Events

The philosopher and political theorist John Locke (1632–1704) is known for his Two Treatises of Government, which became a foundational text for modern western democracy. In May 1652, John Locke was elected to a Studentship at Christ Church, conditionally tenable for life. During the next fifteen years at Oxford, Locke took his degrees (B.A. 1656, M.A. 1658) and fulfilled various college offices. While Censor of Moral Philosophy at Christ Church in 1664 Locke completed the Latin manuscript now known as Essays [or Questions] on the Law of Nature.  

John Locke was elected to a Studentship at Christ Church in 1652, after the civil wars; in 1684 he would be expelled in the wake of the Rye House Plot to assassinate Charles II and his brother James and he would spend some formative years in the Netherlands.

In this study afternoon our speakers will explore Locke's ideas and their connection to Christ Church, to Oxford, and to the wider European context of the early Enlightenment.

Historian and author Sophie Bacchus-Waterman will be speaking about her new book Elizabeth Boleyn: The Life of the Queen’s Mother, the first solo biography of Elizabeth Boleyn, mother of Queen Anne Boleyn. Who was the mother who raised the most famous queen consort in English history, and why has her story gone untold for so many centuries?