As connected with Locke's medical pursuits, I may here mention his friendship with Sydenham. We do not know when the acquaintance commenced, but Sydenham writing to Boyle, so early as April 2, 1668, speaks of "my friend Mr. Locke." That Sydenham entertained great respect for the medical skill and judgment of Locke—who appears to have accompanied him in his visits to his patients, and, in turn, to have availed himself of Sydenham's assistance in attending the Ashley household—there can be no doubt. Writing to Mapletoft, their common friend, and a physician of some eminence, in 1676, he says: "You know how thoroughly my method [of curing fevers] is approved of by an intimate and common friend of ours, and one who has closely and exhaustively examined the subject—I mean Mr. John Locke, a man whom, in the acuteness of his intellect, in the steadiness of his judgment, and in the simplicity, that is, in the excellence, of his manners, I confidently declare to have amongst the men of our own time few equals and no superior." A number of notes and papers, still extant, attest the interest which Locke now took in medical studies, and the hopes with which he looked forward to improvements in medical practice. That the sympathy between him and Sydenham was very close, is evident from the writings of both.
But, meanwhile, he was also busy with other pursuits. One of these was the administration, under Ashley, and the other "lords proprietors," of the colony of Carolina. In 1663 this colony had been granted by Charles the Second to eight "lords proprietors," of whom Ashley was one. Locke, when he went to live in Ashley's family, appears to have become, though without any formal appointment, a sort of chief secretary and manager to the association. A vast amount of miscellaneous business seems to have been transacted by him in this capacity; but what to us would be most interesting, if we could determine it, would be the share he took in drawing up the document entitled "The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina," issued on the 1st of March, 1669-70. Many of the articles, embodying, as they do, a sort of modified feudalism, must have been distasteful to Locke, and it is hardly possible to suppose that he was the originator of them. But perhaps we may trace his hand in the articles on religion, between which and his views, as stated in his unpublished papers written before and his published works written after this time, there is a large amount of correspondence. No man was to be permitted to be a freeman of Carolina unless he acknowledged a God, and agreed that God was to be publicly and solemnly worshipped. But within these limits any seven persons might constitute a church, provided that they upheld the duty of every man, if called on, to bear witness to the truth, and agreed on some external symbol by which such witness might be signified. Any one, however, who did not belong to some such communion was to be regarded as outside the protection of the law. The members of one church were not to molest or persecute those of another; and no man was to "use any reproachful, reviling, or abusive language against the religion of any church or profession, that being the certain way of disturbing the peace, and of hindering the conversion of any to the truth." Amongst the miscellaneous provisions in this code is one strictly forbidding any one to plead before a court of justice for money or reward; and another, enacting that "every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever."
In 1668 Locke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1669 and 1672 was placed on the Council, but he never appears to have taken much part in the proceedings of the society. On the other hand, there seem to have been certain less formal meetings of a few friends, constituting possibly a sort of club, in the discussions of which he took a more active share. It was at one of these meetings that the conversation took place which led to Locke's writing his famous Essay (see page 127). According to a marginal note made by Sir James Tyrrell in his copy of the first edition, now in the British Museum, the discussion on this occasion turned on "the principles of morality and revealed religion." The date of this memorable meeting was, according to the same authority, the winter of 1673; but according to Lady Masham, it was 1670 or 1671. Any way, there is an entry on the main subject of the Essay in Locke's Common-place Book, beginning "Sic cogitavit de intellectu humano Johannes Locke, anno 1671." In this brief entry the origin of all knowledge is referred to sense, and "sensible qualities" are stated to be "the simplest ideas we have, and the first object of our understanding"—a theory which, as we shall hereafter see, was supplemented in the Essay by the addition to the ultimate sources of knowledge of simple ideas of reflection. The Essay itself was not published till nearly twenty years after this date, in 1690.
Locke's health had never been strong, and, in the years 1670-72 he seems to have suffered much from a troublesome cough, indicative of disease of the lungs. Connected with this illness was a short journey which he made in France, in the suite of the Countess of Northumberland, in the autumn of 1672. Soon after his return, his patron, who had lately been created Earl of Shaftesbury, was appointed to the highest office of the State, the Lord High Chancellorship of England. Locke shared in his good fortune, and was made Secretary of Presentations—that is, of the Chancellor's church patronage—with a salary of 300l. a year. The modern reader, especially when he recollects Locke's intimacy with Shaftesbury, is surprised to find that he dined at the Steward's table, that he was expected to attend prayers three times a day, and that, when the Chancellor drove out in state, he was accustomed, with the other secretaries, to walk by the side of the coach, while, as "my lord" got in and out, he "went before him bareheaded." The distinctions of rank were, however, far more marked in those days than at present, and the high officers of state were still surrounded with much of the elaborate ceremonial which had obtained in the times of the Tudors.
To the period of Locke's excursion in France, or that immediately succeeding it, we may refer a free translation—or rather, adaptation—of three of the Essais de Morale of Pierre Nicole, a well-known Jansenist, and the friend of Pascal and Arnauld. These Essays, which were translated for the use of the Countess of Shaftesbury, were apparently not designed for publication, and, in fact, were first given to the world by Dr. Hancock, in 1828. They are mainly remarkable as affording evidence of the depth and sincerity of Locke's religious convictions.
Routine and official duties now occupied much of his time, and must have interfered sadly with his favourite studies. From discussing the tangled and ambiguous politics of this period I purposely refrain; but there is one official act, recorded of Locke at this time, which places him in so incongruous a light that his biographer can hardly pass it over in silence. At the opening of the Parliament which met on February 4, 1672-73, Shaftesbury, amplifying the King's Speech, made, though it is said unwillingly and with much concern, his famous defence of the Dutch war, and his attack on the Dutch nation, culminating in the words "Delenda est Carthago." Locke, we are sorry to find, though the act was a purely ministerial one, stood at his elbow with a written copy, to prompt him in case of failure.
On the 9th of November, 1673, Shaftesbury, who had incurred the displeasure of the king by his support of the Test Bill, and who was now looked on as one of the principal leaders of the Anti-Catholic party, was summarily dismissed from the Chancellorship. Locke, of course, lost at the same time the Secretaryship of Presentations; but he did not, as meaner men might have done, try to insinuate himself into wealth and power through other avenues. "When my grandfather," says the third Earl of Shaftesbury, "quitted the Court, and began to be in danger from it, Mr. Locke now shared with him in dangers, as before in honours and advantages. He entrusted him with his secretest negotiations, and made use of his assistant pen in matters that nearly concerned the State and were fit to be made public."
Locke's connexion with the affairs of the colony of Carolina has already been mentioned. Business of this kind, owing to his relations with Shaftesbury, multiplied upon him, and on the 15th of October, 1673, shortly before Shaftesbury's fall, he was sworn in as Secretary to the Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations, with a salary of 500l. a year. This office he retained, notwithstanding the fall of his patron, till the dissolution of the Council on the 12th of March, 1674-75; but it appears that his salary was never paid.
On February 6, 1674-75, Locke proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Medicine, having already been appointed to, or more probably promised, a Faculty Studentship at Ch. Ch., or, as Dean Prideaux, who had no love for him, puts it, "having wriggled into Ireland's faculty place." It is curious that his name does not appear in the Ch. Ch. books among the Faculty Students till the second quarter of 1675, and during that and the two subsequent quarters it is erased. The first time the name occurs without an erasure is in the first quarter of 1676. That there was much irregularity in the mode of appointing to College places at this time is evident.
His studentship being now secure, Lord Shaftesbury having, for a consideration in ready money, granted him an annuity of 100l. a year, and his estates in Somersetshire, as well as one or two loans and mortgages, bringing him in a modest sum in addition, Locke, notwithstanding the non-payment of his salary as Secretary to the Council of Trade and Plantations, must have been in fairly comfortable circumstances. He was dispensed from the necessity of practising a profession, and, being also relieved from the pressure of public affairs, was free to follow his bent. It is probably to the leisure almost enforced upon him by the weakness of his health, as well as by the turn which public affairs had taken, and rendered possible by the independence of his position, that we are indebted for the maturity of reflection which forms so characteristic a feature of his subsequent writings.