. 28-33 His first actual sight of royalty probably occurred in September, 1663, when the king went to Oxford, and lodged at Christ Church. The party, comprising Charles and his newly married wife Catherine, the Duke of York and his wife Anne, with a large retinue which included Sir Henry Bennet and William Godolphin, arrived on the 23rd of the month, and was met by the students, Locke doubtless being among them, who formed a guard of honour, with Dr. Fell, the dean of Christ Church, at their head. On the following Sunday the king and his party attended service at Christ Church Cathedral, when Dr. Fell preached "a seasonable and excellent sermon; and on the 28th there was a grand celebration of the event in the university, and a giving away of honorary degrees, on which occasion both Bennet and Godolphin were made doctors of civil law." 112 That royal visit may have had no effect upon Locke's career. Just two years later, however, the court was again at Oxford for a longer time, and the consequences to Locke were of some importance. The great plague having broken out in London in the spring of 1665, Charles and all his subjects who were not compelled to remain in town fled to the country, and, after seeking shelter at Salisbury and elsewhere, the king resolved to pass the autumn at Oxford, and to hold there a short session of parliament. He arrived, with his court, on the 23rd of September, and remained till after ChristBennet, now Baron Arlington, was at this time mas. 1 Domestic State Papers, Reign of Charles II., in the Record Office, vol. lxxx., no. 119. 2 Ibid. 3 Wood, Fasti Oxonienses,' part ii., col. 275. Domestic State Papers, Reign of Charles II., vol. cxxxiii, no. 34. the most influential of his advisers, though Clarendon was still in considerable favour; and Godolphin was, as he had been, Arlington's right-hand man. With them also was another of Locke's old school-fellows, Joseph Williamson, principal secretary of state in 1674, and now joint-secretary with Godolphin to Arlington. There was some, but apparently not much, intimacy between him and Locke. The session of parliament at Oxford, which lasted from the 9th till the 31st of October, was specially convened in order that an additional supply might be obtained for carrying on the indefensible war with Holland that had been formally begun in February. If Locke, as may be almost taken for granted, sometimes attended the debates, his attention must have been roused by a curious discussion on the royal prerogative which sprang out of this business. The money asked for was readily voted; but there was considerable opposition to a proviso introduced into the bill, "to make all the money to be raised by this bill to be applied only to those ends to which it was given, which was the carrying on the war, and to no other purpose whatsoever, by what authority soever." The proviso was enforced, and the principle of "appropriation clauses," now such an important guarantee for the proper expenditure of public money, was for the first time established. Strange to say, however, the clause, introduced with Charles's concurrence, was approved by him all through the passage of the bill, and its chief opponents were Clarendon, Arlington, and Ashley, rivals banded together to preserve for the king a mischievous prerogative that he was quite willing to surrender. Charles may not have been shrewd enough to see the whole import of the innovation; but this is not the only occasion on 33 which, contemptible as he was, he showed himself less tyrannical than his advisers. One or two glaring instances of tyranny upon which both the king and his advisers were agreed cannot have escaped Locke's notice during this session at Oxford. The conventicle act having been passed in 1664, the high church party now secured a further triumph of bigotry over religious liberty by the passing of the five mile act, and only a majority of six prevented the adoption of another bill extending its monstrous provisions to all dissenting laymen as well as to all dissenting clergymen. If, however, the brief Oxford session of parliament transacted business that must have helped to excite in Locke greater interest in political affairs than may have resulted from the distant and hardly reported proceedings in London, he probably saw the court in a much more favourable aspect than it generally presented in the metropolis. The Dutch war increased the work that had to be done by courtiers as well as by other folk; and the plague had thrown such gloom over the whole country, that even courtiers were not in the mood to play. But Locke, hitherto for so long a time an almost constant resident at Oxford, only remained in it during the first five or six weeks of the royal stay in the town. The money voted, in October, 1665, towards the continuance of the war with Holland, was, of course, mainly required for the fitting out of new ships, and the renewing of munitions of all sorts in anticipation of fresh hostilities in the spring; but a portion of it was spent in diplomacy, and one of several small efforts to increase the strength of England by indirect means was an embassy to the elector of Brandenburg, whose territory was in immediate proximity to Holland, and whom it was therefore desirable to keep neutral if he could not be secured as an active ally. This embassy was entrusted to Sir Walter Vane, and Locke was appointed to act as his secretary. How the appointment came to be made is not recorded. But we need have no hesitation in assuming that it was effected either through the direct influence of William Godolphin or through Godolphin's introduction of Locke to Arlington and other leading men at court, perhaps to Charles the Second himself. As regards Locke, we can readily understand how willingly he accepted an offer enabling him, after so many years of studious retirement, to try his hand at public business, or, if the change of work was no attraction to him, to welcome the prospect which it afforded of a first visit to the continent. He evidently had not any thought, at this time, of abandoning his old pursuits. He probably considered that he would be able to resume those pursuits with new zest after a few months' occupation in other ways, and with the stock of fresh health and experience that it might be expected to bring him. Sir Walter Vane was the fifth son of Sir Henry Vane the elder, who had been secretary of state to Charles the First, and was thus a younger brother of the Sir Henry Vane who was executed in 1662. He was a royalist, however, and during most, if not all, of the Commonwealth period he resided abroad. He was in Holland between 1654 and 1656, and often afterwards, and, having returned from one of these visits just before the new war was declared in the spring of 1665, his experience was found useful at court.1 He was doubtless as serviceable a man as could be chosen for the work now assigned to him. 1 Domestic State Papers, Reign of Charles the Second, vol. cxvii., no. 18. About that work and its execution abundant information exists, as there has come down to us-besides the originals of twenty-six letters, chiefly in Locke's handwriting, but signed by Vane, to Lord Arlington and Joseph Williamson1-a letter book in which Locke had carefully copied several of these letters and several others addressed to Lord Clarendon, Sir William Morrice, and Sir William Coventry, along with all the replies to Vane's letters, forty in all, that were received from those various correspondents.2 But these letters are not of much interest to us. As to the public business to which they refer, it will be sufficient here to say that Vane, having been sent out to invite the friendly neutrality of Brandenburg, and to recommend neutrality as being to the advantage of the elector, no less than to that of the English king, received for. answer that the elector was willing enough to remain neutral-or to be a fighting ally, for the matter of that, if King Charles would pay him well for it—but that. he was not in the habit of showing friendship without a money return; and that, though Vane himself ap-.. proved of the course hinted at, and urged the English government to bribe the Brandenburgers, his suggestion was not agreed to, and he was forced to return with nothing done, after remaining just two months in Cleve, and, perhaps, spending more than the 3007. that was allowed to him for the work." One point is noteworthy in this correspondence. We find Vane writing for instructions indiscriminately to Lord Clarendon, Lord Arlington, and their subordinates, once, 1 Foreign State Papers, German States, series i., nos. 128–155. 2 Additional MSS., no. 16272, in the British Museum. 3 Domestic State Papers, Reign of Charles the Second, vol. cxlvi., no. 81. |