Project Gutenberg's The Commonwealth of Oceana, by James Harrington

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Title: The Commonwealth of Oceana

Author: James Harrington

Posting Date: December 27, 2008 [EBook #2801]
Release Date: September, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMMONWEALTH OF OCEANA ***

OCEANA

By James Harrington

INTRODUCTION TO OCEANA

JAMES HARRINGTON, eldest son of Sir Sapcotes Harrington of Exton, in
Rutlandshire, was born in the reign of James I, in January, 1661, five
years before the death of Shakespeare. He was two or three years younger
than John Milton. His great-grandfather was Sir James Harrington, who
married Lucy, daughter of Sir William Sidney, lived with her to their
golden wedding-day, and had eighteen children, through whom he counted
himself, before his death, patriarch in a family that in his own time
produced eight dukes, three marquises, seventy earls, twenty-seven
viscounts, and thirty-six barons, sixteen of them all being Knights of
the Garter. James Harrington's ideal of a commonwealth was the design,
therefore, of a man in many ways connected with the chief nobility of
England.

Sir Sapcotes Harrington married twice, and had by each of his wives two
sons and two daughters. James Harrington was eldest son by the first
marriage, which was to Jane, daughter of Sir William Samuel of Upton, in
Northamptonshire. James Harrington's brother became a merchant; of his
half-brothers, one went to sea, the other became a captain in the army.

As a child, James Harrington was studious, and so sedate that it was
said playfully of him he rather kept his parents and teachers in awe
than needed correction; but in after-life his quick wit made him full of
playfulness in conversation. In 1629 he entered Trinity College, Oxford,
as a gentleman commoner. There he had for tutor William Chillingworth,
a Fellow of the college, who after conversion to the Church of Rome had
reasoned his way back into Protestant opinions. Chillingworth became a
famous champion of Protestantism in the question between the Churches,
although many Protestants attacked him as unsound because he would not
accep