Abstract
The opening months of 1649 saw the climax of the revolution staged by the Independent Party. The king was executed, the House of Lords abolished, the Commonwealth of England proclaimed. This outcome, however, was far more radical than most of the moderates in the Presbyterian Party had wanted, and far more revolutionary than the instinctive royalism of most Englishmen could readily countenance. One of the most immediate tasks of the new government was thus to persuade such moderate and hostile groups that the revolution was really over. They had to be given reasons for obeying and submitting to the newly established Commonwealth rather than trying to continue the fight. There was a need, in short, for a theory of political obligation in terms of which the new government might be legitimated. And it was clear that any such theory would in turn need to satisfy two contrasting conditions. It would need to be couched in a sufficiently familiar form to be acceptable to Presbyterian and even Royalist opinion. But it also needed to be capable of performing the revolutionary task of justifying the duty to obey a merely de facto and usurping political power.
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Bibliography
Zagorin provides the best introductory sketch of political theory under the Commonwealth. See also the Introductions to the first four volumes of The Complete Prose Works of John Milton (New Haven 1953–66) under the general editorship of Don M. Wolfe.
The best general account of the engagement controversy is John M. Wallace, Destiny his Choice: The Loyalism of Andrew Marvell (Cambridge 1968), ch. 1. The best account of the relations between historical and political thinking during the revolution is J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge 1957). The relations between the historical and political views of the de facto theorists are discussed in Quentin Skinner, ‘History and Ideology in the English Revolution’, HJ, viii (1965), 151–78. The relations between de facto writings and Hobbes’s political theory are further pursued in
Quentin Skinner, ‘The Ideological Context of Hobbes’s Political Thought’, HJ ix (1966), 286–317. Among the de facto theorists only Ascham, Dury and Nedham have been separately studied. There is as yet no modern edition of Ascham, but there is now a critical edition of Marchamont Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth of England, Stated, ed. Philip A. Knachel (Charlottesville 1969), with a valuable Introduction on Nedham as a political writer. Ascham is discussed in Irene Coltman, Private Men and Public Causes (1964) (mainly a biographical account) and in J. A. W. Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (1969) (a brief paraphrase). Coltman’s interpretation is convincingly challenged by
John M. Wallace, ‘The Cause too Good’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xxiv (1963), 150–4. Dury is discussed in G. H. Turnbull, Hartlib, Dury and Comenius (Liverpool 1947) and in J. M. Batten, John Dury (Chicago 1944).
The literature on Hobbes is of course vast. The fullest recent checklist of secondary authorities has been compiled by Arrigo Pacchi, and published in Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia, xvii (1962), 528–47. See also H. Macdonald and M. Hargreaves, Thomas Hobbes: A Bibliography (1953). The best biography will always be the account given by John Aubrey, even though many of its details must remain doubtful. A paperback edition of Aubrey’s Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (1969) is available. The fullest analysis of Hobbes’s contemporary reputation is contained in Samuel I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (1962). See also the important essay on the context of Hobbes’s thought by Keith Thomas, ‘The Social Origins of Hobbes’s Political Thought’, in Hobbes Studies, ed. K. C. Brown (1965), a brilliant and learned critique of C. B. Macpherson’s remarkable attempt to present Hobbes as the original apologist of ‘bourgeois’ and ‘market’ values in politics (in The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke [1962]). The best recent general accounts of Hobbes’s political system are M. M. Goldsmith, Hobbes’s Science of Politics (New York 1967) and J. W. N. Watkins, Hobbes’s System of Ideas (1965). The major concern of recent commentators has been Hobbes’s theory of obligation. A very subtle general account is given by Michael Oakeshott in the Introduction to his edition of Leviathan (Oxford 1946). An attempt to assimilate Hobbes’s theory of obligation to the Christian natural law tradition is made by H. Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford 1957). For criticisms see the important essay by Stuart M. Brown, ‘The Taylor Thesis: Some Objections’, and other contributions in Hobbes Studies. The most extreme such interpretation is F. C. Hood, The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford 1964). For criticism, see Quentin Skinner, ‘Hobbes’s Leviathan’, HJ, vii (1964), 321–33. For a valuable and less contentious recent account of Hobbes’s views about the state of nature and natural law see F. S. McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan (1968).
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© 1972 G. E. Aylmer, Valerie Pearl, Keith Thomas, Quentin Skinner, Claire Cross, J. P. Cooper, Ivan Roots, David Underdown, Austin Woolrych
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Skinner, Q. (1972). Conquest and Consent: Thomas Hobbes and the Engagement Controversy. In: Aylmer, G.E. (eds) The Interregnum. Problems in Focus Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02419-3_4
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