The Welbeck Academy or Welbeck Circle is a name that has been given to the loose intellectual grouping around William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the first half of the 17th century. It takes its name from Welbeck Abbey, a country house in Nottinghamshire that was a Cavendish family seat.[1] Another term used is Newcastle Circle.[2] The geographical connection is, however, more notional than real; and these terms have been regarded also as somewhat misleading.[3][4] Cavendish was Viscount Mansfield in 1620, and moved up the noble ranks to Duke, step by step; "Newcastle" applies by 1628.
Newcastle was a royalist exile in continental Europe in the latter part of the First English Civil War and the Interregnum. He then returned to England and lived to 1676. His life shows many instances of cultural and intellectual patronage.
- ^ Tom Sorell (26 January 1996). The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes. Cambridge University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-521-42244-4. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
- ^ A. P. Martinich, Hobbes: A Biography, pp. 98–102.
- ^ Noel Malcolm; Jacqueline A. Stedall (10 February 2005). John Pell (1611-1685) and His Correspondence With Sir Charles Cavendish: The Mental World of an Early Modern Mathematician. Oxford University Press. p. 90. ISBN 978-0-19-856484-3. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
- ^ Noel Malcolm (11 November 2004). Aspects of Hobbes. Oxford University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-19-927540-3. Retrieved 3 April 2012.