ABSTRACT
The time of the Stuarts and the Commonwealth was perhaps the most turbulent century in English history. It was an age of revolution, of destruction and reconstruction, not only political but in other fields as well – economic, religious, intellectual. The political problem of the seventeenth century was the vindication of constitutional government and the rule of law. Economically, the problem of the seventeenth century was the swing of emphasis from land to industry and commerce as the main source of national wealth. In the field of religion, the Elizabethan church settlement, for all its pragmatic sagacity, could not permanently quell the eruptive forces of religious zeal. The problem of John Locke and his friends in the Royal Society was to establish on a lasting foundation the habitual attitude to thought and knowledge which we know as the scientific method.
