ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the theory of the body social persisted into the seventeenth century in a variety of forms, in the assertion of patriarchal power over the family and in state power over a moral economy. But there was a counter flow of ideas about the economic and social order and their regulation, including ongoing, often sharp debates about the privatizing of common lands. The extensive publications on these subjects suggest they had huge symbolic significance in communicating differing social models. The archetype of patriarchalism was Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, probably written in the 1630s, which drew somewhat on organic functionalism and was long on denunciations of democracy. The debate over privatizing common lands also reverberated in the halls of Parliament, where proponents of a moral economy and state paternalism encountered growing challenges from the 1590s. It was not so much that there was direct opposition to Christian social principles and the nanny state of Bacon and Cecil.
