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THE ANGLICAN ATTACK ON HOBBES IN PARIS, 1651*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2010

TIMOTHY RAYLOR
TIMOTHY RAYLOR*
Affiliation:
Carleton College, Minnesota
*
Department of English, Laird Hall, Carleton College, I N College St, Northfield, MN, 55057, USAtraylor@carleton.edu
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Abstract

About the circumstances surrounding Hobbes's dismissal from Charles's court and his subsequent departure from Paris at the end of 1651 we know little. While recent scholarship has clarified the broad outline of events, fresh evidence allows us to add some detail, showing that Leviathan was attacked in a sermon delivered by Richard Steward in the Anglican chapel of Sir Richard Browne, thus confirming Hobbes's claim for the involvement of the Anglican establishment in engineering his dismissal from court and giving us a slightly clearer sense of the source and character of the move against him.

Type
Communication
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 153 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

For their comments and suggestions on drafts of this communication I am most grateful to Dr Noel Malcolm, Professor Quentin Skinner, and Professor John Spurr. To Professor Spurr I am also indebted for drawing my attention to the Evelyn sermon book and for sharing with me his unpublished work on it. All errors are my own.

References

1 In handling dates I have taken the year to begin on 1 January and have registered dates in both Old and New Style.

2 Tuck, Richard, ‘Warrender's De cive’, Political Studies, 33 (1985), pp. 308–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 313–14; idem, ‘The civil religion of Thomas Hobbes’, in Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, eds., Political discourse in early modern Britain (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 120–38; idem, Philosophy and government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 319–35.

3 Jeffrey R. Collins, The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 2005), pp. 92–4, 248–50; also idem, ‘Christian ecclesiology and the composition of Leviathan: a newly discovered letter to Thomas Hobbes’, Historical Journal, 43 (2000), pp. 217–31, at pp. 220–31; Jon Parkin, Taming the Leviathan: the reception of the political and religious ideas of Thomas Hobbes in England, 1640–1700 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 36–42, 54–84; Nicholas D. Jackson, Hobbes, Bramhall and the politics of liberty and necessity (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 86, 90. It is inappropriate to regard the first edition as a commercial failure (see, e.g., Collins, Allegiance, p. 92), since it was printed and circulated privately: Hobbes, De cive: the Latin version, ed. Howard Warrender (Oxford, 1983), p. 84; Hobbes, On the citizen, ed. and trans. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge, 1998), p. 14.

4 Collins, Allegiance, p. 143.

5 Parkin, Taming, pp. 85–97; Jackson, Hobbes, Bramhall, pp. 146–79.

6 Thomas Hobbes, Opera philosophica quæ Latine scripsit, ed. William Molesworth (5 vols., London, 1839–45), i, pp. xvi–xvii; cf. ibid., i, pp. xxxvii, xciii; iv, p. 237; idem, English works, ed. William Molesworth (11 vols., London, 1839–45), iv, pp. 415, 424.

7 I am grateful to Noel Malcolm and Quentin Skinner for several suggestions regarding the translation of this passage. Hobbes had earlier made the claim that clerics had driven him to flee Paris in the Dedicatory Epistle to Dialogus physicus, de natura aeris (1661); Opera philosophica, ed. Molesworth, iv, p. 237. Soon after this Hobbes pointed to a threat from ‘the French clergy’; Mr. Hobbes considered in his loyalty, religion, reputation, and manners (London, 1662); English works, ed. Molesworth, iv, p. 415.

8 Collins, Allegiance, p. 4.

9 Jackson, Hobbes, Bramhall, p. 152. Geoffrey Smith, The cavaliers in exile, 1640–1660 (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 32, 175. Among Hobbes's associates who returned at this time was the poet Edmund Waller (who left in mid-January): Collins, Allegiance, p. 147. So did the diarist John Evelyn (in early February); John Evelyn, The diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer (6 vols., London, 1955), iii, pp. 53, 55–6; also iii, p. 47; John Spurr, ‘“A sublime and noble service”: John Evelyn and the Church of England’, in Frances Harris and Michael Hunter, eds., John Evelyn and his milieu (London, 2003), pp. 145–63, at pp. 150–1.

10 Edward [Hyde], earl of Clarendon, A brief view and survey of the dangerous and pernicious errors to church and state, in Mr. Hobbes's book, entitled ‘Leviathan’ (Oxford, 1676), pp. 8–9; cf. Collins, Allegiance, p. 146; Jackson, Hobbes, Bramhall, pp. 171–5.

11 Mercurius politicus, no. 84, 8 [/18]–15 [/25] January 1652. The full passage is quoted in Collins, Allegiance, p. 166. For Ormonde's involvement in delivering the news to Hobbes, see George F. Warner, ed., The Nicholas papers, i, Camden Society, n.s. 40 (London, 1886), p. 285.

12 [Hyde], Brief view, p. 8.

13 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. G. A. J. Rogers and Karl Schuhmann (2 vols. Bristol, 2003), i, pp. 51–2; Parkin, Taming, p. 104, n. 51; see also Jackson, Hobbes, Bramhall, p. 170, n. 94.

14 Parkin, Taming, p. 104.

15 Ibid., p. 70.

16 Jackson, Hobbes, Bramhall, pp. 175–6.

17 Warner, ed., Nicholas papers, p. 285.

18 Thomas Monkhouse, ed., State papers collected by Edward, earl of Clarendon (3 vols., Oxford, 1767–86), iii, p. 45; Bodleian Library, Clarendon MS 42, fo. 316v, qu. in Martin Dzelzainis, ‘Edward Hyde and Thomas Hobbes's Elements of law, natural and politic’, Historical Journal, 32 (1989), pp. 303–17, at pp. 305–6, n. 10.

19 Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford, 2002), p. 21, n. 84. For relations between Hyde and Hobbes, see Dzelzainis, ‘Hyde and Hobbes's Elements’, pp. 304–6; Perez Zagorin, ‘Clarendon against Leviathan’, in Patricia Springborg, ed., The Cambridge companion to Hobbes's ‘Leviathan’ (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 460–77.

20 British Library, Add. MS 78364, fo. 2r. There is a defect in the manuscript between the ‘n’ and the ‘s’ of ‘Sermons’.

21 Evelyn, Diary, i, pp. 82–3; Theodore Hoffman, Joan Winterkorn, Frances Harris, and Hilton Kelliher, ‘John Evelyn's archive at the British Library’, in John Evelyn in the British Library (London, 1995), pp. 11–43, at p. 42. On its contents, see Spurr, ‘“A sublime and noble service”’, pp. 147–8, 151–2.

22 Evelyn, Diary, i, pp. 69–74; I thank John Spurr for this point. The sermon book was designed for use in tandem with the diary, which makes frequent reference to it: for example, Diary, iii, pp. 38, 39.

23 The precise date of the final Paris sermon is unclear in the manuscript, but may be inferred from Evelyn, Diary, iii, p. 53.

24 Evelyn, Diary, iii, pp. 8–9, 247–8. Another valuable source for the period is John Cosin's sermon book, Durham Cathedral Library, MS A. iv. 31, which contains records of twelve sermons preached between 1650 and 1655.

25 Robert S. Bosher, The making of the Restoration settlement: the influence of the Laudians, 1649–1662 (London, 1951), pp. 52–4, 59, 62–3, 67–71.

26 See, for instance, O. Ogle, W. H. Bliss, W. Dunn Macray, and F. J. Routledge, eds., Calendar of the Clarendon state papers (5 vols., Oxford, 1869–1970), ii, pp. 49–50 (Hyde to George Morley, [8/] 18 Mar. 1650).

27 Evelyn, Diary, iii, p. 39; British Library, Add. MS 78364, fo. 20v. See also Evelyn's note on Earle's sermon of ‘<3>d’ Sept. and that on Dr Woolley's reference to ‘the Afflictions of the Church’ in his sermon of 17 Sept. (Diary, iii, pp. 39, 44).

28 News of the defeat arrived by 22 or 23 Sept. (Evelyn, Diary, iii, p. 44; Ogle et al., eds., Calendar of the Clarendon state papers, ii, p. 107; Warner, ed., Nicholas papers, i, p. 267); news of the king's escape arrived by 29 Oct. (Evelyn, Diary, iii, p. 47); the king himself appeared by the month end. Sermons of this period urged Job-like patience (Evelyn, Diary, iii, pp. 44, 47).

29 Monkhouse, ed., State papers, iii, p. 37; Ogle et al., eds., Calendar of the Clarendon state papers, ii, pp. 110–11.

30 Bosher, Restoration settlement, p. 71.

31 Evelyn, Diary, iii, p. 47.

32 Evelyn gives as the text for this sermon 2 Sam. 25–6; I am not sure what he means; cf. idem, Diary, iii, p. 49.

33 For the place and date, see Evelyn, Diary, iii, p. 43. For Hobbes's sickness and recovery, see Collins, Allegiance, pp. 144–5; Jackson, Hobbes, Bramhall, p. 169, n. 92; Evelyn Diary, iii, p. 41 (Evelyn visited him on [28 Aug.]/7 Sept. and made no reference to his being or having been ill).

34 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1651), pp. 395–6.

35 Tuck, Philosophy and government, p. 259; David Martin Jones, Conscience and allegiance in seventeenth-century England (Rochester, NY, 1998), pp. 113–16, 123–4, 135, 142–69, 206; Michael Mendle, Henry Parker and the English Civil War: the political thought of the public's ‘privado’ (Cambridge, 1995), p. 95; Conal Condren, Argument and authority in early modern England: the presupposition of oaths and offices (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 265–7, 290–313.

36 Quentin Skinner, Visions of politics (3 vols., Cambridge, 2002), iii, pp. 283–4, 301–2, 306–7.

37 Vallance, Edward, ‘Oaths, casuistry, and equivocation: Anglican responses to the Engagement controversy’, Historical Journal, 44 (2001), pp. 59–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 The elements of law, xv. 15–17; De cive, i. 8, ii. 18, 22, iii. 27, vi. 3; Leviathan (1651 edn), pp. 66, 69–71; Richard Tuck, Natural rights theories: their origin and development (Cambridge, 1979), p. 124.

39 The fact that Evelyn does not note this is not necessarily a problem for my argument. Evelyn was acquainted with Hobbes (visiting him in Paris on 7 Sept., a few days before Steward's sermon; Evelyn, Diary, iii, p. 41; also p. 163), but there is no evidence that he had read his works of political philosophy at this time. The copy of the first edition of Leviathan in the Evelyn Library was apparently acquired by Evelyn's son; the library also contained a copy of the 1651 English translation of De cive; The Evelyn library (4 vols., London, 1977–8), ii, p. 106. Evelyn later seems to have taken a greater interest in Anglican anti-Hobbesian polemic than in Hobbes's work itself: he owned and annotated Seth Ward's In Thomae Hobbii philosophiam exercitatio epistolica (1656) (Evelyn library, iv, p. 45), and Herbert Thorndike's Epilogue to the tragedy of the Church of England (1659) (Collins, Allegiance, pp. 254–5). In 1653 Alexander Ross presented him with a copy of his Leviathan drawn out with a hook (1653); Diary, iii, p. 81. For his (subsequent) disesteem for Hobbes's principles, see Evelyn, Diary, iv, p. 164; Thomas Hobbes, The correspondence, ed. Noel Malcolm (2 vols., Oxford, 1994), ii, p. 631, n. 2.

40 Cf. Leviathan (1651 edn), pp. 390–1.

41 Hobbes, On the citizen, ed and trans. Tuck and Silverthorne, p. 96; cf. The elements of law, xxi. 9.

42 Malcolm, Aspects, pp. 37–8.

43 George Thomason's copy of the English version (British Library E. 1262) is dated 12 Mar. 1650 (i.e. 1651).

44 Durham University Library, Cosin T. 5. 57. On this volume, see Doyle, A. I., ‘John Cosin (1595–1672) as a library maker’, The Book Collector, 40 (1991), pp. 335–57Google Scholar, at p. 344; Parkin, Taming, pp. 62-3. I am very grateful to Dr Sheila Hingley and Dr Ian Doyle for advice about Cosin's annotations.

45 Warner, ed., Nicholas papers, i, p. 284; cf. Samuel L. Mintz, The hunting of Leviathan: seventeenth-century reactions to the materialism and moral philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 134–5.

46 Bosher, Restoration settlement, pp. 49–50. On Steward generally see Geoffrey Browell, ‘Steward, Richard (bap. 1595, d. 1651)’, The Oxford dictionary of national biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford, 2004); Nicholas Pocock, Life of Richard Steward (London, 1908), pp. 177–8.

47 He named Sheldon and Hammond executors and Cosin overseer of his will: George Ornsby, ed., The correspondence of John Cosin, i, Surtees Society, 52 (Durham, 1868), p. 225n. On Morley, see Ornsby, ed., Cosin correspondence, i, p. 278; Pocock, Steward, p. 136.

48 On his illness and death, see Evelyn, Diary, iii, pp. 48–9. The king arrived back in Paris on 30 Oct. and met with Steward very shortly after; Hyde, in Antwerp, had heard of it by 8 Nov.; Ogle et al., eds., Calendar of the Clarendon state papers, ii, p. 110; Monkhouse, ed., State papers, iii, p. 37.

49 See above, n. 13.

50 Steward left two books to Cosin (Cosin correspondence, i, p. 225n). In fact, nine of his books are now in Cosin's Library at the University of Durham, identified in Cosin's hand: ‘Dean [or ‘D.’] Steward'; none show marginal markings. (I am grateful to Mr Alastair Fraser of Durham University Library for his help on this matter.)

51 Dzelzainis, ‘Hyde and Hobbes's Elements’, pp. 304, 317; Parkin, Taming, pp. 50–1; Ogle et al., eds., Calendar of the Clarendon state papers, i, p. 356; Cosin correspondence, i, p. 229. (Steward's letter – Durham University Library, Mickleton MS xxvi. 74 – is undated and unaddressed; it has not, I think, previously been identified as a reply to Hyde's request of 8 Jan.)

52 See above, n. 29.

53 Bosher, Restoration settlement, p. 63. On links between Hyde and Cosin, see David Pearson, ‘Marginalia Dunelmensia: Durham Cathedral Library, Cosin and Clarendon’, Durham University Journal, 133 (1991), pp. 91–2.

54 He was, writes Hyde, ‘a very honest and learned gentleman, and most conversant in that learning which vindicated the dignity and authority of the church; upon which his heart was most entirely set; not without some prejudice to those who thought there was any other object to be more carefully pursued’; The life of Edward earl of Clarendon (2 vols., Oxford, 1857), i, p. 246.

55 [Hyde], Brief view, pp. 90, 167, 192.

56 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Clarendon MS 27, fo. 293v; qu. in Parkin, Taming, p. 53. Hyde notes that it is no more than seven years old. This might be a slightly inaccurate reference to Hobbes's Elements of law of 1640.

57 Clarendon MS 126, fos. 9r–10v (on De cive, ii. 6, 12, 14, 16, iii. 3, 27); Parkin, Taming, pp. 51–3; see also, pp. 316–18.

58 Clarendon MS 126, fo. 11v (on De cive, vii. 15, 18); [Hyde], Brief view, pp. 41, 71–2.

59 Dzelzainis, ‘Hyde and Hobbes's Elements’, p. 306.

60 Peter Barwick, The life of the reverend Dr John Barwick (London, 1724), p. 430; qu. in Dzelzainis, ‘Hyde and Hobbes's Elements’, p. 306.

61 Parkin, Taming, pp. 298–9, 358–61, 374–5; Mintz, Hunting, pp. 56–7, 114, 134; Evelyn, Diary, iv, p. 164.