over, were not very apparent in Locke's day, and least of all in the time shortly before and shortly after King William's accession. His greatest offences just now were that, like Locke, he was too extreme a latitudinarian to please such cautious churchmen as Burnet, and, also like Locke, too bold a reformer to please such cautious whigs as Halifax.

A short letter which Locke wrote five weeks after his return to England gives us some information about his health and temper at this time, and shows us that, though he had come back as a courtier in the best sense and an honoured statesman to the England that he had quitted as an exile, he was the same man still, and anxious to strengthen old ties of affection which neither time nor distance had broken. The address has been torn off, but it appears to have been written to his cousin, Mrs. Grigg, whose husband had been an intimate friend of Simon Patrick, the excellent bishop of Ely here referred. to.

"DEAR SISTER,-Now I am come to England, where I had promised myself a full satisfaction, I find I want still two things very dear to me,that is, you and my health. The want of your company disturbs me constantly, my cough by intervals; and between them both I am constantly admonished that, whatsoever we may fancy of perfect happiness, we shall never attain it in this world.

"I was informed of your health with satisfaction from my lord of Ely, who, by the kindness he expressed to you, increased my esteem of him. I am glad to hear you are well and at ease, but should be better pleased to hear it from yourself, and to have the opportunity to talk some old and new stories with you; for I fancy we have a great deal to say to one another, and I hope it will not be long, now the great ditch is no longer between us, before we shall meet. Wherever you are, I, with my old concern and friendship, wish your happiness, and shall be glad to receive the news of it from your own hand as often as your inclination or occasions will allow it. You must not forget that I am, dear sister, your most affectionate brother and humble servant, "J. LOCKE.

"I expect to hear some pleasing news of your son to lodge at Dr. Goodall's at the college of physicians in Warwick Lane."1

Four days before the date of that letter Locke sent to his friend Limborch a longer one, which throws more light on his position and occupations at this time. "I fear," he wrote, "that you will suspect me of neglecting you because I have so long continued a silence unsuitable to your deserts, to my own inclinations, and to our mutual affection. You will surely understand that my feelings towards you cannot be changed by a change of country, and that I shall always regard you with the same friendship and reverence; and I know you will find excuse for me in the time I have had to devote to friends from whom I have so long been parted, in the worry I have had in hunting up and collecting my scattered goods and chattels for my immediate use, and, I must add, in the many claims that have been made upon me by the urgent pressure of public business; besides all which, and worst of all, my health has suffered considerably from the abominable smoke of this city. Really, I have hardly had a moment of leisure since I arrived."

He then proceeded to report the news most interesting to his friend, as well as to himself. "Burnet has been nominated to the bishopric of Salisbury. In parliament the question of toleration has begun to be discussed under two designations, comprehension and indulgence. By the first is meant a wide expansion of the church, so as, by abolishing a number of obnoxious ceremonies, to induce a great many dissenters to conform. By the other is meant the allowance of civil rights to all who, in spite

1 Longleat MSS. (the Marquis of Bath's); Locke to, 16 March, 1688-9. I am indebted to Canon Jackson for a transcript of this letter.

56.

are still un

How lax or

of the broadening of the national church, willing or unable to become members of it. strict the new arrangements will be, I cannot tell as yet; but this at all events is certain, that the episcopal clergy are not at all friendly to any of the proposed reforms, whether to their own or to the nation's advantage it is for them to consider. For my own part, I hope soon to get back to books and letters; at present I am too busy with other matters."1

Among the matters with which Locke was so busy at this time, the chief was evidently that movement in favour of religious liberty to which he briefly referred in his letter to Limborch, but all his efforts failed to bring about anything like so much reform as he desired.

It will be remembered that in the autumn of 1685 he had written his since famous 'Epistola de Tolerantia.' This tract was printed at Gouda in the spring of 1689, soon after Locke left Holland. It was published anonymously and probably without Locke's knowledge, the responsibility of giving it to the world being, it would seem, altogether Limborch's, and it is clear there was no design, in its publication just then, of influencing the policy of William and the English legislators. If it did

1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library (part in Familiar Letters,' p. 328); Locke to Limborch, 12 March, 1688-9.

Limborch, or some other person than Locke, was probably the compiler of the ingenious and eccentric wording, or rather initialing, of the title-page: "Epistola de Tolerantia ad Clarissimum Virum TARPTOLA, Scripta a PAPOILA." The initials stood for these words, "Theologiae Apud Remonstrantes Professorem, Tyrannidis Osorem, Limborchium, Amstelodamensem (Professor of Theology among the Remonstrants, Hater of Tyranny, Limborch, of Amsterdam)," and "Pacis Amico, Persecutionis Osore, Johanne Lockio, Anglo (a Friend of Peace, Hater of Persecution, John Locke, Englishman)."

that at all, it can only have been to a very small extent. Translations of it in Dutch and French were almost immediately issued, and it created a good deal of discussion among liberal and illiberal theologians as well as politicians on the continent during the early months of 1689; but, though men like William the Third and Bishop Burnet may have read it, it was at this time almost unknown in England. If Locke had any direct or indirect share in the comprehension and toleration bills that were submitted to the convention parliament in March, his contribution to the scheme of reform had been made long before.

The bills, now introduced by the Earl of Nottingham, were almost identical with measures that had been brought forward nearly ten years earlier, and that had indeed been originated more than twenty years earlier, when Locke was the modest coadjutor of the first Lord Shaftesbury. The comprehension bill proposed to relieve all ministers of the church of England, and all members of the universities, from the necessity of subscribing to the thirty-nine articles, substituting for them this declaration, "I do approve of the doctrine and worship and government of the church of England by law established, as containing all things necessary to salvation, and I promise, in the exercise of my ministry, to preach and practise according thereto;" it also gave considerable liberty as to the wearing of vestments, the mode of baptism, and other ceremonies; and it suggested the appointment of a commission for simplifying the ritual and rubric of the church. The toleration bill, without abrogating the five mile act, the conventicle act and the other monstrous laws in the same category, proposed to nullify their worst provisions in the case of dissenters willing to take the oaths of allegiance and

supremacy and to subscribe to the declaration against transubstantiation and to thirty-four of the thirty-nine articles, along with portions of two others.

Neither measure at all recognised the rule which Locke had laid down in terms that could not be controverted, though they might of course be contradicted, that the civil power has no right to interfere with any one's religious opinions or worship, or in any way to make those opinions or worship an obstacle to the full rights of citizenship, provided only that they are not clearly at variance with the civil interests of the community. We can easily understand that, they being better than nothing, Locke did all he could to secure their adoption, and that he was yet more zealous in urging, through Monmouth and others, that their clauses should be so modified as to make them really liberal measures; but, when he saw that they were narrowed instead of broadened by parliament, and when finally, though the toleration bill was passed, the more useful comprehension bill was allowed to drop through, he certainly had good reason for being disappointed. When his 'Epistola de Tolerantia' was issued in an English translation, it appeared only as an eloquent argument in favour of reforms yet to be effected, and, by implication, as an indignant remonstrance against the very lame and insufficient efforts at reformation which were all that King William, himself an honest friend to religious liberty, and the few men like Lords Monmouth and Pembroke, who shared his views, could persuade the still priest-ridden country, and the priests who tyrannised over it, to consent to.

In that translation Locke himself had no part. "I understand that a countryman of mine is now engaged in rendering my little book about toleration into English,"