John Locke

John Locke was an Oxford physician and philosopher who spent years in exile in Holland under suspicion of plotting against the Stuarts, and returned with William of Orange in 1689 to publish, in a single year, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Two Treatises of Government and the Letter Concerning Toleration. The Essay traced all ideas to experience and founded British empiricism; the Second Treatise, with its natural rights, consent and right of revolution, was the political theory of 1688 and, a century later, of 1776. Some Thoughts Concerning Education shaped how the gentry raised their sons.