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From this point on in the readings, England will sometimes be refered to as Britain or Great Britain. This is because in 1707, England and Scotland agreed to join together along with Wales to create the kingdom of Great Britain. Therefore, England is referred to as Great Britain for events occurring after that date.

The rights or Englishmen were established slowly over centuries of British history. They were certain basic rights that subjects of the English king were understood to have. Some of the earliest of these rights were the right not to be kept in prison without a trial and the right to a trial by a jury.

The historical sources of these rights are custom and law. Evidence of these rights may be found in the literature of the times and in written documents such as various government papers. These rights also may be found in the
common law. The common law is the collection of decisions or opinions of English judges that have developed over the centuries as they have made decisions in specific cases.

The constitution of Great Britain is not a single written document Instead it is made up of the common law, acts of Parliament, and political customs and traditions.

Three great historical documents are important in the develop-ment of the British constitution and the rights of the English people. These are the Magna Carta (1215), the Petition of Rights (1628), and the English Bill of Rights (1689).

These documents were written during times of great conflict. Much of English history is the story of a bloody struggle for power between the most important groups in society. These groups were the royalty, nobility, and the church. By the thirteenth century, the struggle was mainly between royalty and the Parliament. Parliament was originally a council of nobles created to advise the king. It soon became the branch of government that represented the most powerful groups in the kingdom.

For hundreds of years, Parliament and the king struggled for power. During these conflicts, English subjects were jailed, tortured, and executed. Kings and queens defeated in battle were imprisoned and beheaded. Because of these conflicts, several important legal documents were written that limited the power of the monarch (king or queen) in order to protect the rights of other groups. These documents were important not only in English history, but they also had a great influence on the Founding Fathers. Three of the most important of these documents are described below.

King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215. It is the first important document describing the rights of Englishmen. Magna Carta means great or large charter. Originally, the term referred to the large size of the document, not to its importance. It was not until the seventeenth century that the Magna Carta acquired its present importance in the history of constitutional government.

Different groups in feudal society had certain rights and responsibilities. But the monarch had most of the political power. Over the years it had become a custom in England for the kings and queens to share some of their powers with the nobility. Struggles over these powers had led from time to time to the practice of writing documents that limited the king's powers and protected the rights of the nobility

In 1215, King John tried to take back some of the rights and powers that the nobles had grown accustomed to having. A war resulted between the nobles and the king, a war that the nobles won. They were powerful enough to force King John to sign the Magna Carta.

The Magna Carta was perhaps the most important early example of a written Statement of law limiting the power of the king and listing some of the rights of the nobility. It must, however, he seen within the context of the history of the Middle Ages Most of the provisions of the Magna Carta dealt with feudal practices that have little meaning in modern times. The rights it protected were those of the nobility, the upper classes of the time. The men who wrote the Magna Carta had no intention of changing feudal society or increasing the rights of the common people. They were interested in protecting their own rights within the feudal system. However, the following ideas in the Magna Carta were very important in the development of constitutional government in Great Britain and America:

Government should be based on the Rule of Law. The Magna Carta stated that no one could be imprisoned nor any action taken against any freed man "except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land." Although "judgment of his peers" did not mean trial by jury, as we understand it today, the requirement that proceedings must follow the "law of the land" was basic to the development of the rule of law. It meant that no one, not even the king, was above the law.

Government should be based on an agreement or contract between the ruler and the people to be ruled. In the Magna Carta, the agreement was between the king and the nobles and did not include the majority of the English people. It laid the founda-tion, however, for the idea of a social contract. Furthermore, government by contract meant that if either side broke the contract, it would no longer be valid.

Government may not deny certain basic rights. While, at first, important rights were only granted to the nobility, they gradually were applied to all British subjects. These rights included freedom from imprisonment without trial, freedom from excessive fines, and freedom to travel for purposes of trade.

Representatives of the people should take part in government. By denying the king the power to levy taxes without the consent of a "Great Council of the Realm," the Magna Carta laid the foundation for establishing parliament and for parliamentary government.

Even though rights may be established in custom or law, they may still be violated in practice. After the Magna Carta, English history continued to he filled with conflicts among different groups over their rights and powers.

More than four hundred years after the Magna Carta, the struggle for power between King Charles I and Parliament led to the Petition or Right (1628). This document limited the king's power to tax people without the consent of Parliament. It also guaranteed English subjects certain rights such as the protection of habeas corpus
and the prohibition against forcing people to quarter troops in their homes.

During the seventeenth century, England suffered from lengthy civil and religious wars. These wars involved, among other things, conflicts between Protestants and Catholics over which religion was to he the official, established religion of England. The wars ended with a Protestant victory known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The leaders of this bloodless revolution overthrew King James II who was suspected of trying to make Roman Catholicism the established religion of England.

The Protestant victory over James II rested in the law that English rulers must be members of the Church of England. It also established the Church of England, which was Protestant, as the official religion of the country. These arrangements were written in the English Bill of Rights of 1689. This bill set forth the rights and liberties of English subjects.

By far the greatest concerns of the English Bill of Rights were to limit the power of the king, place the dominant power of the government in Parliament, and insure the establishment of the Church of England. With regard to religion, the document was motivated by a deep fear of the Roman Catholic Church and the threat of a counter-revolution to reinstate King James II or his descendants.

The first half of the English Bill of Rights spells out the ways the former king overstepped the limits of his power. He was accused, for example, of violating the rule of law and levying taxes without the consent of Parliament. The English Bill of Rights was intended to provide specific and lasting remedies for the actions of a tyrannical king. It contains many of the ideas about rights and government that were later included in the American Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

The English Bill of Rights includes protections of such traditional rights of Englishmen as trial by jury, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, and the right to keep arms for personal defense. However, the right to keep arms was only given to Protestants. The English Bill of Rights does not contain any reference to freedom of religion for all people. It also does not refer to freedom of the press or to freedom of speech outside of Parliament.

The Act of Toleration, passed shortly after the Glorious Revolution, gave freedom of worship to Protestant dissenters. Catholics were granted no such protection, although in the decades that followed they, too, were generally left alone to practice their faith. This toleration was not, however, the same as complete freedom of religion. Neither Protestant dissenters nor Catholics enjoyed all the political and civil rights granted to members of the established church.

The English Bill of Rights was one of the main examples Americans had of a bill of rights. It is important to remember, however, that it differed from the American Bill of Rights in two significant ways:

Nonetheless, the English Bill of Rights provided Americans with a powerful example of how to protect rights by limiting the powers of government. And, as in the Magna Carta and the Petition of Right, the rights of Englishmen were stated in a written, legal document.

We have seen how the rights of Englishmen were developed over hundreds of years of British history. We also know that the Founding Fathers were familiar with these rights and their history. They believed several of these rights were so important they included them in the original Constitution. Others were added in the Bill of Rights.

The rights to habeas corpus and trial by jury are two of the oldest rights in British history. In fact, there is evidence that habeas corpus is found in English law before the Magna Carta, and there is evidence that an early form of the right to a trial by jury may have been brought to England from Europe. People have fought to establish and protect these rights for over a thousand years.

By the end of the eighteenth century, many Americans had come to believe that government was created by citizens who consent to live under its laws in order to protect their rights. They also thought that a written constitution was necessary for such a government The Founding Fathers had learned from their experience with British history that it was important to have written documents to protect people's rights.

The belief in the importance of a written constitution and bill of rights came as much from practical experiences in government as from the study of history and political philosophy. In the following lessons we will learn more about these experi-ences in self-government and how they influenced Americans' ideas about the best way to protect the rights of the people.