Excerpt from English Common Law in the Early American Colonies The accepted legal theory of this transfer is well known. It is clearly stated by Story in Van Ness v. Packard, 2 Peters, 144 The common law of England is not to be taken in all respects to be that of America. Our ancestors brought with them its general principles, and claimed it as their birth-right; but they brought with them and adopted only that portion which was applicable to their condition. This theory is universally adopted by our courts, and it has given them the important power of judging of the applicability of the principles of the common law to American conditions. According to this view, the common law was from the first looked upon by the colonists as a system of positive and subsidiary law, applying where not replaced by colonial enactments or by special custom suited to new conditions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Drawing on groundbreaking and overwhelmingly extensive research into local court records, The Common Law in Colonial America proposes a "new beginning" in the study of colonial legal history, as it charts the course of the common law in Early America, to reveal how the models of law that emerged differed drastically from that of the English common law. In this first volume, Nelson explores how the law of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--differed from the New England colonies--Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth, and Rhode Island--and looks at the differences between the colonial legal systems within the two regions, from their initial settlement until approximately 1660.

William E. Nelson here proposes a new beginning in the study of colonial legal history. Examining all archival legal material for the period 1607-1776 and synthesizing existing scholarship in a four-volume series, The Common Law in Colonial America shows how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies--initially established in response to divergent political, economic, and religious initiatives--slowly converged into a common American legal order that differed substantially from English common law.