he was a great master of concealment both as to words and looks;
for looks, it is to be supposed, would have furnished a pretext for his
expulsion, more decent than any which had yet been discovered. An
expedient is then suggested to drive Mr. Locke to a dilemma, by summoning
him to attend the college on the first of January ensuing. If he do not
appear, he shall be expelled for contumacy; if he come, matter of charge
may be found against him for what he shall have said at London or
elsewhere, where he will have been less upon his guard than at Oxford.
Some have ascribed Fell's hesitation, if it can be so called, in
executing the king's order, to his unwillingness to injure Locke, who was
his friend; others, with more reason, to the doubt of the legality of the
order. However this may have been, neither his scruple nor his
reluctance was regarded by a court who knew its own power. A peremptory
order was accordingly sent, and immediate obedience ensued. Thus, while
without the shadow of a crime, Mr. Locke lost a situation attended with
some emolument and great convenience, was the university deprived of, or
rather thus, from the base principles of servility, did she cast away the
man, the having produced whom is now her chiefest glory; and thus, to
those who are not determined to be blind, did the true nature of absolute
power discover itself, against which the middling station is not more
secure than the most exalted. Tyranny, when glutted with the blood of
the great, and the plunder of the rich, will condescend to bent humbler
game, and make a peaceable and innocent fellow of a college the object of
its persecution. In this instance one would almost imagine there was
some instinctive sagacity in the government of that time, which pointed
out to them, even before he had made himself known to the world, the man
who was destined to be the most successful adversary of superstition and
tyranny.

The king, during the remainder of his reign, seems, with the exception of
Armstrong's execution, which must be added to the catalogue of his
murders, to have directed his attacks more against the civil rights,
properties, and liberties, than against the lives of his subjects.
Convictions against evidence, sentences against law, enormous fines,
cruel imprisonments, were the principal engines employed for the purpose
of breaking the spirit of individuals, and fitting their necks for the
yoke. But it was not thought fit to trust