Abstract

Presents the discovery that the majority of the so‐called ‘Hobbes Manuscripts’ preserved at Chatsworth are not in Hobbes's hand, but in that of his friend Robert Payne; they probably passed to Hobbes only after Payne's death. Using this information, and a reconstruction of part of Payne's library, it describes Payne's career and intellectual life, and tries to assess the nature of his relationship with Hobbes. It also examines the quasi‐mechanistic treatise known as the ‘Short Tract’, and argues that this work was composed not by Hobbes but by Payne.