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ROYALISTS, REPUBLICANS, FIFTH MONARCHISTS AND LEVELLERS
desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over
you.” Contrary to a Parliamentarian reading, a
constitutional Royalist read this text as positive
affirmation of the first purposeful, divine enactment of
prescriptive human authority originating in Adam. The
husband’s rule over his wife and family, or ‘patriarchy,’
was extended by way of analogy through the patriarchs
of Israel, now considered local kings, to a national
monarchy. Nevertheless, Filmer concluded that
governing authority originated in Adam before the fall,
and therefore, before God’s curse upon Eve. Adam’s
initial creation and pre-fall status represented sufficient
grounds for primacy—a significant interpretive
difference between constitutional and absolute
Royalists.
Parker’s tract was immediately attacked by Henry Ferne
with his The resolving of conscience (London, 1642).
Ferne did not directly address the origin of government
from Genesis 3:16—he never even mentioned Adam’s
authority over Eve—but he provided a strong case
against resistance to the King from Exodus 20:12 with
its command to honour one’s biological father and
employed it in conjunction with Romans 13:1 and
2 Peter 2:13: “If it be agreed upon as a thing known in
this State, that the King is the higher Power according to
S t Paul,” and “the Supreme according to S t Peter,” then a
king is “the Father of the Commonwealth according to the
fifth Commandment.” Therefore, “surely it belongs to
the Divine to urge obedience, honour, and subjection
according to those places, and reprove resistance
forbidden there.” 45 Ferne neglects to draw any links to
the parental authority of a ‘mother,’ but employs the
Exodus text politically to extend the authority of a
father in relation to a family, to that of a king in
relation to an entire people.
Ferne’s The resolving of conscience was immediately
attacked by the Oxford educated Presbyterian
theologian Charles Herle (1598-1659) with An answer to
mis-led doctor Ferne (London, 1642) and subsequently
with A fuller answer to a treatise written by doctor Ferne,
entituled The resolving of conscience upon this question
(London,1642). Ferne responded from Oxford in April,
1643 with Conscience satisfied.
The most relevant aspect of Conscience satisfied in regards
to the origin of government is found in Section III, “Of
the Originall of Governing power, and of the
beginnings of Government in this Land.” The Exodus
passage is again referenced. Ferne, with the support of
Romans 13:1, states that “Governing power . . . flowed
45
Henry Ferne, The resolving of conscience, upon this question whether
upon such a supposition or case, as is now usually made (the King will
not discharge his trust, but is bent or seduced to subvert religion, laws,
and liberties) subjects may take Arms and Resist? (London, 1642),
Epistle, 1, 2.
from that providence at first through the veines of
nature in a paternal or Fatherly rule and by that as by a
pattern in a Kingly Rule or Government, upon the
encrease of people and Nations.” 46 Ferne located
evidence linking paternal rule with regal rule from the
Genesis account of Noah and his descendants. “The
first Fathers of Mankind, were the first Kings and
Rulers.” Noah dispatched his three sons to rule the
earth, who in turn, generated more sons who became
subsequent rulers and “cheife Fathers of those new
Progenies, and had the Government, both Regall and
Sacerdotall by Primogeniture, unless the chief Patriarch,
from whom they all issued, saw cause to order it
otherwise.” “Monarchy” then “was the first
Government,” not “any Popular Rule, Aristocraticall or
Democracticall.” “The first Kings were not by choice of
the People,” and “Monarchy . . . is plainly ducta natura,
by nature leading men from Paternall to Regall
Govrnment, and exemplo divino,” since “the Government
that God set up over his people, being Monarchiall still,
in Moses, the Judges, the Kings.” This original “power of
Kings was as of Fathers, and that the people had no
power of coertion over them, more than children over
Fathers.” Nevertheless, “the King so chosen is a Father,
as in the fifth Commandment, and the people as
children in the same relation for obedience and
coertion, as at first in the generations of Noah.” 47
Sir Robert Filmer certainly had much to claim for
monarchy by way of patriarchy and used the Genesis
3:16 passage as proof. He devotes his first chapter in
Patriarcha (1680), “That the first Kings were Fathers of
Families,” to the subject. 48 In light of the resistance
debate, he attacked Philip Hunton’s A treatise of
monarchie (1643) with The anarchy of limited or mixed
monarchy (1648), which contains some minor polemical
swipes at Observations. Hunton was a parliamentary
constitutionalist and Filmer claimed that his
understanding of the English Constitution as
incorporating a mixed monarchy would inevitably lead
to anarchy given its emphasis upon limited kingship and
popular consent. The anarchy contains powerful
argumentation for absolute monarchy divinely derived,
and based in patriarchal interpretations of Genesis 3:16
and Exodus 20:5.
Filmer subtly condemned Hunton’s use of Genesis 3:16
in support of an Adamic and paternalistic origin of
government. Hunton’s mistake was to rest a grant of
governance to Adam upon God’s curse of Eve and
extend it to limited monarchy and popular consent.
46
Henry Ferne, Conscience satisfied. That there is no warrant for the
armes now taken up by the subject. (Oxford, 1643), 7-8.
47
Ibid., 8, 9.
48
Sir Robert Filmer, Patriarcha: Or the natural power of kings
(London, 1680): 8-24.
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