James Tyrrell, John Locke, and Patriarcha non Monarcha (1681)

In June 1681, Richard Janeway published Patriarcha non Monarcha, a pseudonymous attack on the works of Sir Robert Filmer, the author of Patriarcha: or The Natural Power of Kings. The author of Patriarcha non Monarcha was James Tyrrell (1642–1719), a close friend and correspondent of John Locke (1632–1704), whose own Two Treatises of Government (1690) would bear a marked resemblance to Patriarcha non Monarcha. In the decades since the appearance of Peter Laslett’s critical edition (1960) of Locke’s Two Treatises, these resemblances have formed the subject of an unusual debate about the nature of Tyrrell’s and Locke’s intellectual exchanges during the period when both were writing confutations of Filmer. In the work of Richard Tuck and David Wootton, Patriarcha non Monarcha is shown to possess a remarkable significance in the textual history of the Two Treatises. The article revisits this debate in the light of significant new evidence. In particular, the article examines a series of provocative claims about the arrangement of printed gatherings — or “collation” — of Patriarcha non Monarcha itself.