But the rough attempts at the essay date from 1671, and hints towards the _Letter on Toleration_ can be found in fragments of various dates between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years of his life.

Of the _Two Treatises_ the first seems to have been written between 1680 and 1685, the second in the last year of his Dutch exile.[1] [Footnote 1: On the evidence for these dates see the convincing argument of Mr.Fox-Bourne in his _Life of Locke_, Vol.

II, pp.

165-7.] The remaining fourteen years of Locke's life were passed in semi-retirement in East Anglia.

Though he held public office, first as Commissioner of Appeals, and later of Trade, for twelve years, he could not stand the pressure of London writers, and his public work was only intermittent.