In 1683, Locke retired to Holland, then the asylum of exiles in search of liberty of thought. Descartes and Spinoza had specu lated there ; it had been the home of Erasmus and Grotius ; it was now the refuge of Bayle. Locke spent more than five years there. For a time he was in danger of arrest at the instance of the English Government. After months of concealment at Amsterdam, under the assumed name of Dr. Van der Linden he escaped; but he was deprived of his studentship at Christ Church by order of the king, and Oxford was thus closed against him. In Holland he met Lim borch, the successor of Episcopius as Remonstrant professor of theology, and Le Clerc, whose Bibliotheque universelle was then the chief organ in Europe of men of letters. Locke contributed several articles. It was his first appearance as an author, although he was now 54 years of age. The Essay was finished in Holland, and a French epitome appeared in 1688 in Le Clerc's journal, the forecast of the larger work. Locke was then at Rotterdam, where he was a confidant of political exiles, including Burnet and the earl of Peterborough, and he became known to William, prince of Orange. William landed in England in Nov. 1688 ; Locke followed in Feb. 1689, in the ship which carried the princess Mary.
After his return to England Locke emerged into European fame. Within a month after he reached London he had declined an offer of the embassy to Brandenburg, and accepted the modest office of commissioner of appeals. His defence of religious liberty, in the Epistola de Tolerantia, was published at Gouda in the spring of 1685, and translated into English in autumn by William Popple, a Unitarian merchant in London. Two Treatises on Government, in defence of the right of ultimate sovereignty in the people, fol lowed a few months later. The intention of the treatises was to "establish the throne of our great restorer, the present King William, to make good his title in the consent of the people." The famous Essay concerning Human Understanding appeared early in 1690. He received £30 for the copyright.
The course of public affairs disappointed him, for the settlement at the Revolution fell short of his ideal of toleration and civil liberty. In spring, 1691, he went to live at Oates Manor in Essex, the country seat of Sir Francis Masham. Lady Masham was the accomplished daughter of Ralph Cudworth, and was his friend before he went to Holland. At Oates he enjoyed for 14 years as much domestic peace and literary leisure as was consistent with broken health, and sometimes anxious visits to London on public affairs. In his letters and otherwise we have pleasant pictures of its domestic life and the occasional visits of his friends, among others Lord Peterborough, Lord Shaftesbury of the Character istics, Sir Isaac Newton, William Molyneux and Anthony Collins. The Letter on Toleration involved him in controversy. An Answer by Jonas Proast of Queen's college, Oxford, had drawn forth in 1690 a Second Letter. A re joinder in 1691 was followed by Locke's elaborate Third Letter on Toleration in the following year. In 1692 he also addressed an important letter to Sir John Somers on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money. When he was in Holland he had written letters to his friend Clarke of Chipley about the education of his children. These letters formed the substance of the little volume Thoughts on Education (1693), which remains an edu cational classic. Nor were the "principles of revealed religion"
forgotten. The subtle theological controversies of the i 7th cen tury made him anxious to show the simplicity of fundamental Christianity. In the Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures (anon., 1695), Locke sought to separate the essence of the teaching of Jesus from later accretions. This in volved him in controversies that lasted for years, and his Vindica tion, followed by a Second Vindication in 1697, added fuel to this fire. Above all, the great Essay was assailed and often misin terpreted by philosophers and divines. John Norris, the meta physical rector of Bemerton and English disciple of Malebranche, criticized it in 169o. Locke's second winter at Oates was partly employed in An Examination of Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all Things in God, and in Remarks upon some of Mr. Norris's Books, tracts which throw light upon his own ambiguous theory of perception through the senses. These were published after his death. A second edition of the Essay, with a chapter added on "Personal Identity," and numerous alterations in the chapter on "Power," appeared in 1694. The third, a reprint, was published in 1695. Wynne's well-known abridgment helped to make the book known in Oxford, and his friend, William Molyneux, intro duced it in Dublin. In 1695 a revival of controversy about the currency diverted Locke's attention. Events in that year occa sioned his Observations on Silver Money and Further Considera tions on Raising the Value of Money.
In 1696 Locke accepted a commissionership on the Board of Trade which entailed frequent visits to London. In the autumn of that year, Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, charged Locke with disallowing mystery in human knowledge, especially in his account of the metaphysical idea of "substance." Locke replied in Jan. 1697. Stillingfleet's rejoinder appeared in May, followed by a Second Letter from Locke, to which the bishop replied in the following year. Locke's Third Letter was delayed till 1699, in which year Stillingfleet died. One of the ablest of the other critics of the Essay was John Sergeant, a Catholic priest, in Solid Philosophy Asserted Against the Fancies of the Ideists (1697). He was fol lowed by Thomas Burnet, Dean Sherlock and others. The Essay itself meanwhile spread over Europe, impelled by the name of its author as the chief philosophical defender of civil and religious liberty. The fourth edition appeared in Imp, with important addi tional chapters on "Association of Ideas" and "Enthusiasm." What was originally meant to form another chapter appeared among Locke's posthumous writings as The Conduct of the Under standing, one of his most characteristic works.
In 1700 Locke resigned his commission at the Board of Trade, and devoted himself to biblical studies and religious meditation. He turned to the Epistles of St. Paul, and applied the spirit of the Essay and the ordinary rules of critical interpretation to a litera ture which he venerated as infallible. The work, A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul, etc., was published in 1706 and a tract on Miracles, written in 1702, also appeared posthumously. His last days were occupied in beginning a Fourth Letter on Toleration, never finished, in reply to an attack made by Jonas Proast in 1704. Locke died on Oct. 28, 1704, and was buried by the parish church of High Laver.