Thus the most celebrated man, perhaps, that Oxford has sheltered within her walls since the Reformation was summarily ejected at the dictation of a corrupt and arbitrary court. The Dean and Chapter might have won our admiration had they resisted the royal command, as was done in the next reign by the Fellows of Magdalen College, but it was hardly to be expected that they should risk their own goods and liberties in attempting to afford a protection which, after all, would have been almost certainly attempted in vain. Moreover, as Lord Grenville (Oxford and Locke) has pointed out, Christ Church being a royal foundation, the Dean and Chapter might well regard the king as having full power either to appoint or remove any member of the foundation, and themselves as only registering his decree. The same power, as we have already seen, had been exercised in Locke's favour by the dispensation from entering holy orders accorded by the crown in 1666.
After the Revolution, Locke petitioned William the Third for the restitution of his studentship, but "finding," according to Lady Masham, that "it would give great disturbance to the society, and dispossess the person that was in his place, he desisted from that pretension."
In Fell's first letter to Sunderland, he speaks of Locke's extreme reserve and taciturnity. As this seems to have been one of his distinguishing characteristics, and as the passage is otherwise remarkable, as showing the vigilance with which Locke was watched at Oxford, I give it at length:
"I have for divers years had an eye upon him; but so close has his guard been on himself that, after several strict inquiries, I may confidently affirm there is not any one in the College, however familiar with him, who has heard him speak a word either against or so much as concerning the Government; and although very frequently, both in public and in private, discourses have been purposely introduced to the disparagement of his master, the Earl of Shaftesbury, his party and designs, he could never be provoked to take any notice or discover in word or look the least concern; so that I believe there is not in the world such a master of taciturnity and passion."
This account of Locke's reserve, as well as the illustration here incidentally afforded of the abominable system of college espionage which then prevailed in Oxford, is amply confirmed by Prideaux's letters to Ellis. In the Thoughts on Education parents and tutors are recommended to mould children betimes to this mastery over their tongues. But the gift of silence was exercised by Locke only in those matters where other men have no right to be inquisitive or curious—matters of private concernment and of individual opinion. In conversation on general topics, he seems always to have been open and copious. His taciturnity, though the effect of prudence and self-control, was certainly not due to any lack of geniality or any want of sympathy with others.
[CHAPTER IV.]
RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND.—THE REVOLUTION.—RETURN TO ENGLAND.—PUBLICATION OF THE "ESSAY" AND OTHER WORKS.
Locke must have landed in Holland in one of the autumn months of 1683, being then about fifty-one years of age. We are not able, however, to trace any of his movements till the January of 1683-84, when he was present, by invitation of Peter Guenellon, the principal physician of Amsterdam, at the dissection of a lioness which had been killed by the intense cold of the winter.
Through Guenellon, whom he had met during his stay in Paris, he must have made the acquaintance of the principal literary and scientific men at that time residing in or near Amsterdam. Amongst these was Philip van Limborch, then professor of theology among the Arminians or Remonstrants. The Arminians (called Remonstrants on account of the remonstrance which they had presented to the States-General in 1610) were the latitudinarians of Holland, and, though they had been condemned by the Synod of Dort in 1619, and had been subjected to a bitter persecution by the Calvinist clergy for some years following, were now a fairly numerous body, possessing a theological seminary, and exercising a considerable influence, not only in their own country, but over the minds of the more liberal theologians throughout Europe. The undogmatic, tolerant, and, if I may use the expression, ethical character of the Remonstrant theology must have had great attractions for Locke, and he and Limborch, united by many common sentiments, subsequently became fast friends.