Ault Hucknall

Close to Hardwick Hall, Ault Hucknall is the final resting place of the famous philosopher, and secretary to successive 17th Century Earls and Dukes of Devonshire, Thomas Hobbes who died at Hardwick in 1679.

Known locally as the 'smallest village in England', a claim which can't be proved, Ault Hucknall was much larger in the Middle Ages. It's most significant building is the Church which is Grade I listed and dates back to Saxon times. The Yew Tree in the churchyard is variously aged between 2,000 and 4,000 years old but, again, this can't be proved.


Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire on 5 April 1588 and died in his bed in Hardwick Hall, where his ghost is said sometimes still to be seen, on 4 December 1679. He is buried in nearby Ault Hucknall church. According to his own testimony, his mother gave premature birth to him on hearing of the Spanish Armada sailing up the English Channel. Although it was a false alarm – the Armada did not appear until June – Hobbes always claimed that ‘fear and I were born twins’ and, as fear was to play a large part in his account of human motivation, it was an apt remark.

Hobbes’s father was a vicar who disappeared after a quarrel when Hobbes was very young. It was his uncle who paid for his education and allowed him to proceed to Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1602. By this time he was able to translate the poetry of Euripides from Greek into Latin. Although he did not much like the Oxford syllabus he impressed his College sufficiently to be recommended in 1608 to William Cavendish, first Earl of Devonshire, as a tutor for his son, also William, beginning a connection with that family that was to last until Hobbes’s death. With the son, Hobbes enrolled at St John’s College, Cambridge in 1608 for two years, and travelled with him on the Continent, but spent much of his time at either Chatsworth or Hardwick, the two great Derbyshire homes of the Devonshires, or their London home in the Strand. From this time until the death of the second earl in 1628 he acted as his secretary, and also apparently for a while as secretary to Francis Bacon.


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