and on the following Christmas Eve he was appointed censor of moral philosophy for 1664. These dates, unfortunately, tell all that is to be said about Locke's connection with the posts thus assigned to him. It does not appear that he held any others of a public sort in the university.

It would seem, however, that he occupied much of his time during the first few years after the Restoration in acting as tutor to a few of the younger students at Oxford, though on this point also we have very scanty information. In 1661 and 1662 he had, at any rate, two pupils, Thomas Harborne and Henry Clayton, and in 1663 another named Townshend; and it is probable not only that his rela

2

1 Lord Grenville, Oxford and Locke' (1829), p. 50.

2 This appears from some loose sheets in Locke's handwriting, torn out of an account-book, of which the remainder has disappeared, and from other stray scraps and fragments preserved among the Shaftesbury Papers (series viii., no. 30). Locke received 101. from Thomas Harborne's father on the 16th of January, 1661-2, and 5l. from Harborne himself on the 25th of the month. On Henry Clayton's account he received 51. on the 22nd of March, 1661-2. This short account, relating to Townshend, and dated the 14th of February, 1662-3, is endorsed by Locke, but written in a strange handwriting, evidently that of the young man's father :

tions with these young men extended beyond the years about which we have positive knowledge, but that in these and later years he had several other pupils.1

Was it to help him in obtaining tutorial work that Locke procured from the dean and canons of Christ Church the following certificate of good character and conduct, which he endorsed Testimonial,' and treasured up among his papers ?

"Omnibus in Christi fidelibus ad quos praesens hoc scriptum pervenerit nos pro uniuscujusque persona merito et dignitate debitam et omnimodam reverentiam.

"Cum Joannes Locke, Artium Magister et Alumnus Aedis Christi in Academia Oxoniensi, certis de causis ipsum in hac parte moventibus, Literas nostras Testimoniales de vita sua laudabili et morum integritate sibi concedi petierit, nos quorum nomina subscribuntur tam honesta ejus petitione volentes (quantum in nobis est) obsecundare Testamur per praesentes dictum Joannem Locke per annos illos quibus apud nos vixit sedulam honestis studiis dedisse operam, vitamque suam et mores piè sobrièque semper instituisse, praeteria in illis rebus quae ad religionem spectant nihil unquam aut tenuisse aut credidisse quod sciamus nisi quod Ecclesia Anglicana approbat et tuetur. In cujus rei testimonium nomina nostra subscripsimus.

"Octob. 4, 1663." 2

"JOANNES FELL, Ecclesiae Xti Decanus.

"EDW. POCOCKE, ejusdem Ecclesiae Subdecanus. "RICH. GARDINER, ejusd. Eccl. Canonicus.

Of the senior studentships of Christ Church it was

1 From the tone and purport of the letter to John Alford which will be quoted at the close of this chapter, it may fairly be assumed that Alford was a former pupil of Locke's, now passed out of his immediate charge.

Mrs. Blomer, writing to Locke from Paris on the 24th of January, 1669-70, said in a postscript, "Sir C. B., your pupil, took this place in his way home; but I did not care to say anything to you by so great a courtier." -Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 20.

2 Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 22.

prescribed by the statutes of the college that fifty-five should be held by men in holy orders, or preparing themselves for the clerical office. Only five were open to laymen, there being two "faculty studentships" in medicine, two in law, and one in moral philosophy. These open studentships were much sought after by those Christ Church graduates who did not care to become clergymen ; but most Christ Church graduates became clergymen as a matter of course, and the cleverest among them rarely had any difficulty in obtaining one or other of the ordinary studentships.

As Locke must have obtained such a studentship in 1658 or 1659, when there was no church of England, and when all university laws in its favour were in abeyance, he was probably not then called upon to decide as to his future profession; and perhaps he was not called upon for any formal decision until long after the church of England and all its privileges had been restored. But it is most likely that, without pledging himself to any course of action, he had serious thoughts of entering the church, and that with this prospect, if not on this understanding, he was not only allowed to hold his studentship somewhat irregularly, but was appointed to the college readerships in Greek and rhetoric, and to the censorship of moral philosophy, which he held between 1661 and 1664 offices usually assigned to clergymen. This appears to have been the calling that his father intended

1 "I have been out of my place" (as a student of Christ Church), wrote Richard Lower to Robert Boyle, on the 24th of June, 1664," above a year and a half since, for not being in holy orders, without which I could not keep my student's place, unless I can get a physician's place in the college, there being two allowed, but I had not the favour of friendship to obtain. either."-Boyle, 'Works' (1744), vol. v., p. 525.

him to follow, and it is clear, not only that he did not finally abandon it until 1666, but that he was frequently urged to adopt it by influential friends, some of whom professed themselves able and willing to procure for him high preferment in the church. A letter written by him. in 1666, to one of these friends, resident in Dublin, tells us that much in a very characteristic way.

"The proposals, no question," he here said, "are very considerable; but consider, a man's affairs and whole life are not to be changed in a moment, and one is not made fit for a calling in a day. I believe you think me too proud to undertake anything wherein I should acquit myself but unworthily. I am sure I cannot content myself with being undermost, possibly middlemost, of my profession; and, you will allow, care is to be taken not to engage in a calling wherein, if one chance to be a bungler, there is no retreat. A person must needs be very quick or inconsiderate that can on a sudden resolve to transplant himself from a country, affairs, and study upon probability which, though your interest there may make you

1 Lady Masham reported, as we saw in the last chapter, that, in the early years of his university life, Locke "wished his father had rather designed him for anything else than what he was destined to, apprehending that his no greater progress in knowledge proceeded from his not being fitted or capacitated to be a scholar." Excellence in such scholarship as Locke found distasteful to him was not much looked for in any but clergymen. The elder Locke, like his son, appears to have been a very religious man. We do not know whether, though siding with the puritans in politics, he shared their opposition to the episcopal church; but, even if that were the case, it would hardly affect his plans for his son's training. Many of Locke's contemporaries at Westminster were young puritans designed for the ministerial office, and during the Commonwealth, no less than in the times before and after, the Westminster scholarships, with the Oxford and Cambridge studentships to which they generally led, were regarded as proper and convenient passages to that office.

look on as certain, yet my want of fitness may probably disappoint." "Should I put myself into orders, and, by the meanness of my abilities, grow unworthy such expectations (for you do not think that divines are now made, as formerly, by inspiration and on a sudden, nor learning caused by laying on of hands), I unavoidably lose all my former study, and put myself into a calling that will not leave me." "The same considerations have made me a long time reject very advantageous offers of several very considerable friends in England. I cannot now be forward to disgrace you, or any one else, by being lifted into a place which perhaps I cannot fill, and from whence there is no descending without tumbling."1

2

Whatever thoughts Locke may have had about taking holy orders, therefore, were finally abandoned in 1666; and in the years before that date he had accumulated results of "former study " which he did not care to lose, and had devoted himself to pursuits from which he was not willing to "transplant himself." The calling that he preferred to any employment in the church, however lucrative it might be, which his friends could find for him and urge upon him, was that of medicine.

It is probable that Locke did not resolve to be a physician, instead of a clergyman, till in or near this year 1666. He seems to have been wavering between the two professions for some time after the Restoration, and to have been gradually drawn, by discovery of his own tastes and capacities, from the latter to the former. He seems also to have been gradually led to make a

1 Lord King, p. 27. Only Locke's draft of the letter has been preserved, and the name of his correspondent is not shown in it.

2 This view is confirmed by Charles the Second's "dispensation," which will be quoted hereafter.