James Tyrrell, Whig Historian and Friend of John Locke

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

E-ISSN: 1469-5103|19|3|581-610

ISSN: 0018-246x

Source: The Historical Journal, Vol.19, Iss.3, 1976-09, pp. : 581-610

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Abstract

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.