Color shading added by author, with permission of the British Museum, to indicate features shared with 1648 painting of Malmesbury (Figure 1).

On all of Hobbes’s published books, he identifies himself on the title page as “Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury.” The town on the frontispiece of Leviathan has features in common with the attributes of the town Hobbes describes in his autobiographical poem: “On a Hill seated, with a double Stream / Almost environ’d.” The features the frontispiece shares with the 1648 painting include the town’s location on a high bluff, an abbey with houses extending to the town wall, a two-tiered wall, and an encircling river.

The beautiful aerial maps of English towns – such as Bath, Bedford, Carlile, Kendal, Norwich, and Rochester – published by John Speed in his 1611 Theatre of Empire often have one or several features in common with the town on Hobbes’s frontispiece, but not its hilltop location, its two-layered wall, or its abbey with houses adjoining the wall.