Why was it important that all english settlers in the new world retained the rights of englishmen?

1) What was the impact of England's defeat of Spanish Armada?

1588 - Defeat of the Spanish Armada left the British in sole power of the sea. This made sea travel safer allowing investors to feel more comfortable about investing their money in oversea travel. It also provided English Pride and nationalism; the general population put more faith into their government.

2) What was the status of England as it began colonization?

After the defeat of the Spanish Armada English Pride was souring, the general population were more faithful to their government, and everyone was eager to expand their nation.

3) How was the first permanent English settlement financed?

Jamestown was funded by a Joint Stock Company titled the Virginia Company. The Joint Stock company had many investors; this made it so that the investors would not lose everything if the company bankrupted. The profit if the company didn’t bankrupt was well worth the risk so many investors joined together to form the Virginia Company.

4) How were Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia similar? Different?

They were all dependent on one main export crop for their economy because it was only one crop their economy was unstable at times, rising and falling with the fate of the crop.

5) Why was it important that all English settlers in the New World retained the rights of Englishmen?

The rights of Englishmen provided the role model for American rights today.

6) How would one characterize the early years at Jamestown?

The Settlers were dying from starvation and disease; one man even, in an act of desperateness, murdered, salted, and ate his wife. They did not find the gold that they came to find, and they would have all died had John Smith not cracked down on the remaining settlers.

7) How did Captain John Smith "save" Jamestown?

John Smith forced Jamestown Colonists to begin to farm and grow their own food. The colonists only wanted to look for gold causing them to starve to death. However, with John Smith's policy everyone began to work for their own food.

8) What were the factors leading to the downfall of the Powhatans?

The Indians fell due to the “three D’s”: disease (smallpox ), disorganization (since they were not united, the whites could fight one tribe at a time), and disposability (since the whites had no use for Indians, they were simply pushed out).

9) What was the impact of the tobacco industry on Jamestown?

It made Jametown profitable. This allowed for the continuation of the town; without a purpose, Jamestown would have completely fallen apart.

10) What was the House of Burgesses an important precedent in the American colonies?

The House of Burgesses was the first "mini parliament" to convene in America. It was a role model for other self government establishments to take place and allowed the colonists to distance themselves from the crown.

11) Why was Maryland established? Who founded it?

Maryland was established by Lord Baltimore to provide religious tolerance to Roman Catholics whom were persecuted in England.

12) What was the Barbados slave code?

The Barbados slave code was created in 1661 to deny fundamental rights to slaves and give them wholey to their masters. This was the basis for slavery during the time of the civil war.

13) Why was Georgia founded? By whom?

James Oglethorpe helped found Georgia to do two things: provide a buffer between the money making states and the vicious Spaniards and to populate it with prisoners from debtors prisons so that they could work off their debt.

14) What were the similarities/differences in the southern plantations colonies by 1750?

Southerns plantations resided in very rural populations because landowners needed a lot of space for crops they did not congregate closely, therebye cities were hard to come by. The economy was based on agriculture and slave labour. Wealth was based in a few aristocratic landowners rather than the general population.

The Royal Charters given to the Virginia company of London, granted the colonies formed under that Charter all the rights of Englishmen,( the citizens of England)

These charters stated that emigration from the Mother country did not cause the emigrates to lose their rights as Englishmen. Also as these emigrates had been citizens of England before they left for the American Colonies felt that they retained the rights they had enjoyed as citizens.

The colonies enjoyed self rule for 150 years undisturbed by the actions of the King or Parliament. The descendants the emigrates felt that they retained the rights of citizenship enjoyed by the original colonists.

After the seven year war global war between France and England, England acquired many new colonies and debts. These new colonies were regarded as belonging to the crown and the people living there as tenants. The old colonies of America were regarded by the king as also belonging to the crown as they had been formed by Royal Grants or Charters.

King George regarded the colonist as tenants. As tenants the colonist had only limited rights as granted by the lord. As the rights ( of Englishmen) had been given by a previous king they could be taken away by the present king. Rights that come from the government can be taken by the government.

King George took away the right of the colonists. He needed money to pay off the debts of the global war with France ( The French and Indian War in North America was part of this global war) The colonies were resistant to voluntarily paying off England's debts. So The King absolved the local parliaments installed royal governors to collect the new taxes, and forced the colonists to house, feed, pay for British soldiers to in force the taxes.

The American colonist of course disagreed that King George had the authority to take away their rights and the American revolution resulted.

Rights

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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 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]

The American colonies had since the 17th century been fertile ground for liberalism within the center of European political discourse.[5] 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]

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 history.[6] They were certain basic rights that all subjects of the English monarch were understood to be entitled to,[6] 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.[7]

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.[8][9][10]

Legacy in United States law

Owing to its inclusion in the standard legal treatises of the 19th century,[a] Calvin's Case was well known in the early judicial history of the United States.[9] 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.[b]

Notes

^ Compiled by Edward Coke, William Blackstone, and James Kent.
^ 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.

References

^ Zuckert (2003).
^ Tindall (1984). sfnp error: no target: CITEREFTindall1984 (help)
^ Swindler (1976).
^ a b Miller (1959).
^ Heale (1986).
^ a b 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.
^ 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.
^ Price (1997).
^ a b Hulsebosch (2003).
^ Pearson (2005).
^ Price (1997), pp. 138–39.

Citations

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. 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. 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. JSTOR 3595117. S2CID 232399735. Archived from the original on 29 August 2012. 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. 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. (eds.). Empire And Nation: The American Revolution In The Atlantic World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 102. ISBN 0-8018-7912-4. 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.
Slavin, Arthur J. (January 1983). "Craw v. Ramsey: New Light on an Old Debate". In Baxter, Stephen Bartow (ed.). England's Rise to Greatness, 1660–1763. University of California Press. pp. 31–32. ISBN 9780520045729. 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. JSTOR 3311594.
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 2 August 2010. [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'. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)CS1 maint: location (link)