Noonan, Harold W. - Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Hume on Knowledge

David Hume, the last of the so-called 'three great British empiricists'-the others being Locke (1632-1704) and Berkeley (1685-1753)-was born on 26 April 1711, in Edinburgh, seven years after the death of Locke and when Berkeley was a young man of 26. His father was Joseph Home of Ninewells, a small landholding in Berwick-on-Tweed (David adopted the spelling 'Hume' when he left Scotland in 1734 to avoid mispronunciation by the English). His family were quite prosperous gentry and strict Presbyterians.