The English Enlightenment was the natural development of the English Renaissance. Locke was the successor of Bacon and Hobbes. On the other hand, the English Enlightenment is similar to what went on in France and Germany. The first half of the English Enlightenment――from 1690 to 1750――was absorbed in philosophical discussions; during the second half, the period abandoned philosophy, and was engaged entirely in politics. The classes that won in the Revolution of 1688 had little trouble in maintaining their place of power. The peaceful coming of William and Mary gave well-ordered conditions for intellectual development and for a powerful literary movement. The Jacobites were crushed, and there ensued a period of political peace. In the latter half of the century, however, another set of topics came to the front. After 1750 politics superseded philosophy; and whereas the keenest English minds had been employed upon the theoretical “study of mankind” in literature and philosophy, they now became engaged in practical political questions. Political parties developed. The Court was arrayed against the families of the Revolution, the American trouble, and the Wilkite agitations were looming large. England was sucked into the political maelstrom that was involving all Europe. Instead of deistic controversies with the theological orthodoxy, dangerous political questions were appearing. Instead of Hume’s _Essay_ and Butler’s _Analogy_ we have Burke’s speeches, Adam Smith’s _Wealth of Nations_, Junius’s _Letters_, and political pamphlets. In the first half of the period Bolingbroke had left politics for philosophy; in the second half Priestley left his laboratory for politics. The great change in English intellectual interests is shown in Hume himself. In 1752 he turned from philosophy, because there was so little interest in the subject, to the writing of his history of England. Theology was paralyzed; deism was no longer ridiculed; orthodoxy slumbered in its victory. The only philosophic tones came from France, where Voltaire, the Encyclopædists, and Rousseau were carrying out a movement that had its origin in England; and, on the other hand, from Scotland and its reactionary school. But the political movement always remained political in England, because its institutions were not inflexible and because the English people are by nature constitutional. In England there has never been a revolution, in the true sense, but England’s progress has always been controlled by tradition. Even the revolution in the English colonies in America was caused by an abridgment of constitutional rights, and not by political theory, although the formal Declaration of Independence was framed under the influence of French philosophers. =John Locke, Life and Writings= (1632–1704).[37] The life of Locke falls into four periods.