The political tradition — the thinkers Locke argued against, and the statesmen who carried his ideas forward.
The Second Treatise is a philosophical argument, not a narrative with characters. Its cast is the intellectual tradition — the theorists Locke was arguing against and the statesmen who translated his ideas into political action. To read the book well, know who Locke is writing for and who he is writing against.
Born 1632. Medical training, Whig politics, exile in Holland, return with William of Orange. Published the Two Treatises anonymously in 1689. The most consequential political philosopher writing in English. Died 1704, acknowledging authorship of the Two Treatises only in his will.
Anthony Ashley Cooper. Locke entered his household as physician in 1667 and never left the Whig orbit. The Exclusion Crisis — whether the Catholic James could be barred from the throne — is the political occasion of the Two Treatises. Shaftesbury died in Holland in 1683; Locke survived him by twenty years.
Author of Patriarcha (1680). Argued all royal authority descended from Adam's God-given dominion. The First Treatise demolished him; the Second Treatise replaced his doctrine. Without Filmer, the urgency of Locke's argument is harder to feel.
Never named in the Second Treatise. Author of Leviathan (1651), which began where Locke begins — state of nature, social contract — and arrived at irrevocable absolute sovereignty. The Second Treatise is the demonstration that the Hobbesian conclusion does not follow from the Hobbesian premise.
Named Locke one of the three greatest men who ever lived. The Declaration of Independence is in places almost a paraphrase of the Second Treatise. Jefferson made Locke's philosophical argument a founding document.
Locke's most consequential invention: the political community as the original holder of all authority, from which government derives its power in trust. When trust is broken, judgment returns to them. The modern democratic state has been working with this figure ever since.