an eminent English writer, was born in January 1611, at Upton in Northamptonshire. After being educated at Oxford, he travelled into Holland, France, Denmark, and Germany, and learned the languages of these countries. Upon his return to England, he was admitted one of the privy chamber extraordinary to King Charles I. He served the king with great fidelity, and made use of his interest with his friends in parliament to procure matters to be accommodated with all parties. The king loved his company, except when the conversation happened to turn upon commonwealths. He found means to see the king at St James's; and attended him on the scaffold, where, or a little before, he received a token of his majesty's affection. After the death of King Charles, he wrote his *Oceana*, a kind of political romance, in imitation of Plato's *Commonwealth*, which he dedicated to Cromwell. It is said, that when the latter perused it, he declared, that "the gentleman had wrote very well, but must not think to cheat him out of his power and authority; for that what he had won by the sword he would not suffer himself to be scribbled out of." This work was attacked by several writers, against whom he defended it. Besides his writings to promote republican principles, he instituted a nightly meeting of several ingenious men in the New Palace-Yard, Westminster. This club was called the *Rota*, and continued till the secluded members of parliament were restored by General Monk. In 1661, he was committed to the Tower for treasonable designs and practices; and Chancellor Hyde, in a conference with the Lords and Commons, charged him with being concerned in a plot. But a committee of Lords and Commons could make nothing of the alleged plot. He was conveyed to St Nicholas's Island, and thence to Plymouth, where his imagination became disordered. Having obtained his liberty through the Earl of Bath, he was carried to London, and died in 1677. Besides the above works, he published several others, which were first collected by Toland in 1700, one vol. folio; but a more complete edition was published in 1737, by the Reverend Dr Birch.