ABSTRACT
Tomas Hobbes was born at Malmesbury in 1588 and died in 1679 at the age of ninetyone years. After completing his school and university education he became tutor to the Cavendish family, with whom he remained until 1628 when his pupil, the second Earl of Devonshire, died. He subsequently became tutor to the Clinton family until 1631, when he returned to the Cavendish family to act as tutor to the third Earl. In 1640 the summoning of the Short Parliament provoked him to circulate a pamphlet defending the absolute rights of the King, but this evoked considerable hostility, and he deemed it prudent to remove to Paris, where he stayed for the next eleven years. During this period he wrote his principal work, Leviathan, which was published in London in 1651. It met with widespread opposition, because his attempt to justify the absolute rights of whatever government happened to be in power was repugnant to the Royalists (who believed in the Divine Right of Kings), his atheism was condemned by the Church of England, and his subordination of ecclesiastical to civil authority was unacceptable to the Roman Church. The exiled Royalists in Paris particularly disliked a doctrine which, if true, would have justified their permanent exile, and Hobbes was consequently banished from their Court. In these circumstances he thought it wise to make his peace with the Council of State of the ‘Rump Parliament’. After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 Hobbes was pardoned by the King and gradually came into favour at Court. But the Leviathan continued to evoke hostility in ecclesiastical circles, and a Parliamentary Committee was appointed to receive information about it. No action, however, resulted, and Hobbes spent the rest of his life quietly in England.
