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First edition, large and thick paper copy, handsomely bound in contemporary English black morocco, and with the near-contemporary bookplate to the front pastedown of John Evans as Bishop of Bangor. Clarendon's fiercely critical Survey is the most significant and sustained early response to Hobbes's Leviathan. Clarendon (1609-1674) was chief advisor to Charles I during the Civil War and Lord Chancellor to Charles II from the Restoration to 1667. He knew Hobbes from their days at court. Clarendon's view of government was very conservative, in the tradition of Tudor and Stuart paternalism; though not explicitly mentioning the divine right of kings, he draws on its tenets. He rejects Hobbes on two grounds - that government did not in any time or place evolve in the manner Hobbes outlines and that even if Hobbes's theories were right, a government constructed upon such absolutist principles could not work. In Clarendon's view, Leviathan consequently posed a real threat to civil peace. "Clarendon's reply is an important document in terms of seventeenth-century political thought. Political theory must, after all, be judged as well in terms of political reality. Perhaps more than any other man in Restoration England, Clarendon was qualified to make such a critique" (Miller, p. 105). The work was completed in the early 1670s and published following his death - "a sign, perhaps, of the revival of Anglican royalist fortunes from the mid-1670s" (ODNB). Madan notes the printing of thick paper copies, though the Bodleian's copy is not one of these. A scattering of large, thick paper copies, in various bindings, can be traced in institutional holdings and commerce. This copy is last recorded in market listings at Sotheby's in 1977 (November 15, lot 55). The clerical career of John Evans (c.1652-1724) began with his appointment as the first chaplain of the East India Company. He was appointed as Bishop of Bangor in 1701, holding the position until 1716 whereupon he took the more lucrative Irish see of Meath until his death. He was a fierce Whig and a strong proponent of the English interest in the Irish House of Lords. ESTC R23248; Madan, III, 3110; Wing C4420. George E. Miller, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, 1983. Quarto (234 x 186 mm). Engraved allegorical frontispiece, showing Andromeda chained to a rock, Perseus with the head of Medusa, and the sea monster Cetus; title page vignette of the Sheldonian Theatre; complete with the terminal blank. Contemporary English black morocco, red morocco spine label lettered "Ld. Clarendon Agt Hobbes", gilt ornaments in compartments, covers with central square panels with floral inner and outer cornerpieces, gilt double-rule border, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Joints neatly repaired, some minor peripheral wear, frontispiece with short closed tear at foot (not into plate mark), faint stain at head of frontispiece and towards rear. An excellent copy.
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