In chapters VI and VII of his 2d Treatise on Government: “Of Civil Government” makes a remarkable argument against natural hierarchy, whether patriarchy, the supposed "divine right of kings" or any other natural hierarchy—other than the voluntary deference people are often inspired to make to someone imbued with justice and wisdom. Here are the links to the blog posts I wrote on these chapters:

Chapter VI: Of Paternal Power

• Thinking of Mothers and Fathers On a Par Undercuts a Misleading Autocratic Metaphor

• Equality Before Natural Law in the Face of Manifest Differences in Station

• The Purpose of Law Is Freedom

• The Law of Nature Requires Maturity to Discern

• John Locke Explains 'Lord of the Flies'

• John Locke's Smackdown of Robert Filmer: Being a Father Doesn't Make Any Man a King

Chapter VII: Of Political or Civil Society

• By Natural Law, Husbands Have No Power Over Their Wives

• The Metaphor of a Nation as a Family

• From Each Individual as Judge, Jury and Executioner to Each Nation as Judge, Jury and Executioner

• The Social Contract According to John Locke

• The Law Must Apply to Rulers, Too

Let me distill what I learned from these two chapters into the following thought. In "The Social Contract According to John Locke" I praise Michael Huemer's work, saying "I love the idea that what is wrong for an individual in the state of nature cannot suddenly become OK just because the government is doing it." Here, I want to point to the converse implication of this kind of reasoning: anything that is legitimate for a government to do is also legitimate for those not in the government to do, if (and it is a big if) they can do a better and more just job than the conventionally accepted government. The American Revolutionaries are exactly such a group of individuals who set out to do a better job than the government headed by King George III in the administration of the American colonies. One of the reasons they could hope to to a careful job of governing that would be better than the government headed by King George III is that they used the machinery of colonial government wherever that could be tweaked to make it consistent with independence. They weren't trying to start from scratch in inventing the machinery of government. 

Update: Links to posts on earlier and later chapters can be found in these aggregator posts:

Posts on Chapters I-III:  John Locke's State of Nature and State of War 

Posts on Chapters IV-V:  On the Achilles Heel of John Locke's Second Treatise: Slavery and Land Ownership

Posts on Chapters VI-VII : John Locke Against Natural Hierarchy

Posts on Chapters VIII-XI:  John Locke's Argument for Limited Government