Editing Robert Filmer (section)

==Reception==
Filmer's theory obtained wide recognition owing to a timely posthumous publication. Nine years after the publication of ''[[Patriarcha]]'', at the time of the [[Glorious Revolution|Revolution]] which banished the [[House of Stuart|Stuarts]] from the throne, [[John Locke]] singled out Filmer among the advocates of Divine Right and attacked him expressly in the first part of the ''[[Two Treatises of Government]]''. The first ''Treatise'' goes into all his arguments [[seriatim]], and especially points out that even if the first principles of his argument are to be taken for granted, the rights of the eldest born have been so often cast aside that modern kings can claim no such inheritance of authority, as Filmer asserts.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

Filmer's patriarchal monarchism was also the target of [[Algernon Sidney]] in his ''Discourses Concerning Government'' and of [[James Tyrrell (writer)|James Tyrrell]] in his ''Patriarcha non-monarcha''.

[[John Philipps Kenyon|John Kenyon]], in his study of British political debate from 1689 to 1720, claimed that "any unbiased study of the position shows in fact that it was Filmer, not Hobbes, Locke or Sidney, who was the most influential thinker of the age.... Filmer's influence can be measured by the fact that both Locke ... and Sidney ... were not so much [making] independent and positive contributions to political thought as elaborate refutations of his ''Patriarcha'', written soon after its first publication. Indeed, but for him it is doubtful whether either book would have been written."<ref>John Kenyon, ''Revolution Principles. The Politics of Party. 1689–1720'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 63.</ref>

During the reign of [[Anne, Queen of Great Britain|Queen Anne]] Filmer's works enjoyed a revival. In 1705 the [[nonjuring schism|non-juror]] [[Charles Leslie (nonjuror)|Charles Leslie]] devoted twelve successive issues of the weekly ''Rehearsal'' to explaining Filmer's doctrines and published them in a volume.<ref>Kenyon, pp. 63–64.</ref>

In an unpublished manuscript, [[Jeremy Bentham]] wrote:
<blockquote>Filmer's origin of government is exemplified everywhere: Locke's scheme of government has not ever, to the knowledge of any body, been exemplified any where. In every family there is government, in every family there is subjection, and subjection of the most absolute kind: the father, sovereign, the mother and the young, subjects. According to Locke's scheme, men knew nothing at all of governments till they met together to make one. Locke has speculated so deeply, and reasoned so ingeniously, as to have forgot that he was not of age when he came into the world.... Under the authority of the father, and his assistant and prime-minister the mother, every human creature is enured to subjection, is trained up into a habit of subjection. But, the habit once formed, nothing is easier than to transfer it from one object to another. Without the previous establishment of domestic government, blood only, and probably a long course of it, could have formed political government.<ref>J. C. D. Clark, ''English Society, 1688–1832. Ideology, social structure and political practice during the ancien regime'' (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 75–76.</ref></blockquote>

Bentham went on to claim that Filmer had failed to prove divine right theory but he had proved "the physical impossibility of the system of absolute equality and independence, by showing that subjection and not independence is the natural state of man".<ref>{{Cite web|last=Gonzalez|first=Pedro|date=October 14, 2019|title=A Better Guide than Reason|url=http://theagonist.org/essays/2019/10/14/essays-gonzalez.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200408014729/http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2019/10/14/essays-gonzalez.html|url-status=usurped|archive-date=8 April 2020|access-date=June 4, 2020|website=The Agonist}}</ref>