Conquest and Consent: Thomas Hobbes and the Engagement Controversy

Abstract

T he 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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