Agnes Keene

Agnes Keene, dau. of Edmund Keene; married on July 15,1630 with JOHN LOCKE, b. Apr. 29,1606. He was then twenty-three years of age and she, per the handwritten record of Locke's father, was born c April 4,1597,being an estimation of her birth date. She was his step-mother's niece and sister of an Edmund Keene, who, a year or two earlier, had married his sister Frances. He did not follow his father's trade in cloth.

• The life of John Locke (1876)

Author: Bourne, H. R. Fox (Henry Richard Fox), 1837-1909

Volume: 1

Subject: Locke, John, 1632-1704

Publisher: New York, Harper & brothers

Possible copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT. Pg. 1-13

__________________________________

• Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 34
• Locke, John (1632-1704) by Leslie Stephen
• LOCKE, JOHN (1632–1704), philosopher, son of John Locke (1606–1661), was born 29 Aug. 1632, at Wrington, Somerset, about ten miles from Bristol, in the house of his mother's brother. He had one brother, Thomas, born 9 Aug. 1637. His mother, Agnes Keene (b. 1597), was niece of Elizabeth Keene, second wife of his grandfather, Nicholas Locke. Nicholas, who died in 1648, is described as 'of Sutton Wick, in the parish of Chew Magna, clothier.' He had previously lived at Pensford, six miles from Bristol, on the Shepton Mallet road. He had a house called Beluton, close to Pensford, but in Publow parish, which before his death was occupied by his son John. He left his house and a good fortune to John, who became an attorney, was clerk to the justices of the peace for the county, and agent to Alexander Popham, one of the justices, whose estates were in the neighbourhood. On the outbreak of the civil war Popham became colonel of a parliamentary regiment of horse, and Locke one of his captains. The regiment, after doing some service at Bristol and Exeter, was apparently broken up at Waller's defeat at Roundway Down (13 July 1643). Locke lost money by the troubles, and ultimately left to his son less than he had inherited. After leaving the army he again settled down as a lawyer. His wife, of whom the younger Locke speaks as 'a very pious woman and affectionate mother,' is not mentioned after the birth of her second child. The elder Locke was rather stern during his son's infancy, but relaxed as the lad grew, 'lived perfectly with him as a friend,' and solemnly 'begged his pardon for having once struck him in his boyhood. The younger Locke was sent to Westminster, probably in 1646, 'and placed on the foundation in 1647,through the interest of his father's friend, Popham, who had been elected to the Long parliament for Bath, in October 1645. The school was then managed by a parliamentary committee, Busby was head-master, and Dryden and South were among Locke's schoolfellows. At Whitsuntide 1652 Locke was elected to a junior studentship at Christ Church, and was matriculated 27 Nov. following. John Owen [q. v.] was then dean of Christ Church and vice-chancellor. Locke's tutor was Thomas Cole (1627?-1697) [q. v.] In 1654 Locke contributed a Latin and an English poem to the 'Musæ Oxonienses,' '??a??f???a,' a collection of complimentary verses, edited by Owen, in honour of the peace with the Dutch. He became B.A. on 14 Feb. 1655-6, and M.A. on 29 June 1658.
• Locke, like his predecessor Hobbes and all the rising thinkers of his own day, was repelled by the Aristotelian philosophy then dominant at Oxford. He is reported as saying (Spence, Anecdotes, p. 107) that his aversion to the scholastic disputation led him to spend much of his first years in reading romances. Lady Masham also heard that he was not a 'very hard student,' and preferred cultivating the acquaintance of 'pleasant and witty men.' She also states that his first relish for philosophy was due to his study of Descartes (Fox Bourne, i. 62), then becoming the leader of European thought. He had to attend the lectures of Wallis on geometry, and of Seth Ward upon astronomy. He long afterwards spoke with enthusiasm of the orientalist Pococke, who, though a staunch royalist, was allowed to retain the professorships of Hebrew and of Arabic (letter of 28 July 1703, first published in 'Collection' of 1720). Locke never became a mathematician or an orientalist, but he made acquaintance with the group of scientific men who met at Oxford before the Restoration and afterwards formed the Royal Society. With Boyle, who settled at Oxford in 1654 and became, with Wilkins, a centre of the scientific circles, he formed a lifelong friendship. Most of Locke's friends had royalist sympathies, and in spite of his early training he had become alienated from the puritan dogmatism. He heartily welcomed the Restoration in the belief that a return to constitutional government would be favourable to political and religious freedom.
• Locke's father died 13 Feb. 1660-1, leaving his property between his sons John and Thomas. Upon Thomas's death from consumption soon afterwards John probably inherited the whole. Seven years later it seems that he was receiving 73l. 6s. 10d. a year from his tenants at Pensford (ib. i. 82). He continued to reside at Oxford, where he had some pupils in 1661-3. He was appointed Greek lecturer at Christmas 1660, lecturer on rhetoric at Christmas 1662, and censor of moral philosophy at Christmas 1663, each appointment being for the following year. A testimonial to his good character from the dean and canons is dated 4 Oct. 1663. Fifty-five of the senior studentships out of sixty were tenable only by men in holy orders or preparing to take orders. Locke appears to have had some intentions of becoming a clergyman, but a letter written in 1666 (King, i. 52) declares that he had refused some very advantageous offers of preferment on the grounds that he doubted his fitness for the position, that he would not be contented with 'being undermost, possibly middlemost, of his profession,' and would not commit himself to an irrevocable step, for which, moreover, his previous studies had not prepared him. He had (Wood, Life and Times, Oxford Hist. Soc., i. 472) attended in 1663 the lectures of Peter Stahl, a chemist who had been brought to Oxford by Boyle in 1659. He must also have studied medicine, to which he soon devoted himself.
• .... etc.
• From: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Locke,_John_(1632-1704)_(DNB00) ______________________
• John Locke FRS (/'l?k/; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and known as the "Father of Classical Liberalism".[1][2][3] Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence.[4]
• Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau, and Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.[5]
• Locke's father, also called John, was a country lawyer and clerk to the Justices of the Peace in Chew Magna,[6] who had served as a captain of cavalry for the Parliamentarian forces during the early part of the English Civil War. His mother was Agnes Keene. Both parents were Puritans. Locke was born on 29 August 1632, in a small thatched cottage by the church in Wrington, Somerset, about twelve miles from Bristol. He was baptised the same day. Soon after Locke's birth, the family moved to the market town of Pensford, about seven miles south of Bristol, where Locke grew up in a rural Tudor house in Belluton.
• .... etc.
• From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke _________
• Book of the Lockes : A genealogical and historical record of the descendants of William Locke, of Woburn ... by Locke, John G
• https://archive.org/details/bookoflockesgene00lock
• https://archive.org/stream/bookoflockesgene00lock#page/354/mode/1up
  • JOHN LOCKE, "Gent."
• The fame and character of John Locke, commonly called "the great philosopher and metaphysician," are too well known to require a more extended notice. .... etc.
• https://archive.org/stream/bookoflockesgene00lock#page/355/mode/1up
• All the English writers whose works I have consulted, seem to have been almost entirely ignorant of his pedigree. Even Lord King, his nephew, who was to a great extent educated by him, and who published an edition of his works, merely says that "He was the son of J. Locke, who was descended from the Lockes of Charter Court, in Dorsetshire. That his father, who was a Captain in the army of the Parliament, possessed a moderate landed property in Pensfold, [it should have been Pensford] and Bellerton, where he lived ; that his fortune became so much impaired in the civil wars that he left a smaller estate to his son than he himself inherited." According to the Gent. Magazine, (see p. 344,) Capt. Locke was the son of Christopher, of Pilrow, in Somersetshire, but in the memoirs prefixed to the edition of the works of his son, pub. in London in 1801, it is said he was the son of Nicholas, of Suttenwick, in the parish of Chew-Magna, which is near Pensford, in Somersetshire. He was an Attorney, as well as a Captain, and officiated as "Steward or Court-keeper" to Col. Popham, who owned large possessions in the vicinity. Several authorities say that he was killed in battle, at or near Bristol, in 1645, and this seems to have been the prevailing opinion ; but Lord King, in speaking of a letter written by John to his father, Capt. Locke, says, "It is without date, but was probably written before 1660." This remark would indicate that the father was living in 1660. Another writer says he was living at the restoration (1660), and was appointed Clerk of the Sewers. As the writer in the Gentleman's Magazine says he copies his pedigree from the record of the parish where Capt. Locke was a Church Warden, we must suppose his statement to be the most reliable, and if so, that he was the son of Christopher.
• Equally contradictory are historians as to whom the wife of Capt. Locke was. Lord King, I think, does not name her. In the edition of Locke's works before named, published in 1801, in the memoir prefixed, it is said that Capt. Locke married Ann, the dau. of Edmund Keen or Ken, of Wrington ; while on the other hand, the Rev. Joseph Hunter, in his article relating to the emigrants from Suf-
• https://archive.org/stream/bookoflockesgene00lock#page/356/mode/1up
• folk, (Eng.) to New England, which was pub. in the Mass. His. Society's Collections, says on the authority of Candler, a great antiquarian of England, and who left voluminous manuscripts, containing pedigrees of many families, that ___ Bernard, who was the farmer of an estate of Custridge Hall, which he held of Lord Chief Justice Coke, married a dau. of Robert and Sibil Fisk, and that Bernard had a dau. who was the mother of John Locke. Mr. Hunter is disposed to think Candler good authority, because Bernard was Candler's grand-uncle. Yet doubts may be entertained, for Mr. Hunter himself, who ranks high as a learned antiquarian, in this very article, makes a statement which shows that he is ignorant of what some of us even in New England have learned. He says "that little is known of Locke's father, but no one who has written on his life, has had the slightest knowledge of the mother." In contradiction of this statement, it is only necessary to refer to the memoir from which I have before quoted, prefixed to the edition of Locke's works, pub. 1801, where the writer knew, or pretended to know, that she was the dau. of Edmund Keen or Ken. I notice this that my readers may see how easy it is for writers to be mistaken, hoping that they will be charitable to the many errors that they may find in this unpretending volume.
• I have before assumed that Candler was probably right, and that Locke's mother was a Bernard, and his statement seems to receive support from the association of the names of Matthew Barnard, (which I presume was only another way of spelling Bernard,) with the name of William Locke in Nicholas Davie's Will, on the presumption that there was a connection between William Locke and the family of John Locke.
• .... etc.
• The conflicting statements with regard to the family of the wife of Capt. Locke may be reconciled by supposing that he may have been twice married, a fact unknown to the different writers. It is to be hoped that these remarks may induce further inquiries, which may throw more light upon the subject.
• All authorities agree that John Locke, the subject of this sketch, was born while the mother was from home in a small cottage in Wrington, in Somersetshire, Aug. 29, 1632 An exception to this, however, as to the date, is a most interesting article originally published in the London Athenæum, and which was afterwards copied into the Living Age, No. 341, p. 424, entitled, "The Grave of Locke." The date of his birth, taken from his tomb, is printed A. D. "1631." This may be a typographical error. Wrington is a small town not far from Bristol, and in the immediate vicinity of Pensford, Bedminster, Pilrow, and several other places where many of the Lockes resided.
• Mr. Locke was never married, and after his retirement from public life he became the inmate of the family of Sir Francis and Lady Masham, at their seat at Oates, in Essex, and here he passed the remainder of an invalid life in the cultivation of his mind, and in the composition of many of his admirable works. Lady Masham, who was the dau. of the Rev. Dr. Ralph Cudworth, of Oxford, was a woman of a congenial mind, highly intellectual, and herself a writer. The friendship that existed between them, says one, "must have rested on similarity
• https://archive.org/stream/bookoflockesgene00lock#page/357/mode/1up
• Thus ended the life of this eminent man, Oct. 27, 1704, a. 72. He was buried at the Church at High Laver, in Essex, near Oates, about 20 miles from London. Against the south wall of the Church is a square raised tomb covered with a slab, on which is inscribed, "JOHN LOCKE, Ob. A.D. 1704." Above the tomb is a marble tablet bearing the Latin inscription written by himself. Here follows a translation :
• .... etc. ______________