page_title: Rights of Englishmen
section_title: Historical background
hierarchical_section_title: Rights of Englishmen / Historical background
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780)
context_page_description: The "rights of Englishmen" are the perceived 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 British colonies in North America argued that their traditional rights as Englishmen were being violated. The colonists wanted and expected the rights that they had previously enjoyed in England: a local, representative government, with regards to judicial matters and particularly with regards to taxation. Belief in these rights subsequently became a widely accepted justification for the American Revolution.
  The American colonies had since the 17th century been fertile ground for liberalism within the center of European political discourse. 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."
context_section_description: In the tradition of Whig history, Judge William Blackstone called them "The absolute rights of every Englishman", and explained how they had been established slowly over centuries of English history, in his book on Fundamental Laws of England, which was the first part of his influential Commentaries on the Laws of England. They were certain basic rights that all subjects of the English monarch were understood to be entitled to, 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.
  In a legal case in 1608 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.
caption: 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone attempted to explain the rights of English citizens.
exif: {}