. 1-10

And as soon as the time for yielding, however sullenly, to the king's illegal demands was over, he prepared to take his share in active opposition to them. On the 3rd of April, 1642, in the parish church of Publow, he publicly announced his assent to the protest that the Long Parliament had made the year before,' and a few weeks after that declaration he took the field as captain of a troop of horse in the regiment of volunteers raised by his friend and employer, Alexander Popham, now Colonel Popham, in the parliamentary army.

3

The rebellion in the west had broken out. The Marquis of Hertford and Lord Paulet were sent down to quell it; but Popham's regiment, aided by some other volunteers, drove them back in August, and, for a time, kept Somersetshire clear of royalists. But Bristol was not quite so brave or steadfast as some other towns, and when in September Popham sought permission to lodge within its walls five hundred of his horse, in order to strengthen its defences, he was refused admission, and he had to wait two months for the arrival of more regular troops from London, when the gates were forced open under the

of the kingdom, and of the contributions to be made accordingly by the 1st of March, 1635-6. That entry is followed by an enumeration of all the rateable persons in Publow and the neighbouring parishes, and of the amounts of ship-money levied against each of those persons-8s. 9d. being charged against the elder Locke himself, the largest item except four out of the fifty-seven of which the 97. claimed from Publow was made up.

1 Additional MSS., no. 28273. Next before this entry is "a particular how each tithing within the hundreds of Chew, Chewton, and Kainsham stands charged for the relief of his Majesty's army in the northern part of the kingdom," in respect of the subsidy appointed in 1641.

2 Additional MSS., no. 4222; Seyer, vol. ii., p. 310.

3 Clarendon, History of the Rebellion' (1849), vol. ii., p. 325; Seyer, vol. ii., p. 310.

leadership of Colonel Thomas Essex.1 In January he was sent with his regiment to relieve Exeter; but, having done that, he returned next month, and remained there for some time as chief adviser of Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes, now in charge of the city."

The parliamentary cause, however, was not destined to prosper in the west. During the first half of 1643 the royalist party, with superior forces and better generalship on its side, gained ground in nearly all the districts outside of Bristol. In Cornwall and Devonshire, Lord Hertford and Prince Maurice carried all before them. Maurice entered Somerset in June, and scoured all the country about Wrington, Pensford, and the other haunts of the Locke family, while Sir William Waller was hurrying down to meet him. Waller was reinforced at Bath by Popham's regiment and other supplies from Bristol, and with proper management might have defeated the enemy. But, after winning one battle, at Lansdown near Bath, on the 5th of July, he allowed time for fresh royalist troops to arrive, and then, rashly accepting a challenge to renew the fight, was altogether worsted near Devizes on the 13th. His infantry was cut up, and his cavalry, with Colonel Popham and Captain Locke among its officers, was put to the rout. A fortnight later, after a siege of a day and a half, Bristol surrendered to Prince Rupert.

What became of Captain Locke and his immediate leader after the catastrophe at Devizes is not recorded. They were not in Bristol when it was taken by Prince Rupert in July, 1643: there is nothing to show that they were engaged in its recapture under Fairfax and Cromwell

1 Barrett, History of Bristol' (1789), pp. 225, 226.

2 Ibid.; Seyer, vol. ii., pp. 315, 322, 329.

. 11-14

in September, 1645. We may reasonably assume that further work was found for them to do in the ensuing years, but we only know that they were on active service as soldiers from before midsummer in 1642 till after midsummer in 1643. That Colonel Popham continued to be a good patriot is proved by the little that we know about his later history. That he was not a very good soldier may be inferred from the silence of the chroniclers concerning any later enterprises that he may have been concerned in. And that Captain Locke followed his steps, as a soldier no less than a patriot, may also be inferred.

By the "public calamities" of the civil war, we are told, Captain Locke was a "private sufferer." It seems, indeed, that he was nearly ruined, and, as soon as his ordinary avocations could be resumed, he had, in order partly to retrieve his position, to add to them fresh work of a kindred sort, as clerk of the sewers for the county of Somerset. It was well for him and his family, however, that he was able, after some five or six years' inter

3

1 Popham entered the Long Parliament as member for Bath in October, 1645, immediately after the re-capture of Bristol. He was not in the Barebones Parliament, but he represented Bath again in Cromwell's Parliament of 1654, the county of Somerset in the Parliament of 1656, and the borough of Minehead in Richard Cromwell's Parliament of 1658. (Cobbett, 'Parliamentary History,' vol. ii., col. 616; vol. iii., cols. 1431, 1481, and 1534.) 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Jean le Clerc, 12th Jan., 1704-5.

3 Additional MSS., no. 4222. In his memorandum book, Additional MSS., no. 28273, entries begin to be made again in 1648, and some of them indicate that he was still specially interested in the business of the civil war. Thus we have the particulars of "a rate for raising 411. Os. 3d. per mensem in the hundred of Kainsham, for General Fairfax's army," in 1648, as well as some account of a 'purblind, partial, and innovated rate" levied in Kainsham hundred, the hundred in which the parish of Publow was situ

ruption, to settle down in his old ways of living. However praiseworthy and however necessary may have been

ated, dated the 24th of September, 1649. The last entry upon business matters is dated 1655.

The later pages of this memorandum-book are chiefly occupied with medical prescriptions and other recipes, some evidently written by the older Locke himself. One of the recipes has the following heading: "The weapon-salve, and the use thereof, as it was sent unto me as a most excellent and rare secret, from my cousin, Alderman John Locke, of Bristol, in his letter dated 5th April, 1650." Another and very strange recipe is apparently in the juvenile handwriting of his famous son:

"To make Capon-Water.

"Take three pints of sack; a red capon, feather pulled alive; take out the gut and quarter him, and beat it all to pieces;-it must not be washed. Then take half a pound of dates, and one pound of raisins of the sun; stone them both; one handful of pimpernel; half a handful of rosemary; one handful of hill-thyme; one handful of penny-royal; wash them and dry them in a cloth and cut them. Take all these, and put them in a clean earthen pot all night. Next morning put them in a cold still, and still it. Take a quarter of a pound of white sugar candy, and put it in the glass that takes the water, and you shall take three pints of water."

This next recipe is more interesting as being signed "J. L., Ox:" and being probably, if not of our John Locke's own devising, the one that he used while he was an Oxford student :

:

"To make Shining Ink.

"Half a pint of wort:

Half a quarter of a pound of galls:

Half an ounce of copperas:

Half a quarter of an ounce of gum arabic.

Put together; set over the fire till so hot you cannot well endure your finger therein, stirring it always. Let it stand 7 or 8 days, often stirring it. Then strain out the ink. You may double or treble the quantity of the gum, as you shall see cause."

Besides the business concerns and the recipes, this curious memorandumbook of Locke's father is interspersed with several entries on theological and ecclesiastical topics. There is a long transcript, for instance, from Archbishop Ussher on "the liturgy and episcopal government required by

his patrotic work as a soldier under the Long Parliament, it had brought trouble enough upon the little household at Pensford into which, nearly ten years before the civil war broke out, JOHN LOCKE had been born.

Pensford is a straggling village about six miles from Bristol, on the road to Shepton Mallet; the part of it lying on the left-hand side of the road being in the parish of Publow, and stretching up towards Publow village, a mile nearer to Bristol. The house which belonged to old Nicholas Locke until his death in 1648, but which seems to have been long previously occupied by his son, was situated in this eastern part of the village, with a field that is still known as Locke's Mead in its rear. It was thus

the house of parliament in anno 1640," together with "copia actus locationis mensae Dominic in ecclesia St. Gregorii, Civitatis London." There are also entries"de predestinatione," and so forth. Then we find a curious string of questions on "propositiones catholicae "-whether all that are baptised are regenerated? whether those that die unbaptised may be saved? whether bowing towards an altar is lawful? whether a minister may hold more benefices than one? whether the order of bishops is of divine institution? whether bowing at the name of Jesus is a pious ceremony? whether a minister may with a safe conscience administer the sacrament to one not kneeling? whether Christ did "locally" descend into hell? whether the minister's pardon in remitting sins is only "declarative"? whether in the election of ministers the voice of the people is required ? whether the church of Rome is a true church? To these knotty questions no answers were given by the writer. Did he set them down, in the days of puritan supremacy, as remembrances of the Laudian tyranny from which England had so recently escaped? or, having taken his share in the grand effort to save the country from papistical idolatry and "divine right " oppression, was he himself beginning to find out, with Milton, that "new presbyter is but old priest writ long," and to think that perhaps there was something to be said for as well as against the ritual and the ecclesiasticism that were just then being ruthlessly trampled under foot?