Harrington's life and writings

Not much is known of James Harrington (1611–77) beyond what his published works tell us. There are next to no surviving personal papers or manuscripts of his various writings. Not all of these were published in his lifetime, however; a number of his works, including A System of Politics, are stated by John Toland (1670–1722) to have been preserved in manuscript by Harrington's sister Dorothy BeUingham and published by Toland in the first collected edition of 1700. These manuscripts no longer seem to exist, and since we know that Toland extensively rewrote the memoirs of Edmund Ludlow before publishing them, caution is in order. The Commonwealth of Oceana, on the other hand, was printed in 1656, and most of what we consider Harrington's major works between that year and 1660. In all these cases we can compare what he published with what Toland edited, and find the latter to have been no unreliable editor where printed originals already existed.

But we are also dependent on Toland – together with John Aubrey and Anthony Wood – for most of our information about Harrington's personal life. He was a country gendeman, of an old family with Yorkist antecedents established in Northamptonshire and Lincoln shire. Notwithstanding his criticisms of primogeniture, he was an eldest son with younger brothers; but he remained unmarried until late in life and seems to have played no part in county or national politics, before or during the First Civil War.