John Locke: Second Treatise on Civil Government

Context

The context of the Second Treatise on Civil Government was the Glorious Revolution of 1688, an event whose roots stretched back at least to the reign of King Henry VIII in the early sixteenth century. Henry's rejection of Roman Catholicism and his reformation of the church in England coincided with the greater Protestant Reformation, launched by Martin Luther in Germany in 1517 with the publication of his Ninety-five Theses. Henry's reforms, however, did not go far enough for those who wanted to see the church fully purified. Out of this discontent rose the Puritans, who became the party of radical reform. Pitted against them was the Church of England (Anglican) establishment, which sought to impose national unity of religion in England. The ensuing struggle reached a climax of armed conflict in the mid-seventeenth century under King Charles I: the three-stage English Civil War took place through the 1640s between the Royalists (supporters of the king) and a Parliament dominated by Puritans. In 1649 the defeated Charles I was convicted of treason by Parliament and executed.

The Puritans, led by Oliver Cromwell and later his son Richard, ruled England for about seven years; during this period, called the Interregnum, the state was variously called the Commonwealth or the Protectorate. Under the Puritans, strict standards of morality were enforced, with holidays, the theater, gambling, and other amusements suppressed. Richard succeeded his father to the position of lord protector on the latter's death, but after Richard abdicated in 1659, the monarchy was restored, and Charles II was crowned in 1660, an event called the Restoration. The Restoration was a period of reaction to the strict morality enforced during the Commonwealth, as people indulged their pent-up desires for theater, art, fashion, and pleasure. Charles's own hedonistic way of life was almost a relief to the English people. At the same time, efforts were made to impose religious uniformity in England. The Anglicans were able to expel Presbyterian and other “dissenting” Protestant ministers from their pulpits, pushing them to the fringes of society along with Catholics. Charles II, though, was sympathetic to Catholicism and sought to grant legal relief to Catholics, as well as to Dissenters.

Charles personally favored a policy of religious tolerance, but he bowed to Parliament's desire to restore the supremacy of the Church of England by agreeing to the Clarendon Code. This code was a series of laws that enforced religious conformity and made “meeting houses” and dissenting or nonconformist worship illegal. Yet in 1672 he issued the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, which extended tolerance to Nonconformists and Catholics. Later, though, he rescinded the declaration under pressure from Parliament. Then, in the late 1670s, the purported “Popish Plot” provoked fear after it was revealed that Charles's brother and heir, James, was a Catholic. This discovery led to a split between the Whig Party, which advocated the exclusion of Catholics and Dissenters from public office, and the Tory Party, which opposed exclusion. When a 1683 plot to assassinate both Charles and James, the Rye House Plot, was exposed, numerous Whig leaders were forced into exile or even killed.

Charles meanwhile had dissolved Parliament in 1679 when it attempted to remove James from the line of succession, and he ruled without Parliament until he died in 1685—on his deathbed converting to Catholicism. When the Catholic James II's wife gave birth to a son, the nobility decided that the time had come to extirpate Catholic rule once and for all by inviting William, Prince of Orange, a Protestant, to assume the throne of England. (Orange was a principality in Holland; it is now part of France.) William had some legitimate claim to the throne as the husband of James II's daughter, Mary, by his deceased first wife. William invaded England in 1688, met with no meaningful resistance, and was crowned on April 11, 1689. With James II in exile, the establishment of Protestantism in England was made permanent. This change in the monarchy was named the Glorious Revolution because in the main it was accomplished without bloodshed. Such a major step, however, required justification. John Locke provided that justification in his Second Treatise, at the same time outlining a theory and philosophy of government. It is believed, too, that a goal of his was to refute the views of Thomas Hobbes's influential book Leviathan, an argument in favor of absolutist governments published in 1651 and translated into Latin in 1668.