Robert Filmer, the English political writer and theorist of the divine right of kings, was an early expositor of the patriarchal account of the state and of society. He was a country gentleman of the county of Kent but also belonged to the intellectual society of London and had some connection with the Court. He was an associate of prominent lawyers and historians, such as John Selden and Sir Henry Spelman, of the orthodox clergy, and of the Jacobean poets and literati too, including George Herbert and possibly John Donne. His absolutist views on political matters may have been acquired while he was at Trinity College, Cambridge, or at the Inns of Court and were developed well before the outbreak of the Civil War between the king and Parliament in 1642. In this he resembles Thomas Hobbes, his contemporary, but Filmer wrote his...