govern was obtained from the permission of the people, influenced the "founding fathers" of the United States Constitution. He declined an offer of preferment for a clerical position in 1666, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1668. Shaftsbury was later tried for treason but he was acquitted. While working for Lord Ashley, Locke's work included being the secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations and Secretary to the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas. In southern France, at the famous health resort of Montpellier, Locke journals he recorded there would later be in Essay Concerning Human Understanding. While in Holland Locke had formed a friendship with Philip van Limbroch, the leader of the Remonstrant clergy, to whom Epistola de Tolerantia was dedicated. This would make the monarch's decisions the will of God. Before there were governments, people exist in a state of nature, where they are governed only by the laws of nature. Locke remained at Oates until his death in 1704. The Board had a variety of duties including overseeing colonial governments. The two of them liked one another and as a result of this meeting, Ashley invited Locke to come to London to be his personal physician. Behind both these doctrines lies the idea of the independence of the individual person. The state of nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society, men are subject to moral law, which is the law of God. In 1696 a Board of Trade was established and Locke was appointed to it. Because of his asthma, Locke went to France in hope of better health.
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