Locke the Plotter? Ashcraft's Revolutionary Politics Reconsidered

Abstract


 
 
 In the twenty years since it was published, Richard Ashcraft’s Revolutionary Politics and Locke’ s ‘Two Treatises of Government’ has become established as a major contribution to Locke scholarship. Ashcraft’s primary interest was in political theory, and though he emphasized that he was not writing a political biography he did insist that Locke’s political thought ‘cannot be grasped in any way other than on the basis of biographical evidence’. One of his main aims was to dispel what he called the ‘myth of Locke’s political innocence’ and he sought to portray him as a committed political activist, not a ‘detached philosopher’. ‘We have become accustomed’, he wrote, ‘to seeing a tapestry in which Locke is pictured alongside Newton or Boyle. The historical Locke, however, was more often in the company of Ferguson or Wildman or some obscure tradesmen.’ The comparison is a striking one. Robert Ferguson has gone down in history as Ferguson the Plotter, and John Wildman was someone who, in the words of his biographer, was ‘plotter alike against Charles I, Cromwell, Charles II, James II and William III’. Both were involved in the Rye House plot and Monmouth’s rebellion, though Wildman preferred to leave the risks to others. If Ashcraft is to be believed, Locke was similarly involved, and so too were most of his friends: ‘The fact is that the majority of Locke’s friends were political activists, and of these, the overwhelming majority had been members of the Green Ribbon Club and were participants in the Rye House conspiracy’.