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James Tyrrell, Whig Historian and Friend of John Locke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. W. Gough
J. W. Gough
Affiliation:
Oriel College, Oxford
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Extract

It has been said of James Tyrrell that his ‘main claim to distinction was perhaps his friendship with John Locke’, but his elaborate monument in Oakley church, near Brill in Buckinghamshire, although it records a number of his qualities and achievements, does not mention this. James was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Tyrrell, Knight, of Shotover House, near Oxford; his mother's father was James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh. Sir Timothy had been a Cavalier and in royal service, but his n son was to devote himself to writing books attacking the principles for which the royalists had stood. Born in London in May 1642, James Tyrrell was entered before he was fourteen as a student at Gray's Inn, but a year later he abandoned legal study and went up as a gentleman commoner to Queen's College, Oxford.

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Articles
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The Historical Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 1976 , pp. 581 - 610
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 Douglas, D. C., English Scholars (2nd edn, 1951), p. 134.Google Scholar

2 V. C. H. Bucks, iv, 80, 82. There is biographical information about the Tyrrell family in Wood, A., Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, P. (1920), iv, 520Google Scholar; Biographica Britannica (1763), s.v. James Tyrrell; D.N.B., ditto; Lipscombe, G., History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham (1847), I, 352.Google Scholar

3 Many years later Tyrrell told Mrs Masham that ‘Mr. Locke was then looked upon as one of the most learned and ingenious young men in the college that he was of (quoted in Bourne, H. R. Fox, Life ofJohn Locke (1876), I, 61;Google ScholarCranston, M., John Locke (1957), p. 38).Google Scholar

4 MS Locke c. 22, fos. 36–172. When quoting these letters (referred to in the footnotes as L) I have modernized the spelling and regarded the year as beginning on 1 Jan.

5 See the Introduction by Abrams, P. to his edition of John Locke: Two Tracts on Government (Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar

6 Ussher's views were upheld by Nicholas Bernard, previously a fellow prelate in Ireland, and Heylyn's, Respondet Petrus (1658)Google Scholar was the second of two tracts in reply to Bernard. Heylyn ‘added an Appendix in answer to certain passages in Mr. Sanderson's History of the Life and Reign of King Charles…’, whereupon Sanderson (William, not to be confused with Robert Sanderson, later Bishop of Lincoln) produced Post Haste, a Reply to Peter's Appendix to his Treatise intituled ‘Respondet Petrus’. Heylyn's rejoinder to this elicited two more tracts from Sanderson. All these pamphlets appeared in 1658.

7 L, fos. 36–7. Cf. Lough, J., Locke's Travels in France (Cambridge, 1953), pp. xxxi, 154. Locke recorded in his Journal that he had sent ‘133 printes of views de Paris et ses environs’, costing £1. 7s. 8d. Tyrrell paid him in instalments: gs. on 20 Dec. 1679 and the balance of 18s. 8d. on 15 Apr. 1680 (MS Locke fo. 4, p. 61).Google Scholar

8 Cranston, , John Locke, pp. 117, 140–1.Google Scholar

9 See Leyden, W. von, John Locke, Essap on the Law of Nature (Oxford, 1954).Google Scholar

10 Its full title is ‘Patriarcha non Monarcha. The Patriarch Unmonarch'd: being Observations on a late Treatise and divers other Miscellanies, published under the name of Sir Robert Filmer, Baronet. In which the falseness of those Opinions that would make Monarchy Jure Divino are laid open: and the true Principles of Government and Property (especially in our Kingdom) asserted. By a Lover of Truth and of his Country’. London: Printed for Richard Janeway in Queen's-head-Alley in Pater-Noster Row. 1681. The Preface is signed ‘Philalethes’.

11 Written perhaps forty years previously but not printed and published until 1680. See Laslett's, P.Introduction to his edition (Oxford, 1949).Google Scholar

12 Tyrrell to Petyt, 12 Jan. (1680): Inner Temple MSS 583 (17), fo. 302.

13 The Freeholder's Grand Inquest was originally published in 1648, and is attributed in Fortescue's catalogue of the Thomason Tracts to Sir Robert Holbourne, but it was included in collected editions of Filmer's works published later in the century, and formed the title for three of them.

14 Dated 1680 but already in circulation in the previous October: see Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 187–8.Google Scholar

15 Pocock, The Ancient Constitution. See also his article on Brady, in Cambridge Historical Journal, x (1951), pp. 186–204Google Scholar; also Weston, C. C., ‘Legal Sovereignty in the Brady Controversy’, in Historical Journal, xv (1972), 409–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Laslett, P., Introduction to his edition of Locke's Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge, 1960; 2nd edn, 1967), p. 60.Google Scholar According to Laslett Locke wrote the First Treatise after what became the Second Treatise.

17 Signature K, which concludes the first compositor's assignment, consists of only eight instead of the usual sixteen pages. At the end of signature O there are four pages in the wrong order (159 on the reverse of 157, 160 on the reverse of 158), the last two in smaller type, possibly otherwise because the text could not be fitted in. The third compositor, who I took over at signature P, and whose page-numbers are enclosed in round brackets, whereas the previous page-numbers are in square brackets, numbered his pages from 209 instead of from 161.

18 Laslett, Introduction to Two Treatises, p. 60; MS Locke fo. 5 (Journal for 1681), p. 65: ‘Thursday June 2. Paid for Patriarcha non Monarcha for Mr. Tyrrell 0–3–3.’

19 Patriarcha non Monarcha, pp. 98 ff., 2nd pagination; Locke, First Treatise, §16.

20 P. non M. p. 113, 2nd pagination; Locke, Second Treatise, chap. v.

21 See Laslett's footnotes to §§27 and 32 of the Second Treatise for details of these points.

22 P. non M. p. 14; Second Treatise, chap. vi.

23 P. non M. p. 11; Second Treatise, §II.

24 P. non M. pp. 46ft.

25 P. non M. pp. 84ff.; Second Treatise, §§95, 96.

26 P. non M. pp. 226SF.

27 Second Treatise, §104.

28 Second Treatise, §§102, 103.

29 See Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, pp. 188, 237, 238;Google Scholar also Laslett, P., Introduction to Two Treatises, pp. 76–8.Google Scholar

30 See de Beer, E. S., ‘John Locke and English Liberalism’, in Yolton, J. W. (ed.), John Locke, Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 40–1.Google Scholar Locke was not unappreciative of the value of history. He recommended that ‘an English gentleman should be well versed in the history of England’, and ‘with the history he may also do well to read the ancient lawyers…which he may find quoted in the late controversies between Mr. Petit, Mr. Tyrrell, Mr. Atwood, &c. with Dr. Brady….’ (‘Some Thoughts concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman’, in Locke’s Works (12th edn, 1824), 11, 408–9.)

31 Altogether Locke recorded fourteen visits to Oakley in his Journals for the years 1680 to 1683. His longest stay was from 30 Sept. to 27 Oct. 1682.

32 L, fos. 40–9, dated 5 Nov. 1680, 26 June 1681, 16 Jan. 1683. Mrs Tyrrell's health was giving cause for anxiety, and Locke sometimes included medical advice for her in his letters.

33 Often small sums of a few shillings, each loan and its repayment meticulously recorded by Locke in his Journal. He nearly always refers to his friend in formal terms as ‘Mr. Tyrrell’, but on one occasion (15 Oct. 1683) he notes the deposit of ‘two bunches of keys chez Musidore’, using the nickname no doubt for reasons of security.

34 MS Locke c. 34. Lord King printed some excerpts in his Life of Locke under the title ‘A Defence of Nonconformity’. In later years, when Stillingfleet was Bishop of Worcester, Locke became engaged in a famous dispute with him about the Trinity.

35 MS Locke c. 31, fos. 35–40. It is wrongly described as incomplete in Long's, P.Summary Catalogue of the Lovelace Collection, p. 43.Google Scholar

36 Tyrrell may, of course, simply have copied out someone else's account. He presumably had some Irish connexions through Archbishop Ussher, and in one of his letters (5 Mar. 1690: L, fos. 84–5) he raised the question of pensions for Irish ladies who had lost their title husbands in the king's service,

37 Cal. State Papers Domestic, July–Sept. 1683, p. 109.

38 L, fos. 50–1; see Cranston, p. 234.

39 Cranston, pp. 214ft.

40 L, fos. 52–3.

41 Thomas Herbert, eighth earl of Pembroke, had long been a friend and patron of Locke, and the Essay concerning Human Understanding was dedicated to him.

42 Rand, B. (ed.), The Correspondence of John Locke and Edward Clarke (Oxford, 1927), p. 174.Google Scholar

43 Rand, (ed.), The Correspondence, pp. 127, 171.Google Scholar Security may again have been the reason for avoiding Tyrrell's real name; cf. note 33 above.

44 L, fos. 56–8.

45 This was the first of James II's two Declarations, issued on 4 Apr. 1687. The second Declaration, of 27 Apr. 1688, was widely resisted and led to the trial of the seven bishops.

46 Subsequent letters gave Locke further news about the Magdalen affair and other events at Oxford. These letters were printed by Lord King,

47 L, fos. 59–61.

48 L, fos. 62–8, dated 2 Nov. and 14 Dec. 1687, 20 Feb. 1688. The first of these also ason contains more details about Mrs Tyrrell's illness; the second thanks Locke for his ‘kind and consolatory letter’.

49 L, fos. 107–9.

50 He was also an M.P. for twenty years. On one occasion in 1715, however, according to Hearne, he behaved rudely to the vice-chancellor and the mayor of Oxford; see Hearne, T., Remarks and Collections (Oxford Historical Society), v, 125.Google Scholar

51 He had a fresh copy made by his amanuensis, but took no further steps towards publication. See von Leyden, John Locke, Essays, p. 13.

52 As a young man Locke had shown marked hostility towards the Quakers and their habits, particularly their refusal to remove their hats. Cf. Cranston, pp. 41, 42; also the views he expressed in the earlier versions of the ‘Essay concerning Toleration’ composed in 1667: see my Introduction to his Epistola de ToUrantia (ed. Klibansky, and Gough, , Oxford, 1968), p. 18.Google Scholar Locke may perhaps have feared that the ‘light of nature’, which he held was the means by which we obtain knowledge of the law of nature, would be confused with the ‘inward light’ by which, according to George Fox, God's will was revealed to every man.

53 Postscript to a letter to Edward Clarke, 6 Feb. 1688: Rand, (ed.). The Correspondence, p. 244.Google Scholar

54 L. fos. 69, 70.

55 L.fo. 71.

56 See Bourne, H. R. Fox, Life of John Locke, II, 23,Google Scholar quoting a letter in which David Thomas reported to Locke that Musidore had told him that Penn had ‘moved the King for a pardon for you’.

57 Letters from Locke to Clarke, 16 and 21 May, 22 June 1688: Rand, (ed.), The Correspondence, pp. 268, 270, 277.Google Scholar See Cranston, pp. 284, 301–2.

58 L, fo. 72.

59 L, fos. 73–89, of various dates between 20 Dec. 1689 and 6 Apr. 1690. Locke was evidently appreciative of what Tyrrell had done, and on 2/12 Feb. 1690 he assured Limborch that Tyrrell had taken good care of all the funeral arrangements (Lettres inédites de John Locke à ses amis…, ed. H. Ollion and T. J. de Boer (The Hague, 1912), p. 195.

60 23 Jan. 1690: L, fo. 76.

61 15 Feb. 1690: L, fo. 83.

62 L, fo. 80.

63 L, fos. 86–7.

64 L, fos. 90–1. Part of this letter is quoted in Yolton, J. W., John Locke and the Way of Ideas (Oxford, 1956), p. 54.Google Scholar

65 L, fos. 92–3.

66 Cf. Yolton, John Locke, pp. 16ff.

67 MS Locke c. 24, fo. 277, dated 4 Aug. 1690. The draft of this letter, printed by Lord King, Life and Letters of John Locke (1858 edn), pp. 198ff., is well known.

68 W. von Leyden, Introduction to Locke, John, Essays on the Law of Nature (Oxford, 1954), esp. pp. 7Iff.Google Scholar; Cranston, M., John Locke (1957), p. 66;Google Scholar P. Laslett, Introduction to Two Treatises of Government, pp. 80ff.; Dunn, J., The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge, 1969), chap. 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 See my John Locke's Political Philosophy (2nd edn, Oxford, 1973), p. 14,Google Scholar and references given in the footnote there. See also Polin, R., La Politique morale de John Locke (Paris, 1960), esp. pp. 48ff.Google Scholar

70 Cf. Essay, II, xxviii, §8; ‘the divine law, whereby I mean that law which God hath set to the actions of men, whether promulgated to them by the light of nature, or the voice of revelation’.

71 Essay, II, xxviii, §5.

72 Von Leyden, introduction to John Locke, Essays, p. 71.

73 Von Leyden, p. 72, n. 3; Essay, II, xxi, §§68–72. Locke altered this chapter in the second edition in order to meet some of the criticisms brought against him.

74 For a fuller discussion of these points see Aarsleff's, H. article in Yolton, J. W. (ed.), John Lock, Problems and Perspectives, esp. pp. 108–27.Google Scholar

75 L, fos. 94–6.

76 See Laslett, , Introduction to Two Treatises, p. 79.Google Scholar

77 29 June, 15 Oct. 1691: L, fos. 98–103. Fos. 100–1 contain an inventory of Locke's household chattels left at Oakley. Tyrrell thanked Locke for making him a present of some chairs and cupboards, ‘which is more than I could expect for so little trouble as your things have been to me.’

78 22 Oct. 1691: L, fo. 104.

79 L, fo. 115.

80 9 Aug. 1692: L, fo. 117. How hard it was to allay Locke's suspicious secretiveness and fussiness about details may be gathered from Tyrrell's remarks in a letter dated 13 Feb. 1692 (L, fos. 110–11), telling Locke that ‘in obedience to your commands’ he is despatching his manuscripts in a little box, except for the foul copy of ‘your late treatise of human understanding’. This was too big to go inside, so Tyrrell has tied it on the top, ‘yet so sealed I, up that nobody can look into it’.

81 L, fos. 115–16.

82 L, fo. 104.

83 L, fo. 113.

84 L, fo. 116.

85 L, fos. 117–20. Part of this letter is quoted in Laslett's Introduction to Two Treatises of Government, p. 79.

86 The full title is ‘ A Brief Disquisition of the Law of Nature, according to the Principles and Method laid down in the Reverend Dr. Cumberland's (now Lord Bishop of Peter borough's) Latin Treatise on that Subject. As also his Confutations of Mr. Hobbs's Principles, put into another Method’. The date on the tide page is 1692. A ‘second edition, corrected and somewhat enlarged’, appeared in 1701. The concluding 150 pages are devoted to the ‘confutation’ of Hobbes's principles, summed up under ten headings and answered seriatim.

87 E.g. Locke's arguments against innate ideas (p. xxv), his notion of a Supreme Being discoverable by reason, and his belief that morality should be as capable of demonstration as mathematics (p. lv). Dr von Leyden has shown (John Locke, Essays, pp. 85–8) that parts of Tyrrell's arguments are derived from Locke's unpublished Latin essays on the law of nature, to which Tyrrell would have had access while they were deposited at his house.

88 L, fo. 114.

89 Preface, p. vi.

90 Preface, p. ix.

91 Dialogue 7. There is a further long discussion about the Norman Conquest in Dialogue 10.

92 Dialogue 7. On the use made in the later seventeenth century of the so-called ‘King's Constitution’ as expressed in the Answer to the Nineteen Propositions, see Weston, C. C., English Constitutional Theory and the House of Lords (1965), chap. III.Google Scholar

93 L, fo. 129. On 28 Jan. 1695(L, fos. 130–1)Tyrrell writes again, saying he has sent Locke his first dialogue and is now sending the second. He has marked the places borrowed from the Essay concerning Human Understanding, and asks Locke to let him know if he approves or disapproves. He concludes with the hope of seeing Locke at the queen's funeral. Locke must have replied fairly promptly, for in a letter of 11 Mar. (L, fos. 132–3), thanking him for perusing his papers, Tyrrell wishes he had been ‘more particular’ in his criticism, and says he would welcome ‘the impartial judgment of that ingenious lady with whom you now are’ [i.e. Damaris Masham, Cudworth's daughter] on his attempt to refute some allegations against her father.

94 Letters of 7 Jan. and 26 Oct. 1693, 7 Aug. 1701: L, fos. 121, 123–5, 145.

95 L, fos. 141–2. Tyrrell's persistent failure to pay his debts was an important factor in Locke's coolness towards him. A short note from Locke dated 22 Oct. 1694 (MS. Locke, c. 24, fo. 279), suggesting ways in which Tyrrell might ‘quit scores between us’, recalled that he had ‘had £33 of mine in your hands five years and £10 near eleven years’.

96 26 Oct. 1693: L, fos. 123–5.

97 L, fos. 128–9. Locke had had the new matter printed on separate slips of paper for purchasers of the first edition; see Cranston, p. 379.

98 Cf. Essay, II, xxvii.

99 11 Mar. 1695: L, fos. 132–3. Thomas Willis was Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Oxford. His De Anima Brutorum was published in 1672, and an English translation in 1683.

100 The full title is ‘The General History of England, both Ecclesiastical and Civil; from the Earliest Accounts of Time, to the Reign of his Present Majesty, King William III. Taken from the most Ancient Records, Manuscripts, and Printed Historians. With Memorials of the most Eminent Persons in Church and State, As also the Foundations of the most Noted Monasteries, and both Universities’. The work is dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke, to whom Locke had dedicated his Essay.

101 L, fo. 145.

102 Hearne, T., Remarks and Collections (Oxford Historical Soc.), I, 69.Google Scholar

103 Hearne, II, 220.

104 Hearne, iv, 376.

105 Hearne, x, 77. On 14 Sept. 1721 Hearne recorded that Tyrrell ‘left another volume of his History ready for the Press, but ‘twas never printed, and perhaps never will’ (ibid. p. 455).

106 L, fos. 153–4. Tyrrell also commented favourably on Clarendon's History, and advised Locke to read it, ‘it being full of lively (and I believe for the most part) true Characters of the chief persons concerned in the public affairs of that time besides many curious particulars of secret History not before published; the second volume is going to press’ (L, fos. 151–2).

107 In 1684 Brady published what he called An Introduction to the Old English History, which was in fact a collection of his replies to Atwood and Petyt and other controversial tracts. The first volume of his Complete History of England appeared in 1685.

108 Hearne, T., Remarks and Collections, II, 227, 228.Google Scholar

109 Hearne, I, 69.

110 Hearne, iv, 222.

111 Hearne, VII, 19. Hearne wrote this on 19 June 1719, and was of the same opinion twelve years later: ‘He was a very industrious man, and had consulted and inspected a very great variety of books, MS. and printed,…and his skill was very considerable, though his judgment not great. Besides, being a partial writer, he is not much regarded. Yet his notes about authors are of good account’ (ibid, X, 455: 14 Sept. 1731). A fortnight er later Hearne added that ‘men, even of his own principles, used to stile him an hypothetical writer’ (ibid. p. 461).

112 These are the epithets used by E. I. Carlyle in his article in the D.N.B.

113 General History of England, Introduction, I, xxx; in 11, xix he again charges Brady with lack of impartiality in exaggerating the arbitrary power of medieval kings.

114 His tract The Necessity of the Absolute Power of all Kings; and in particular the Kings of England (1648) ‘consists entirely of extracts from the République’, and shows that Bodin was the source of many of the arguments he used in his other works. See Laslett, P., Patriarcha and other works of Sir Robert Filmer (Oxford, 1949) p. 316.Google Scholar

115 L, fos. 159–60.

116 The gentlewoman was Mrs Catharine Trotter Cockburn: see Yolton, J. W., John Locke and the Way of Ideas, pp. 19, 215.Google Scholar

117 L, fos. 165–6; see Cranston, pp. 467, 468.

118 L, fos. 167–8.

119 Thomas James had been the first librarian, appointed in 1602.

120 L, fos. 153–4.

121 L, fos. 157–8 (6 May 1703). But he only sent books published under his name; anonymous works such as the Two Treatises of Government, The Reasonableness of Christianity, and his works on toleration were only bequeathed to the library in a codicil to his will (Cranston, p. 460).

122 L, fos. 159–60 (29 July 1703).

123 Dr Jonas Proast, of All Souls (previously of Queen's), was the author of a pamphlet attacking Locke's Letter concerning Toleration. Locke replied (anonymously) with his Second Letter concerning Toleration, and a protracted controversy ensued. *

124 L, fo. 169. zea

125 L, fos. 171–2.

126 Hearne, 1, Ig. Moreri's Le Grand Dictionnaire Historique had appeared in France in 1688–9. Tyrrell is also said to have been the editor of Mr. John Milton's Character of the Long Parliament, a previously censored fragment published in 1681, but possibly the editor was not Tyrrell but Arthur Annesley, first Earl of Anglesey.

127 Hearne, iv, 397. ‘The Hereditary Right of the Crown of England asserted, by a Gentleman’ (1713) was attributed to Hilkiah Bedford, a non-juring divine who became chaplain to Bishop Ken. He was in fact not the author but the publisher, but it led to his being prosecuted, imprisoned for three years, and fined 1000 marks. The real author was another non-juror, George Harbin, a friend of Bishop Ken's and chaplain to Lord Weymouth. See D.N.B. s.v. Hilkiah Bedford.

128 Hearne, 1, 339 (28 Jan. 1710). Hearne exaggerated in calling Tyrrell ‘too zealous a republican to retract his errors’ (ibid. iv, 376), but Tyrrell was naturally pleased ‘that the Elector of Brunswick is acknowledged’ (4 Aug. 1714: ibid., iv, 389).

129 Hearne, iv, 257 (15 Nov. 1713).

130 Hearne, v, 101. Locke's young friend Anthony Collins had produced a tract entitled ‘Priestcraft in Perfection’, in reply to which, in 1715, Thomas Bennet, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, published his ‘Essay on the XXXIX Articles agreed on in 1562 and revised in 1571…and a Prefactory Epistle to Anthony Collins, Esq., wherein the egregious falsehoods and calumnies of the author of “Priestcraft in Perfection” are exposed…’.

131 Hearne, iv, 231–2.

132 Hearne, VIII, 91 (27 June 1723). Hearne was told this the previous evening by aclergyman well acquainted with James Tyrrell, Esq.’, who had it from the ‘very near relation’ himself.