Look in your messages for a PM

If you mean Locke, he went into exile twice. The first was to France, the second to Holland (one step away from the King's agents who were after him. Aside for his theoretical writings, Locke was up to his eyeballs in revolutionary intrigue. He was part of the Shaftesbury rebels bent on keeping the Catholic James II from succeeding Charles II to the British throne. There is no finer discussion of Locke's historical context and revolutionary activity than Richard Ashcraft's volume, i.

Locke's contribution to the advance of reason, toleration, individualism, and the free market were indeed great and helped immeasurably to build the culture of the Enlightenment. His influence was so great that it extended to the key 18th century writers and ministers who could spread the word..

If the premise is that the founders needed to read Locke's works to justify their revolution, it needs to be checked. Locke's political thought reverberated through the 18th century British Opposition press. Books, broadsides, periodic literature (newspapers and magazines. Two of the most influential authors who published 144 essays civil and religious between 1720-23, right after the bursting of the South Sea Bubble. The essays were collected and published as CATO'S LETTERS. It exposed the corruption of the British goov't and thoroughly covered the elements of Locke's political thought. \Colonial America devoured the Opposition Press of the period and corresponded with many of its members. Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution is the best source. But you can check out my own Locke In America: The Moral Philosoophy of the Founding Era.

Before they set pen to paper?...Really don't know...do you? Would be interesting.

Thank you, I'd forgotten that he exiled himself. Always a pleasure, a breath of fresh air, to read about Him and those times of enlightenment.