Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/34

xxviii powerful and malignant enemies. Before he had been a year in Holland, he was accused at the English court of being the author of certain tracts which had been published against the government; and, notwithstanding that another person was soon afterwards discovered to be the writer of them, yet as he was observed to join in company at the Hague with several Englishmen who were the avowed enemies of the system of politics on which the English court now acted, information of this circumstance was conveyed to the earl of Sunderland, then secretary of state. This intelligence lord Sunderland communicated to the king, who immediately ordered that bishop Fell, then dean of Christ-church, should receive his express command to eject Mr. Locke from his student's place, which the bishop executed accordingly. After this violent procedure of the court against him in England, he thought it prudent to remain in Holland, where he Mas at the accession of king James II. Soon after that event, William Penn, the famous quaker, who had known Mr. Locke at the university, used his interest with the king to procure a pardon for him; and would have obtained it had not Mr. Locke declined the acceptance of such an offer, nobly observing, that he had no occasion for a pardon, since he had not been guilty of any crime.

In the year 1685, when the duke of Monmouth and his party were making preparations in Holland for his rash and unfortunate enterprise, the English envoy at the Hague demanded that Mr. Locke, with several others, should be delivered up to him, on suspicion of his being engaged in that undertaking. And though this suspicion was not only groundless, but without even a shadow of probability, it obliged him to lie concealed nearly twelve months, till it was sufficiently known that he had no concern whatever in that business. Towards the latter end of the year 1686, he appeared again in public; and in the following year formed a literary society at Amsterdam, of which Limborch, Le Clerc, and other learned men, were members, who met together weekly for conversation upon subjects of universal learning. About the end of the year 1687, our author finished the composition of his great work, the Essay concerning Human Understanding, which had been the principal object of his attention for some years; and that the public might be apprised of the outlines of his plan, he made an abridgment of it himself, which his friend Le Clerc translated into French, and inserted in one of his "Bibliotheques." This abridgment was so highly approved of by all thinking persons, and sincere lovers of truth, that they