Patriarchy Defended
An implicit patriarchalism based on religious scripture pervaded the English polity from its inception.11 In the late sixteenth century, the French philosopher Jean Bodin had emphasized the parallel authority of fathers and kings.12 But nothing clarifies a theory more than direct attack.
The political theory of patriarchalism was most systematically developed in response to Hobbesian apostasy and the Civil War. Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, published in 1680, was welcomed as an eloquent defense of the divine right of kings. 13 Even if it became ‘‘the most refuted theory in the history of politics'' it offered a clear and consistent justification of inequalities based on lineage, age, and gender. 14Filmer's defense of patriarchy glorified the hierarchies inscribed in Holy Scripture. All men were children of a heavenly father ruled by his representatives in the flesh. The King of England derived his authority by direct descent from Adam (Filmer traced the genealogy in some detail). Likewise, men derived their authority over women and children from the original dominion God gave Adam over Eve. The very idea that men might have joined together to negotiate their own social contract was preposterous. They were placed upon earth by God to fulfill his purpose, not their own. 15
Filmer did more than reiterate religious doctrine. He ridiculed Hobbes's account of how men and society came to be:
I cannot understand how this right of nature can be conceived without imagining a company of men at the very first to have been all created together without any dependency, one of another, or as mushrooms (fungorum more) they all of a sudden were sprung out of the earth without any obligation one to another.16
In reality men begin their lives as children. They must be nurtured before they can begin to fight.
In Filmer's cosmology, God took more credit than parents who presumably acted out the Father's will. Even if a father implanted a tiny homunculus in the mother's womb—as Aristotle confidently explained—a mother's care was indispensable.17 Hobbes conceded this point as a basis for maternal authority within the state of nature (before fathers framed the Commonwealth). Filmer simply insisted that God gave authority over children to the father as the ‘‘nobler and principle agent'' in generation.18Logic played a lesser role in Filmer's account than his oft-reiterated parallel between the divine rights of kings and those of men. The two sets of rights sometimes conflicted, as when kings or their aristocratic minions laid claim to the daughters or wives of ordinary men. More often they constituted a patriarchal quid pro quo: Defend my authority as your master and I will defend your authority as master of your wife and children. Filmer warned liberals that if men gained the right to vote, women would soon begin to clamor for it. If men designed their own social contract, women would soon begin to revise it. These warnings proved prophetic, if somewhat premature.