Divine right of kings

A doctrine that monarchs receive their authority directly from God and are not accountable to earthly subjects. It denies subjects a legitimate right to depose or judge their sovereign.

James VI and I: The king of Scotland and England who defended royal authority through writings such as The True Law of Free Monarchies. His defenses gave the doctrine a prominent early modern English formulation.
Absolute monarchy: A form of government in which a monarch holds supreme political authority with few effective legal restraints. Divine sanction supplied one justification for concentrating authority in the monarch.
Popular sovereignty: The principle that political authority ultimately derives from the people. It reverses the doctrine's claim that sovereignty descends from God to the monarch.
English Civil War: A series of armed conflicts in England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1639 to 1651 over political and religious authority. Disputes over royal prerogative and accountability helped drive conflict between Charles I and Parliament.
The True Law of Free Monarchies: A 1598 treatise by James VI arguing that kings rule by divine appointment and stand above human judgment. It sets out James's argument for a monarch's God-given authority.
Sacred kingship: A system in which a ruler's office or person is treated as having religious significance. The doctrine recast older sacred rulership as a specific claim about God's grant of sovereignty.
Social contract: A theory that political authority arises from an agreement, actual or hypothetical, among people. It makes political legitimacy depend on human consent rather than divine appointment.
Execution of Charles I: The public beheading of King Charles I of England on 30 January 1649 after his trial for treason. The trial and execution rejected the claim that a king could not be judged by earthly subjects.
Patriarcha: A political treatise by Robert Filmer, published posthumously in 1680, defending absolute hereditary monarchy. Filmer's influential defense tied royal authority to inherited paternal power.
Political theology: The study of how religious ideas shape political authority, institutions, and concepts of sovereignty. The doctrine translates a theological claim into a theory of political obedience.

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