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Divine right of kings   /dɪvˈaɪn raɪt əv kɪŋz/   Listen
noun
Right  n.  
1.
That which is right or correct. Specifically:
(a)
The straight course; adherence to duty; obedience to lawful authority, divine or human; freedom from guilt, the opposite of moral wrong.
(b)
A true statement; freedom from error of falsehood; adherence to truth or fact. "Seldom your opinions err; Your eyes are always in the right."
(c)
A just judgment or action; that which is true or proper; justice; uprightness; integrity. "Long love to her has borne the faithful knight, And well deserved, had fortune done him right."
2.
That to which one has a just claim. Specifically:
(a)
That which one has a natural claim to exact. "There are no rights whatever, without corresponding duties."
(b)
That which one has a legal or social claim to do or to exact; legal power; authority; as, a sheriff has a right to arrest a criminal.
(c)
That which justly belongs to one; that which one has a claim to possess or own; the interest or share which anyone has in a piece of property; title; claim; interest; ownership. "Born free, he sought his right." "Hast thou not right to all created things?" "Men have no right to what is not reasonable."
(d)
Privilege or immunity granted by authority.
3.
The right side; the side opposite to the left. "Led her to the Souldan's right."
4.
In some legislative bodies of Europe (as in France), those members collectively who are conservatives or monarchists. See Center, 5.
5.
The outward or most finished surface, as of a piece of cloth, a carpet, etc.
At all right, at all points; in all respects. (Obs.)
Bill of rights, a list of rights; a paper containing a declaration of rights, or the declaration itself. See under Bill.
By right, By rights, or By good rights, rightly; properly; correctly. "He should himself use it by right." "I should have been a woman by right."
Divine right, or
Divine right of kings, a name given to the patriarchal theory of government, especially to the doctrine that no misconduct and no dispossession can forfeit the right of a monarch or his heirs to the throne, and to the obedience of the people.
To rights.
(a)
In a direct line; straight. (R.)
(b)
At once; directly. (Obs. or Colloq.)
To set to rights, To put to rights, to put in good order; to adjust; to regulate, as what is out of order.
Writ of right (Law), a writ which lay to recover lands in fee simple, unjustly withheld from the true owner.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Divine right of kings" Quotes from Famous Books



... right to assemble whenever and wherever they please." "A general rising of a nation does not deserve the name of a revolt. It is the people for whom and by whom the Sovereign is established, who have the sole power of judging whether he does, or does not, fulfil his duties." In the days of "the Divine Right of Kings" such sentiments could easily be charged ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... Ferdinand von Stroebel. The Archduke's son and I were school-fellows and playmates; you remember as well as I my father's place near the royal lands. The Archduke talked much of democracy and the New World, and used to joke about the divine right of kings. Let me make my story short—I found out their plan of flight and slipped away with them. It was believed that I had been carried away ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... When William I. snatched his crown from the altar, as Charlemagne might have done, and clapped it on his head, repeating formulas suited to Philip II. and Charles V., the minister was silent and submitted to these blasphemies, derived from the ancient doctrine of the divine right of kings, because they increased his own ministerial power, exercised under a presidency and governorship chiefly nominal and honorary. But a thinker of his force, a statesman of his science, a man of his greatness, should have remembered what ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Thersites seems drawn with special spite and venom, as a satire upon the first critics that rose up among the assembled people to question the divine right of kings to do wrong. We may be sure the real Thersites, from whom the poet drew his picture, was a very different and a far more serious power in debate than the misshapen buffoon of the Iliad. But the king who had been thwarted ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... men of 1776 rebelled against a government which did not claim to be of the people, but on the contrary upheld the "divine right of kings;" and whereas, The women of this nation today, under a government which claims to be based upon individual rights, in an infinitely greater degree are suffering all the wrongs which led to the war of the Revolution; and whereas, the oppression is all the more keenly felt because our masters, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper


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