Five-minute digest
Patriarcha
Summary
Patriarcha: or the Natural Power of Kings is Sir Robert Filmer's defence of royal authority as the natural continuation of the authority of fathers. Written in manuscript during the reign of Charles I and circulated privately, it was printed in London in 1680, almost thirty years after Filmer's death, when supporters of the crown were resisting attempts in Parliament to bar the Catholic Duke of York from the succession. The library text is that first edition, complete, keyboarded by the Text Creation Partnership. It opens with a letter by the clergyman and historian Peter Heylyn to Filmer's son, Sir Edward Filmer, praising the author's learning, his conversation and his devotion to the Church, followed by a table of contents and three chapters divided into numbered sections. Chapter I, 'That the first Kings were Fathers of Families', begins with the opinion Filmer means to overturn: that mankind is naturally born free from all subjection and may choose its own form of government. He traces this view to the scholastic divines and to Jesuit writers, notes that some Reformed writers share it, and warns that Robert Parsons and George Buchanan drew from it a right of the people to depose kings. Against Cardinal Bellarmine he argues that God gave Adam dominion over his children and the world, that this dominion passed to the patriarchs, and that after Babel the nations were divided by families under fathers who were kings. Every king is therefore either a father of his people, the heir of such a father, or a usurper of a father's right, and the duty of a king is summed up as a universal fatherly care of his people. The commandment to honour one's father, he observes, is the law that also requires obedience to rulers. Chapter II, 'It is unnatural for the People to Govern, or Chose Governours', answers Aristotle, Suarez and Bellarmine on the family and the city, asks how a whole people could ever consent to anything, finds no example in Scripture of a people choosing its king, and surveys Roman and Athenian history to argue that popular government was unstable and bloody and that mixed government is impossible. Chapter III, 'Positive Laws do not infringe the Natural and Fatherly Power of Kings', reads Samuel's description of a king, Christ's answer about tribute and Paul's teaching on rulers, and argues that kings existed before laws, keep the laws by choice, and stand above them through the prerogative. It closes with a long survey of English records to show that the king makes law in Parliament and that the liberties of Parliament flow from royal grace. John Locke's First Treatise of Government answers Patriarcha section by section, and Algernon Sidney and James Tyrrell also wrote replies.
Top Lessons
The family as the pattern of the state
Filmer's central claim is that the city is a large family and the king a father. Authority is not invented by human agreement; it is given by God in the order of creation, first to Adam over his children, and it carries the father's duty to preserve, feed, instruct and defend those in his care.
Can a whole people consent?
Filmer presses a hard question on the theory of popular consent. If power first belonged to all, then every person, including women, children and those absent, would have to agree to transfer it, and majority rule and representation are themselves human arrangements that need some prior authority.
Order and the danger of rebellion
Writing after decades of religious wars in Europe, Filmer feared doctrines that allowed subjects to depose their rulers. He holds that God may remove a wicked king, but that private men who take that judgment into their own hands commit sin.
Law, prerogative and the king's conscience
In Chapter III Filmer argues that law is the instrument of the ruler, as a rule is the carpenter's tool. The king ordinarily keeps the laws and swears to do so, but he must be able to act above them, through equity, pardons and emergency measures, for the good of those who live under them.
Verified Quotes
“Mankind is naturally endowed and born with Freedom from all Subjection, and at liberty to choose what Form of Government it please”
“That the desire of Liberty was the first Cause of the Fall of Adam.”
“This Lordship which Adam by Command had over the whole World, and by Right descending from him the Patriarchs did enjoy, was as large and ample as the Absolutest Dominion of any Monarch which hath been since the Creation”
“the Ministry of men who execute God's Judgments without Commission, is sinful and damnable.”
“all the Duties of a King are summed up in an Universal Fatherly Care of his People.”
“the Original of Laws was for the keeping of the Multitude in Order”
“the Prerogative of a King is to be above all Laws, for the good only of them that are under the Laws, and to defend the Peoples Liberties”
Medical Lens
Patriarcha is a work of political and legal argument with no medical content. Filmer's separate tract An Advertisement to the Jury-Men of England Touching Witches (1653), not included here, bears on the history of witchcraft trials.