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Ex Libris: Annotating Books from the William A. Clark Memorial Library

A Survey of the Leviathan (p. 206)

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Contextualizing Leviathan: A Historical Look of Hobbes' Impact to Seventeenth Century England and Beyond Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan remains a staple for study in contemporary political philosophy and has maintained the extraordinary impact that the book possessed in its release in 1651. The book is one of the earliest examples for social contract theory and came during a volatile period for seventeenth century England. The text being studied, A Brief Survey of the Dangerous and pernicious Errors to Church and State In Mr. Hobbes’ Book Entitled Leviathan, is just one representation of how England reacted to his ideas in what is over a 300 page text performing what the title states itself; a critique of Hobbes’ writing. The historical analysis being performed here is not aimed at delineating and analyzing the intellectual discourse of either of the two texts, rather, is aimed at analyzing the context of which the texts were written in. Specifically, it is aimed at contextualizing the sociopolitical state of seventeenth century England and connecting said historical observations to Leviathan and the selected text. To do so, it is still necessary to lay out the basic foundations of Leviathan’s ideas; Hobbes describes the structure for society and a legitimate government to ultimately take shape in an absolute sovereign state. He argues that humans naturally would fall into an anarchic state if left to their own devices, and should therefore subscribe to a social contract in which individuals relieve their power to the sovereign state in order to maintain peace. “Leviathan” is a biblical reference to a sea monster and Hobbes uses this creature as a metaphor for his perception of the ideal state, a conglomerate powerhouse supported by the many individuals who have transferred their power through the social contract. The writing of such ideas took place in the turmoil of the English Civil War which consisted of multiple wars from the year 1642 to 1651(NAM). Division was largely driven by religious differences and conflict regarding the power of the English parliament. Looking at the conflict from one dimension, the two sides are labeled separately between Royalists and Parliamentarians, however pertinent to other historical civil wars, the line separating the two was severely blurred. Communities and family members found themselves against each other with reasons for picking one’s side varying between religious convictions, local rivalries, loyalty to the king, and economic struggles. Beyond these variations, choice in the matter was largely a luxury in that most were obliged to follow the allegiance of their landlords. Multiple civil wars took place during these years with the Parliamentarians securing victory and solidifying an end to absolute monarchical rule in England. The monarchy would still be reinstated with King Charles II, however the powers relative to the English parliament were severely neutered(NAM). Both Hobbes and the writer of the presented text, Edward Hyde, were proponents of King Charles I with Hobbes being an extreme Royalist while Hyde served as the chief advisor to him during the first outbreak of civil war(Wormald). Edward Hyde, the first Earl of Clarendon, was loyal to the monarch but remained uninvolved and served as a diplomat in the later civil wars(Cornell). That loyalty is reinforced by the opening page of the text giving more than generous praise to Charles II given that this piece was written in 1676. Delving deeper into the second page, Hyde refers to Leviathan as “evil doctrines”, and it was in 1666 that the English parliament ordered for Leviathan to be investigated because of suspicion of atheism in his writings(Parkin). Some bishops suggested Hobbes be burned at the stake, but ultimately no actions were taken against him. The previous owners of the book, John Romilly and Frederick Pollock, were both English jurists and likely used the book for legal study(AC). Annotations within the text seem to reveal an academic use with specific lines and passages being underlined, as well as writing in the margins commenting or critiquing the text. The provided owners held possession of the text between the nineteenth and twentieth century, meaning that not only were the ideas of Leviathan still alive, but also that the extended conversations of those ideas were well alive. The selected text is an analysis of Leviathan and serves as evidence of the latter, however to further affirm the first point one can observe an actual copy of Leviathan which contains its own annotations that are inferred to be academic in their purpose. In this text, annotations of specific page numbers are written in the margins and selected lines have a word marking them for reference or some sort of comment. The text is fully written in Latin and the previous owners do hot have clear historical profiles making the full context of this text slightly more difficult. The opening pages have annotations that indicate that the text was being studied in 1824 which fits a similar time period of ownership as the selected text. The annotations in the Leviathan text are not as prominent as the selected text with a lack of underlined passages compared to the selected one, however, both are seemingly connected with their academic usage. In an observation of the selected text’s binding and overall quality, it is highly considerable with an impressive binding containing stylistic indents and the inside cover showcasing a beautiful multi-colored swirl pattern. Whether the book was bound like this immediately after its print or decades later by a subsequent owner, its impressive quality reveals the high socioeconomic status of the owner as well as the general audience of the book within the pre-Modern period. It is possible that the decorative additions are indicative of the text being partially used as a luxury display piece in some sort of personal collection. Beyond this, its quality matches the true audience that Hobbes provoked with his ideas; upper class political elites and clergymen. Ultimately, A Brief Survey of the Dangerous and pernicious Errors to Church and State In Mr. Hobbes’ Book Entitled Leviathan and Leviathan were written in a tumultuous period in England stemming from a civil war between the monarch and parliament of England. “Leviathan” serves not only as a metaphor for Hobbes’ idealized form of government, but also is a metaphor for the substantial impact that his ideas caused in seventeenth century England and the centuries that follow.

Works Cited
Wormald, B. H. G. 1945. “How Hyde Became a Royalist.” The Cambridge Historical Journal 8 (2): 65–92. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3020612?seq=28#metadata_info_tab_contents.

National Army Museum. n.d. “British Civil Wars | National Army Museum.” Www.nam.ac.uk. https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/british-civil-wars.

Parkin, Jon. 2015a. “Hobbes and the Reception of ‘Leviathan.’” Journal of the History of Ideas 76 (2): 289–300. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43948739?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents.

Craik, Henry, and Cornell University Library. 1911. The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, Lord High Chancellor of England. Internet Archive. London, Smith, Elder & Co. https://archive.org/details/cu31924088005644/page/n87/mode/2up.

Craik, Henry. 1911. The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, Lord High Chancellor of England,. London,. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89097315931&view=1up&seq=3.

2021. Cam.ac.uk. 2021. https://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search-2018.pl?sur=&suro=w&fir=&firo=c&cit=&cito=c&c=all&z=all&tex=PLK863F&sye=&eye=&col=all&maxcount=50.
Curran, Eleanor. 2002. “A Very Peculiar Royalist. Hobbes in the Context of his Political Contemporaries.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 10 (2): 167–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/096087800210122455.