If we are to understand the importance of the ideas which Selden put forward, we have to recognise the strength of their influence in England during the 1640s to the 1670s. Just as Grotius's theory did in Holland, Selden's provided a whole generation of politically active and intelligent Englishmen with a new ideology, which they were able to apply to the most important issue of the day, the war between the King and Parliament. The most interesting of these followers, and the most original in his adaptation of the ideology, was Thomas Hobbes; but before considering his work we ought to consider that of the more typical and faithful ‘Seldenians’, for it is they who represent the milieu out of which Hobbes's work grew.

The key group of these followers were the members of the so-called Tew Circle, the intellectuals (mainly from Oxford) who met at Falkland's house at Great Tew in the 1630s. We know in fact that Selden himself sometimes came there though he does not seem to have been one of the regular group immortalised in Clarendon's Life. The Tew Circle writers modified the theory in various ways, of course, but in its basic outlines it remains recognisably the same sort of doctrine as that which Selden expounded, rather than those of Grotius or Hobbes (as has been suggested by, inter alia, Trevor-Roper and Sirluck).

The Tew Circle ideas were put forward in various works, one of which (to complicate matters) was of joint authorship.