Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Austin Woolrych: an appreciation
- 1 Secret alliance and Protestant agitation in two kingdoms: the early Caroline background to the Irish Rebellion of 1641
- 2 Of armies and architecture: the employments of Robert Scawen
- 3 George Digby, Royalist intrigue and the collapse of the cause
- 4 The iconography of revolution: England 1642–1649
- 5 The casualties of war: treatment of the dead and wounded in the English Civil War
- 6 ‘A bastard kind of militia’, localism, and tactics in the second civil war
- 7 Cromwell's commissioners for preserving the peace of the Commonwealth: a Staffordshire case study
- 8 Colonel Gervase Benson, Captain John Archer, and the corporation of Kendal, c. 1644—c. 1655
- 9 Repacifying the polity: the responses of Hobbes and Harrington to the ‘crisis of the common law’
- 10 Equality in an unequal commonwealth: James Harrington's republicanism and the meaning of equality
- 11 John Milton and Oliver Cromwell
- 12 From pillar to post: Milton and the attack on republican humanism at the Restoration
- 13 ‘They that pursew perfaction on earth …’: the political progress of Robert Overton
- 14 Locke no Leveller
- A bibliography of the writings of Austin Woolrych, 1955-95
- Index
14 - Locke no Leveller
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Austin Woolrych: an appreciation
- 1 Secret alliance and Protestant agitation in two kingdoms: the early Caroline background to the Irish Rebellion of 1641
- 2 Of armies and architecture: the employments of Robert Scawen
- 3 George Digby, Royalist intrigue and the collapse of the cause
- 4 The iconography of revolution: England 1642–1649
- 5 The casualties of war: treatment of the dead and wounded in the English Civil War
- 6 ‘A bastard kind of militia’, localism, and tactics in the second civil war
- 7 Cromwell's commissioners for preserving the peace of the Commonwealth: a Staffordshire case study
- 8 Colonel Gervase Benson, Captain John Archer, and the corporation of Kendal, c. 1644—c. 1655
- 9 Repacifying the polity: the responses of Hobbes and Harrington to the ‘crisis of the common law’
- 10 Equality in an unequal commonwealth: James Harrington's republicanism and the meaning of equality
- 11 John Milton and Oliver Cromwell
- 12 From pillar to post: Milton and the attack on republican humanism at the Restoration
- 13 ‘They that pursew perfaction on earth …’: the political progress of Robert Overton
- 14 Locke no Leveller
- A bibliography of the writings of Austin Woolrych, 1955-95
- Index
Summary
The political philosophy of John Locke continues to arouse controversy. This in itself is testimony to the interest both of the man and of his writings. The most ambitious attempt of recent years to set Locke's political ideas in a detailed biographical and historical context is to be found in the work of the late Richard Ashcraft. To quote his words:
What I have attempted, therefore, is a marriage of Locke's ideas with the actions and objectives of a political movement in which Locke was a participant and for which his ideas served as an articulate expression of the meaning of those actions and goals.
His location of Locke in the radical (and not merely Whiggish) politics of the 1670s and 1680s led Ashcraft in a very specific direction: ‘I have throughout this work placed Locke in much closer proximity to the Levellers and to the radical political theory they developed than has previously been supposed.’ While this interpretation has been severely criticised by some historians and social scientists, Ashcraft's work has been sufficiently influential to merit further scrutiny. Needless to say, it is a matter of much regret that he can no longer himself join in this discussion.
There is more than one way of approaching the possible connectionsbetween Locke and the Levellers. It is possible to argue that those who were called Levellers (of whom John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn and John Wildman were the most important, together with Thomas Rainsborough and Edward Sexby for their part in the Army debates) were more interested in preserving individual property rights than they were in complete democracy, even if the right to vote in parliamentary elections was limited to adult males.
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- Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution , pp. 304 - 322Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998