Richard Cumberland followed Selden over both Grotius and Hobbes on natural law. Selden contested the scholastic position, after Cicero, that "right reason" could by its dictates alone generate obligation, by claiming that a formal obligation required a superior in authority. In his "De legibus" Cumberland rejects Selden's solution by means of the Noahide laws, in "De jure naturali", in favour of Selden's less developed alternate solution. The latter is more orthodox for a Thomist, an "intellectus agens" as a natural faculty in the rational soul, by the mediation of which divine intellect can intervene directly with individuals. Matthew Hale tried to merge the theory of Grotius on property with Selden's view on obligation. Cumberland and Hale both belonged to a larger group, followers in a broad sense of Selden, with backgrounds mostly of Cambridge and the law, comprising also Orlando Bridgeman, Hezekiah Burton, John Hollings, Richard Kidder, Edward Stillingfleet, John Tillotson, and John Wilkins.