ABSTRACT

Defoe’s satire Jure Divino, begun in 1703 and eventually published in the summer of 1706, was, as its title suggests, an attack on the theory of the ‘divine right’ of monarchs. The ‘divine right’ doctrine, though itself new, was linked to the older and hallowed doctrine of the Anglican church which inculcated the duty of Passive Obedience. Nevertheless, human beings pay a heavy price for their tyrannising bent. For a tyrant is also by propensity a slave — a slave to vice. The point, for Defoe, is that, given the circumstances, the way the Romans and their successors found of forming a state, was perfectly reasonable. Defoe, just as much as Locke, wants to take government out of the realm of historical myth, whether of the ‘divine right’ kind or the Whiggish one. That Defoe is writing in a different spirit from Tyrrell is also made clear by a further fact.