Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity: A Quarrel of the Civil Wars and Interregnum

Nicholas D. Jackson0521870062, 9780521870061, 9780511355554

This is the first full account of one of the most famous quarrels of the seventeenth century, that between the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and the Anglican archbishop of Armagh, John Bramhall (1594-1663). This analytical narrative interprets that quarrel within its own immediate and complicated historical circumstances, the Civil Wars (1638-1649) and Interregnum (1649-1660). The personal clash of Hobbes and Bramhall is connected to the broader conflict, disorder, violence, dislocation and exile that characterised those periods. This monograph offers not only the first comprehensive narrative of their hostilities over two decades, but also an illuminating analysis of aspects of their private and public quarrel that have been neglected in previous biographical, historical and philosophical accounts, with special attention devoted to their dispute over political and religious authority. This will be essential reading for scholars of early modern British history, religious history and the history of ideas.

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Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Half-title……Page 3
Series-title……Page 4
Title……Page 5
Copyright……Page 6
Dedication……Page 7
Contents……Page 9
Acknowledgments……Page 11
Abbreviations……Page 13
Note on dates and style……Page 19
Introduction……Page 21
1
Bishop Bramhall, the ‘Great Arminian’,
‘Irish Canterbury’ and ‘Most Unsound
Man in Ireland’, 1633–1641……Page 41
2
Bishop Bramhall, the Earl of Newcastle,
Thomas Hobbes and the First English
Civil War……Page 60
3
Hobbes’s flight to France, De Cive and
the beginning of the quarrel with
Bramhall, summer 1645……Page 88
4
An epistolary skirmish, 1645–1646:
Bramhall’s ‘Discourse’, Hobbes’s
‘Treatise’ and Bramhall’s ‘Vindication’……Page 120
5
Bramhall and the royalist schemes
of 1646–1650……Page 145
6
Hobbes and Leviathan among
the exiles, 1646–1651……Page 166
7
The public quarrel: Hobbes, Of Liberty
and Necessity, 1654, Bramhall, Defence
of True Liberty, 1655 and Hobbes,
Questions concerning Liberty,
Necessity and Chance, 1656……Page 200
8
Castigations of Hobbes’s Animadversions
and The Catching of Leviathan,
1657–1658: Hobbes as Leviathan
of Leviathans……Page 240
9
The Restoration and death of Bramhall
and Hobbes’s last word, 1668……Page 270
Conclusion……Page 296
Hobbes, bramhall and the theology and ecclesiology of the church of england……Page 298
Hobbes, bramhall and the longue durée of the debate over free-will……Page 312
Printed……Page 325
SECONDARY SOURCES……Page 330
Index……Page 343