the answer, "and am obliged to own your justice that are pleased so amply to make satisfaction for some kind though unwelcome accounts. The Lord's name be blessed and praised for her well-doing and safely bringing that noble family so hopeful an heir."1

In the following June Locke accompanied Lord Ashley to St. Giles's for a few weeks, and there he looked after the baby, while Lady Dorothy and her husband paid a visit to Belvoir. Two letters from Lady Dorothy show that she missed Locke's company as a friend no less than as a doctor. "I am so much obliged to you," she wrote in the first, "for your letter and kind account and care of my dear one, that I am forced to give you trouble by this letter, and must tell you I do find so much alteration in my health and strength, that I most heartily wish you here every day, for I am sure this place would at this time do you all the good in the world." But, being away from her doctor and her baby, she was tired of Lincolnshire. "I wish I was at St. Giles's with my lord and lady, and where I should see you there with them." "I return you ten thousand thanks for your letter this day," she wrote a fortnight later. "Longer than this day se'nnight I cannot stay here, unless I am commanded by his lordship; for this two or three days I do find my condition. makes me most unfitting for to be here, where I find every day so many wonderful disturbances that I must be at rest somewhere. Nothing is more pleasant than the thoughts to see his lordship, and my lady, and yourself too. If you

1 Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 11; Lady Rutland to Locke, 7 March, 1670-1. No. 210 in series ii. is another letter from Lady Rutland to Locke, dated 10 March, 1670-1.

2 lbid., series viii., no. 12; Lady Dorothy Ashley to Locke, 1 July,

can, sir, let me hear from you this week, I shall be glad; for else we shall be gone the next, and hear nothing."1

Lady Ashley was not now at St. Giles's, as Lady Dorothy supposed, but at Petworth, the residence of the Earl of Northumberland. Of this Lady Ashley we do not hear very much; but she seems to have been an excellent wife (his third) to Lord Ashley, a wise and affectionate mother to her sickly step-son and his lively little wife, and a very good friend-" your faithful friend to serve you," she styled herself-to Locke. She was not a great scribe, but in this July she answered a gossiping letter in which Locke had told her of her husband's recovery from an attack of gout and had reported some news he had just received from London. "Though I am very ill at this exercise in all kinds," she said, "yet my earnest inclination to express my gratitude upon every occasion will not suffer me to omit this return of my thanks to you for the best of news you sent me of my dear lord's welfare, and of the gallant actions of our island adventurers "-probably the raid of Morgan and his brother buccaneers of Jamaica at Panama-" and also of the old dotage and young folly of the senseless English and Irish contrivance, overthrown by the French experience in gallantry, all which in several ways is very entertaining "—not entertaining to us, however, as we do not know what was the matter referred to.

Next month, Lord Ashley and his son being at St. Giles's, his wife and his daughter-in-law were in London, with Locke to look after them. "I have received yours of the 27th instant," wrote Ashley on the 29th of August, "with the most welcome news, both to me and my son, of my

1 Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 15; Lady Dorothy Ashley to Locke, 15 July, 1671.

2 Ibid., series viii., no. 14; Lady Ashley to Locke, 14 July, 1671.

wife's, my Lady Dorothy's, and the little boy's health." And he subscribed himself, "Your very affectionate friend to serve you.'

Those extracts from the letters of the Ashley family help us to understand Locke's position in it at this time. Further evidence of Lord Ashley's gratitude to the man who had saved his life is contained in a letter written by him to Dr. Fell, the dean of Christ Church, which also throws some curious light on Locke's relations with the university and college authorities.

In 1666, it will be remembered, Lord Clarendon had issued an instruction-which was not complied withthat the degree of doctor of medicine should be conferred on Locke, although he had not conformed to the ordinary routine; and in the same year Charles the Second had granted Locke a dispensation" to retain his student's place at Christ Church, although a faculty studentship in medicine was not available for him, and though he declined to make sure his standing in the college by taking holy orders. It seems that he was anxious to exchange the irregular studentship by royal favour for a more certain and better-defined position, and that Lord Ashley had used influence with the Duke of Ormond, who had succeeded Clarendon as chancellor of the university in August, 1669, with a view towards his obtaining the doctor's degree, which his absence from Oxford still prevented him from gaining in the usual way, on the occasion of an entertainment that was to be offered at Oxford in the week before Christmas, 1670, to William, Prince of Orange, now visiting the king, his uncle, when, according to custom, some complimentary 1 Shaftesbury Papers, series ii no. 191; Lord Ashley to Locke, 29 August, 1671.

degrees were to be given in honour of the event.1 Dr. Richard Allestree, now canon of Christ Church as well as provost of Eton, and Dr. Dolben, now dean of Westminster as well as bishop of Rochester and destined soon to be archbishop of York, who are referred to in Lord Ashley's letter, were high churchmen possessing great influence in university matters.

"You are well acquainted," Lord Ashley wrote to Dean Fell, on the 8th of December, 1670, "with the kindness I have great reason to have to Mr. Locke, on whose behalf I had prevailed with the Duke of Ormond for his assistance towards attaining his doctor's degree at the reception of the Prince of Orange; and I am apt to think the instance of your chancellor, and the relation he has to me, would not have been denied by the university. But Mr. Locke, understanding the provost of Eton declared himself and you dissatisfied with it, has importuned me to give him leave to decline it, which, upon conference with my worthy friend the bishop of Rochester, I have done, and returned his grace's letter; though my lord bishop of Rochester can tell you I could not but complain to him that your chapter had not been so kind to him in Mr. Locke's affairs as I thought I might justly expect, considering him a member of their house, having done both my life and family that service I own from him, and I being of that quality I am under his majesty, under which title alone I pretend to any favour from them. All that I request now of you and them is, that, since he will not allow me to do him this kindness, you will give me leave to bespeak your favour for the next faculty place, and

1 There is a lively account of this ceremony in a letter written by Sir Robert Southwell to Secretary Williamson near the end of December, among the Domestic State Papers in the Record Office.

. 38

I

that a more powerful hand may not take it from him. rely very much on my Lord Rochester's mediation and your own kindness to me."1

From this letter we can see, not only that Locke desired to maintain his connection with Christ Church and continued to look upon medicine as his regular calling; but also that the jealousy on the part of the high church party, which had kept from him the doctor's degree in 1666, still prevailed. He evidently asked that the Duke of Ormond's letter might be cancelled.because he had private knowledge that it would not be attended to, and did not care thus to court refusal a second time.

With two men, about equally esteemed by him, though the one has acquired much greater reputation than the other, Locke appears to have made acquaintance very soon after his arrival at Exeter House; or, if he had met them earlier, the acquaintance only now began to develop into close and lasting friendship. These men were Thomas Sydenham and John Mapletoft.

Of Mapletoft, Locke had probably known a little, at any rate, long before, as they were school-fellows for a year or two. He was a king's scholar at Westminster, and left it for Trinity College, Cambridge, four years before Locke proceeded to Oxford, though he was Locke's senior by only fifteen months. In 1658 he left the university to become tutor to Joceline, Lord Percy, the only son of the tenth Earl of Northumberland. In 1660

2

1 Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 10*, a copy in Locke's handwriting. The letter is printed in the tenth edition of Locke's 'Works.'

2 Most of the following account of Mapletoft's life is taken from Ward, 'Lives of the Gresham Professors' (1740), the copy used being the one in the British Museum, with numerous manuscript additions by the author.