Rights of Englishmen

Short description: Historical rights of English people

Rights

Theoretical distinctions

* Claim rights and liberty rights
* Individual and group rights
* Natural rights and legal rights
* Negative and positive rights

Human rights

* Civil and political
* Economic, social and cultural
* Three generations

Rights by beneficiary

* Accused
* Animals
* Children
* Consumers
* Creditors
* Deaf
* Disabled persons
* Elders
* Farmers
* Humans
* Natives
* Intersex
* Kings
* LGBT
* Men
* Minorities
* Parents (Mothers, Fathers)
* Patients
* Peasants
* Plants
* Prisoners
* States
* Students
* Victims
* Women
* Workers
* Youth

Other groups of rights

* Civil liberties
* Digital
* Food
* Free migration
* Housing
* Linguistic
* Property
* Reproductive
* Rest and leisure
* Self defense
* Self-determination of people
* Sexuality
* Water and sanitation

* v
* t
* e

The "rights of Englishmen" are the traditional rights of English subjects and later English-speaking subjects of the British Crown.

In the 18th century, some of the colonists who objected to British rule in the thirteen British North American colonies that would become the United States of America argued that their traditional[1] rights as Englishmen were being denied by the Crown and the British Parliament. The colonists sought to retain the rights they or their ancestors had traditionally enjoyed in Britain, including the guarantee of a local, representative government. Their demands were especially focused on issues of judicial fairness such as opposition to being transported to England for trial and the principle of no taxation without representation.[2] Defense of these rights subsequently became a widely accepted motivation and justification for the American Revolution.[3][4]

## Contents

* 1 Historical background
* 2 Legacy in United States law
* 3 See also
* 4 Notes
* 5 Citations
* 6 Bibliography

## Historical background

18th-century English jurist William Blackstone attempted to explain the rights of English citizens.

In the tradition of Whig history, Judge William Blackstone called them "The absolute rights of every Englishman". He described the Fundamental Laws of England in his influential Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765), in which he explained how they had been established slowly over centuries of English constitutional history.[5] They were certain basic rights that all subjects of the English monarch were understood to be entitled to,[5] such as those expressed in Magna Carta since 1215, the Petition of Right in 1628, the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and the Bill of Rights 1689.[6]

In a legal case that came to be known as Calvin's Case, or the Case of the Postnati, the Law Lords decided in 1608 that Scotsmen born after King James I united Scotland and England (the postnati) had all the rights of Englishmen. This decision would have a subsequent effect on the concept of the "rights of Englishmen" in British America.[7][8][9]

## Legacy in United States law

The American colonies had since the 17th century been fertile ground for liberalism within the center of European political discourse in the Age of Enlightenment.[10] However, as the ratification of the Declaration of Independence approached, the issue among the colonists of which particular rights were significant became divisive. George Mason, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, stated that "We claim nothing but the liberty and privileges of Englishmen in the same degree, as if we had continued among our brethren in Great Britain."[4]

Owing to its inclusion in the standard legal treatises of the 19th century,[lower-alpha 1] Calvin's Case was well known in the early judicial history of the United States.[8] Consideration of the case by the United States Supreme Court and by state courts transformed it into a rule regarding American citizenship and solidified the concept of jus soli – the right by which nationality or citizenship can be recognised to any individual born in the territory of the related state – as the primary determining factor controlling the acquisition of citizenship by birth.[11]

The Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley asserted that the "rights of Englishmen" were a foundation of American law in his dissenting opinion on the Slaughter-House Cases, the first Supreme Court interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in 1873.[lower-alpha 2]

## See also

* Civil and political rights
* Civil liberties in the United Kingdom
* First Charter of Virginia
* Natural and legal rights
* Parliament in the Making
* Roman citizenship
* English Bill of Rights

## Notes

1. ↑ Compiled by Edward Coke, William Blackstone, and James Kent.
2. ↑ In his dissenting decision, Bradley wrote:

> The people of this country brought with them to its shores the rights of Englishmen, the rights which had been wrested from English sovereigns at various periods of the nation's history.... England has no written constitution, it is true, but it has an unwritten one, resting in the acknowledged, and frequently declared, privileges of Parliament and the people, to violate which in any material respect would produce a revolution in an hour. A violation of one of the fundamental principles of that constitution in the Colonies, namely, the principle that recognizes the property of the people as their own, and which, therefore, regards all taxes for the support of government as gifts of the people through their representatives, and regards taxation without representation as subversive of free government, was the origin of our own revolution.

## Citations

1. ↑ Zuckert (2003).
2. ↑ Tindall (1984), p. 176.
3. ↑ Swindler (1976).
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Miller (1959).
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Blackstone, Fundamental Laws of England, the first part of Commentaries on the Laws of England, pp. 123–24. Scanned in text available at Yale Law School Libraries online. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
6. ↑ Billias, George Athan (2011). American constitutionalism heard round the world, 1776–1989: a global perspective. New York: New York University Press. p. 54. ISBN 9780814725177. https://books.google.com/books?id=ku0TCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA54.
7. ↑ Price (1997).
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Hulsebosch (2003).
9. ↑ Pearson (2005).
10. ↑ Heale (1986).
11. ↑ Price (1997), pp. 138–39.

## Bibliography

* Aptheker, Herbert (1960). The American Revolution, 1763–1783: a history of the American people: an interpretation. International Publishers. p. 107. ISBN 978-0-7178-0005-6. https://archive.org/details/americanrevoluti0000apth. Retrieved 2 August 2010. "It is true that the colonists had insisted that they were seeking "the rights of Englishmen", but insisting upon this in the face of rulers who declare that colonists do not have such rights is revolutionary, though the rights themselves might not be new."
* Heale, M. J. (1986). The American Revolution. Taylor & Francis. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-416-38910-4. https://books.google.com/books?id=LbgOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA16. Retrieved 2 August 2010.
* Hulsebosch, Daniel J. (2003). "The Ancient Constitution and the Expanding Empire: Sir Edward Coke's British Jurisprudence". Law and History Review 21 (3): 439–482. doi:10.2307/3595117. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/21.3/hulsebosch.html. Retrieved 21 May 2012.
* Miller, John Chester (1959). Origins of the American Revolution (2nd ed.). Stanford University Press. p. 168. ISBN 978-0-8047-0593-6. https://archive.org/details/originsofamerica0000mill. Retrieved 2 August 2010. "As long as the rights of Englishmen remained the goal, most Americans warmly supported the patriot leaders; when the rights of Americans and independence Great Britain were put forward, the colonists began to divide into hostile camps."
* Pearson, Ellen Holmes (2005). "Revising Custom, Embracing Choice: Early American Legal Scholars and the Republicanization of Common Law". in Gould, Eliga H.; Onuf, Peter S.. Empire And Nation: The American Revolution In The Atlantic World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 102. ISBN 0-8018-7912-4. https://books.google.com/books?id=zaZuwRLHGCAC&pg=PA102. Retrieved 21 May 2012.
* Price, Polly J. (1997). "Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship in Calvin's Case (1608)". Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 9: 73. https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=9+Yale+J.L.+&+Human.+73&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=6f7fa7d7d678630d5ab630572c3866d5.
* Slavin, Arthur J. (January 1983). "Craw v. Ramsey: New Light on an Old Debate". in Baxter, Stephen Bartow. England's Rise to Greatness, 1660–1763. University of California Press. pp. 31–32. ISBN 9780520045729. https://books.google.com/books?id=bNlB-Jb2WMIC&pg=PA32. Retrieved 21 May 2012.
* Swindler, William F. (May 1976). ""Rights of Englishmen" Since 1776: Some Anglo-American Notes". University of Pennsylvania Law Review 124 (5): 1083–103. doi:10.2307/3311594. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/1596.
* Tindall, George Brown (1984). America: a narrative history. New York: Norton. ISBN 9780393954357. https://archive.org/details/americanarrative02tind/.
* Zuckert, Michael (2003). Greene, Jack P.; Pole, J. R.. eds. A Companion to the American Revolution. Chapter 88, "Rights": Wiley–Blackwell. p. 691. ISBN 978-1-4051-1674-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=u6UiHVpkiN8C&pg=PA691. Retrieved 27 August 2023. "[The American colonists' position depended] not on natural law, but on traditional notions of the rights of Englishmen, the royal charters of the separate colonies and especially on 'long standing constitutional custom'.".

Articles related to the rights of Englishmen

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British laws relating to the American Revolution

Royal Proclamations, Acts of Parliament, and other legal issues relating to the American Revolution

Before 1763|

* Navigation Acts
* Wool Act (1699)
* Hat Act (1732)
* Molasses Act (1733)
* Iron Act (1750)

Grenville ministry
(1763–1765)|

* Royal Proclamation of 1763
* Sugar Act (1764)
* Currency Act (1764)
* Quartering Act (1765)
* Stamp Act (1765)

Rockingham ministry
(1765–1766)|

* Repeal Act (March 1766)
* Declaratory Act (March 1766)
* Revenue Act (June 1766)

Chatham and Grafton
ministries (1766–1770)|

* Townshend Acts (1767)

North ministry
(1770–1782)|

* Repeal Act (1770)
* Tea Act (1773)
* Coercive Acts (1774)
* Conciliatory Resolution (February 1775)
* Restraining Acts (March and April 1775)
* Proclamation of Rebellion (August 1775)
* Prohibitory Act (December 1775)
* Taxation of Colonies Act (1778)

Other legal issues|

* Rights of Englishmen
* Writ of assistance
* Admiralty courts
* Parson's Cause (1763)
* Taxation without representation

Category

* v
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* e

American Revolutionary War

Origins of the American Revolution

| Philosophy|

* American Enlightenment
* John Locke
* Colonial history
* Liberalism
* Republicanism
* Freedom of religion
* Rights of Englishmen
* Common Sense
* Spirit of '76
* "All men are created equal"
* "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
* "Consent of the governed"

|

Royalists|

* Pitt–Newcastle ministry
* Bute ministry
* Grenville ministry
* First Rockingham ministry
* Chatham ministry
* Grafton ministry
* North ministry
* Second Rockingham ministry
* Shelburne ministry
* Fox–North coalition
* Loyalists
* Black Loyalist

Related British Acts
of Parliament

* Navigation
* Iron
* Molasses
* Royal Proclamation of 1763
* Sugar
* Currency
* Quartering
* Stamp
* Declaratory
* Townshend
* Tea
* Quebec
* Intolerable
* Conciliatory Resolution
* Restraining
* Proclamation of Rebellion
* Prohibitory

Colonials|

* Stamp Act Congress
* Declaration of Rights and Grievances
* Virginia Association
* Sons of Liberty
* Patriots
* Black Patriots
* Committees of correspondence
* Committees of safety
* Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania
* Massachusetts Circular Letter
* First Continental Congress
* Continental Association
* Minutemen
* Provincial Congress
* Second Continental Congress
* Olive Branch Petition
* Committee of Secret Correspondence
* Lee Resolution
* Declaration of Independence
* Articles of Confederation
* Confederation Congress

Events|

* French and Indian War
* Treaty of Paris (1763)
* Boston Massacre
* Gaspee Affair
* Hutchinson Letters Affair
* Boston Tea Party
* Powder Alarm

* Combatants
* Campaigns
* Theaters
* Battles
* Events
* Colonies

| Combatants|

| Thirteen Colonies|

* Continental Congress
* Army
* Navy
* Marines

|

Kingdom of Great Britain|

* Parliament
* British Army
* Royal Navy
* German auxiliaries

Colonial allies|

* France
* army
* navy
* Hortalez et Cie

Campaigns and
theaters

* Boston
* Quebec
* Nova Scotia
* New York and New Jersey
* Saratoga
* Philadelphia
* Northern
* Northern after Saratoga
* Southern
* Western
* Yorktown
* Naval battles

Major battles|

* Lexington and Concord
* Boston
* Capture of Fort Ticonderoga
* Bunker Hill
* Quebec
* Valcour Island
* Long Island
* Harlem Heights
* Fort Washington
* Trenton
* Assunpink Creek
* Princeton
* Siege of Fort Ticonderoga
* Bennington
* Saratoga
* Brandywine
* Germantown
* Monmouth
* St. Lucia
* Grenada
* Stony Point
* Sullivan Expedition
* Savannah
* Gibraltar
* Cape St. Vincent
* Charleston
* Connecticut Farms
* Springfield
* Camden
* Kings Mountain
* Cowpens
* Guilford Court House
* Lochry's Defeat
* Yorktown
* Saintes

Other events|

* Staten Island Peace Conference
* "First Salute"
* Washington's crossing of the Delaware River
* Conway Cabal
* Valley Forge
* Entry of France into war
* Carlisle Peace Commission
* Gordon Riots
* Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1781
* Sint Eustatius
* Newburgh Conspiracy
* Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783

Related conflicts|

* Cherokee–American wars
* Fourth Anglo-Dutch War
* Second Anglo-Mysore War

Involvement (by
colony or location)

| Rebel colonies|

* Connecticut
* Delaware
* Georgia
* Maryland
* Massachusetts
* New Hampshire
* New Jersey
* New York
* North Carolina
* Pennsylvania
* Rhode Island
* South Carolina
* Virginia

|

Loyal colonies|

* East Florida
* Nova Scotia
* Quebec
* West Florida

Leaders

| British|

| Military|

* Arbuthnot
* Brant
* Burgoyne
* Campbell
* Carleton
* Clinton
* Cornwallis
* Fraser
* Gage
* Graves
* Richard Howe
* William Howe
* Knyphausen
* Rodney

|

Civilian|

* King George III
* Amherst
* Barrington
* Germain
* North
* Rockingham
* Sandwich
* Shelburne

Colonial|

| Military|

* Washington
* Alexander
* Allen
* Arnold
* Barry
* Claghorn
* Clark
* Duportail
* Gates
* Greene
* Hamilton
* Hopkins
* Jones
* de Kalb
* Knox
* Lafayette
* Charles Lee
* Lincoln
* Mercer
* Montgomery
* Nicholson
* Putnam
* Rodney
* St. Clair
* Schuyler
* von Steuben
* Sullivan
* Ward
* Wayne

|

Civilian|

* John Adams
* Samuel Adams
* Carroll
* Dickinson
* Franklin
* Hancock
* Hanson
* Henry
* Huntington
* Jay
* Jefferson
* Laurens
* Richard Henry Lee
* McKean
* Morris
* Revere
* Rush
* Witherspoon

Colonial allies|

| French|

* Louis XVI
* Beaumarchais
* d'Estaing
* de Grasse
* de Guichen
* Luzerne
* de Rochambeau
* Suffren
* Vergennes

|

Aftermath

* Society of the Cincinnati
* Treaty of Paris (1783)
* Ratification Day (1784)
* Constitutional Convention
* The Federalist Papers
* Constitution
* Bill of Rights
* Shays' Rebellion
* Jay Treaty

* Related topics

| Military|

* Prisoners
* The Turtle

|

Political|

* Founding Fathers
* Diplomacy
* Liberty Tree
* Yankee Doodle

Other topics|

* Timeline of the American Revolution
* African Americans in the Revolutionary War
* Women in the American Revolution
* Financial costs of the war
* Libertas Americana

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