Rights of Englishmen were included in the colonial charters and were generally identified through English common law. The struggle against Gov. Edmund Andros's arbitrary rule in the Dominion of New England during the 1680s, as well as the publication of John Locke's Two Treatises of Government in 1690, popularized knowledge of these rights. After the Glorious Revolution (1688), colonists identified the English Bill of Rights and other new legislation as the foundation of English liberty–safeguards against tyranny at home and abroad, under laws that governed both king and Parliament. After 1763, colonists claimed the right of English subjects to be taxed internally only if they had representation in Parliament. Later, the patriot movement asserted English liberties to defend life, liberty, and property.
Bibliography
Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.
Lovejoy, David Sherman. The Glorious Revolution in America. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1987.
