By the fall, petitions were circulating asking Charles to call the Parliament on Jan. 29, 1680, the day to which it had been prorogued. Petitioning in 17th-century England was a risky business. Soon after Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, an act was passed by Parliament prohibiting \u201a\u00c4\u00f2tumultuous petitioning.\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 It was meant to prevent a recurrence of the civil war. No mass petitions were circulated again until 1679.<\/p>\n

Sometime during 1679, John Locke returned from France, to find London in political turmoil. This may have inspired Locke to write his Second Treatise on Civil Government. Locke signed the London petition, as did Shaftesbury and Daniel Coxe, as well as many other residents of Aldersgate Street. William Penn thought that matters had become so \u201a\u00c4\u00f2violent and irreconcilable\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 that he decided to stay out of the fight.<\/p>\n

In November 1679, Charles issued a proclamation against tumultuous petitioning, which made all petitioners vulnerable to arrest. To make his meaning clear, Charles had royal troops drawn up, but people kept signing the petitions anyway, some making the bold statement that petitioning was a citizen\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s right.<\/p>\n

The \u201a\u00c4\u00f2Monster Petition\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 was presented to the king on January 13, 1680. He did not think much of it. When January 26th came around, Charles prorogued the Parliament again. So much for petitioning. Sentiment began to shift away from the petition movement, with some fearing that Protestants were bent on making the Duke of Monmouth king, rather than James.<\/p>\n

As for Shaftesbury, his luck ran out. The political winds shifted in favor of the monarchy and in 1681, Shaftesbury was charged with treason. Fortunately, the jury acquitted him; ten members of the jury had signed the \u201a\u00c4\u00f2Monster Petition.\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 But recognizing the danger of remaining in London, Shaftesbury went into exile in Holland and died there in 1683.<\/p>\n

What perplexes me is that despite the fact that Coxe had sided with dissenters and Whigs by signing the petition, he was admitted as an honorary fellow to the Royal College of Physicians in London on September 30, 1680. I am guessing he became a physician to the king about this time, although it doesn\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t seem to make sense. Coxe must have found a way to mute his grievances and make himself acceptable to the king. This suggests a very flexible fellow.<\/p>\n

But I am not done with Daniel Coxe yet.<\/p>\n

Note: Information regarding the \u201a\u00c4\u00f2Monster Petition\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 came from Mark Knights, \u201a\u00c4\u00faPetitioning and the Political Theorists: John Locke, Algernon Sidney and London\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s \u201a\u00c4\u00f2Monster\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 Petition of 1680.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 Past & Present (Oxford Univ. Press), no. 138 (Feb 1993), pp. 94-111.<\/em><\/span>
\nAddendum, 4\/23\/2010: Added the exact date that Coxe was admitted to the Royal College of Physicians. <\/span><\/em>
\nCorrection, 4\/25\/2010: Replaced the portrait of the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury with the 1st Earl, Lord Ashley. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a few years spent mixing with the virtuosi in London and playing with volatile salts in his laboratory, Daniel Coxe bethought himself to get a wife. He married Rebecca Coldham, the daughter of John Coldham, Esq. of Tooting Graveney, London. I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4m not kidding; Tooting Graveney, actually has its own page in Wikipedia. It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[36,37,45],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-west-new-jersey","tag-daniel-coxe","tag-england","tag-politics","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6807,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/6807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}