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IV. George Lawson and John Locke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

A. H. MacLean
A. H. MacLean
Affiliation:
Peterhouse
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In the year of 1657, a Shropshire clergyman, George Lawson by name, followed a prevailing fashion among English moralists and political writers of the day in publishing a formal refutation of Hobbes' then notorious Leviathan. Three years later, he further provided a positive and complete enunciation of his principles of civil and ecclesiastical polity in a work which he entitled Politica Sacra et Civilis. While it is perfectly evident that neither of these works attracted anything like that degree of contemporary attention which was aroused by the Leviathan of Hobbes or the Oceana of Harrington, it is no less evident, on the other hand, that they did not fall stillborn from the press. Not only are they to be found listed, with a fair measure of frequency, in extant catalogues of private libraries of the period, but in the critical year 1689—eleven years after the death of Lawson—Politica Sacra et Civilis was well recognized by certain ardent supporters of the revolution then in progress in England to be sufficiently timely to warrant its republication, and was palpably considered by at least one Whig pamphleteer to be well worth the trouble of plagiarizing. The popularity of the work was, however, of the most transient nature. The truth would seem to be that those principles of civil government which were maintained by Lawson were some three decades in advance of the age for which he wrote them; and that when, at length, the circumstances attending the English Revolution rendered them particularly appropriate, a greater political thinker, John Locke, was at hand to give them full expression in a form which, for clarity and fidelity to the spirit of the audience to which they were addressed, has rarely been equalled, and never surpassed. In all probability it is chiefly owing to this fact that the name of Lawson has been almost completely forgotten even by students of the history of English political philosophy, while Locke, for more than two centuries, has been regarded as one of the greatest political philosophers of all time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , 1947 , pp. 69 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1947

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References

1 For mention of one or other of Lawson's political works see, for example, Biblioiheca Jacombiana (1687), Bibliotheca Angleseiana (1686), Catalogus Librorum…Doctoris Benjaminis Worsley (1678). The Jacomb referred to is Thomas Jacomb, S.T.D.; and the Anglesey is Arthur, Earl of Anglesey.

2 See note 39 below, p. 76.

3 The political writings of Lawson are not mentioned in any of the standard works on seventeenth-century English political philosophy. There is, needless to add, no extant biography of Lawson. References to his religious works are to be found in Dr Edward Williams' Christian Preacher, and in Bickersteth's Christian Student, but I have been unable to discover as yet any references to his political works later than the period of the Revolution.

4 Politico Sacra et Civilis, pp. 33-5. Civil Government, II, 9–10Google Scholar. All references to Politica Sacra et Civilis are to the edition of 1660.

5 An Examination of… Leviathan, pp. 5. 48-9. Politica Sacra et Civilis, pp. io, 14. Civil Government, II, 8. References to An Examination of… Leviathan are to the edition of 1657.

6 Politica Sacra et Civilis, pp. 36, 45. Civil Government, II, 11.

7 An Examination of… Leviathan, p. 30. Politica Sacra et Civilis, p. 94. Civil Government, II, 12.

8 An Examination of… Leviathan, pp. 30, 95. Politica Sacra et Civilis, pp. 38, 80. Civil Government, II, 11.

9 An Examination of…Leviathan, p. 18. Politica Sacra et Civilis, pp. 54, 56, 214, 216, 220.

10 Civil Government, 11, 19.

11 An Examination of…Leviathan, p. 15. Politica Sacra et Civilis, pp. 35, 94-5. Civil Government, II, 11, 13, 19.

12 Politico Sacra et Civilis, pp. 16, 33, 35, 214, 216-17, 223. Civil Government, II, 19.

13 Venn, , Alumni Cantabrigienses, vol. 1Google Scholar.

14 Venn inclines to this opinion.

15 Parish Register of More, Shropshire.

16 Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), I, 1, pp. 107-8Google Scholar.

17 Ibid. See also n. 24 below.

18 See Shaw, W. A., A History of the English Church…1640-1660 (1900), II, Appendix 36, p. 412Google Scholar.

19 More Parish Register. His later theological works continued to be subscribed: ‘Rector of More in the county of Salop.’

20 More Parish Register.

21 The bookseller being Edward Millington. See, in the Bodleian Library, the catalogue entitled Catalogus Librorum in Bibliothecis Selectissimis Doctissimorum Virorum: Viz. D. Lawsoni, Salopiensis…‘Quorum Auctio Habebitur Londini apud Domum Auctionariam ex Adverso Areae Warwicensis in Vico Vulgo Dicto Warwick Lane, TricessimoMaii, 1681…Per Edoardum Millingtonum, Bibliopolam.’ While booksellers' puffs were certainly no more disinterested and reliable in the seventeenth century than at the present day, it is interesting to note that Millington was prepared to speak of Lawson in such glowing terms as these: ‘Mr George Lawson was a person of such universal learning and general esteem that the works that already are extant of him, and those that he hath left perfected under his own hand.for the press, shall stop my pen and supercede my intention of giving a larger character of him.’ (To the Reader.)

22 Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), 1, 1, pp. 107–8Google Scholar.

23 Catholick Theologie (1675), Preface.

24 Speaking of Lawson, Baxter wrote: ‘He was himself near the Arminians…and so went farther than I did from the Antinomians.’ Of Lawson's political writings, Baxter had this to say: ‘He hath written…animadversions on Hobbes; and a piece of ecclesiastical and. civil policy according to the method of politics; an excellent book, were it not that he seemeth to justify the king's death, and meddle too boldly with, the political controversies of the times… Also I have seen some ingenious manuscripts of his for taking of the Engagement…. But I thought those papers easily answerable.’ (Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), I, 1, pp. 107-8.) Baxter, none the less, referred to An Examination of… Leviathan in his Holy Commonwealth (1659). P. 432.

25 Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), 1, 1, p. 108.

26 Theo-Politica (1659; 2nd ed. 1705); An Exposition of St Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews (1662); Magna Charta Ecclesiae Universalis, published posthumously (1st and 2nd eds. 1686; 3rd ed. 1687).

27 Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), 1, i, p. 108.

28 Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman, Locke's Works (ed. 1794), li, p. 408Google Scholar. Locke purchased a copy of Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government in 1698 for his own library. It is listed in subsequent catalogues of his books. It is quite possible, of course, that he actually had not taken the time to read it.

29 A Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke's Works (ed, 1794), vi, p. 420Google Scholar. See also Mr Locke's Reply to the Bishop of Worcester's Answer to His Second better, Locke's Works (ed. 1794), III, p. 477. Locke had a first edition copy of Hobbes' Leviathan in, his own library. It is listed among his books in a catalogue compiled in or about the year 1691.

In an unpublished notebook, dating from the year 1667, in which Locke set down opinions on various books, there are two or three references to Leviathan. In addition, in his published Remarks upon Some of Mr Norris's Books, he spoke of ‘the religion of Hobbes and Spinoza’ as though he were familiar with it. (Locke's Works (ed. 1794), ix, p. 255.)

30 ‘I think it is an idle and useless thing to make it one's business to study what have been other men's sentiments in things where reason is only to be judge.’ (Locke, , ‘A Discourse on Study and Knowledge’ (1677)Google Scholar; summarized in Fox-Bourne, H. R., Life ofJohn Locke (1876), 1, p. 361Google Scholar.)

31 Locke went to live with Furly in Rotterdam in February 1687, and remained there, apart from some brief intervals, until his departure for England in February 1689. Furly had been one of the earliest of the converts of George Fox.

32 In his letters to Limborch during the spring and summer of 1688, Locke wrote a great deal concerning a ‘Liber Sententiarum Inquisitionis Tholosanae’, of which the manuscript was in Furly's possession, and which he and Furly were seriously thinking of publishing.

33 Bibliotheca Furleiana. The catalogue was published in Rotterdam in 1714, shortly after Furly's death. There is a copy in the University Library, Cambridge.

34 Also listed is Lawson's Politico Sacra et Civilis; but since the edition is that of 1689, Locke could not possibly have come upon the work in Furly's library prior to his departure from Rotterdam. It is not, of course, absolutely certain that the copy of An Examination of…Leviathan had been added to Furly's library prior to Locke's departure, but it is certainly most probable.

35 The list is in the Lovelace Collection of Locke MSS., at present in the custody of the Keeper of the Western MSS., the Bodleian Library. Between the years 1697 and 1704, Locke added to his library a copy of An Examination of…Leviathan, one of Politica Sacra et Civilis, 2nd ed., one of Theo-Politica, and one of a commentary by Lawson on St Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews. Locke kept the copy of Politica Sacra et Civilis which he purchased in 1688 in his possession until 16 May 1690, when he left it with, or presented it to, a friend.

36 It is evident that the political ideas of Lawson and Locke were very much ‘in the air’ at the time when Civil Government was written. Locke may, of course, have derived them largely from this source alone. On the other hand, they were by no means so apparently ‘in the air’ at the time when Lawson wrote Politica Sacra et Civilis. The intellectual approach of Lawson and Locke to the subject of politics was strikingly similar.

37 The identity of the editor of this second edition of Politico Sacra et Civilis is unknown.

38 The advertisement appears between the covers of th e book entitled Lex Parliamentaria, published in 1690. This was, of course, no more than the full title of the original edition of 1660. The very fact, however, that the latter part of the full title was retained in the edition of 1689 would appear to show that its immediate relevance was well recognized.

39 Proposals Humbly Offered to the Lords and Commons in the Present Conventionfor Settling the Government; printed in State Tracts, 1660-1689, p. 456.

40 Ibid.

41 It was incorporated in State Tracts, 1660-1689 under the title Proposals Humbly Offered to the Lords and Commons in the Present Convention for Settling the Government; and in A Collection of State Tracts Published on Occasion of the Late Revolution in 1688 and During'the Reign of King William III (vol. 1) under the title Some Short Considerations Relating to the Settling of the Government Humbly Offered to the Lords and Commons of England now Assembled at Westminster. The text, under both titles, is identical.

42 See n. 36 above. They were by no means similarly ‘in the air’ in a coherently connected form. Considered separately, the political ideas which Locke subscribed in Civil Government were more or less common to the age. It is in over-all presentation, treatment, and emphasis, no less than in content and argument, that the agreement between Politica Sacra et Civilis and Civil Government is most marked.