Rights |
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Theoretical distinctions |
Human rights |
Rights by beneficiary |
Other groups of rights |
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 first United States argued that their traditional[1] rights as Englishmen were being violated. The colonists wanted and expected the rights that they (or their forebears) had previously enjoyed in England: a local, representative government, with regards to judicial matters (some colonists were being sent back to England for trials) and particularly with regards to taxation.[2] Belief in these rights subsequently became a widely accepted justification for the American Revolution.[3][4]