What influenced Thomas Hobbes?

People with whom he connected: Francis Bacon; John Selden; Ben Jonson; Galileo; Rene Descarte; Pierre Gassendi.

There will be writings by and about Hobbes' political views and how they compared with those in the above list. At the time of the Long Parliament, Hobbes left England for France along with other devoted Royalists.

Look for: Richardson, George C. - Hobbes: Second Edition (1967)

I guess you have the philosophy down. He was very smart.

this may help

2. Life and Times

Hobbes’s biography is dominated by the political events in England and Scotland during his long life. Born in 1588, the year the Spanish Armada made its ill-fated attempt to invade England, he lived to the exceptional age of 91, dying in 1679. He was not born to power or wealth or influence: the son of a disgraced village vicar, he was lucky that his uncle was wealthy enough to provide for his education and that his intellectual talents were soon recognized and developed (through thorough training in the classics of Latin and Greek). Those intellectual abilities, and his uncle’s support, brought him to university at Oxford. And these in turn – together with a good deal of common sense and personal maturity – won him a place tutoring the son of an important noble family, the Cavendishes. This meant that Hobbes entered circles where the activities of the King, of Members of Parliament, and of other wealthy landowners were known and discussed, and indeed influenced. Thus intellectual and practical ability brought Hobbes to a place close to power – later he would even be math tutor to the future King Charles II. Although this never made Hobbes powerful, it meant he was acquainted with and indeed vulnerable to those who were. As the scene was being set for the Civil Wars of 1642-46 and 1648-51 – wars that would lead to the King being executed and a republic being declared – Hobbes felt forced to leave the country for his personal safety, and lived in France from 1640 to 1651. Even after the monarchy had been restored in 1660, Hobbes’s security was not always certain: powerful religious figures, critical of his writings, made moves in Parliament that apparently led Hobbes to burn some of his papers for fear of prosecution.