1660.

Et. 28..

PROPERTY IN SOMERSETSHIRE.

83

this property he seems to have been chiefly assisted by Peter Locke, his father's younger brother, and the only one who lived to be an old man. He was in frequent intercourse with this uncle and with the Keenes, his mother's kinsfolk, who continued to reside in and near Wrington, but was not himself very often in Somersetshire.

CHAPTER III.

FURTHER RESIDENCE AT OXFORD.

[1660-1667.]

HE restoration of Charles the Second to the throne

THE

from which his father had been deposed by the most irrevocable of all decrees, and the consequent revival of Stuart institutions, produced nowhere else a greater revolution than at Oxford, though the change was less sudden, and, except on the surface of university life, less complete than that which had occurred twelve years before.

The old order of things was of course re-established, and every effort made to remove all trace of the presbyterian and puritan supremacy by which, it was thought, the greatest school and most favourite haunt of episcopalian orthodoxy had been defiled. Most of the headships and other offices in the various colleges were either restored to their former occupants or assigned to new claimants from the party now in power; and the students were required either to quit the university or to conform to the prescriptions and shibboleths of the re-established church. But the change of rulers and of ruled hardly went beyond that for some time. Its chief effect was to drive away some violent and some honest sectaries, to convert a few puritans into hypocrites, and to enable a great many royalists to throw off the cloak of hypocrisy that

1660.

Et. 28..

THE STUART RESTORATION.

85

they had been wearing for several years. It did not very materially affect the position of a large number of men, who, latitudinarian under the Commonwealth, were able quite honestly to fall in with the arrangements of the Restoration, and of whom Dr. Wallis, the Savilian professor of geometry, may be regarded as a type and spokesman. "It hath been my lot," he said, "to live in a time wherein have been many and great changes and alterations. It hath been my endeavour all along to act by moderate principles, between the extremities on either hand, in a moderate compliance with the powers in being, in those places where it hath been my lot to live, without the fierce and violent animosities usual in such cases against all that did not act just as I did, knowing that there were many worthy persons engaged on either side ; and willing, whatever side was upmost, to promote, as I was able, any good design for the true interest of religion,

1 "The hopes of this" (the Restoration), said a royalist Oxonian of the day, who it is to be hoped exaggerated the temper and conduct of those members of the university who had been concealing their political and social inclinations during the Commonwealth, "made the scholars talk aloud, drink healths, and curse Meroz in the very streets, insomuch that when the king came in-nay, when the king was but voted in-they were not only like them that dream, but like them who are out of their wits, mad, stark staring mad. To study was fanaticism; to be moderate was downright rebellion. And thus it continued for a twelvemonth; and thus it would have continued till this time if it had not pleased God to raise up some vice-chancellors who stemmed the torrent which carried so much filth with it, and-in defiance of the loyal zeal of the learned, the drunken zeal of dunces, and the great amazement of young gentlemen who really knew not what they would have, but yet made the greatest noise-reduced the university to that temperament that a man might study and not be thought a dullard, might be sober and yet a conformist, a scholar and yet a Church of England man ; and from that time the university became sober, modest, and studious as perhaps any university in Europe."-Stephen Penton, The Guardian's Instructor, or the Gentleman's Romance' (1688), p. 44.

of learning, and the public good; and ready so to do good offices as there was opportunity, and, if things could not be just as I could wish, to make the best of what is."1

It was on that sound principle that Locke proceeded. Therefore, having been eight years at Oxford during the Commonwealth, he maintained his connection with the university for four and twenty years longer-until it was broken for him by order of Charles the Second.

cause.

He welcomed the change when it came, and, during the first few years, found no reason to regret it. He had seen enough of the disorder and tyranny incident to the management of the university by the presbyterians while they were vainly endeavouring to keep alive their dying He had good ground for hoping that a far better state of things would result from the promises given by Charles the Second to those who, in the name of the English nation, had offered him the crown; and his hopes seemed for some time in the way of being realized. The new rulers of the university were not men of great eminence, but for the most part they governed it temperately and wisely. As good order as was practicable under the Stuart revival was maintained, and many of the academical and scholastic improvements effected by Dr. Owen and his companions were adopted, or even further improved upon.

His own position and prospects were bettered by the change. On the 24th of December, 1660, he was appointed Greek lecturer or reader for the ensuing year. Whether he continued to hold the office during 1662 is not recorded; but on the 24th of December in that year he was appointed reader or lecturer on rhetoric for 1663,

1 Hearne, 'Peter Langtoft's Chronicle' (1725), vol. i. (the Publisher's Appendix to his Preface), p. clxix.

1660-4. Et. 28-32.

COLLEGE LECTURER AND TUTOR.

87

and on the following Christmas Eve he was appointed censor of moral philosophy for 1664.1 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

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 107. 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: