cient zeal and tenacity to overcome the rigors of life in the
new world. But it was the law which carried the promise of
personal liberty--law dating before Magna Carta--"that pal-
ladium of our liberties," as the colonists themselves liked to
say.

In the field of personal liberty the allusion to the Magna
Carta of 1215 was on solid ground. That document, coupled
with the common law, furnished the principal tenets for per-
sonal rights until the Puritan Revolution reinforced and some-
what enlarged the substantive rights of English freeholders.
Significantly, the written guarantees in each case were produced
in an effort to curb arbitrary power. Prior to the American
Revolution they were set down by the colonists as reminders
to their royal governors, or granted by proprietary interests,
so that the freeborn rights of Englishmen were generally con-
sidered as applicable in America as they had been in England.
In time, the English courts were called upon to make this
clear, and Chief Justice Holt in 1694 declared that in the
settlements overseas "all the laws in force in England are in
force there." Attorney General West also attempted to make
the laws of England follow the flag in 1720 with an opinion
stating that the common law of England was carried to the
colonies unless there was "some private Act to the contrary." ²
The point was by no means settled, however, and it became
abundantly clear that when the American colonists cited Holt
and West prior to 1775 they were thinking of those English
laws which protected personal rights.

Certainly the laws of England included many safeguards
for the private citizen of pre-revolutionary America. Every
freeholder was guaranteed the sacred English right of the
protection of his life, his liberty, and his property from ar-
bitrary action. Foremost among these safeguards stood the
writ of habeas corpus and trial by jury. Both had roots planted

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