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Sir Godfrey Kneller painted me in 1697, when I was sixty-five and had been back in England for eight years after years of exile in the Dutch Republic. I do not look well. I was not well — I had suffered from asthma since my thirties. I had also spent much of my adult life in fear of execution: I had been involved with the Earl of Shaftesbury, whose plots against Charles II had gone badly, and I had spent years in hiding.

The Two Treatises of Government were written in this period — I could not publish them under my own name for years. The Essay Concerning Human Understanding was written in bits and pieces over twenty years. Everything I published was either anonymous or delayed. The political philosopher of liberty spent decades unable to speak freely. I do not consider this ironic. I consider it instructive.