ABSTRACT
Born at Wrington in Somersetshire in 1632, John Locke came of Puritan parents, and was for fourteen years educated in his own family circle, a little pocket of peace in a restive country soon to be plunged into civil war. Recounting his early career to his patroness, Lady Masham, Locke later confessed that he was far from being a model student. Retirement for Locke meant the reverse of idleness. Not merely did he spend much time in answering letters and pamphlets, many of them hotly controversial, concerning the Essay; he also produced new works on economics, finance and theology. An essay entitled The Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures, published at first anonymously in 1695, brought him into collision not merely with obscure rectors, anxious to demonstrate their polemical gifts, but with well-known bishops, anxious to preserve public orthodoxy.
