


Sir Walter Raleigh's notes

First English dictionary

Letter about Guy Fawkes

Gunpowder Plot conspirators

The head of Guy Fawkes

Shakespeare's King Lear

The Globe Theatre

King James Bible

Surgeons' tools

Chinese globe

Shakespeare's First Folio

Lotus Sutra

Witch hunting

English Civil War scenes

Execution of Charles I

Agreement of the People

Charles I's executioner

Early A - Z of London

Advert for a quack doctor

Oliver Cromwell as the Devil

A cure for the Plague

Robert Hooke, Micrographia

Great Fire of London map

Great Fire of London

Wren's plans after the fire

Theatrical figures

Dictionary of criminal slang

Games and pastimes

Habeas Corpus Act

Map of the moon

A London Rhinoceros

Henry Purcell

Locke's Two Treatises

East India Company

Account of a shipwreck

Map of South America
The writings of philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) have had a profound effect on Western ideas of political and human rights. Locke proposed that all human beings are created free and equal, that all individuals have a right to life, liberty and property, that there should be religious tolerance and that a government should be based on popular consent.
Through the mid-1600s, when England had been rocked by civil war, the King was executed, a republic established and monarchy restored, many people had to think hard about the true nature of an individual’s rights and freedoms. But the Age of Enlightenment had yet to dawn, and those who promoted their ideas about rights and freedoms would find their lives in danger. It was not until after the Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights that thinkers felt sufficiently free to express their views without fear of persecution.
Shelfmark: C.107.e.89, tp.