Britain in the 17th Century was perpetually in conflict. It cut off the king’s head, tried being a republic for a bit, reverted to the old royal family once more before finally importing a foreign monarch to run it.

That conclusive act was the end of an era and would become known historically as the “Glorious Revolution”. If there was any glory in it, it wasn’t for substituting one king with another, but for the political philosophy that was taking root at the time.

No one articulated that philosophy better than John Locke whose influence reached across the water to the New World and into the American Constitution. A sceptical attitude toward absolutes whether of knowledge or the divine right of kings was core to his thinking clearly articulated in this passage from his essay on human understanding:

1.   “Where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all that he condemns, or could say that he has examined to the bottom of all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.”