The Reading Room

The Best of the OLL No. 44: “The English Bill of Rights” (1689)

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. A thematic list with links to HTML versions of the texts is available [here](/pages/best-of-the-oll). The English Bill of Rights (1689) is part of a series of legal statements about the rights of Englishmen which were proclaimed during the 17th century. Others include the Petition of Right (1628), the Agreement of the People (1647, 1648), and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679). It was a clear statement of the primacy of Parliament in the British system of government and defined the legal limits of the power of the government over the citizens.