Abstract
Filmer's political thought was made up of four elements. First of all, there were his critical remarks about some of the key ideas of his opponents, his analysis of such concepts as social contract, supremacy of the people, mixed government, and the like. Then there were his inquiries into the constitutional and legal history of this country which enabled him to show, for instance, that the claim of the House of Commons to have been time out of mind an integral part of Parliament equal to Lords and monarch was not tenable. Thirdly, there was his assimilation of royal to paternal power, an analogy fundamentally cast in terms of the philosophy and political theory of order and which enabled him to ascribe the undoubted contemporary authority of a paterfamilias to the pater patriae. Finally, there was a genea-logical argument purporting to derive the supreme authority of a king neither from the people over whom he ruled nor from some ecclesiastical intermediary like the pope but lineally from God through inheritance of the dominion which had been divinely bestowed upon Adam.
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