Patriarchalism in late Stuart political argument

This dissertation explores the patriarchal arguments found in various strata of political discussion: in newspapers and lesser-known treatises as well as in better-known texts such as those of Sir Robert Filmer. It investigates how writers of different political inclinations viewed patriarchalism and familial analogies. Overall, I argue that the word "patriarchal" has gone too long without a clear, historically-grounded definition. Scholars should not abandon the term because coming up with such a definition is difficult; political writers in the late Stuart period used it, believing it had power.;Patriarchalism was a type of anti-contractarianism, so a study of it sheds light on contract theory, which is sometimes referred to as "liberalism". For late Stuart writers, "patriarchalism" principally indicated an argument about the origin of government intended to demonstrate that monarchy divinely ordained and that therefore the king of England had power superior to Parliament's. This genetic account of the origins implied an analogy, though not an identity, between fathers and kings. Also implicit in the argument was the assumption that if fathers were akin to kings, who had sovereign power, wives were at the very least not co-equal to their husbands and their husbands had some sort of power over them. During the period under consideration here, patriarchalism, like Sir Robert Filmer, had limited influence over political events but some weight in the world of political ideas. Familial analogies appeared in a variety of political and religious tracts, due to the universality of the reference and the importance placed by contemporaries on the Bible. The pervasiveness of both familial analogies and biblical references may also have underpinned patriarchalism's influence.;The chapters are organized thematically. First, I address the question of "what is patriarchalism." The second chapter discusses contemporary scholars' various definitions of "patriarchalism" and suggests a definition more appropriate to the context of late Stuart England. The next chapter tackles the limited contribution of Sir Robert Filmer to late Stuart patriarchal arguments. After these two chapters, various aspects of patriarchal arguments are identified and analyzed: the origin of government, royal inheritance, and different types of familial analogy.