ABSTRACT
The philosophy of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582/3-1648) and of the Cambridge Platonists exemplifies the continuities of seventeenth-century thought with Renaissance philosophy. At the same time, they were very much engaged with new developments in philosophy of the seventeenth century. Together they represent the development of philosophy outside the Aristotelian tradition. And each illustrates one aspect of what were to become interconnected features of seventeenth-century philosophy: its lay character and the use of the vernacular as the language of philosophical discourse. Although he wrote in Latin, still the lingua franca of intellectual exchange, Lord Herbert was a lay practitioner of philosophy. The Cambridge Platonists were all university men, although they wrote in English.
