Two Treatises of Government is English philosopher John Locke's principal work of political philosophy. It was published anonymously in 1689, after the Glorious Revolution, but likely drafted 1680-81 during the Exclusion Crisis (1679–81). The First Treatise attacks patriarchalism in the form of sentence-by-sentence refutation of the late Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, which argues for a divinely ordained, hereditary, absolute monarchy, ideas which remained current with living defenders.