Patriarcha or, The Natural Power of Kings
A Rare Book Room treasure from the George Wythe Collection
Filmer, Robert, Sir (d. 1653). Patriarcha or, The Natural
Power
of Kings. London : Printed, and are to be sold by Walter Davis
Book-binder, in Amen-Corner, near Pater-noster-row, 1680.
Sir Robert Filmer was born around 1588 and educated at Trinity
College, Cambridge, and at Lincoln’s Inn. He was well placed in the
court
of Charles I and thus came to be knighted. While he was too old to
fight
for the king during the Civil Wars he was briefly imprisoned as a
Royalist and his house in East Sutton was sacked. Filmer died in 1653
and
his importance was chiefly posthumous.
Filmer's political tracts, which were published between 1648 and 1653,
were re-published by Tories who believed in the divine right of kings
during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-1680. These included The
Freeholder’s Grand Inquest (1679) which argued that Parliament only
sat at the king’s will. Another was The Anarchy of a Limited or
Mixed
Monarchy which argued that any limitations on monarchical power, of
whatever kind, would make a nonsense of the king’s authority, an
argument
repeated in his tract The Necessity of the Absolute Power of All
Kings, and his major work, Patriarcha (written 1638 but
published 1680). Patriarcha is now largely remembered because
John
Locke launches a cogent attack on its premises in his first Treatise
on Government (drafted 1681-1682 and published 1689). Filmer argued
that the state should be seen as a family whose father was the king to
whom all subjects owed the obedience and respect of children. Filmer
derived his argument from the premise that Adam was the first earthly
king and that all subsequent monarchs derived their authority from him.
Such ideas seemed to Charles I and later Stuart monarchs to provide a
rationale for the absolutist right to govern, notwithstanding the
evident
weakness of the parallels drawn between families and states. (Clark,
Robert, University of East Anglia. "Sir Robert Filmer." The
Literary Encyclopedia)
Patriarcha may be viewed in the St. George Rare Book Room at the Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary School of Law.
-- Kevin Butterfield
