Filmer’s patriarchalism, not Hobbes’s Leviathan, was the dominant theoretical defense of royal absolutism.

Evidence

The Second Treatise almost never refers to other theorists, friend or foe. But Locke’s book comprises not one but two treatises, and the First Treatise is a rebarbative line-by-line critique of Filmer. By separating the Second from the First, Locke—and we—exaggerate its detachment from the fray. Refuting Filmer was necessary to the Whig cause. If today it is Hobbes’s Leviathan which is considered the pre-eminent English defence of absolute sovereignty, Filmer’s patriarchalism was far more characteristic of Royalism and Toryism. — , Second Treatise of Government and A…, 15

Categorization

• CANDY: Great trivia: the Leviathan we treat as the classic absolutist text was not the one Royalists actually rallied around.