"Freeborn" is a term associated with political agitator
John Lilburne (1614–1657), a member of the
Levellers, a 17th-century English political party. As a word, "freeborn" means born free, rather than in
slavery or
bondage
Bondage may refer to:
Restraints
*Physical restraints
**Bondage (BDSM), use of restraint for erotic stimulation
***Self-bondage, use of restraints on oneself for erotic pleasure
Social and economic practices
*Serfdom, feudal enslavement of peasan ...
or
vassalage. Lilburne argued for basic human rights that he termed "freeborn rights", which he defined as being
rights that every human being is born with, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or by human law. John Lilburne's concept of freeborn rights, and the writings of
Richard Overton another Leveller, may have influenced the concept of
unalienable rights,
[ cites Andrew Sharp 1983, p. 177] (Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.) mentioned in the
United States Declaration of Independence.
Other historians, according to Edward Ashbee, consider that it was not the tradition of "Freeborn Englishmen", as espoused by Lilburne, Overton,
John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...
and
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
, that was the major influence on the concept of unalienable rights in the United States Declaration of Independence, but rather "an attempt to recreate 'civic republicanism' established in classical Greece and Rome".
Notes
References
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See also
*The "
Rights of Englishmen", claimed by the revolutionary American colonists
Slavery
{{Humanrights-stub