This book analyses the reception of the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) in late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century Ireland. Ward finds that Sir William Petty (1623–87), John Vesey, archbishop of Tuam (1638–1716) and Edward Synge, bishop of Elphin (1691–1762) employed or reacted against various Hobbesian concepts. Ward admits that he is not the first to note the engagement of these intellectuals with Hobbesian philosophy, but he analyses their engagements in depth. Ward argues that it was the political and confessional instability of the Protestant regime in Ireland that made Hobbes pertinent to these three authors. Ward sees a similar ambivalence among readers of Hobbes in Ireland that his former supervisor, Jon Parkin, has identified in the reception of Hobbes in the Church of England. On the one hand, Hobbes’s political philosophy gave the secular monarch a power in religion contrary to traditional Christian theology; on the other hand, the established Protestant churches of England and of Ireland owed their form to royal power and so Hobbesian absolutism might seem useful and familiar to defenders of those churches.

Petty is the most obviously Hobbesian of the three: he served as Hobbes’s amanuensis in Paris during the 1640s. Ward addresses Petty’s Treatise of taxes and contributions (London, 1662) and what Ward calls Petty’s commentary on Hobbes’s De Cive (published by Frank Amati and Tony Aspromourgas as ‘Petty contra Hobbes’) in chapter 1. Here, Ward criticises Ted McCormick for identifying Petty chiefly as a Baconian and for his attempt to place Petty in the pre-history of the science of statistics. Instead, Ward narrows his focus to Restoration debates about wealth and the imperial relationship between England and Ireland. In chapter 2 Ward examines Political arithmetick (London, 1690) and Political anatomy of Ireland (London, 1691), both of which were probably composed in 1671–2, associating them with the Cabal ministry of the late 1660s and their imperial policies. This treatment overlooks the common hostility of Hobbes and Petty to Aristotle’s metaphysics in favour of some similarities in their understanding of imperial trade and government. Chapter 3 analyses Petty’s writings on maritime law and government after the fall of the Cabal in 1673. Ward suggests that Petty was aligned with the ‘sceptical Tories’ (a small number of clients of James, duke of York, who were inclined to Hobbesian anti-clericalism and religious toleration) identified by Mark Goldie. Petty’s rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics is addressed in this chapter, but Ward’s account of it is not strongly related to his description of Petty’s ambitious claims for the jurisdiction of Ireland’s admiralty court.

Ward turns to John Vesey in chapter 4. Vesey wrote a biography of John Bramhall, archbishop of Armagh (1594–1663) and Ward begins with this before turning to the sermons that Vesey delivered after 1679 which demonstrate certain Hobbesian tendencies. Bramhall, the most distinguished critic of Hobbes’s legal theory who worked in Ireland, is thus treated only in passing, and Ward does not explain this decision. Chapter 5 considers Vesey’s response to the rule of King James II and the revolution of 1688. The engagement of Vesey with Hobbes that Ward identifies in this chapter often amounts to no more than the common citation of a biblical place.

Ward’s last chapter explores Edward Synge’s Case of toleration (Dublin, 1725) and his allegation that Irish Protestants relied on Hobbes to justify the penal laws against Catholics. Ward mentions in this chapter that learned members of the Church of Ireland used a wide variety of new natural law theories (235), but nevertheless concentrates on appearances of Hobbes alone to make the case that Hobbes was an ‘unavoidable point of reference’ (225) among Irish Anglicans. In the course of this argument, Ward criticises definitions of the Enlightenment favoured by Michael Brown and David Berman, but he does not counter with a definition of his own.

Ward’s approach to the problems and texts that he has identified is certainly skilled and learned, despite the criticisms I make above. Scholars of Petty, in particular, will be obliged to engage with Ward’s arguments. Nevertheless, the focus of Ward’s study exaggerates Hobbes’s importance in Ireland. Irish Protestants were using a wide variety of new natural law theories throughout the seventeenth century: Vesey’s patron, Roger Boyle, earl of Orrery, was a keen reader and user of Hugo Grotius, as was William King, archbishop of Dublin. Irish Catholics sometimes experimented with theorists like Grotius, and Ward’s neglect of Catholics makes the book feel rather old fashioned. Perhaps Ward will be able to pursue this novel jurisprudence in a subsequent work.