James Harrington’s bent was for the study of life, and he made no active suit for court employment. But he went to court, where Charles I liked him, and admitted him as one of his privy chamber extraordinary, in which character he went with the King in his first expedition against the Scots. Because Charles I knew him and liked him, and because he had shown himself no partisan of either side in the civil war, though he was known to be inclined, in the way of abstract opinion, toward a form of government that was not monarchy, the commissioners appointed in 1646 to bring Charles from Newcastle named Harrington as one of the King’s attendants. The King was pleased, and Harrington was appointed a groom of the bedchamber at Holmby. He followed faithfully the fortunes of the fallen King, never saying even to the King himself a word in contradiction of his own principles of liberty, and finding nothing in his principles or in his temper that should prevent him from paying honor to his sovereign, and seeking to secure for him a happy issue out of his afflictions. Antony à Wood says that, “His Majesty loved Harrington’s company, and, finding him to be an ingenious man, chose rather to converse with him than with others of his chamber: they had often discourses concerning government; but when they happened to talk of a commonwealth the King seemed not to endure it.” Harrington used all the influence he had with those in whose power the King was, to prevent the urging of avoidable questions that would stand in the way of such a treaty as they professed to seek during the King’s imprisonment at Carisbrooke. Harrington’s friendly interventions on the King’s behalf before the Parliament commissioners at Newport caused him, indeed, to be suspected; and when the King was removed from Carisbrooke to Hurst Castle, Harrington was not allowed to remain in his service. But afterward, when King Charles was being taken to Windsor, Harrington got leave to bid him farewell at the door of his carriage. As he was about to kneel, the King took him by the hand and pulled him in. For a few days he was left with the King, but an oath was required of him that he would not assist in, or conceal knowledge of any attempt to procure, the King’s escape. He would not take the oath; and was this time not only dismissed from the King’s service but himself imprisoned, until Ireton obtained his release. Before the King’s death, Harrington found his way to him again, and he was among those who were with Charles I upon the scaffold. After the King’s execution, Harrington was for some time secluded in his study. Monarchy was gone; some form of commonwealth was to be established; and he set to work upon the writing of “Oceana,” calmly to show what form of government, since men were free to choose, to him seemed best.