Towards the end of Hobbes's Behemoth, or The Long Parliament, speaker B in the dialogue, the pupil, obligingly poses a question: ‘Seeing that there had been so many shiftings of the supreme authority, I pray you, for memory's sake, repeat them briefly in times and order.’ This is the cue for a brisk resumé by speaker A, the master: the Long Parliament, he says, gave way to the Rump, followed in turn by Cromwell's Council of State and the so-called Barebone's Parliament. ‘Fifthly’, A continues, from

The manner in which the story is told suffices to make Hobbes's feelings plain. A note of disdain is audible in the studied precision with which the succession of regimes is recorded, changing to one of derision as numbers and dates are abandoned for the final, headlong descent into anarchy. Of course, Hobbes, an avowed enemy of republicanism, could afford to be ironic about a sequence of events which he saw as a vindication of his political philosophy.