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John Locke’s career
Locke was looking for work and moved into Ashley's home at Exeter House in London in 1667 to work as his personal physician. Locke resumed his medical studies in London under the supervision of Thomas Sydenham. Locke's natural philosophical thought was profoundly influenced by Sydenham, as evidenced in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke's medical knowledge was put to the test when Ashley's liver infection became life-threatening. Locke coordinated the advice of several physicians and was probably instrumental in persuading Ashley to undergo surgery (then life-threatening in itself) to remove the cyst. Ashley survived and prospered, crediting Locke with saving his life.
Locke had positions as Secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations and Secretary to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina during this time, which influenced his views on international trade and economics. Ashley influenced Locke's political ideas greatly as a pioneer of the Whig movement. When Ashley became Lord Chancellor in 1672, Locke became interested in politics (Ashley being created 1st Earl of Shaftesbury in 1673). Locke spent considerable time traveling across France as a tutor and medical attendant to Caleb Banks after Shaftesbury's demise in 1675. When Shaftesbury's political prospects improved briefly in 1679, he returned to England. Locke wrote the bulk of the Two Treatises of Government during this time, most likely at Shaftesbury's request. While it was traditionally assumed that Locke authored the Treatises to defend the Glorious Revolution of 1688, current research has revealed that the work was written far earlier. Individual consent as the basis of political legitimacy is today seen as a more broad argument against absolute monarchy (especially as advocated by Robert Filmer and Thomas Hobbes). Despite his association with the powerful Whigs, Locke's ideas regarding natural rights and government are nevertheless regarded innovative for the time period.
The Netherlands
Locke fled to the Netherlands in 1683, under strong suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot, although there is little evidence to suggest that he was directly involved in the scheme. The philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein argues that during his five years in Holland, Locke chose his friends "from among the same freethinking members of dissenting Protestant groups as Spinoza's small group of loyal confidants. [Baruch Spinoza had died in 1677.] Locke almost certainly met men in Amsterdam who spoke of the ideas of that renegade Jew who... insisted on identifying himself through his religion of reason alone." While she says that "Locke's strong empiricist tendencies" would have "disinclined him to read a grandly metaphysical work such as Spinoza's Ethics, in other ways he was deeply receptive to Spinoza's ideas, most particularly to the rationalist's well thought out argument for political and religious tolerance and the necessity of the separation of church and state.” In the Netherlands, Locke had time to return to his writing, spending a great deal of time working on the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and composing the Letter on Toleration.
Return to England
Locke did not return home until after the Glorious Revolution. Locke accompanied Mary II back to England in 1688. The bulk of Locke's publishing took place upon his return from exile – his aforementioned Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration all appearing in quick succession.
Locke's close friend Lady Masham invited him to join her at Otes, the Mashams' country house in Essex. Although his time there was marked by variable health from asthma attacks, he nevertheless became an intellectual hero of the Whigs. During this period he discussed matters with such figures as John Dryden and Isaac Newton. Events that happened during Locke's lifetime include the English Restoration, the Great Plague of London, the Great Fire of London, and the Glorious Revolution. He did not quite see the Act of Union of 1707, though the thrones of England and Scotland were held in personal union throughout his lifetime. Constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy were in their infancy during Locke's time.
Locke's political theory was founded upon that of social contract. Unlike Thomas Hobbes, Locke believed that human nature is characterised by reason and tolerance. Like Hobbes, however, Locke believed that human nature allows people to be selfish. This is apparent with the introduction of currency. In a natural state, all people were equal and independent, and everyone had a natural right to defend his "life, health, liberty, or possessions". 198 Most scholars trace the phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" in the American Declaration of Independence to Locke's theory of rights, although other origins have been suggested.
Like Hobbes, Locke assumed that the sole right to defend in the state of nature was not enough, so people established a civil society to resolve conflicts in a civil way with help from government in a state of society. However, Locke never refers to Hobbes by name and may instead have been responding to other writers of the day. Locke also advocated governmental separation of powers and believed that revolution is not only a right but an obligation in some circumstances. These ideas would come to have profound influence on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
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