These struggles elevated the notion of “English liberty” to a central place in Anglo-American political culture. It became a major building block in the assertive sense of nationhood then being consolidated in England. The medieval idea of liberties as a collection of limited entitlements enjoyed by specific groups did not suddenly disappear. But it was increasingly overshadowed by a more general definition of freedom grounded in the common rights of all individuals within the English realm. By self-definition, England was a community of free individuals and its past a “history of liberty.” All Englishmen were governed by a king, but “he rules over free men,” according to the law, unlike the autocratic monarchs of France, Spain, Russia, and other countries.
Meeting of the General Council of the Army at Putney, scene of the debate in 1647 over liberty and democracy between Levellers and more conservative army officers.
By 1680, in his book English Liberties, or, The Free-Born Subject’s Inheritance, the writer Henry Care described the English system of government as a “qualified Monarchy,” which he considered the best political structure in the world because, even though the “nobility” enjoyed privileges not available to others, all citizens were “guarded in their persons and properties by the fence of law, [which] renders them Freemen, not Slaves.” The belief in freedom as the common heritage of all Englishmen and the conception of the British empire as the world’s guardian of liberty helped to legitimize English colonization in the Western Hemisphere and to cast its imperial wars against Catholic France and Spain as struggles between freedom and tyranny.