This book arises directly from The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts, a theoretical study dealing with the fate of political texts and the vocabulary of their analysis. As a detailed illustration and adaptation, however, this work is hardly as premeditated as it might seem.

In the earlier book I had argued that there is a poor fit between ‘classic’ status and what we see as intellectual virtue; and so, there is a certain decorum in the fortuitous way in which Lawson's Politica has become the principal grist to a theoretical mill.

In writing Status and Appraisal, I made passing illustrative reference to Locke and, having little particular interest in the seventeenth century, I thought it was as well to find out what was currently being written about him. I was shown Julian H. Franklin's John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty, Cambridge, 1978, and, because of its virtuous brevity, I was encouraged to read it carefully. It became clear to me that to assess Franklin's work on Locke one had first to know Lawson's Politica, a text I had not previously come across. Reading the Politica gradually suggested to me its suitability for a full-scale study. Manifestly an interesting and sophisticated work, it was just as obviously not a ‘classic’ and was now being proffered in the usual terms as a suitable case for elevation.