In seventeenth-century England, social theory – and practice – gave fathers and husbands very wide authority over their wives and children. People said that fatherly (or patriarchal) authority was derived from God. The father, they claimed, was head of the family according to the divine law of nature; his wife, children and servants owed him obedience by the will of God Himself. Fatherly power over the family was natural, and God was the author of nature. These ideas were held by people of widely differing political opinions. It was perfectly possible to argue in favour of an authoritarian and patriarchal family, and against an authoritarian state. Many theorists did in fact draw a sharp distinction between family and state, arguing that what was true of the one institution need not necessarily be true of the other. But some applied social theory to politics, and claimed that rulers have fatherly power over their subjects. Just as a father's power over his children does not stem from their consent, they said, so the king's power is not derived from the consent of his subjects, but from God alone. The state, they argued, is a family, and the king its father. They concluded that kings are accountable to God alone and that they can never be resisted by their subjects. The most famous of these theorists was Sir Robert Filmer. His patriarchalist political theory was set out in several works, of which the longest was Patriarcha. To understand Filmer's ideas it is necessary to know something about his life, and also about the context (or rather, contexts) of his thought.