By 1700 the cumulative effect of five decades of critical engagement with Hobbes's writings had produced the images of the philosopher with which I began this book. Hobbes had attained a possibly unique position in the English imagination of the time. He had become a household name, but one associated with atheism, immorality, selfish behaviour, a poor view of human nature and unacceptable political views. Taken together these views constituted ‘Hobbism’, a well-documented creed to be detested by all God-fearing people and a set of views associated with a minority of ‘Hobbists’.

These debased disciples fell broadly into two categories; the libertine and the hypocrite. The libertine, typically young, always immoral and often drunk, is a stock figure by the later seventeenth century, a lively combination of Scargill and Rochester. Robert Dixon captures him in his Canidia:

In 1688 Jane Barker spots him with his friends up to no good, exemplifying the corruption of the town, when they:

The other kind of Hobbist is the similarly irreligious but more calculating hypocrite whose superficial conformity to social norms and values conceals his adherence to the controversial philosopher.