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During colonial times, English speech regulations were rather restrictive.The English criminal common law of seditious libel made criticizing the government a crime. Lord Chief Justice John Holt, writing in 1704–1705, explained the rationale for the prohibition: "For it is very necessary for all governments that the people should have a good opinion of it."
A distant heritage : the growth of free speech in early America. New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-5853-26580. (Google book) —— (July 1995). "Before Zenger: Truth and Seditious Speech in Colonial America, 1607–1700". The American Journal of Legal History. 39 (3). Oxford University Press: 337– 358. doi:10.2307/845791. JSTOR 845791.
During the American colonial period a freeman was a person who was not a slave. The term originated in 12th-century Europe. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a man had to be a member of the Church to be a freeman; in neighboring Plymouth Colony a man did not need to be a member of the Church, but he had to be elected to this privilege by the General Court.
Church membership statistics by denomination are unreliable and scarce from the colonial period, [122] but Anglicans were not in the majority by the time of the American Revolutionary War and probably did not comprise even 30 percent of the population in the Southern Colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia ...
The act, which was passed in part due to heavy pressure from merchants in England's American colonies, results in the number of Africans transported to the American colonies being increased from 5,000 to 45,000 per annum. 1699 – Capital of Virginia moved from Jamestown to Williamsburg; Jamestown is slowly abandoned.
Freedom of the Press: The First Amendment: Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary Debate (2008) Martin, Robert W.T. The Free and Open Press: The Founding of American Democratic Press Liberty, 1640–1800 (2012). Nelson, Harold Lewis, ed. Freedom of the Press from Hamilton to the Warren Court (Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1967) Powe, Lucas A.
Censorship came to British America with the Mayflower "when the governor of Plymouth, Massachusetts, William Bradford learned [in 1629] [4] that Thomas Morton of Merrymount, in addition to his other misdeed, had 'composed sundry rhymes and verses, some tending to lasciviousness' the only solution was to send a military expedition to break up Morton's high-living."
Freedom of speech and expression has a long history that predates modern international human rights instruments. [4] It is thought that the ancient Athenian democratic principle of free speech may have emerged in the late 6th or early 5th century BC. [5] Freedom of speech was vindicated by Erasmus and Milton. [4]