The most powerful presentations were based on legal precedents, especially Calvin's Case (1608), which, it was claimed, proved on the authority of Coke and Bacon that subjects of the King are by no means necessarily subjects of Parliament.
Bernard BailynThe wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessary than liberty but more dangerous.
Bernard BailynThat by 1774 the final crisis of the constitution, brought on by political and social corruption, had been reached was, to most informed colonists, evident.
Bernard BailynDefiance to constituted authority leaped like a spark from one flammable area to another, growing in heat as it went.
Bernard Bailyn