Nicholas Locke, of Sutton Wicke

A younger brother to the Lockes of Charon Court in Dorsetshire.

Nicholas was described as "of Sutton Wick, in the Parish of Chew Magna, clothier". When he died, in 1648, he was buried in the courtyard of Chew Magna, "under a goodly tomb opposite the belfry door".

Chew Magna is a village and civil parish within the Chew Parish in the United Authority of Bath and North East Somerset, in the Ceremonial county of Somerset, England.

Links

• http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeofjohnlocke01bour#page/2/mode/2up
• http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&i...
• http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=brackneyr...
• http://openlibrary.org/books/OL13506880M/The_life_of_John_Locke.Pg. 1-3

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• Abstracts of Somersetshire wills, etc. by Crisp, Frederick Arthur
• https://archive.org/details/abstractssomers00browgoog
• https://archive.org/stream/abstractssomers00browgoog#page/n25/mode/1up
• Pg.11
• EDMUND KEANE, or KEENE, of Wrington, Somerset, Tanner. Will dated January; 1628, proved June, 1630. [60 Scroope.] A marriage shortly to be solemnized between my daughter Agnes Keene & John Locke son of Nicholas Locke, of Pensford. Elizabeth Locke, my daughter. My wife Mary, Extrix.
• Edward Locke, of Brockhampton, Buckland Newton, Dorset. Churchwarden, 1573. ch: Nicholas (m. Frances Lansden & Elizabeth Keene) Locke
  • Nicholas Locke, born 1574, migrated to Somerset. Clothier, of Sutton Wick, died 1648, buried at Chew Magna. = 1 w. Frances Lansden, married at Publow, co. Somerset, died 1612. ; ch: Frances (m. Edmund Keene), John (m. Agnes Keene), Peter (m. Ann . . . ), Edward (b.1610), Thomas (b.1611-12) Locke.; = 2 w. Elizabeth Keene, widow of ...., married 1624.
    • Frances Locke, born Oct. 5, 1604, married Edmund Keene.
    • John Locke, born Apr. 29, 1606, married July 15, 1630, Agnes Keene, sister of Edmund Keene, clerk to Francis Baber and Alexander Popham. ; ch: John (the Philosopher), Thomas (bap.1637) Locke
      • John Locke the Philosopher, born Aug. 29, 1633.
      • Thomas Locke, born at Pensford, bap. Aug. 9, 1637.
    • Peter Locke, born July 13, 1607, buried 1686. = Ann . . . ; ch: Issue, see Registers at Chew, 1639-56.
    • Edward Locke, born Nov. 7, 1610. His will 1663.
    • Thomas Locke, born Feb. 10, 1611-12. Will 1663. _____________________
• 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) ______________________
• The life of John Locke by Bourne, H. R. Fox
• https://archive.org/details/lifeofjohnlocke01bour
• http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeofjohnlocke01bour#page/2/mode/1up
• .... etc.

  Edward Locke lived at Brockhampton, a hamlet near to Canning's Court, in the parish of Buckland-Newton, of which he was churchwarden in 1573 ; 3 but his son '''Nicholas, born in 1574, 4 migrated early in life from the Dorsetshire hamlet to a Somersetshire village. In 1603, Nicholas Locke married a Frances Lansdon, at Publow, 5 and there, or at Pensford, hard by, he established himself as a clothier. 6  Bristol, being then a centre of the woollen trade in the west of England, like Hull and Leeds in the north, gathered in the cloths manufactured in the surrounding towns and villages for shipment to other parts of the country and to continental marts ; and contributions were sent to it from Pensford, which 

*http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeofjohnlocke01bour#page/3/mode/1up

• Leland, in 1540, termed a pretty market town, occupied with clothing." Nicholas Locke appears to have heen a collector of the stuffs made by his neighhours, and thus a sort of merchant, rather than himself a manufacturer. His trade prospered, and he acquired money in other ways. His first wife died in 1612, 1 and in 1624 he married again — his second wife being a well-to-do widow living at Chew Magna, in the same neighbourhood, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Keene. 2 After that, it would seem that he lived in the second wife's house. He was described as "of Sutton Wick, in the parish of Chew Magna, clothier;" 3 and when he died, in 1648, he was buried in the churchyard of Chew Magna, "under a goodly tomb opposite the belfry door." 4 Besides other children, he left a daughter Frances, born on the 5th of October, 1604; a son John, born on the 29th of April, 1606 ; and another son, Peter, born on the 13th of July, 1607. 5
  • .... etc.
  • 5 Additional MSS., no. 28273. Other sons of Nicholas Locke were Edward, born on the 7th of November, 1610, whose will was, dated the 24th of April, 1663, and proved in the same year, and Thomas, born on the 12th of February, 1611-12, and whose will, dated the 23rd of November, 1663, was proved on the 4th of February, 1663-4. Peter Locke, who probably carried on his father's business, and became a man of substance, lived at Bishop's Sutton, and was buried in Chew Magna churchyard on the 20th December, 1686. Three of his children died before him. He bequeathed his property to two daughters, — Anne, born in 1641, who in 1670 married Jeremy King, a grocer of Exeter ; their son, Peter King, Locke's protege, and afterwards lord chancellor, being the founder of the family now represented by Earl Lovelace ; and Elizabeth,
• http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeofjohnlocke01bour#page/4/mode/1up
• The elder of these two sons was the father of the John Locke wliose life is to he recorded in these pages. On the 15th of July, 1630, at the age of twenty-three, his wife being ten years older, 1 he married Agnes or Anne Keene, his step-mother's niece and sister of an Edmund Keene, who, probably, a year or two before, had married his sister Frances. 2 He did not follow his father's trade in cloth,
  • who married twice, and had at any rate two sons, Peter Stratton, of Bristol, and John Bonville. Two other cousins of Locke's, Mary Doleman and Anne Hazel, were named by him in his will; but I have not been able to trace their parentage.
  • 1 The date of her birth— the 14th of April, 1597— is given on a loose memorandum, in the handwriting of Locke's father, but endorsed by him, "Age," which I found among the Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 30.
  • 2 These Keenes were descended from Edmund Keene, a plumber, of Wrington, who, as it is recorded in John at-Neale's pedigree, owned "the house where he dwelt, by the hatch on the north side" — which is interesting to us as being afterwards the birth-place of John Locke — and whose widow, living on till 1636, or later, was the owner of much property at Wrington. The Edmund Keene who married Frances Locke was a tanner by trade. Among other evidences of his good social position, we hear of his purchasing land at Wrington worth 330/. under a deed that was executed by John Keene, his brother, and John Locke, his brother-in-law, as attorneys. .... etc. _____________________