• 13 • ENGLISH LIBERTIES “HAD MORE TO DO WITH PREPARING THE MINDS OF AMERICAN COLONISTS FOR THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION THAN… COKE, SIDNEY AND LOCKE”: VERY SCARCE 1774 AMERICAN EDITION 13CARE, Henry. English Liberties, or The Free-Born Subject’s Inheritance: Containing Magna Charta, Charta De Foresta… Providence, Rhode-Island, 1774. Small octavo, contemporary full brown sheep, custom clamshell box. $13,500 1774 American edition of Care’s immensely influential English Liberties, preceded only by the 1721 Boston edition, issued not long after the Boston Tea Party and the same year as the First Continental Congress, with printings of the Magna Charta, the Habeas Corpus Act (1769)—”a second Magna Charta”— and foundational texts on jury trials, “principally designed for America.” This major second American edition of English Liberties, preceded by the 1721 edition, came at a turning point in America’s path toward independence. Printed shortly after the Boston Tea Party, this appeared the same year Charles III declared: “The die is cast, the colonies must either submit or triumph,” and the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. Care saw English Liberties (1680) as giving Englishmen necessary “documents and information about the law and their rights… describing the Magna Charta as ‘Declaratory of the principal grounds of the Fundamental Laws and Liberties of England” (Morrison & Zook, 46-7). “William Penn silently lifted a sizable portion of English Liberties… into his Excellent Priviledge [sic] (1687)” (Schwoerer, 2315). Care’s “vocabulary and ideas appeared in the writings of the founding fathers… Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Dickinson and Alexander Hamilton,” and Jefferson owned two London editions of English Liberties (Schwoerer, 231-5). Benjamin Franklin was apprenticed to James Franklin when he issued the 1721 edition, and “it is quite probable that he worked on [that] edition” (Church 880); English Liberties might well have been in Franklin’s “self-improvement course” (Isaacson, 21-8). Scholars have alternatively credited William Penn with authoring substantial portions of English Liberties (see Hudson, “William Penn’s English Liberties”). “This sixth Edition being principally designed for America, a few Particulars are omitted, which were in the former Editions, such as concerning Constables, Churchwardens… But to compensate amply for these Omissions, and make the Work as truly valuable, and more serviceable in America, a Number of Excellent Forms for Justices of the Peace, &c. are added, as also some Extracts from several late celebrated writers on the British constitution” (viii). Sabin 10819. Text generally fresh with light scattered foxing, inner hinges expertly reinforced, slight rubbing to boards. A very desirable copy in contemporary sheep boards.
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