Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

BLAIR WORDEN - A BOOK OF FRIENDSHIP

What Granville actually knew of John Locke is unclear. They were near contemporaries, Locke born in 1632 and Granville in 1637, and had overlapped at Oxford, where Granville attended Exeter College (1657-60) while Locke was at Christ Church (1653-67) and served as Censor of Moral Philosophy in the early 1660s. Granville had risen spectacularly in the restored Church of England, while Locke’s star ascended more slowly, through academia, medicine, tutoring, and a growing reputation as a virtuoso. Both men profited from their social connections: it was likely an association with Sir John Banks, whose son, Caleb, was under Locke’s ‘friendship and Conduct’ while travelling in France, that brought Granville and Locke together in 1676. 7 Their earliest recorded interaction was Locke’s witnessing of loans made to Granville in December 1676. 8 After their extended visits to France in the 1670s, their trajectories diverged: Locke would spend much of the 1680s in exile in Holland, while Granville became Dean of Durham; and then at the Revolution they crossed the North Sea in opposite directions, Locke home to publish the works which would cement his reputation, and Granville to a life of impoverished French exile. This all lay in the future when first the importunate Granville began to badger Locke with requests for his friendship. Granville cast himself as a hollow man, an unfinished project: if he judged by the standards of the world, ‘I should thinke my selfe a famous Christian and considerable minister. But I am too sensible of the rottennesse of such foundations to build on them; I would faine have a litle better testimony in my owne Conscience.’ 9 He saw in Locke a heaven-sent companion who could quiet his conscience, resolve his ‘scrupulosity’, and complete his moral formation. ‘There is somewhat yet to be done,’ he wrote of himself: both as to Head and Heart (which ought regularly to have been done before I entred into sacred orders) which I despaire of ever doing, unless I can secure the Constant Conversation of an accomplished freind, whoe can lend mee, upon a pinch, a little learning and virtue , till I have by his Counsell and assistance purchased a better stock of both than I have yet done, and which my Conscience tells mee, that I am yet obliged to seek after. 10

7 Locke, Correspondence , ii. 465, 478. 8 Ed. John Lough, Locke’s Travels in France, 1675-1679, as related in his Journals (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 118-19.

9 Locke, Correspondence , i. 640. 10 Locke, Correspondence , ii. 75.

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