Hobbes was more praised and censored than any other thinker of his time. The first effect of his publication was to break his link with the exiled realists, who might well have killed him. The secularist spirit of his book greatly angered both Anglicans and French Catholics. Hobbes appealed to the English revolutionary government for his protection and fled to London in the winter of 1651. After his submission to the Council of State, he was allowed to immerse himself in private life on Fetter Lane.
