Chapter 3 - Locke and the Restoration Politique

Summary

Chapter 3 narrates the development of Locke’s theory of toleration during the early 1660s and the period of his most consequential involvement in the political circles of the earl of Shaftesbury. The critical development, for Locke as for Hobbes, was the fall of the earl of Clarendon and the rise of the so-called Cabal ministry. This development cast the conformist clergy into disfavour and elevated policies of politique religious Indulgence that were often associated with court Hobbism. Locke was immersed in the Erastian political projects of Shaftesbury’s circle during these years and produced his preliminary ‘Essay concerning Toleration’. This chapter reveals the ‘Essay’ to have been a transitional text, moving towards assertion of a right to religious exercise but still influenced, and compromised, by a striking deference to sovereignty and civil religion. Shaftesbury and Locke, by allying themselves with this mixture of policies, found themselves vulnerable to charges of Hobbism, not least in the polemics of Samuel Parker. Locke’s initial effort to escape this critique can be dated to this period.