The Commonwealth of Oceana | Page 3

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Oceana
by James Harrington

INTRODUCTION TO OCEANA
JAMES HARRINGTON, eldest son of Sir Sapcotes Harrington of
Exton, in Rutlandshire, was born in the reign of James I, in January,
1611, five years before the death of Shakespeare. He was two or three
years younger than John Milton. His great-grandfather was Sir James
Harrington, who married Lucy, daughter of Sir William Sidney, lived
with her to their golden wedding-day, and had eighteen children,
through whom he counted himself, before his death, patriarch in a
family that in his own time produced eight dukes, three marquises,
seventy earls, twenty-seven viscounts, and thirty-six barons, sixteen of
them all being Knights of the Garter. James Harrington's ideal of a
commonwealth was the design, therefore, of a man in many ways
connected with the chief nobility of England.
Sir Sapcotes Harrington married twice, and had by each of his wives
two sons and two daughters. James Harrington was eldest son by the
first marriage, which was to Jane, daughter of Sir William Samuel of
Upton, in Northamptonshire. James Harrington's brother became a
merchant; of his half-brothers, one went to sea, the other became a
captain in the army.
As a child, James Harrington was studious, and so sedate that it was
said playfully of him he rather kept his parents and teachers in awe than

needed correction; but in after-life his quick wit made him full of
playfulness in conversation. In 1629 he entered Trinity College, Oxford,
as a gentleman commoner. There he had for tutor William
Chillingworth, a Fellow of the college, who after conversion to the
Church of Rome had reasoned his way back into Protestant opinions.
Chillingworth became a famous champion of Protestantism in the
question between the Churches, although many Protestants attacked
him as unsound because he would not accept the Athanasian Creed and
had some other reservations.
Harrington prepared himself for foreign travel by study of modern
languages, but before he went abroad, and while he was still under age,
his father died and he succeeded to his patrimony. The socage tenure of
his estate gave him free choice of his own guardian, and he chose his
mother's mother, Lady Samuel.
He then began the season of travel which usually followed studies at
the university, a part of his training to which he had looked forward
with especial interest. He went first to Holland, which had been in
Queen Elizabeth's time the battle-ground of civil and religious liberty.
Before he left England he used to say he knew of monarchy, anarchy,
aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, only as hard words to be looked for
in a dictionary. But his interest