Historians may know that sometime in the seventeenth century the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes debated John Bramhall, Bishop of Derry. But where and what did they debate? And why did they debate the issues they did? It is not difficult to find brief descriptions or summaries of their public debate on free-will; this book provides the first comprehensive account not only of that debate, but also of their private quarrel and hostile relations during both the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and Interregnum. Hobbes and Bramhall argued about much more than ‘liberty’ and ‘necessity’ (free-will and determinism), and the following account offers a detailed historical explanation of their debating those and other issues. By situating their long and acrimonious, private and public, dispute within its contemporary context we may come to view the whole quarrel as a by-product or collateral intellectual skirmish of those rebellions and wars in the British Isles. We can also come to understand exactly what stakes they were playing for: what would a victory in the dispute mean to themselves, their friends and their audience? Although the clash of arms in their homeland was quite destructive, it was also productive of such contests of wit as the uncivil war of words between Hobbes and Bramhall that began across the Channel.

In the summer of 1645, during the First English Civil War, Hobbes and Bramhall met in Paris, at the lodgings of their mutual acquaintance, the recently retired Cavalier general, the Marquess of Newcastle.