The History of England: Six-Volume Series

David Hume’s enduring reputation as the first modern thinker to develop a systematically naturalistic philosophy tends to obscure the fact that he was more famous among his contemporaries as a historian. Covering almost 1,800 years, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 was the work that established Hume’s reputation in his own time.

Hume saw English history as a process of the evolution from a government of will to a governmen…