John Locke

Independent activity Liberalism and republicanism 1632–1704 ○ Natural causes

"Father of liberalism" whose Two Treatises rested government on consent and the right of resistance

Born to Puritan parents in Somerset in 1632, he entered Christ Church, Oxford in 1652 and spent fifteen years there as student and tutor, also studying medicine and science. In 1666 he became an associate of Anthony Ashley Cooper, later Earl of Shaftesbury, and took government posts at his recommendation. When Shaftesbury fell he went into exile in the Netherlands in 1683, living in hiding for five years. After the Glorious Revolution he returned in 1689 and published in quick succession the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. The Two Treatises argued that government rests on the consent of the governed and that a tyranny which has lost that consent may be resisted, and he became an intellectual hero of the Whigs. He sat on the Council for Trade and Plantations from 1696 to 1700.