Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), born at Malmesbury (supposedly frightened before his birth by the approach of the Spanish Armada and educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Like John Milton, he travelled to the European continent and met Galileo Galilei, Descartes and Mersenne. Briefly worked as mathematical tutor to the exiled King Charles II, but returned to England and submitted to the Commonwealth Regime in 1652. Got a pension after the Restoration in 1660.

Known as influential political philosopher, most famously for The Leviathan (1651).