Name James Tyrrell Role Author | Education University of Oxford | |
Died 1718, Shotover, Oxford, United Kingdom Books A Brief Disquisition of the Law of Nature: According to the Principles and Method Laid Down in the Reverend Dr. Cumberland's (now Lord Bishop of Peterborough's) Latin Treatise on that Subject : as Also His Confutations of Mr. Hobb's Principles Put Into Another Method : with the Right Reverend Author's Approbation | ||
James Tyrrell (May 5, 1642 – June 17, 1718) was an English author, Whig political philosopher, and historian.
Contents
Life
James Tyrrell was born in London, the eldest son of Sir Timothy Tyrrell and Elizabeth Tyrrell (née Ussher), the only daughter of Archbishop James Ussher. His younger sister Eleanor married the deist Charles Blount. He lived in Oakley, Buckinghamshire. He was married to Mary Hutchinson (1645-1687), daughter of Sir Michael Hutchinson of Flatbury, Worcestershire. They had at least three children, including James Tyrrell and Mary and another son.
Educated at The Queens College, Oxford (MA, 1663), he became a barrister in 1666 and a justice of the peace in Buckinghamshire. He was deprived of this office by James II for failing to support the Declaration of Indulgence. At the time of the Peace of Rijswijk (1697), he was persuaded back into public service by Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke (Lord Pembroke) to become Commissioner of the Privy Seal.
Tyrrell was a friend and supporter of John Locke, who stayed for a time at Tyrrell's home, at a time when he was apparently working on his Two Treatises on Government. His thinking appears to have been influential in the development of Locke's thinking, and for a time his writings were more influential than Locke's in the emergence of Whig thinking and policies.
He spent his later years in Shotover, near Oxford and began building Shotover Park there, where he died on June 17, 1718, though he is buried in the church in Oakley.
According to a memorial to him, "He was a man of rare integrity, gravity, and wisdom: had never polished himself out of his sincerity: nor refined his behaviour to the prejudice of his virtue. He was a warm and zealous lover of his country, & of that system of religion and law which he well knew could only support it."
Works
His Patriarcha non monarcha (1681) was a reply to Robert Filmer's Patriarcha; it also included references to Thomas Hobbes, and was also influenced by Samuel Pufendorf. A Brief Disquisition of the Law of Nature was an English abridgment of Richard Cumberland's De legibus naturae. Bibliothetica politica was a huge compendium of Whig constitutional theory.