Though he was not very hopeful about himself, Locke seems to have been in better health now than for some years past. As it had been arranged that he should return to England this spring, there was therefore no reason why he should prolong his already unexpectedly protracted sojourn in France, especially as his presence was urgently desired in England by Lord Shaftesbury.

He saw the last of Paris on the 22nd of April. On that day he rode as far as Clermont, on the 23rd he reached Amiens, on the 24th he was at Abbeville, on the 25th he passed through Montreuil to Boulogne, and on the 26th he arrived at Calais.1

"You are surely," he wrote thence to Thoynard, "the best of friends and the worst of comforters. From Paris to this place I have been as miserable as possible at the loss I endured in leaving you. My heart was so heavy that my beast stumbled under me, and I scarcely could find a posthorse that would gallop under such a load, though everybody says they are capital horses, and accustomed to bear men much larger than I am. That, however, is one of the least troubles of a man who has neither the wish nor the power to remove himself from your affection. As soon as I put my foot on the ground here, I begin to think of the pleasant conversation we used to have together, and of all that I should gain from you if I were with you always; and I assure you these thoughts distress me a good deal more than a horse that hobbles at every step. While I was in this poor state of mind, discontented with my journey, with Calais, with myself and with everything, your letter arrived and I opened it, when, lo! I found nothing but a history of the

1 Additional MSS., no. 15642, in the British Museum; Locke's diary for

1769. Et. 46.

RETURN TO ENGLAND.

entertainments going on in Paris.

409

That is poor consolation for a man who has left your city, and who derives no pleasure from the prospect of returning to his native land."1

How much of that last sentence was merely complimentary, and how far it expressed a real preference for France over England as a place of residence, can hardly be determined. Locke was fond of saying civil things to his friends, and he seems always, on losing any pleasure, to have been apt to magnify that pleasure to the disparagement of others in the uncertain future.

In that letter Locke made allusion to John Brisbane, who was secretary to Ambassador Montague, and with whom he appears to have been on very intimate terms. The day before Locke left Paris, Brisbane added an odd postscript to a letter addressed by him to Henry Coventry, then secretary of state to Charles the Second. "Mr. Locke, who will deliver this to you, is a person of extraordinary good parts and a very honest man. If you make any trial of him, you will find it so." Secretary Coventry was Lord Shaftesbury's brother-in-law, and had doubtless found out long before that Locke was an honest man and a person of good parts.

Locke started from Calais for London in the yacht Charlotte, at eleven o'clock on the 28th of April; and, being detained in the Thames for a day, by lack of wind, landed at the Temple stairs on the 30th of the month.3

1 Additional MSS., no. 28836; Locke to Thoynard, [27 April-] 7 May, 1679.

2 The letter is among the Marquis of Bath's family papers at Longleat; cited in the Fourth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission (1874), Appendix, p. 243.

Additional MSS., no. 15642.

TH

CHAPTER VIII.

WITH LORD SHAFTESBURY AGAIN.

[1679-1684.]

HE Earl of Shaftesbury, having been dismissed from the lord chancellorship two years before Locke went to France, had, during that time, and for some time after, become more and more alienated from Charles the Second and the court party, which was really the catholic party, and, as has been noted, had actually spent a year in the Tower as punishment for his efforts to thwart the treacherous and tyrannical policy of the king and his advisers. From the autumn of 1673 till the spring of 1678 the policy represented during most of the period by the Earl of Danby had been triumphant, and its triumph had brought England into worse degradation than it had suffered during any of the disgraceful years before. But a crisis, very brief and insufficient in itself, though the prelude of the far more momentous crisis that ten years afterwards placed William of Orange on the throne, occurred in 1678, when the eyes of the people were at length partially opened to the contemptible vices of King Charles, and to the schemes encouraged or sanctioned by him for bringing England into political vassalage to France, and religious vassalage to Rome. In that first crisis, Shaftesbury was to some small extent, and for some

1679.

Et. 46.

RENEWED CONNECTIONS WITH SHAFTESBURY.

411

short time, the hero. It was he, more than any other man, who procured the impeachment of Danby; and when, in the spring of 1679, a new scheme of government by a reorganised privy council was formally adopted by the king, he was appointed its president.

In anticipation of that appointment, probably as soon as he saw his way to a return to power, he invited Locke to come back to England and to resume his former relations with him as adviser upon all affairs of public importance. Locke did so, it would seem, with as little delay as possible.'

2

Arriving in London, as we have seen, on the last day of April, 1679, he proceeded at once to Thanet House, in Aldersgate-street, where Shaftesbury now resided when he was in town, and there or elsewhere he was in frequent attendance on the earl during the next two years at any rate. Unfortunately we have very little information. about his connection with public affairs during these and the following years. The stray details that have come down to us fully justify the inference that he was intimately concerned in all the important business of the time, often serving Shaftesbury, not only as his adviser, but also as his agent; but we are not able to follow him step by step through these movements, and must be

1 "In the year 1679," said Lady Masham, in her letter to Le Clerc, “the Earl of Shaftesbury being made lord president of the council, Mr. Locke was sent for home." Locke had evidently arranged some weeks before to bring to a close his sojourn in France, already protracted far beyond its intended limits, and as he had left Paris before Shaftesbury's appointment was made, he was probably first informed of it on his arrival in London. It may be supposed, however, that the crisis in public affairs that issued in the formation of the new privy council had caused him, at Shaftesbury's request, to hurry home when he did.

2 Additional MSS., no. 15642.

satisfied with such occasional illustrations as have been preserved.1

However zealously he may have worked in the service of his friend and his country, however, it is evident that he did so with but faint hope of any good resulting from his or any other patriot's toil. The state of public affairs had considerably altered during his three and a half years' absence from England, and the changes that had taken place in himself made these alterations seem even greater than they really were. When, in 1675, he went to France to seek relief from his bodily ailments, he must have been sick at heart on account of the utterly diseased condition of his country. But till then he was so closely mixed up, through his relations with Lord Shaftesbury, though not by much that was said or done by himself, with public business, that he must necessarily have regarded that business in the spirit of a partisan, rather than as an impartial observer. While in France, he was able to look without any bias upon the court vices, religious frauds and corrupt statecraft that by direct effort and indirect example had already brought England so near to the verge of ruin. When he came home, he was able to gauge very much more accurately than heretofore the true condition of the political society in which he had again to move, and by which his own movements were to be very materially influenced.

It was only a few days before Locke returned to England that Shaftesbury had been appointed president of the

1 The Shaftesbury Papers, which throw much light on Locke's connection with Shaftesbury between 1667 and 1675, are so incomplete for the later period as to be of comparatively little value. It is probable that the earl and his friends found it expedient to destroy all the important papers likely to implicate them with the government and its catholic supporters.