John Locke

John Locke never married or fathered any children.

He had a very close friendship with Lady Damaris Cudworth Masham that lasted till his death. During his later years he was invited by Lady Masham to come and live with her family at Oates in High Laver, Essex.

He died on 28 October 1704 and was buried in the churchyard of the village of High Laver.

John Locke was born on 29 August 1632, in Wrington, Somerset, England, to Puritan parents. His father, also called John Locke was a country lawyer and a small landowner who had served as a captain of cavalry for the Parliamentarian forces during the English Civil War. His mother’s name was Agnes Keene.

He studied at the prestigious Westminster School before moving on to attend Christ Church, Oxford in 1652. As a college student he discovered the works of philosophers like Rene Descartes which kindled his interest in the subject. He also developed an interest in medicine.

He received his bachelor’s degree in 1656 and a master's degree in 1658. He also studied medicine extensively and worked with noted physicians and thinkers like Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, Robert Hooke and Richard Lower.

Locke helped to treat Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who had come to Oxford seeking treatment for a liver infection in 1666. Cooper was impressed with Locke and appointed him as his personal physician. Locke moved to London to assume this position in 1667.

He resumed his medical studies under the prominent physician Thomas Sydenham who proved to be a great influence on young Locke. He was then elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1668 and graduated with a bachelor's of medicine in 1674.

During the early 1670s he became active in politics and served as Secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations and Secretary to the Lords Proprietor of Carolina.

Locke travelled to France during the mid-1670s and returned to England by 1679. He wrote extensively during his years of service to Lord Cooper. At around this time he started composing what would eventually form the bulk of the ‘Two Treatises of Government’ which would be published years later.

The early 1680s was a period of great political turmoil in England and Locke was forced to leave the country under strong suspicion of his involvement in the Rye House Plot. However, there is little historical evidence to prove that he was directly involved.

His work ‘Two Treatises of Government’ is an important text on political theory. Locke’s political ideas were founded on social contract theory and he advocated governmental separation of powers along with the establishment of a civil society to resolve conflicts in a civil way.

The treatise ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Education’ gave a framework of Locke’s ideas on how to improve education in England. It became a significant philosophical work on the concept of education and was translated into almost all of the major European languages within a century.