2-798-765 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sir William Molesworth, Bart., M.P., 1845. Portrait of British politician Sir William Molesworth, 8th Baronet. '...the successful candidate for the [London] Borough of Southwark in the recent election...one of an old and wealthy Cornish family'. Molesworth paid f £6000 for a reprint of the entire writings of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, which were placed in many English university and provincial libraries: 'The great objection urged against him by his opponents in the present contest is the fact of his having edited an edition of the Works of Hobbes, of Malmesbury, a speculative philosopher, defunct about a century, and one of those celebrated English authors whom everybody has heard of and nobody has read'. From "Illustrated London News", 1845, Vol VII.