Few educators in history have made such a profound effect on the shape of the future as John Locke. His practical, down to earth approach on education and his belief in the folly in the practice of divine kinship did much to shape the course of the Enlightenment period and the basis of modern European thought.

Locke was born in 1632 into an upper middle class family in England and studied medicine at Oxford. Early on Locke found himself disagreeing with professors who insisted on teaching the ancient Greek philosophers. He was more interested in newer theories and had a penchant for the works of Rene Descartes. Through his friendship with the mechanical philosopher Robert Boyle and the famed scientific rebel Isaac Newton, Locke found logic in the new theories floating around in the late 17^th century.

Soon after graduating from college, Locke came under the employ of the Earl of Shaftsbury and assisted him in a number of non medical matters including the administration of his estate, various business matters and also acted as his political advisor. The earl enjoyed Locke’s unique (for the time) views on the freedom of religion, the unbelief in absolutism and the desire for a democratic governing body for the country.

In 1682, Locke’s anti royal sentiments resulted in his banishment to Holland. It was in exile that Locke penned his influential work “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” In 1688, the Glorious Revolution in which William of Orange overthrew the current English king, James II. This meant Locke could return to his homeland without fear of persecution or prosecution and so he did.

In 1690, Locke published his two treaties on government which were considered influential works in the revolutions of the 18^th century, namely America and France. Locke argued that revolution against tyranny was acceptable to bring legitimate rule to a nation. He also explained his thoughts on education which involved learning from experience not just because we exist.

During the 1690s Locke worked for the new British government in a number of positions including commissioner of plantations and trade. He continued with his theoretical writings, publishing on religion, government, ethics and education.

Locke retired to the country to live with friends and passed away in 1704, long before many of his works would influence the birth of a democratic America and the overthrow of royal power in France. But without Locke’s suggesting divine kingship as wrong and the rights of the citizens as the main work of any government, those two revolutions may have taken very different forms. His work on education would underlie the public school system in Britain and his thoughts on theology helped others find their own path to religious freedom. Locke was one of many that created the bedrock for the Enlightenment period.

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Bonnie Prince Charlie, or Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart, was the son of the executed English King, James Stuart. Charlie was brought up a Roman Catholic and was taught to believe that the Stuarts were the true ruling family of England and Scotland. From his birth the Prince was at the center of the Jacobite revolt and he was trained in the military arts so that he would be able to lead his own army to war and reclaim his rightful kingdom.

The French agreed to ‘lend’ Charlie their army but when he arrived in France they withdrew their offer, too afraid of England’s power. Nevertheless, Charlie went ahead with his plan to over take Scotland and in the 1745 he landed there with less than a dozen supporters. It was his plan to rally together the Scottish clans, his plan worked as many people believe him to have the divine right of Kings, a power that was invested in him by the God. After defeating the King’s army Bonnie Prince Charlie’s supporters numbered over 6000.

Unfortunately at The Battle of Culloden on the 16th April 1746 the Jacobite army was defeated by William Aufustus, the Duke of Cumberland. Thousands of Jacobites were killed but the Prince managed to escape with a bounty of £30,000 or $1 million on his head. After the battle Charlie fled to the Island of Benbecula, where Flora MacDonald lived.

Flora MacDonald was born in the village of Miltion in the Western Isle in 1722 but soon moved to Skye after her father’s death (Ranald MacDonald of Miltonas) when her mother was re-married to Hugh MacDonald. In 1746 O’Neil, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s servant and faithful follower, approached Flora asking her to help smuggle the Prince off the island to France before being discovered by General Campbell. Flora was reluctant at first for she was not a Jacobite follower but her fiancé Allan MacDonald and O’Neil persuaded her to help Bonnie Prince Charlie escape.


Flora gave her own account of what happened: “After Miss MacDonald (with some difficulty) agreed to undertake the dangerous enterprise, she set out for Clanranald’s house, Saturday, June 21st and at one of the fords was taken prisoner by a party of militia, she not having a passport. She demanded to whom they belonged? And finding by the answer that her stepfather was then commander, she refused to give any answer till she should see their captain. So she and her servant, (Neil MacKechan), and another woman, Bettie Burk, a good spinster, and whom he recommended as such in a letter to his wife at Armadale in Sky, as she had much lint to spin. If her stepfather (Hugh MacDonald of Armadale) had not granted Miss a passport she could not have undertook her journey and voyage. Armadale set his stepdaughter at liberty, who immediately made the best of her way to Clanranald’s house and acquainted the Lady Clanranald with the scheme, who supplied the Prince with apparel sufficient for his disguise, viz. a flower’d gown, a white apron, ect., and sent some provisions along with him.”

The plan was to snuggle the Prince off the island disguised as Betty, Flora’s maid lest the servants should be making their observations. They were to cross approximately 45 miles of ocean in a rowing boat until reaching Rudha Phrionnsa, or Prince Charlie’s Point.

They left on the 27 June and for several days sailed in stormy conditions until they reached their destination were they hid for the night in a cottage on far form the water. In the morning they travelled over land to Portree were there was ship was waiting to take the Prince back to France.

It is said that the during the journey the Prince sung Flora many songs including ‘The King shall enjoy his own again’

“…for who better may
Our high sceptre sway.
Than he whose tight it is to reign:
Then look for no peace,
The wars will never cease”
Till the king shall enjoy his own again.

They parted at Portree and Flora returned home. As they were leaving the Prince gave Flora a locket with his portrait in it saying I hope, madam, that we may meet in St James’s yet. Despite this, she never saw Charlie again.

On her way home she was held prisoner in Dunstaffnage Castle, and then for a short time in the Tower of London as a traitor but was released shortly after under the Act of Indemnity of 1747.

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In 1750 Flora married Allan MacDonald when she returned to Skye and 24 years later they emigrated to North Carolina. Allan or Flora’s husband fought in the American War of Independence with the Hanoverians but they were forced to leave when Allan was captured. Flora returned home to her family and was soon followed by Allan. She died on the 4 March 1790 at the age of 68 and it is said that she died in the same bed that Bonnie Prince Charlie had slept in when staying at their house and was buried in the sheets used by the Prince.

About the Author
Charlotte Gardner, a guest blog writer, is currently studying archaeology at the Australian National University. In her spare time she likes to read and write about eccentric historical moments. Her love of old buildings and older stories was sparked when she visited Italy. One of Charlotte’s greatest wishes is that in a few thousand years her skeleton will be dug up by an archaeological investigation team and put on display in a national museum. You may contact Charlotte via email at: charlotteg86@gmail.com.

Born September 22, 1791 Michael Faraday was a poorly educated economically challenged south London boy. He grew to become one of Britain’s foremost scientists who we remember today as the foundational thinker in the study of electromagnetism. In other words, without Faraday, there would be no electric motor.

Leaving school at 14 forced Faraday to become a self educated man. He read scientific books in his spare time as he apprenticed for a local book binder. In 1813, he finally got a job as a lab assistant at the famed Royal Institution. He worked under Humphry Davy a known chemist at the time. Faraday spent several years working in the shadow of some of Britain’s foremost scientific minds, he own thoughts unaccredited in a several experiments, studies and lectures.

In 1821, Faraday published his first solo paper on the electromagnetic radiation. It discussed the idea that charged particles produced waves. The different types and length of these waves are discussed in modern times by the use of the electromagnetic spectrum. Technical thoughts for a high school drop out.

As the years passed, Faraday established a name for himself among his fellow scientists and the students at the Royal Institution, creating a lecture series tradition that continues today. All this time, he continued his research into electromagnetism and in 1831, he determined the rules that governed electromagnetic induction.

Electromagnetic induction is the science behind the electric generator and the electric transformer. It meant that electricity could go from a novelty item of the rich to the power behind mass production, industrialization and modern manufacturing and transportation. Faraday changed the world by expanding the scientific knowledge of his era and giving it a truly practical application.

Faraday’s work and discoveries earned him many titles and honors throughout his scientific career. An unfortunate bout of ill health but a stop to further research and in late August of 1867, Faraday died. Without him, the words “electrode”, “ion” and “cathode” may never have existed and the fundamental principles behind the electric motor never thoroughly worked out.

Every school student learns that moving a magnet inside a coil of wire produces an electrical current. That was Faraday’s original experiment and took a man of humble beginnings into the books of modern world history. Michael Faraday not only discovered the role of electromagnetism but also the compound benzene reminding everyone who knew him that he was not just a physicist but a chemist, one of England’s finest.

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Born the son of a minister in Suffolk, England around 1620, Matthew Hopkins was a lawyer by trade, though an unsuccessful one. Unable to make a living in the city center, he moved to the small village of Manningtree and soon found a new line of work: witch hunting.

In March 1644, he announced publicly that there were witches practicing black magic in the forest near his home and that he had seen them with his own eyes. After naming an elderly, one-legged woman by the name of Elizabeth Clark as his first suspect, she arrested and strip searched, whereupon the discovery of a third nipple was deemed to be a devil’s mark – scarified evidence of copulation with Satan himself.

Hopkins obtained a confession from Clarke in short order, then went about rousting out and arresting thirty-two more women from in and around Manningtree. Though four died during their internment, the remaining twenty-eight were put on trial before a specially convened tribunal in the neighboring hamlet of Chelmsford. Of those tried, fourteen were hanged and eight remained in jail and officially under investigation. Though Hopkins himself was the chief witness at the trials, he often did not wait to hear the verdicts—word of his skill at locating witches had spread and put his services at great demand throughout England.

Over the next year, Hopkins, now calling himself by the unofficial title of Witch-Finder General, and his four assistants traveled to towns such as Essex, Aldeburgh and Stowmarket — sometimes at the behest of the village elders and sometimes just to see what would turn up. In but one year, Hopkins’s investigations would lead several hundred men and women to the gallows on charges of death by enchantment and collusion with evil spirits. And Hopkins was paid for each and every one of them: in 1645 alone, he is said have earned the then-extravagant sum of £1000 for his work.

His fortunes changed in April of 1646, however, when a clergyman named John Gaule circulated a widely read pamphlet, Select Cases of Conscience, that denounced Hopkins’s methods as torture. Though the physical torment of witches was explicitly banned under English law, Hopkins routinely employed methods such as sleep deprivation and “swimming” – the notorious practice of casting suspected witches into water, the logic goes, where only the guilty float and the innocent sink – in his interrogations.

After two years of notoriety, Hopkins found himself the subject of a public backlash. One apocryphal account even tells an armed mob subjecting him to the “swimming” test, as if to prove a point. Nonetheless, Hopkins withdrew from witch hunting and retired to Manningtree, where he died of tuberculosis the following the summer.

The Reverend Montague Summers, re-examining Hopkins’s legacy centuries later, wrote that the self-proclaimed Witch-Finder General’s insincerity “made his name stink in men’s nostrils…as the foulest of foul parasites, an obscene bird of prey of the tribe of Judas and Cain.”

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