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² The relevant literature is conveniently listed in Mulligan, L., Richards, J. and Graham, K., ‘Intentions and conventions: a critique of Quentin Skinner's method for the study of the history of ideas’, Political Studies, XXVII (1979), 84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ Austin, J. L., How to do things with words (Oxford, 2nd edn, 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Gunnell, J. G., Political theory: tradition and interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., 1975).Google Scholar

⁶ Tarlton, C. D., ‘Historicity, meaning, and revisionism in the study of political thought’, History and Theory, XII (1973), 313;Google Scholar cf. pp. 322, 325; Parekh, B. and Berki, R. N., ‘The history of political ideas: a critique of Q. Skinner's methodology’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xxxiv (1973), 171,177Google Scholar; Corrigan, P., ‘Curiouser and curiouser: a largely bibliographical comment on Hall's “English intelligentsia”’, British Journal of Sociology, xxxi (1980), 292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ Capra, D. La, ‘Rethinking intellectual history and reading texts’, History and Theory, xix (1980), 254–5; Gunnell, Political theory, ch. 4; M. P. Thompson, ‘Rezeptionsgeschichte and the history of political thought: the case of Locke's Two treatises’, forthcoming.Google Scholar

⁸ Ashcraft, R., ‘On the problem of methodology and the nature of political theory’, Political Theory, III (1975), 17–20.Google Scholar

⁹ R. Ashcraft, ‘Political theory and political action in Karl Mannheim's thought: reflections upon Ideology and Utopia and its critics’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, MXXIII (1981).Google Scholar

¹⁰ By way of illustration, I hope it is not gratuitous to record that in 1976 an article of mine, subsequently appearing in this journal (xx (1977), 569–86), was rejected by another journal on the ground that, though ‘fully worthy of publication’, it was ‘a purely internalist piece on the history of political theory’.

¹¹ Skinner, Q., ‘Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas’, History and Theory, VIII (1969), 49.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid. pp. 28–9. Cf. Skinner, , ‘On performing and explaining linguistic actions’, Philosophical Quarterly, xxi (1971), 19Google Scholar; and Skinner, , ‘Motives, intentions and the interpretation of texts’, New Literary History, III (1972), 405.Google Scholar

¹³ Skinner, Q., ‘The limits of historical explanations’, Philosophy, XLI (1966), 214Google Scholar; Skinner, , ‘Conventions and the understanding of speech acts’, Philosophical Quarterly, xx (1970), 138.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Laslett, P., Runciman, W. G. and Skinner, Q., eds., Philosophy, politics and society, Fourth Series (Oxford, 1972), pp. 136–57.Google Scholar

¹⁵ It first appeared in Hookway, C. and Pettit, P., eds., Action and interpretation: studies in the philosophy of the social sciences (Cambridge, 1978).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Abelson, R., ‘Because I wanted to’, Mind, LXXIV (1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ Skinner, ‘Performing and explaining linguistic actions’, p. 16; Dunn, ‘Practising history’, in Political obligation, pp. 86, 88, 110.

¹⁸ Apart from items mentioned below, see also Kato, T., ‘On the “complexity” of Locke's thought: a methodological sketch’, History of Political Thought,II (1981)Google Scholar; Nelson, J., ‘Unlocking Locke's legacy: a comment’, Political Studies, xxvi (1978)Google Scholar; Thompson, M. P., ‘Reception and influence: a reply to Nelson on Locke's Two treatises of government’, Political Studies, xxvii (1980).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Pocock, J. G. A. and Ashcraft, R., John Locke: papers read at a Clark Library seminar, 10 December 1977 (William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, 1980).Google Scholar

²⁰ Dunn, , The political thought of John Locke (Cambridge, 1969), esp. ch. 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Macpherson, C. B., The political theory of possessive individualism (Oxford, 1962).Google Scholar

²¹ ‘Consent in the political theory of John Locke’, first published in Historical Journal, x (1967)Google Scholar; ‘The politics of Locke in England and America in the eighteenth century’, first published in Yolton, J. W., ed., John Locke: problems and perspectives (Cambridge, 1969).Google Scholar

²² See below, nn. 53, 55.

²³ Cf. Tully, J., ‘Current thinking about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political theory’, Historical Journal, xxiv (1981).Google Scholar

²⁴ Journal of the History of Ideas, XLII (1980).Google Scholar

²⁵ ‘A concern for understanding: a case of Locke's precepts and practice’, Historical Journal, xxv (1982).Google Scholar

²⁶ Ironically, Mulligan et al. have criticized Skinner for too narrow a notion of context: ‘Intentions and conventions’. Cf. Bouche, D. E. G., ‘A comment on Mulligan, Richards and Graham’, Political Studies, xxix (1981).Google Scholar

²⁷ Cf. Locke, A letter to the right reverend Edward, lord bishop of Worcester (1697).

²⁸ Locke, , A letter concerning toleration, ed. Klibansky, R. and Gough, J. W. (Oxford, 1968), pp. 145–9.Google Scholar

²⁹ ‘John Locke and the political thought of the 1680s’: Conference for the study of political thought, Folger Institute, Washington, D.C., March 1980. Ashcraft's paper has appeared as ‘Revolutionary politics and Locke's Two treatises of government: radicalism and Lockean political theory’, Political Theory, VIII (1980); my paper, ‘John Locke and Anglican Royalism’, is forthcoming in Political Studies.Google Scholar

³⁰ Ashcraft, ‘The Two treatises and the Exclusion crisis: the problem of Lockean political theory as bourgeois ideology’, in Pocock and Ashcraft, John Locke, p. 45.

³¹ Ibid. pp. 35, 37.

³² Pocock, ‘The myth of John Locke and the obsession with liberalism’, in Pocock and Ashcraft, John Locke, pp. 9–10.

³³ Kautsky, K., Thomas More and his Utopia (New York, 1927)Google Scholar; Ames, R., Citizen Thomas More and his Utopia (Princeton, 1949), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

³⁴ Utopias and Utopian thought (ed.) (Boston, 1966)Google Scholar; French Utopias: an anthology of ideal societies (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

³⁵ Manuel and Manuel, Utopian thought in the western world (Oxford, 1979), p. 801Google Scholar; Davis, , Utopia and the ideal society: a study of English utopian writing 1516–1700 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 388.Google Scholar

³⁶ Davis, Utopia, pp. 2–3. Actually, it is most unlikely that Harrington did not know Utopia: Pocock, , ed., The political works of James Harrington (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 395, 697.Google Scholar

³⁷ Davis, Utopia, p. 61 (my emphasis).

³⁸ Manuel and Manuel, Utopian thought, pp. 19, 20, 27, 62, 113, and passim; cf. Manuel, ‘Toward a psychological history of Utopia’, in Manuel, ed., Utopias.

³⁹ Cf. Eliav-Feldon, M., Realistic Utopias: the ideal imaginary societies of the Renaissance 1516–1630 (Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Skinner, B. F., Walden two (New York, 1948).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Davis, Utopia, pp. 61, 182, 202.

⁴² Ibid. pp. 375, 388.

⁴³ Cf. Hollis, M., Models of man (Cambridge, 1977).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Cf. Goodwin, B., Social science and Utopia: nineteenth century models of social harmony (Sussex, 1978).Google Scholar

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⁴⁶ Cf I. M. Crombie, Plato: the midwife's apprentice (1964).

⁴⁷ Gospel of St John, 1, ‘In the beginning was the Word...’

⁴⁸ Manuel and Manuel, Utopian thought, p. 110.

⁴⁹ Bradshaw, B., ‘More on Utopia’, Historical Journal, xxiv (1981).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ I shall in due course publish an article on Francis Lee.

⁵¹ Locke, Essay concerning human understanding, bk. iv, ch. 10.

⁵² Lee, Antiquity reviv'd, pp. 6–24.

⁵³ ‘From applied theology to social analysis’, in Ignatieff, M. and Hont, I., eds., Wealth and ***: the shaping of political economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar

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⁵⁸ ‘Political obligation and political possibilities’, in Political obligation: my quotations are from pp. 244, 246, 248, 255, 265, 272, 274, 281.

⁵⁹ MacIntyre, A., After virtue: a study in moral theory (1981).Google Scholar