Catalogue description Papers of and relating to Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

An outline catalogue of the collection probably arranged as it is today was likely compiled in 1936 by Arthur T. Shillinglaw and recorded in the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts "Report on the MSS and papers of Thomas Hobbes" (1977). The collection is made up of somewhat eclectic series which have been separated fairly arbitrarily considering most of the material in HS/B, HS/C, HS/E, HS/G and HS/L was probably kept and used by Hobbes in a similar way.

It is tempting to rearrange this material to reflect new understandings of it, for example the fact that much of it isn't in Hobbes's hand and certain items thought unrelated are in fact closely linked e.g. HS/A/10 and HS/C/4/2. The misidentification of much of Payne's work as Hobbes's has greatly affected the arrangement of some of this material and had the original arranger identified Payne's hand, these papers would undoubtedly have been arranged differently to the way they are now. There are letter enclosures and notes by Robert Payne scattered throughout the collection which would probably be more sensibly kept together if one were to overhaul the arrangement to better reflect how the papers might have been used or kept by Hobbes and the Cavendish family.

However, given the artificial and incomplete nature of this collection, such a task could never be completed satisfactorily and the confusion it would cause users to fully re-reference would not be worth the benefit of having an arrangement which better reflects the administrative relationship of various items within the collection. Some archival history of the records may risk being lost by rearranging this collection too. It was therefore decided when cataloguing this collection in September 2021 to keep the arrangement largely as it is and to cross-reference material and explain links where relevant at series and item-level.

However, a minor re-arrangement as part of the cataloguing of this collection has resulted in the F series being disbanded. This was done partly because it was very small and unhelpfully titled, only containing two items unrelated to each other. One item which was originally catalogued as HS/F/3 was found to be a page from another document in the separate Hardwick Drawers collection (H/146/11) and was relocated before the current cataloguing project. The two other items in the F series were relocated to E and D series which include similar types of material to each of these items. The former references have been added to the titles of these items as well as the former reference field to make it clear where they now sit in the hierarchy of records.
HS/G/4 was also re-catalogued as HS/ADD/6 as it clearly relates to the other catalogue material.
Titles of the series have been altered from the original catalogue handlist, to better reflect the contents of the series. The material is arranged into nine principal series, which probably largely reflect the earliest catalogue of the material in 1936 which in turn possibly informed the RCHM Report (1977):

HS/A: Manuscripts relating to treatise by Hobbes
HS/B: Treatises collected by Hobbes and Robert Payne
HS/C: Mathematical notes of Robert Payne
HS/D: Cavendish family papers relating to Hobbes
HS/E: Personal papers of Hobbes and Payne
HS/G: Copies of political documents
HS/H: Translations of Italian letters from Fulgenzio Micanzio
HS/L: Letters to Thomas Hobbes mostly from foreign correspondents
HS/ADD: Lists of books at Hardwick and Chatsworth

Archival material, such as correspondence and published and unpublished scribal manuscripts relating to Hobbes, can be found at:

- The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (MS f.fr n.a 6206, MS f.l. 6566A, MS f.l.10352, MS f.l. 1637).

- The Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, (MS Gal. 286).

- The Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Aubrey 9, MS Aubrey 12, MS Rawlinson D 1104, MS Rawlinson D 174, MS Rawlinson D 960, MS Rawlinson C. 232, MS Eng. e. 3381, MS Ashmole 1818, item 30).

- The British Library, London (Egerton MS 669, Egerton MS 1910, Egerton MS 2231, Egerton MS 2005, Sloane MS 1865, Sloane MS 1458, Sloane MS 3930, MS Add 11044, MS Add 4278, MS Add 4395, MS Add 4417, MS Add 4292, MS Add 28927, MS Add 72899, MS Add 70499, MS Add 72850, MS Add 32553, Add 78423, MS Add 78448, MS Add 78205, MS Add 21107, Harley MS 1325, Harley MS 1844, Harley MS 3360, Harley MS 4235, Harley MS 4236, Harley MS 5219, Harley MS 6083, Harley MS 6207, Harley MS 6796, Harley MS 6858, Stowe MS 77, Lansdowne MS 238 ).

- The National Archives, Kew, (SP 29/204/1, SP/29/242/79).

- Nottingham University Library, Nottingham (the Clifton MSS - Cl C 198, 199, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 565, 566).

- Staffordshire Record Office, (D 4038/I/33).

- University of Toronto, Fisher Library, (MSS Hobbes Collection 001, 002, 003)

- Harvard, (MS Hyde 10 (337), Autograph file).

- Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, (Folger, MS V.b.154).

- St John's College, Oxford, (MS 13).

- The Queen's College, Oxford, (MS 449, ff. 118-26).

- Corpus Christi College, Oxford, (MS 313, MS 318).

- Magdalene College, Cambridge, (Pepys Library MS 2099, Ferrar MS 1476).

- Aberdeen University Library, (MS 1047).

- Royal College of Physicians, (MS 200).

- University College London, (MS Ogden 7/22).

- Derby Central Library, (fmss 3514).

- Trinity College, Dublin, (MS 875, MS 876).

- University of Calgary, (B 1235 L3 1680).

- Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Gratz Collection, (Authors, Case 10, Box 30).

- Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, (Cod. 11.539.2.)

- The Royal Society, London (MS H 1. 5, MS H 3. 20, MS 83, MS 366/1/1, Classified Papers IV (1) item 30, Register Book 1, MS 776, Letter Book 2).

See GB 2495 HMS/1/34 at Chatsworth Archives, for a draft of Hobbes's will written in Whildon's personal account book.

See CELM listing for Hobbes (HbT) for further details of the individual manuscripts listed above: https://celm-ms.org.uk/authors/hobbesthomas.html.

Some letters, bearing the same endorsements of James Whildon (executor of Hobbes's will and his amanuensis) as those found on the Chatsworth material (HS/L), were probably leant by the Duke of Devonshire to James Crossley, antiquarian (1800-1883). Crossley appears to have bound these letters, and they are now among others held by the British Library (MS ADD 32553).

The following items in the Hardwick Drawers collection (GB 2495 H) at Chatsworth were likely once part of Hobbes's papers:

- H 145/21: "Discours contre la frequente saignee" by Samuel Sorbière is in the hand of the Parisian scribe, sent by Sorbière to Hobbes in early 1657.

-H/145/18: Copy of a legal brief evidently composed by Hobbes, in the hand of his amanuensis (James Whildon), untitled and beginning "Concerning the punishment of such persons as by word or writing uttered any thing contrary to the definition or determination of Holy Church& ". See CELM HbT 59 (Formerly cited in IELM, II.i (1987) as HbT 74).

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Robert Payne (1596–1651)

The collection is open for consultation. Access to the archive at Chatsworth is by appointment only. For more information please visit: https://www.chatsworth.org/art-archives/access-the-collection/archives-and-library/.

Copies of material in the archive can be supplied for private study and personal research purposes only, depending on the condition of the documents.

A collection of Hobbes's papers has been kept at Chatsworth since Hobbes's death in 1679. However, many items that have some (sometimes tenuous) link to Hobbes have been gathered from other parts of the Chatsworth Archives or donated and added from external sources to what is known as the 'Papers of and relating to Hobbes' at Chatsworth since then. One must bear in mind therefore that the collection here is not one of papers created by Hobbes and then left untouched after his death in the order in which he kept and used them at Hardwick and Chatsworth. Instead this collection is somewhat artificial and has been compiled over the centuries since Hobbes lived with and worked for the Cavendish family, with some items in this collection not of his creation and some not even belonging to him.

Regarding early references to the Hobbes-related material at Chatsworth, the English bishop and antiquarian, White Kennett, added a memorandum to the entry on Hobbes in Woods' Athenae stating: "When I was in Chatsworth, after the funeral of the Duke of Devonshire in Sept. 1707... Mons. Huet told me there was an old trunk of his [Hobbes's] papers in the house, containing chiefly correspondence between him and foreigners." The letters HS/L remain in the collection today and indeed James Whildon - executor to Hobbes's will  tried to put some of Hobbes's papers in order after his death and wrote endorsements on many of these letters from Hobbes's foreign correspondents.

It is likely that the papers of Robert Payne in this collection were acquired by Hobbes after the death of his friend in 1651, and were possibly sent to Hobbes when he was once again in the employ of the Cavendish family.

Hobbes did not spend all his time living at Hardwick, indeed he travelled with the family between Hardwick and Chatsworth as well as living in the Cavendish household at Latimers and London, also for some time in Paris in the 1640s. Some of his papers no doubt travelled with him and his use of particular scribes sometimes assists in pinpointing at what point certain items were acquired by him. It is possible the manuscripts written by the Parisian scribe and others of that period in HS/A and HS/B were brought to Hardwick when Hobbes returned there in the 1650s.

At some point between 1660 and1666 Hobbes is recorded by the biographer John Aubrey and his amanuensis, James Whildon, as having burned some of his papers. It is not known exactly what Hobbes destroyed or why, but Aubrey suggested it may have been linked to parliamentary debates about heresy at the time, and a precautionary action on Hobbes's behalf. Therefore the papers in this collection provide an incomplete picture of the working practices of Hobbes.

But what material in this collection was at Chatsworth and what was at Hardwick and when is not clear. Hobbes scholar Ferdinand Tönnies studied the 'Hobbes-related papers' at Hardwick Hall in the 1870s. And page 43 of The Royal Commission's on Historical Manuscripts third report (1872) includes the following entry on items at Hardwick: 'two bundles of Mathematical papers of and letters to Thomas Hobbes (of Malmesbury) and some of his writings.' It is possible the items in HS/G were amongst this collection of Hobbes material already, because until recently their link to Hobbes was unidentified and it would therefore have been unlikely that a keeper of the collections would see fit to move them here, had they not already been present amongst Hobbes s papers.

In the 19th century both HS/A/1 and HS/H were donated to Chatsworth owing to the links to Hobbes.

Some other material has, during the 19th and 20th centuries, been added from the papers once kept in the Evidence Room at Hardwick (now catalogued as the Hardwick Manuscripts (HMS) and Hardwick Drawers (H/143)) that related to Hobbes when he was based at Hardwick as tutor, librarian and later secretary to the 2nd and 3rd Earls. And indeed in correspondence between Francis Thompson (Keeper of the Collections at Chatsworth), and Baron Cay von Brockdorff in the mid-1930s, the baron refers to the 'letters to Hobbes in the Hardwick papers'. The item HS/D/9 (formerly HS/F/1) was moved in this way from the Hardwick Drawers collection on the assumption it was an exercise book completed under the tutoring of Hobbes, but in fact likely predates Hobbes's employment in the Cavendish household and was created under the tutor Thomas Oates. It is possible much of HS/D and HS/E which relates to administration of the Cavendish estate and the education of the earls was gathered from other places and brought together by various keepers of the collections because of the assumed links to Hobbes, as many of these records were created by Cavendish household members rather than Hobbes.

This online catalogue is based on the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts  Report on the Thomas Hobbes MSS 1977 which in turn was probably a reworking of a catalogue arranged and compiled in 1936, by Francis Thompson, and Mr Arthur T. Shillinglaw, lecturer in Moral Sciences at the University of Liverpool, with some assistance from an unnamed student at the University of Belfast in 1933. In order for Shillinglaw to work on the papers they were transferred to the National Library of Scotland. According to the curatorial correspondence in the Chatsworth Archives, the catalogue was due to be published by the University of Liverpool Press, however this did not happen and the original catalogue is not extant in the records of Chatsworth Archives. However, the catalogue probably informed the RCHM Report (1977) and may have been the point at which the papers and manuscripts were arranged into their current series. The current reference numbers (A, B, C etc) date from the RCHM Report 1977, but again may originally have been taken from the Shillinglaw cataloguing project  without the paperwork, it is not possible to know for certain. However, it can be assumed that the majority of this collection was in its current compilation by 1977 at the latest and possibly even by the early 20th century when Shillinglaw came to work on it.

The additional series of material (HS/ADD) was added to this collection in the late 20th and early 21st century, and does not feature in the RCHM 1977 Report. Like much of the material previously added to this collection it was likely relocated, because of its indirect links to Hobbes and particularly the library catalogue that was already part of this collection (HS/E/1A).

No further accruals are expected.

• 17th century
• manuscripts
• scribes
• Mathematics--Problems, exercises, etc
• philosophy
• life works
• politics
• education
• foreign correspondents
• letters

The majority of items are listed in: the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts "Report on the MSS and papers of Thomas Hobbes" (1977) available at Chatsworth Archives.

The relevant reference numbers for the manuscripts listed in the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700 (CELM) are recorded in the individual item records of this catalogue, and can also be found here: https://celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/devonshire-chatsworth-house.html

Thomas, Hobbes (1588-1679).
Hobbes’s early education had taken place in Westport and Malmesbury; a young clergyman, Robert Latimer, who had just graduated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford (and took over the curacy of Brokenborough after the departure of Hobbes's father) was a fine classicist, and gave Hobbes a good grounding in Latin and Greek. He later also taught the young John Aubrey; this connection was one reason for Aubrey's special interest in Hobbes, which would eventually bear fruit in his valuable compilation of biographical information about him, on which all modern accounts of Hobbes's life depend.
Oxford
Hobbes was entered at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. His precise date of matriculation is not known; Aubrey dated it to 'the beginning of an. 1603' (Brief Lives, 1.330). Hobbes himself recorded that he stayed at Oxford for five years, and it is known that he was admitted BA in February 1608. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Magdalen Hall had a reputation as a stronghold of puritanism. Hobbes's familiarity with Calvinist theology (evident in his later controversies with John Bramhall) may well have been acquired during his Oxford years.
Undergraduate studies were fundamentally humanist, involving wide reading among classical authors on rhetoric, moral philosophy, and history—an accomplishment clearly discernible in Hobbes's later writings. Many fellows of Oxford colleges also took an active interest in new developments in mathematics and the physical sciences. Unfortunately it is not known whether he had any contact with established Oxford scientists. All that can be deduced from the surviving evidence is that astronomy was one of Hobbes's earliest intellectual enthusiasms—a point confirmed by his own account, in his manuscript refutation of Thomas White, of his careful observation of a comet that appeared in 1618.
Early employment and first European tour
After being admitted BA in February 1608, Hobbes was recommended for the post of tutor to William Cavendish (1590-1628). William's father, Baron Cavendish of Hardwick (later 1st Earl of Devonshire), was one of the major landowners of Derbyshire, with estates centred on Hardwick Hall and (from 1616) Chatsworth. The choice of such a young graduate as a tutor—Hobbes was only two years older than his pupil—was unusual; the idea, apparently, was to provide intellectual companionship as much as formal pedagogy. His pupil had real intellectual abilities, but was little interested in academic studies; he spent some time at St John's College, Cambridge (where Hobbes joined him in the summer of 1608 and incorporated as a Cambridge BA), but left the university in November 1608.
In his verse autobiography Hobbes described his time with William Cavendish—who was knighted in 1609, became Lord Cavendish on his father's elevation to the earldom of Devonshire in 1618, and succeeded him as second earl in 1626—as 'by far the sweetest period of my life'; he noted that his pupil became not so much a master as a friend, allowing Hobbes both leisure and whatever sorts of books he needed for his studies (Opera philosophica, 1.lxxxvii–lxxxviii). These comments probably relate more to the latter part of his service to Cavendish, who came to treat him as a secretary and companion. The early years of his employment may sometimes have tried the patience of this young graduate, who, according to Aubrey, was treated as 'his lordship's page, and rode a hunting and hawking with him, and kept his privy purse' (Brief Lives, 1.330–31). As Cavendish was a notorious spendthrift, the responsibility for his purse was onerous, involving frequent meetings with creditors. At the same time, however, Hobbes's page-like duties would have brought him into contact with the Anglo-Scottish courtier society of Jacobean London. (Cavendish married Christian Bruce – the daughter of a prominent Scot and royal political agent, Lord Bruce of Kinross.) But Cavendish also had literary interests, including an evident passion for Bacon's Essayes, and in 1611 he published an extended essay of his own, A Discourse Against Flatterie; it can be assumed that Hobbes was involved (at the very least secretarially) in the preparation of this work. The household accounts of Cavendish's father mention a number of books purchased during the period 1609–13, presumably for Cavendish's studies with Hobbes: these included works by Plutarch, Cicero, Ramus, Montaigne, Huarte, Bacon, Keckermann, and Botero, as well as 'iii of the kinges bookes in defence of the othe of allegiance' (HMS/1/16, Hardwick MS 29, pp. 91, 219b, 303, 316, 355). The same source also reveals that Hobbes co-operated with the surveyor William Senior in his mapping of the Cavendish estates—which suggests that Hobbes had, or acquired, at least some practical knowledge of geometry at this early stage (ibid., p. 128, entry for April 1610).
Also listed among the books purchased were several primers and dictionaries of French and Italian, evidently in preparation for a continental tour. The traditional dating of this tour, 1610–15, given in most biographies of Hobbes, is incorrect; the household accounts show that Hobbes and Cavendish left in June 1614 and returned by October 1615 (HMS/1/16, Hardwick MS 29, pp. 371, 453). Their main destination was Venice; from there they made a trip to Rome in October 1614, returning to stay in Venice until the summer of 1615. Here Cavendish worked hard on his Italian, translating Bacon's Essayes into that language—once again, presumably, with Hobbes at his side. He also met the most influential intellectual in Venice, Paolo Sarpi, a man of wide scientific interests, suspected of protestant sympathies or even atheistic tendencies, who as 'state theologian' had defended Venice during its great dispute with the papacy in 1606. Cavendish (and, it may be assumed, Hobbes) cultivated the acquaintance of Sarpi's assistant Fulgenzio Micanzio, and Cavendish began corresponding with him during their return journey, via Paris, to England.
Secretarial employment (to 1628)
The correspondence with Micanzio continued for thirteen years, being ended only by Cavendish's death. Only Micanzio's letters have survived, in English translations by Hobbes (see HS/H). These were made, evidently, not for Cavendish (who knew Italian well) but for circulation to other readers, who might be interested not only in Micanzio's detailed political news but also in his thinking about foreign policy (which aimed at a strategic anti-papal and anti-Spanish alliance). Micanzio took a special interest in the Croatian-Venetian churchman Marc' Antonio de Dominis, archbishop of Split, who fled to England in 1616, joined the Anglican church, supervised the publication in London of Sarpi's Historia del concilio tridentino, and published a major anti-papal treatise of his own, De republica ecclesiastica. In 1617–18 de Dominis helped to revise Cavendish's Italian translation of Bacon's Essayes for publication, and therefore probably came into direct contact with Hobbes. Admiration for Bacon united Cavendish, Micanzio, and de Dominis; Micanzio's letters show that Cavendish was in personal contact with Bacon from 1616 onwards, and Hobbes is known to have visited Bacon on the legal business of the Cavendish family in 1619 and 1620. Aubrey records that Hobbes also did secretarial work for Bacon, taking dictation from him and translating some of his essays into Latin; biographers have traditionally assumed that this work took place after Bacon's fall from office in 1621, but it is now clear that Hobbes's connections with Bacon predated that event by several years.
Another sign of Cavendish's admiration for Bacon was his composition of a collection of essays of his own, published (anonymously) in 1620, under the title Horae subsecivae. The volume also contained his Discourse Against Flatterie and three other discourses: a description of Rome (arising from Cavendish's visit there with Hobbes in 1614), 'Discourse upon the beginning of Tacitus', and 'Discourse of lawes'. A fair copy manuscript of the essays (but not the discourses) in Hobbes's hand survives at Chatsworth (see HS/D/3); this demonstrates that he was not the author of the essays, as his occasional misreadings of the text he was copying are corrected in manuscript by another hand. Even if Hobbes's role in the preparation of these texts was little more than that of a sounding board, secretary, or stylistic improver, they must constitute important evidence of the cultural and political attitudes to which he was most directly exposed at this time. Particularly striking are the coolly political analysis of religion, the Tacitean emphasis on the role of interest and the value of dissimulation in political affairs, and the stress laid on the special evil of anarchy and civil war.
Cavendish himself had some experience of politics: he was a member of the parliaments of 1610, 1614, 1621, and 1624, and it can be assumed that Hobbes would have followed the debates in which he took part. More importantly, Hobbes was also associated with his master's activities in two trading and colonizing companies, the Virginia Company and the Somers Islands Company. Hobbes was granted a share in the former in 1622; the precise date at which he joined the latter (which dealt with the Bermudas) is not known. Between 1622 and 1624 Hobbes attended thirty-seven meetings of the governing body of the Virginia Company; there he must have encountered prominent politicians and writers such as Sir Edwin Sandys, Sir Dudley Digges, and John Selden. Both as an assistant to Cavendish and in his own right, Hobbes was thus involved in public or quasi-public affairs; it is significant that in the first surviving item of his own correspondence, a letter to him from a Cambridge don, Robert Mason, in 1622, he is treated as a well-placed source of social and political gossip.
In 1626 Cavendish succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Devonshire. His tendency to lavish spending was now unchecked, and, given his literary interests, it is likely that he was an active and generous patron of other writers. These may have included Ben Jonson, with whom, according to Aubrey, Hobbes was well acquainted by 1628. Cavendish's patronage certainly extended to the physician and minor poet Dr Richard Andrews, a friend of Donne (and of Jonson), who visited him in Derbyshire; in August 1627 Cavendish, Andrews, and Hobbes went on a tour of the Derbyshire Peak District, visiting the so-called ‘wonders of the Peak’. Travelogue poems celebrating this tour were written by Andrews (in English) and Hobbes (in Latin), and Hobbes's work later received a small, undated printing (probably in 1636), under the title De mirabilibus pecci (see HS/A/1).
Before the composition of that poem Hobbes had probably already completed a much more significant work: a complete translation of Thucydides, taken (unlike the only existing English version at the time) directly from the Greek. This translation was an important achievement, establishing Hobbes at a stroke as one of the leading Grecianists of his day. Hobbes also drew the elaborate map of ancient Greece which accompanied the text. Possibly he had planned to add further materials of his own; otherwise it is not clear why he did not hasten to publish the work, eventually remarking in the preface: 'After I had finished it, it lay long by me' (English Works, 8.ix). In the end, the catalyst for its publication was the sudden death of his pupil–patron in summer 1628. By November Hobbes had prepared the dedication (a eulogy of the late 2nd Earl, addressed to his young son), and was nervously clearing it with the dowager Countess Christian: no doubt he hoped that such a public monument to his former employer would earn her approval and guarantee his re-employment. The book was published in early 1629; Hobbes was not, however, re-employed.
Second European tour; tuition of the 3rd Earl
Hobbes spent much of 1629 and 1630 in the service of a Nottinghamshire landowner, Sir Gervase Clifton, escorting his son Gervase on a European tour. The reason for this temporary departure from the Cavendish family is not clear; the dowager countess was making what savings she could, but she still needed a tutor for her two sons (aged twelve and nine in 1629), and did indeed employ one. Possibly Hobbes had hoped to carry on working as secretary and librarian, and was reluctant to teach at such an elementary level; his new pupil, Gervase Clifton, was aged seventeen or eighteen. On the other hand, although a later memorandum drawn up by Hobbes stated that he was 'discharged' after the death of the second earl (see HS/D/6, fol. 2r), he was still receiving a half-yearly payment from the dowager countess as late as June 1630. So perhaps his service to the Cliftons might better be described in terms of being 'on loan' from the Cavendishes.
Hobbes and his new pupil travelled to France in October 1629 and spent the winter in Paris; in March–April 1630 they moved to Geneva, where they lodged with a Reformed minister. A planned visit to Italy was aborted because of the warfare raging there, and by late June they were in France again, at Orléans. At this stage they were intending to spend the coming winter in Paris; but the trip was curtailed, and Hobbes was back in England by the beginning of November 1630. He returned to the dowager Countess of Devonshire's house, Hardwick Hall, and wrote from there to Sir Gervase Clifton on 2 November: 'That I am welcome home, I must attribute to yor favorable letter, by wch my lady understandes yor good acceptance of my service to Mr Clifton' (Correspondence, 1.17).
Hobbes now re-entered the service of the dowager countess, replacing the tutor who had been teaching her elder son—'wch imployment', as he put it in a later memorandum, 'he [Hobbes] neverthelesse undertooke, amongst other causes cheifly for this, that the same did not much divert him from his studyes' (HS/D/6, fol. 2r). In his verse autobiography Hobbes recorded that he gave the young 3rd Earl tuition in Latin, rhetoric, 'the precepts of demonstration' (meaning either logic or mathematics, or both), geography, and law (Opera philosophica, 1.lxxxviii–lxxxix). Some traces of this teaching survive among the manuscripts at Chatsworth: exercise books with geometrical problems (HS/D/2) and passages from the ancient historians Livy and Valerius Maximus (HMS/4/34, Hardwick MS 70). Of special interest is a dictation book in which the young earl took down Hobbes's Latin translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric—a text concerned as much with psychological analysis as with the rhetorical art (HS/D/1). An English translation of this Latin 'digest' was later published as A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique (1637).
Early philosophical interests
Biographers of Hobbes have traditionally dated the emergence of his serious philosophical interests to the early 1630s. The neat dichotomy between his ‘humanist’ period (up to the 1630s) and his ‘philosophical’ one (thereafter) is perhaps too neat, as his earlier interests had evidently not been confined to classical literature. His early passion for astronomy has already been noted; his connection with Bacon must have prompted some interest in that author's scientific and philosophical writings; and it seems likely that he had shared the interest displayed in Cavendish’s Essays texts in the analysis of religion, politics, and law. The earliest library catalogue at Chatsworth (HS/E/1A) was drawn up by Hobbes, about 1629 (with a few items inserted as later additions); given Hobbes's later recollection, cited above, that the 2nd Earl had supplied him with all sorts of books for his studies, it can be assumed that many of the items in this list were bought by and for Hobbes. It includes numerous items by Calvin, many works of Catholic and protestant controversial theology, especially ones relating to the political issues disputed by Bellarmine, Suárez, and King James, and works by Machiavelli, Guiccardini, Botero, Bodin, Charron, Grotius (his De jure belli ac pacis is a late addition), and Selden. Scientific writings are less well represented, but the list includes the works of the geometrician Clavius, Napier and Briggs on logarithms, and textbooks by Case and Keckermann on physics. It may be significant that scientific works feature more prominently among the later additions (HS/ADD/1): these include Clavius's edition of Euclid, the works of Robert Fludd, Gilbert on magnetism, Vieta's algebra, and two volumes of the astronomer Tycho Brahe.
In his prose autobiography Hobbes stated that it was during his European trip with Clifton that he acquired his special interest in geometry, when he happened to look at a copy of Euclid's Elements. (Aubrey, telling this story, gives the place where this happened as '. . . . . a', with the number of dots corresponding to the missing letters of Geneva; Bodl. Oxf., MS Aubrey 9, fol. 36r.)
The only surviving clues as to the nature of those problems are a comment made by Hobbes in 1641, when he wrote that he had explained his 'doctrine of the nature and production of light, sound, and all phantasms and ideas' to the Earl of Newcastle and his brother in 1630 (Correspondence, 1.108), and a similar claim addressed to Newcastle himself in 1646, referring to 'that wch about 16 yeares since I affirmed to your Lopp at Welbeck, that Light is a fancy in the minde, caused by motion in the braine' (BL, Harley MS 3360, fol. 3r). William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, was a cousin of the Earl of Devonshire, and had houses close to Hardwick (at Bolsover in Derbyshire and Welbeck Abbey in north Nottinghamshire); Hobbes would certainly have had contact with him during the 2nd Earl of Devonshire's lifetime, and his friends Jonson and Andrews both benefited from Newcastle's patronage. Newcastle had scientific as well as literary interests, and his brother Sir Charles Cavendish had a passion for mathematics and physics. The Newcastle Cavendishes played a key role in awakening Hobbes's scientific interests: thanks to them, he was put in touch during the early 1630s with the scientists Walter Warner (a survivor of the circle of Thomas Hariot) and Robert Payne (Newcastle's chaplain), with whom he discussed problems of optics and epistemology. Payne’s mathematical notes are in the collection at Chatsworth (see HS/C).
Hobbes made a special effort to find a copy of Galileo's Dialogo in London in 1634, at Newcastle's request; and it is possible that he actually met Galileo in Italy at the end of the following year.
Whether Hobbes wrote up his own theories in any systematic form during the early 1630s is very uncertain. A manuscript on the principles of physics and psychology, known as the 'Short tract', has commonly been attributed to Hobbes and assigned to this period; it has sometimes been dated to 1630 on the strength of the remarks by Hobbes quoted above. However, those remarks referred to claims made in conversation, not to any written work, and in his verse autobiography he emphasized that he began to write up his theories only after his return from his third European tour in 1636. Recent studies of the 'Short tract' have shown on the one hand that it contains phrases that reappear in Hobbes's later works, and on the other hand that it is not in his handwriting (as previously thought) but in Payne's, and that its theory of light is closer to Payne's views than to Hobbes's. The attribution of this text remains uncertain, therefore, and it is possible that Payne may have composed it (perhaps in the mid- to late 1630s) while making use of some Hobbesian ideas or materials.
Third European tour
In April 1634 Hobbes and the 3rd Earl of Devonshire were planning to travel to France within a few weeks; instead they reverted to a previous plan, which involved spending the summer months in Oxford (from where Hobbes visited his family and old friends in north Wiltshire). But by October they were in Paris, where they stayed until the end of August 1635. Then they travelled via Lyons to Italy: their destination was Venice, but it is not clear whether they reached it, or whether the military situation forced them to change their route. If they did stay in Venice, it seems likely that Hobbes would have renewed his acquaintance with Fulgenzio Micanzio. In November or December Hobbes and Devonshire travelled to Rome; on 26 December they dined at the Jesuit English College there.
It is during their journey to Rome that the meeting of Hobbes and Devonshire with Galileo (in his villa outside Florence) is traditionally supposed to have taken place. Tantalizingly, there is a reference in a letter written by Galileo on 1 December 1635 (ns) to a recent visit by an English lord, who told him that his Dialogo was translated into English: this probably alluded to a manuscript translation commissioned by the Earl of Newcastle, a fact which strengthens the possibility that his informants were Devonshire and Hobbes. Yet Galileo's letter was addressed to Micanzio, and he obviously had no inkling that he was referring to mutual friends. An element of mystery still surrounds this episode, though Aubrey's definite statement that 'When he [Hobbes] was at Florence … he contracted a friendship with the famous Galileo' must carry considerable weight (Brief Lives, 1.366). Aubrey's reference may in fact be to the period of several weeks in April 1636 when Hobbes and Devonshire stayed in Florence on their way back from Rome.
In May they moved to Turin, and then to Geneva and Lyons; they reached Paris on 1/11 June. Hobbes had kept up a correspondence with the Earl of Newcastle during this tour; Sir Charles Cavendish put him in touch with the French mathematician Claude Mydorge, and it was probably thanks to Sir Charles's contacts that Hobbes made the acquaintance of the Minim friar, scholar, scientist, and intellectual impresario Marin Mersenne. In his verse autobiography Hobbes wrote that it was during this stay in Paris that he discussed his ideas about matter and motion with Mersenne, proudly adding that 'from that time, I too was counted among the philosophers' (Opera philosophica, 1.xc).
Philosophy and politics, 1636–1640
When Hobbes returned with Devonshire to England in October 1636 he was in the grip of a furor philosophicus: 'the extreame pleasure I take in study', he wrote to Newcastle, 'overcomes in me all other appetites' (Correspondence, 1.37). Physics, optics, epistemology, psychology, metaphysics, and logic seem to have been his main concerns. His interest in optics received a special stimulus in October 1637 when Digby sent him a copy of Descartes's Discours de la méthode, the work which also contained an essay on refraction, the 'Dioptrique'. Hobbes made a careful study of this essay, and sent a lengthy criticism of it to Mersenne (a 56-page letter, now lost) in November 1640, shortly before returning to Paris himself. He also wrote a treatise on optics in Latin, containing several criticisms of Descartes; this work may have been substantially completed before his move to Paris in late 1640, though the surviving manuscript is a fair copy made by a Parisian scribe, probably in 1641 or 1642.
According to his verse autobiography, it was in the period 1637–40 that Hobbes began to organize his ideas in a tripartite scheme, dealing with 'body' (metaphysics and physics), 'man' (epistemology—including optics—and psychology), and 'citizen' (politics). The works eventually published under the titles De corpore, De homine, and De cive would be described as the three 'sections' of his 'elements of philosophy'. How fully worked out this scheme was during the late 1630s is not clear, though it may be significant that the Latin optical treatise contains a reference to the preceding section ('sectione Antecedente'; Harley MS 6796, fol. 193v). Some manuscript notes on early chapters of De corpore do survive, but their dating is uncertain (see HS/A/10 and HS/C/4/2).
In view of the predominantly scientific interests of the people who had stimulated this philosophical awakening (Mersenne, Sir Charles Cavendish, Payne, and Warner), it may seem odd that Hobbes should have included politics as the culminating part of his philosophical programme. The personal interests of the Earl of Newcastle—who was now playing an increasingly important role as a courtier-politician—were probably important here. But Hobbes's own experience must also have stimulated his interest in political theory. In 1627 he helped to collect money for Charles I's unpopular ‘forced loan’ in Derbyshire, which may have prompted some thoughts about the relation between political authority and property; and in January 1640 he was put forward by the Earl of Devonshire—unsuccessfully—as a possible parliamentary candidate. Hobbes had also had some contacts in the 1630s (the precise chronology is again uncertain) with the so-called Great Tew circle, a group of literary men, divines, and lawyers who gathered round Lord Falkland at his country house near Oxford: the topics discussed by members of this circle, such as Edward Hyde and William Chillingworth, included the nature of religious authority and the relation between church and state.
It was at Newcastle's bidding that Hobbes first put his political theory down on paper, in an English treatise which may have been based, to some extent, on draft materials for his Latin work 'on the citizen'. This treatise, The Elements of Law, was completed on 9 May 1640 (just after the dissolution of the Short Parliament), and distributed in manuscript copies produced by a production line of scribes (see HS/A2). Starting with an account of human psychology and a powerful analysis of the origins (and the necessity) of the state, it mounted a strong defence of royal authority in such matters as the imposition of taxation. Hobbes's name was now in circulation as a hardline theorist of royal absolutism. When the Long Parliament began to debate these issues in November 1640 such views came under fierce attack. Hobbes, who was staying in London at the time, hurriedly packed his bags and travelled to Paris.
Hobbes's own account of the reasons for this move (given in a letter from Paris five months later) emphasized the parliamentary debates, but also added that 'I thought if I went not then, there was neverthelesse a disorder comming on that would make it worse being there then here' (Correspondence, 1.115). His fear of being hauled before parliament may only have hastened a move which he had already planned for other reasons, both political and personal. One sign of such planning is the fact that in September 1640 he had withdrawn a sum of £100 which the steward of Chatsworth had invested for him (HS/D/8); he also withdrew the £400 which he had banked with the Cavendish family, and thus had the financial security for a long stay abroad. His tutorial duties had ended in 1637, and the 3rd Earl of Devonshire (who attained his majority in late 1638) may have used him thereafter only for minor secretarial services. With Newcastle distracted by politics, the prospects of a period of quiet study in Newcastle's household had receded; Mersenne's Paris thus became the most natural and alluring alternative. Hobbes would remain there for eleven years.
Paris, 1640–1648
Friendship with Mersenne provided an ideal entrée to Parisian intellectual life. The friar held regular meetings of scholars and scientists in his convent; thanks to him Hobbes became acquainted during the early 1640s with the anti-Aristotelian philosopher Pierre Gassendi, the mathematician Gilles Personne de Roberval, and young Huguenot intellectuals such as Thomas de Martel and Samuel Sorbière. Visitors to Paris who also frequented Mersenne's meetings included Sir Kenelm Digby and the Catholic philosopher Thomas White. Mersenne was a close friend of Descartes; he circulated Descartes's Meditationes to various writers, including Hobbes, soliciting their critical comments, which he published, with Descartes's replies, in 1641. In the case of Hobbes's criticisms, Descartes's responses were acerbic to the point of open contempt—an attitude expressed also in his correspondence with Hobbes (conducted via Mersenne) during the early months of that year. In November 1642 Mersenne performed another service for Hobbes when he organized the private printing and distribution of De cive, the third 'section' of his intended 'elements of philosophy'. This treatise presented (in Latin) the key political arguments of The Elements of Law, omitting the earlier text's material on psychology and developing further Hobbes's arguments about religion (which, probably, were the reason for Mersenne's cautious method of publication). De cive established Hobbes's reputation among select intellectual circles; later editions printed in the Netherlands by Elsevier in 1647 (at Sorbière's behest) spread it among a much wider public.
It was probably at Mersenne's invitation that, in 1642–3, Hobbes composed a huge manuscript refutation of a recently published work, Thomas White's De mundo dialogi tres.
Mersenne also published some short pieces by Hobbes, on physics and optics, in two scientific compilations which he edited in 1644. These pieces (some of them extracted from the critique of White) were evidently intended as samples of Hobbes's work in progress. His own efforts were now mainly directed at composing the first section of his philosophical elements, De corpore—a huge task, which involved setting out in a proper 'method' all the principles of logic, metaphysics, and physics. Sir Charles Cavendish, who was corresponding with Hobbes, wrote to his friend John Pell in December 1644: 'Mr Hobbes puts me in hope of his Philosophie, which he writes he is nowe putting in order, but I feare that will take a long time' (BL, Add. MS 4278, fol. 190r).
Sir Charles and his brother arrived in Paris in April 1645; from Hobbes's point of view their renewed patronage was a mixed blessing, since they caused several interruptions to his work. In the summer of 1645 Newcastle set up a philosophical disputation between Hobbes and an exiled Anglican bishop, John Bramhall, on free will and necessity; the short text Hobbes wrote on this subject was later published, without his authorization, as Of Libertie and Necessitie (1654). In late 1645 and early 1646 it was also at Newcastle's bidding that Hobbes wrote a treatise on optics in English. (The fair copy was written out by William Petty, who had contacted Hobbes in Paris in 1645 at the behest of the mathematician John Pell, to solicit a demonstration from Hobbes for a work eventually published by Pell in 1647.) And a further diversion came in the summer of 1646: when Hobbes was just about to travel to Montauban in the south of France (home of his friend Martel) to work intensively on De corpore, he was required to stay in Paris to give lessons in mathematics to the young Prince Charles, who arrived there in July. While this appointment further delayed the completion of De corpore, however, it did give Hobbes a personal acquaintance with the future king which stood him in good stead in Restoration England: the prince adopted an attitude of bemused affection towards his tutor, commenting, reportedly, that he was the oddest fellow he ever met.
In the second half of 1647 Hobbes's work suffered a much graver interruption, an illness which nearly killed him: according to his later recollections he was in bed for six months, and went for six weeks without eating. Recovering at last, he soldiered on with his work on De corpore. Prince Charles left Paris in the summer of 1648; so too did Newcastle, and his brother, who reported just after their departure that 'Mr: Hobbes hath nowe leasure to studie & I hope wee shall have his [philosophy] within a twelve moneth' (BL, Add. MS 4278, fol. 273r). Sure enough, in June 1649 Hobbes informed Sorbière that he hoped to complete De corpore by the end of that summer. So confident was he that the work was in its final form that he was already having the figures engraved, to facilitate speedy publication. And yet the book was not published for another six long years.
Paris, 1649–1651: Leviathan
The main interruption to the completion of De corpore was a self-inflicted one: the writing of Hobbes's major treatise on psychology, politics, and religion, Leviathan. The precise date at which he began it is not known; the evidence of his pattern of work on De corpore, described above, suggests that he may have started it only in 1649, but his verse autobiography implies that he had been working on it since 1646. In May 1650 Robert Payne (who was corresponding with Hobbes from England) learned that he had completed thirty-seven chapters; and in April 1651 Edward Hyde, on a visit to Paris, was told that the book 'was then Printing in England, and that he receiv'd every week a Sheet to correct' (E. Hyde, A Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous Errors … in … Leviathan, 1676, 7). It was published in the following month, by the London bookseller Andrew Crooke. The fact that this work was written in English and published in England strongly suggests that it was intended as a contribution to the internal political debate in that country. According to Hyde, when Hobbes was asked why he was publishing the work, he replied: 'The truth is, I have a mind to go home' (ibid., 8). Certainly the final section of the book, entitled 'A review and conclusion', contained a strong justification of submission to the new regime in England. It summarized Hobbes's general argument about the rational basis of political authority, pointing out that there was a reciprocal relationship between protection and obedience: Hobbes's point was that since the king (now Charles II) could not protect people in England, they were impelled by the dictates of self-preservation to transfer their obedience to the power that now ruled there. Whether this argument had any direct relevance to someone who, like Hobbes, was no longer living in England, is much less clear.
There were, nevertheless, some personal reasons why life in Paris may have seemed no longer so attractive to Hobbes. Mersenne had died in 1648; Gassendi had left for the south of France soon thereafter; Sorbière was permanently away from Paris during these years; Martel was absent for most of the time between 1646 and 1654. Hobbes did have some old friends there, and also acquired some new ones—notably the Huguenot physician Abraham du Prat and a young amateur mathematician from the Bordeaux region, François du Verdus, who became a fervent admirer. But Mersenne had been the linchpin of Hobbes's intellectual life in Paris, and his loss was keenly felt. In August 1651, when Hobbes had another severe illness, he was treated by the famous physician and philosophical sceptic Guy Patin: according to Patin, the pain that he was suffering, combined with his natural melancholy, had inclined Hobbes's thoughts to suicide. Significantly, however, he also recorded that Hobbes was so grateful for his treatment that he promised that he would send Patin a present when he was back in England: the move was definitely planned by this stage.
During his years in Paris, Hobbes had kept in touch with the 3rd Earl of Devonshire, who returned to England in 1645 and made his peace with the parliamentary authorities. For most royalists living in England, ‘compounding’ for their estates was a practical necessity to which, by the end of the 1640s, no stigma applied. Some of the more flamboyant exiled royalists of Hobbes's acquaintance could not return, for reasons of personal safety: Newcastle was in this category, and so was the poet Sir William Davenant, whose epic Gondibert Hobbes praised in a letter published with Davenant's preface to the poem in 1650. But even friends such as these do not seem to have objected to Hobbes's own decision to go back.
More problematic was the political theory of Leviathan, which implied that the submission of former royalists to the new authority in England was not a provisional measure, pending the return of the rightful king, but rather a recognition of a new authority just as valid as the previous, royal, one. One of the most important features of Leviathan, indeed, is its constant attention to the role of belief (especially religious doctrine) in subverting political authority. Hobbes's advice here may have been directed, at least implicitly, at the new powers in England, who had the opportunity to create a new, rational settlement of religion there. But it was also directed at the young Charles II, to whom, after his return to Paris in October 1651, Hobbes gave a fair copy manuscript of the work. Within two months Hobbes's enemies at the court-in-exile succeeded in having him banned from the court; there were also rumours that the French clergy intended to arrest him. He left Paris in mid-December, and sailed to England.
England, 1652–1660
In his verse autobiography Hobbes suggests that on his arrival in England he was fearful that he might be taken for a royalist spy—he was, he emphasizes, a prominent defender of the rights of the crown—and says that he therefore presented himself to the council of state to regularize his position. This sounds retrospectively disingenuous. Although some royalists (such as the young Charles Cotton, whose translation of De cive was published in 1651) did see Hobbes as a defender of their cause, the ideologists of the parliamentary regime, such as Marchamont Nedham and John Hall of Durham, were well aware that Hobbes's theories could be used to support the new political settlement. His reconciliation with the council of state seems, unfortunately, to have left no trace in the written records of that body; but it was probably assisted by the young William Brereton (cousin of a parliamentary commander), who had studied mathematics under John Pell and was a friend of Sir Charles Cavendish.
Hobbes soon returned to the service of the Earl of Devonshire, who stayed frequently at Latimers, a country house in Buckinghamshire. But it seems that his duties were slight, and that he spent much of his time during the 1650s in London, pursuing his own studies. De corpore was finally published there in 1655 (an English translation, supervised by Hobbes, appeared in the following year); De homine followed in 1658. Hobbes was able to renew some old friendships—with, for example, the physician William Harvey—and make some new ones. John Aubrey, a friend of Harvey's, became personally acquainted with Hobbes at some time in the early 1650s. Having sent John Selden a copy of Leviathan on its publication, Hobbes struck up a somewhat quarrelsome friendship with him; Selden's epigone, the lawyer John Vaughan, became a more unqualified admirer of Hobbes's work.
Sir Kenelm Digby and Thomas White returned to London in late 1653 or early 1654; Hobbes continued his philosophical disputes with White, but may have been sympathetic to White's main political aim, which was to win a settlement for English Catholicism by renouncing the authority of the pope in temporal affairs.
Equally, Hobbes's views on religion, and on the relations of church and state, gained him many new enemies. Particularly offended were believers in the jurisdictional powers of the church, whether Laudian, presbyterian, or Catholic. Even the leaders of the Independents, such as John Owen at Oxford, who had least reason to reject Hobbes's ecclesiology, were scandalized by the scoffing, anti-theological tone of the last part of Leviathan. Critical responses to that book began to appear within a year of its publication, and the easiest targets for the critics were Hobbes's views on theological questions—his materialism, his 'mortalist' doctrine about the soul, and his apparent identification of Moses as the first person of the Trinity. One particularly tenacious critic was the Anglican bishop John Bramhall, who, offended by the publication (albeit unauthorized by Hobbes) of Hobbes's 1645 critique of his views on free will, issued two refutations of Hobbes, eliciting two further responses (The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, 1656, and An Answer to a Book Published by Dr Bramhall, written in 1668 but not published until 1682). The desire for theological rectitude, however, was not the only motive of Hobbes's critics. Some, such as Seth Ward at Oxford, felt threatened by Hobbes's call for a reform of the universities; others, such as Ward's colleague John Wallis, were keen to discredit such an outspoken opponent of presbyterianism.
The publication of De corpore, with its incompetent geometrical demonstrations, provided an ideal opportunity for Wallis, who was one of the leading mathematicians of the age. His disdainful work of refutation, Elenchus geometriae Hobbianae (1655), set off a long-running dispute, in which Hobbes's philosophically acute remarks about the conceptual basis of mathematics were unfortunately quite overshadowed by his frequent mathematical blunders. Other mathematicians and scientists, such as John Wilkins and Robert Boyle, also joined the anti-Hobbesian campaign, and Hobbes would (to his irritation) never be invited to become a member of the Royal Society. In general intellectual terms, Hobbes was on the same side as these leading scientists—a proponent of the mechanistic 'new science' against the old scholasticism. But the more widely Hobbes was denounced for his dangerous theological and political errors, the more reason his fellow scientists had to dissociate themselves from him by attacking him as well. He could console himself with the thought that his works were—as his loyal French correspondents assured him—highly prized in French philosophical circles: François du Verdus even learned English in order to translate Leviathan into French, though his version was never in fact published. In England there were some equally fervent admirers, such as the maverick scholar Henry Stubbe, who began translating Leviathan into Latin; but as Stubbe's correspondence with Hobbes (HS/L) shows, admiration for the philosopher had to be a somewhat covert affair in 1650s Oxford.
After the Restoration, 1660–1679
In some ways the Restoration was beneficial to Hobbes: Aubrey cleverly arranged a meeting between him and his former pupil, the king, at the studio of the painter Samuel Cooper, whereupon the king ordered that Hobbes 'should have free access to his majestie' (Brief Lives, 1.340). Within a few years Hobbes was receiving a royal pension of roughly 100 guineas per annum. But the Restoration settlement also involved the return to power of an Anglican establishment that strongly disapproved of Hobbes's religious views. In 1662 a Printing Act was passed which required books to be licensed by episcopal authority; thereafter, nothing that Hobbes wrote in the controversial fields of politics, law, history, or religion could be published in his lifetime. (The last such contentious work, Mr Hobbes Considered, a short apologia replying to Wallis's accusations about his political record, was published in the summer of 1662, having apparently gone to press before the act was passed.)
Although the publication of Leviathan in 1651 was covered by the Act of Oblivion, Hobbes appears to have been genuinely afraid that he might be prosecuted for heresy: there was a rumour in the early 1660s that some of the bishops were planning such a move, and in 1666 a committee of the House of Commons called for an examination of the theological contents of Leviathan. Hobbes responded to the first of these threats by writing a treatise on the law of heresy, arguing that no one could be burnt for that offence; the second may have prompted his composition of a long appendix to the Latin edition of Leviathan (1668), in which he also defended himself from the charge of heresy. His fears seem to have been exaggerated; and he enjoyed, in any case, the protection of the Earl of Devonshire, in whose household he remained, spending his summers in Derbyshire and the winter months in the Devonshires' town house in London.
Hobbes may have been fearful and old (he was aged seventy-two at the Restoration), but he continued to display a remarkable vigour as an author—all the more remarkable given that since the mid-1650s he had suffered so badly from the 'shaking palsy' (probably Parkinson's disease) that he was obliged to dictate to an amanuensis. In the fields in which publication was permitted he kept up a stream of new works: a treatise on physics in dialogue form, Problemata physica (1662), a sequence of responses to his mathematical critics, De principiis et ratiocinatione geometrarum (1666), Rosetum geometricum (1671) and Lux mathematica (1672), and a scattering of pamphlets on physics and geometry.
More significant were the things he was unable to publish, at least in England. His Latin translation of Leviathan, with its important appendix, was made for an edition of his Latin philosophical works produced by Johan Blaeu in Amsterdam (1668). At some time in the late 1660s Hobbes wrote (in English) a history of the civil war in dialogue form, in which he paid special attention to the interplay of religion and human ambition: this eventually appeared in an unauthorized edition in 1679, and was later reprinted under the title Behemoth. His last reply to Bramhall (mentioned above) was written in 1668. Shortly thereafter (perhaps in 1670, but by 1673 at the latest) he wrote a treatise on law, A Dialogue between a Phylosopher and a Student, of the Common-Laws of England, in which he defended his theory of legislative sovereignty against what he regarded as the excessive claims of the common lawyers. Also significant for the study of his political thought is a long Latin poem about the encroachments of priestcraft down the ages, Historia ecclesiastica, completed in 1671 and eventually published in 1688. His Latin verse autobiography, written in 1672, was also published posthumously.
In 1674 Hobbes was permitted one small exception to the ban on his controversial publications: after John Fell, dean of Christ Church, Oxford, had inserted some abusive comments about him into an entry on Hobbes in a work by Anthony Wood, he wrote a letter of complaint and self-defence, and obtained the king's permission to print it, having approached him in person in St James's Park. This was the last year in which Hobbes was in London; thereafter, he resided only at Hardwick Hall and Chatsworth. Though his strength was failing, his intellectual energy was unabated: he published translations of Homer (books 9–12 of the Odyssey in 1673, the rest of that work in 1675, and the whole of the Iliad in 1676), as well as another treatise on physics in dialogue form, Decameron physiologicum, in 1678. In March 1678, just before his ninetieth birthday, he commented in a letter to Aubrey: ''Tis a long time since I have been able to write my selfe, and am now so weake that it is a paine to me to dictate'; yet his last dated letter (18 August 1679), addressed to his publisher, William Crooke, contained the tantalizing phrase, 'I am writing somewhat for you to print in English' (Correspondence, 2.767, 774).
Illness and death
Hobbes had enjoyed good health for most of his adult life, the only known exceptions being his two bouts of serious illness in France, another in London about 1668, and his 'shaking palsy'. When Aubrey first saw him (in 1634) he was struck by his 'briske' deportment; he would later describe him as a tall man (over 6 feet), with a 'fresh, ruddy complexion' and 'a good eie … which was full of life and spirit, even to the last'. This last observation is confirmed by three of the best portraits of Hobbes: by Samuel Cooper (1660s; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio), John Baptist Gaspars (1663; Royal Society, London), and John Michael Wright (c.1669–1670; NPG). Aubrey also recorded that he was 'temperate, both as to wine and women', and that he kept to a simple daily routine, going for a morning walk to compose his thoughts, taking an early lunch, and writing in the afternoon. His health may also have benefited from his sceptical attitude towards contemporary medical science: he said he preferred 'to take physique from an experienced old woman … then from the learnedst but unexperienced physician' (Brief Lives, 1.332, 347–51).
In October 1679 Hobbes suffered from strangury (pain when urinating); on 27 November he had a severe stroke, which left him paralysed and unable to speak. He died on 4 December, at Hardwick Hall. His amanuensis, James Whildon (the Earl of Devonshire's baker and receiver), reported that he seemed 'to dye rather for want of the fuell of life … and meer weaknesse and decay' (Brief Lives, 1.383). He was buried two days later in the local church of Ault Hucknall, Derbyshire.
Hobbes's will
Hobbes had made three versions of his will. The earliest, in July 1674, included bequests to two nieces (daughters of his brother), five smaller bequests to members of the Devonshire household, and a legacy of £100 to Elizabeth Alaby, described as 'an Orphan and remitted by me to the Tuition of my Executor'; the residue was to go to his executor, James Whildon. In the second version (December 1675) the five smaller bequests were omitted, and money left instead to 'the poore' and the minister of the parish where he was buried; Hobbes also stated his wish that Elizabeth Alaby be married off to Whildon's son Jack, 'provided they liked one another, and that he was not a Spendthrift'. At this stage Whildon calculated that Hobbes had £787 (HMS/1/ 34, Hardwick MS 19, final page). The final version (September 1677) added bequests to his brother's grandchildren, and doubled the legacy to Miss Alaby. Hobbes's estate, in the end, was worth nearly £1000 (Brief Lives, 1.346). The special attention paid to Elizabeth Alaby in his will seems to have given rise to the popular belief that Hobbes had an illegitimate daughter. In fact she was an orphan child, possibly the daughter of a travelling musician, who had turned up at Rowthorn (Whildon's village, near Hardwick) in May 1674, 'supposed about 5 yeares old', and whose plight had evidently touched the heart of the elderly philosopher (HMS/1/ 34, Hardwick MS 19, final page).
Reputation
Hobbes's enemies, of whom there were many, portrayed him as a disagreeable character: bullying, dogmatic, and irascible. Seth Ward's biographer claimed that 'if any one objected to his Dictates, he would leave the Company in a passion, saying, his business was to Teach, not Dispute' (W. Pope, The Life of … Seth, Lord Bishop of Salisbury, 1697, 118). His friends, on the other hand, took a different view: Aubrey commented on 'His goodness of nature and willingnes to instruct any one that was willing to be informed and modestly desired it' (Brief Lives, 1.352), and Sorbière exclaimed, in a letter to Hobbes, that he admired 'your goodness, your courtesy, and all those fine qualities which make you a perfect gentleman as well as a great philosopher' (Correspondence, 2.619). The truth may be that Hobbes was affable and generous towards his friends, and intolerant only in company which he felt was predisposed to hostility towards him.
The negative stereotype of Hobbes which developed during and after his lifetime was based, however, more on his teachings than on his personal character. There were three main charges: that he was an atheist (or, at least, guilty of gross heresies), that his political theory glorified despotism, and that he overturned traditional morality. The third charge connected the first and second: he was accused of deriving morality not from God or reason but from the will of the sovereign.
Whether, in his heart, Hobbes believed in God is a question no biographer can answer with certainty; the fact that he attended Anglican services and took Holy Communion does not settle the matter. In his writings he displayed not only a fierce anti-clericalism but also a type of negative theology in which the possibility of human knowledge of God's intentions was virtually eliminated; but neither of these is necessarily the same as atheism. As for despotism, his political theory did propose that sovereignty, to be real, must be absolute, and he observed that ‘tyranny’ was merely a term used for monarchy by those who disliked it. Yet at the same time he tried to demonstrate that it was in the interests of rulers to promote the well-being of their people, and his entire theory supposed that the authority of the ruler rested on nothing other than the will of the ruled. His moral theory was indeed unorthodox, but neither relativist nor arbitrarist: he believed that certain moral rules (the ‘laws of nature’) followed necessarily from the human condition, and his position might best be described as a naturalistic adaptation of the natural law tradition.
The many denunciations of Hobbes by theological writers (including Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, Thomas Tenison, and Richard Cumberland) helped to reinforce a popular notion of ‘Hobbism’ in Restoration England as a concentrate of libertinism and irreligion. Some of the rare open admirers of Hobbes (such as the early deist Charles Blount) idolized him precisely because they thought he had undermined traditional religion; his name would continue to be invoked in this way by the radical Enlightenment. But his writings also had a more positive influence on some European thinkers, especially in the Netherlands (Velthuysen, de la Court, Spinoza), Germany (Leibniz), and France (Merlat, Bossuet); and the frequent reprintings of De cive on the continent guaranteed that writers such as Rousseau and Kant would give serious consideration to his ideas. In the nineteenth century a more sympathetic view of him emerged among utilitarians (who recognized an affinity with his moral theory) and legal positivists (who admired his theory of sovereignty). Some twentieth-century writers portrayed Hobbes as an ancestor of totalitarianism; but the tendency of modern scholarship has been to see his political theory as both authoritarian and individualist, embodying an unusual and intriguing mixture of illiberal and liberal elements. Increasingly, too, he is recognized as a philosopher whose importance extends far beyond the realm of political theory—someone whose work in theology, metaphysics, science, history, and psychology entitles him to be described as one of the true founders of modernity in Western culture.
[Source: Malcolm, Noel. 'Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679), philosopher.' "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13400. By permission of Oxford University Press.]

Robert Payne, (1596–1651), Church of England clergyman and natural philosopher, was born in Abingdon, Berkshire, the son of Robert Payne (d. 1628), a wealthy woollen draper and four times mayor of the town, and his wife, Martha, daughter of William Branch, also of Abingdon. After attending the local Roysse Grammar School, Robert matriculated a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, on 5 July 1611, graduating BA on 4 July 1614 and proceeding MA exactly three years later. In 1612 he contributed a poem to Iusta Oxoniensium, a university volume grieving the death of Henry, prince of Wales, and another poem in 1619 to Funebria sacra, lamenting the death of Queen Anne. His surviving notebooks from this period attest to his developing interest in natural philosophy, in particular the philosophy of Roger Bacon, as well as to his embarking on the study of Hebrew.

Like many other scientifically minded scholars of the time Payne was reluctant to take holy orders and proceed with a clerical career, and he thus migrated in 1624 to the newly created Pembroke College where he became second foundation fellow. Two years later he stood candidate for the Gresham professorship of astronomy, vacant following the death of Edmund Gunter, but lost to another Oxford hopeful, Henry Gellibrand. An unpublished facetious poem also suggests his being, in 1626, an unsuccessful candidate for a Christ Church proctorship. However, he achieved some financial security when, after the death of his father in February 1628, he inherited a sizeable property. By 1630 Payne's scientific accomplishments had recommended him to the mathematician Sir Charles Cavendish and his brother William, successively earl, marquess, and duke of Newcastle, and the latter conferred on him the rectorship of Tormarton, Gloucestershire, that was in his gift. The living was certainly intended to serve as a sinecure for Payne, who was employed as the earl's chaplain and secretary. Consequently, his absence from Tormarton nearly resulted in his suspension in 1632. One of the delicate tasks with which Payne was charged was negotiating Ben Jonson's gratuity for the two masques he wrote on the occasion of the visits of Charles I in 1633 and 1634 to Welbeck Abbey and Bolsover Castle respectively. Jonson was effusive in praising Payne, his 'beloved friend' further intimating to Newcastle his joy in 'the good friendship and fellowship of my right learned friend Mr Payne' (Ben Jonson, 1.212–13).

For almost a decade Payne served as a key figure in the intellectual and scientific circle around the Cavendish brothers that extended to include other practitioners, such as William Oughtred, Walter Warner, John Pell, and Thomas Hobbes. Indeed, Payne was an intimate friend of the philosopher of Malmesbury and appears to have played a significant role in the development of the latter's optical theories, as well as his mechanistic philosophy more generally. It is quite likely that 'Short tract on first principles', usually attributed to Hobbes, was actually written by Payne—certainly the manuscript is in his handwriting. On similar grounds, another short treatise traditionally attributed to Hobbes, 'Considerations touching the facility or difficulty of the motions of a horse', should likewise be credited to Payne. During the mid-1630s Payne translated, for the benefit of Sir Charles Cavendish, Galileo's Della scienza mecanica and Benedetto Castelli's 'Della misura dell'acque correnti', both from manuscripts communicated to Sir Charles by Mersenne. He was also engaged in a variety of chemical experiments with the earl of Newcastle.

In 1638 Newcastle was entrusted with the education of Charles, prince of Wales, and with his move to London the Welbeck group dispersed. Payne returned to Oxford as canon of Christ Church, retaining contacts with Sir Charles and Hobbes through correspondence. Thus, for example, Payne was among those who circulated copies of Hobbes's Elements of Law. With the outbreak of the civil war and the removal of the court to Oxford, Payne was appointed royal chaplain, and on 1 November 1642 the degree of DD was conferred on him. In 1646 Payne was deprived of his Tormarton living and two years later he was not only expelled by the parliamentary visitors from Christ Church (whose treasurer he then was) but briefly imprisoned in London while a search was made of his property. Following his release Payne retired to his sister's house in Abingdon, occasionally visiting Sir William Backhouse at Swallowfield, Sir George Stonehouse at Radley, Berkshire, and the third earl of Devonshire at Latimers, Buckinghamshire. Payne's surviving correspondence with Gilbert Sheldon attests not only to the modest role he played in keeping the royalist cause alive following the execution of Charles I, but also to his continued intellectual activity. He was instrumental in the diffusion of the ideas of Hobbes, Descartes, and Gassendi in Oxford and elsewhere in England, but his efforts to defend Hobbes in the face of the growing hostility towards him from the Anglican establishment—some members of whom Payne actually accused of provoking Hobbes to embrace a hostile attitude towards the church—ended in failure.

Payne drew up his will on 16 May 1649, apparently during a serious bout of sickness, making his sister Martha executor and chief beneficiary of his estate. Though Payne recovered his health remained frail. By summer 1651 he had moved to Swallowfield where he died, unmarried, in early November. George Morley's eulogy of his friend is indicative of the high esteem in which Payne was regarded by contemporaries. No one, Morley wrote to Sheldon, was: 'better made for a friend at all parts and to all purposes than he was. His Moralls were as good as his Intellectualls, and his Intellectualls such as I knew noe man had better: and both accompanied with a modesty allmost to an excesse.' (Walker rev., 176).

[Source: Feingold, Mordechai, 'Robert Payne, 1596-1651', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/37837. By permission of Oxford University Press.]

James Whildon, who spelt his name both Whildon and Wheldon was auditor of the Earl of Devonshire's Derbyshire estates. Prior to that he was the baker for the 1st Earl and became amanuensis to Hobbes in 1654, possibly on account of his very neat handwriting. He also copied documents for the Cavendish family and was comissioned in 1657 to compile a new catalogue of the library books at Hardwick. He was executor to Hobbes's will and his personal account book (HMS/1/34 ,Hardwick MS 19) contains a draft of Hobbes's will.

William Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Devonshire (1590-1628), nobleman, was the second son of William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire (1551-1626), and his first wife, Anne Keighley. He was educated by Thomas Hobbes and who accompanied him on a tour through France and Italy before his coming of age. Hobbes states that he was his pupil's friend for twenty years, and eulogizes his learning in the dedication of his translation of Thucydides. Cavendish was admitted to Gray's Inn on 14 May 1602, and it is asserted that he was created MA at Cambridge, incorporated at Oxford on 8 July 1608. He was knighted at Whitehall in 1609. He married, allegedly against his will, on 10 April 1608; his wife was Christian Bruce (1595-1675), daughter of Edward, Lord Bruce of Kinloss, and later a notable royalist. Cavendish was after this a leader of court society, and an intimate friend of James I. He was MP for Bishop's Castle in 1610 and for Derbyshire in 1614, 1621, 1624, 1625, and 1626, and Lord Lieutenant of Derbyshire, jointly with his father in 1619 and alone after the latter's death. In April 1622 he introduced ambassadors from the emperor Ferdinand, Venice, and the United Provinces in an audience with the King.

Devonshire was a leading member of the Virginia and Somers Isles companies, frequently lobbying the crown on their behalf. His role in overseas adventure led, in 1623, to conflict with Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick; a duel was arranged, but prevented by the Privy Council. In 1625 he was present at Charles I's marriage with Henrietta Maria. Styled Lord Cavendish from 1616, early in 1626 he inherited his father's title and his seat in the House of Lords: there he resisted Buckingham's attempt to interpret a speech of Sir Dudley Digges as treasonous (13 May 1626). His lavish hospitality strained his ample resources in his last years, and in 1628 a private Act of Parliament enabled him to sell some of the entailed estates in discharge of his debts. Devonshire's London house was in Bishopsgate, on the site afterwards occupied by Devonshire Square. He died there (from excessive indulgence in good living, it is said) on 20 June 1628, and was buried on 11 July in All Saints' Church, Derby. He and his wife had three sons: William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, Charles Cavendish, army officer, and Henry, who died in youth. His daughter Anne, a well-known patroness of literature, married Robert, Lord Rich, heir of the earl of Warwick.
[Source: Lee, Sidney, revised by Stater, Victor, ‘Cavendish, William, second earl of Devonshire’, (1590-1628), "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4945. By permission of Oxford University Press.]