Sir Robert Filmer was an English political theorist who defended the divine right of kings. His best known work, Patriarcha, published posthumously in 1680, was the target of numerous Whig attempts at rebuttal, including Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government, James Tyrrell's Patriarcha Non Monarcha and John Locke's Two Treatises of Government. Filmer also wrote critiques of Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, Hugo Grotius and Aristotle.

In European Christianity, the divine right of kings, divine right, or God's mandation, is a political and religious doctrine of political legitimacy of a monarchy. It is also known as the divine-right theory of kingship.