Features · Across the Water · September 2026
Americans are taught that freedom was won from Britain. The record says something sharper. The colonists claimed “the rights of Englishmen” before they claimed independence, took their movement’s name from a speech in Parliament, put Magna Carta on their seal and their money, and printed the Declaration in type cast in London. Then they did what England had not: they wrote the rights down and bound the lawmakers too. For eight hundred years the argument has crossed the water in both directions. It is needed on both shores again. Liberty was never one nation’s property.
Three things · Two shores · Madison’s gap · The relay · Where we stand · Reasons for hope · The Runnymede Principles · What we don’t claim · Sources
Three things most people don’t know
1215
The first demand for a written limit on the king was made in a church that later became home to the lawyers. In January 1215, armed barons confronted King John at the New Temple in London and demanded an enforceable charter. He refused. Five months later he sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede. Temple Church ↗
1775
They went to war holding Magna Carta. Before the Declaration, before the Constitution, the First Continental Congress claimed “all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural-born subjects, within the realm of England.” When Massachusetts threw out the royal seal, it replaced it with a colonist holding a sword and Magna Carta. Declaration and Resolves, 1774 ↗ The 1775 seal ↗
1946
The “special relationship” was born in a speech about free speech. At Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill traced a “joint inheritance” through Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, and said it meant “that freedom of speech and thought should reign.” Minutes later he coined the phrase. Speech text ↗
The story of liberty in the English-speaking world is not one of two rival nations. It is one long argument, carried on across the water, about who holds power over free people, and what that power may never touch. The Americans did not reject that argument in 1776. They accused the British government of abandoning it, and then wrote it down.
Two shores · 1215 to 2027
Britain in navy, America in red, shared milestones in both. Follow the years down the line and you can watch an idea leave one shore, change, and come back stronger. Every entry links to its source.
Runnymede
“No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.” Those words, clauses 39 and 40, are still on the statute book in England, and they are the root of due process in the American Constitution. UK Parliament ↗ Constitution Annotated ↗
The Temple
The Pope annulled Magna Carta within weeks. William Marshal, regent for the boy king Henry III, reissued it under his own seal in 1216 and again in 1217. He is buried in the Temple Church, beside his son, who had been one of the rebel barons. Temple Church ↗
Virginia
The First Charter of Virginia promised settlers and their descendants all the “liberties, franchises, and immunities” of anyone born in England. Many members of the Middle Temple were involved in founding the Virginia Company. Library of Congress ↗ Middle Temple ↗
London
In 1608 King James I granted the Temple to the lawyers outright. His own Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke of the Inner Temple, insisted the king was bound by law. “Magna Carta,” Coke said, “is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.” The bronze doors of the U.S. Supreme Court show him barring James I from the “King’s Court,” making the court independent of the executive. Middle Temple ↗ Supreme Court ↗ Coke quoted in Hansard ↗
The Old Bailey
William Penn was prosecuted for preaching his Quaker faith on a London street. “Where is that common-law?” he asked the court. The jury refused to convict, even under threat, and Bushel’s Case established the independence of the jury. Religion, speech and assembly, three of the First Amendment’s five freedoms, were on trial in a single English courtroom. Library of Congress ↗
Philadelphia
Penn took the lesson with him. In 1687 he published The Excellent Privilege of Liberty and Property, the first edition of Magna Carta printed in the New World. Library of Congress ↗
New York
The printer John Peter Zenger was tried for seditious libel, an English doctrine under which truth was no defense. His lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, called to the bar at Gray’s Inn in London, persuaded the jury to acquit. The verdict shaped the founding generation’s commitment to a free press. NY Courts ↗ National Constitution Center ↗
London
The government answered a newspaper, The North Briton No. 45, with a general warrant that named no one. John Wilkes sued and won. The court called such warrants “totally subversive of the liberty of the subject.” In 1768 Boston’s Sons of Liberty wrote to praise him, and the case became a foundation of America’s Fourth Amendment. Constitution Annotated ↗ Sons of Liberty to Wilkes ↗
House of Commons
Isaac Barré told Parliament the colonists were “sons of liberty.” The Stamp Act passed anyway, 205 to 49. Across the ocean, the phrase became a name. Our American Revolution ↗
House of Commons
William Pitt, the most celebrated statesman in Britain, told the Commons the colonists were right. “Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.” Benjamin Franklin, in London, sent the speech home. Founders Online ↗
Westminster
Repealing the Stamp Act, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act the same day, asserting its power to bind the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” No written limit stood above Parliament itself. That is the gap Americans would later close. Declaratory Act ↗
Philadelphia, First Continental Congress
Two years before independence, the delegates resolved that their ancestors “were at the time of their emigration from the mother country, entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural-born subjects, within the realm of England,” that the colonies “are entitled to the common law of England,” and that they had a right “peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the king.” The case against the Crown was made in the Crown’s own legal language. Declaration and Resolves ↗
House of Commons
Edmund Burke, urging conciliation three weeks before Lexington: “The people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen… They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles.” Parliament did not listen. Speech on Conciliation, March 22, 1775 ↗
Watertown, Massachusetts
Weeks after Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress discarded the royal seal and adopted a new one: “an English-American man holding the Magna Carta” in one hand and a sword in the other, with a motto from the English republican Algernon Sidney. Paul Revere engraved it, and printed the same figure on the colony’s banknotes over the words “Issued in defence of American Liberty.” The rebellion’s own emblem was an English charter. Secretary of the Commonwealth ↗ Smithsonian ↗
Philadelphia
Five Middle Templars signed the Declaration of Independence. Seven Middle Templars were among the 39 signers of the Constitution in 1787. The American founding was argued in the language of English law, turned against a Parliament that had placed itself above it. Even the first printed copy of the Declaration, the Dunlap broadside of July 4–5, 1776, was set in type cast by William Caslon in London. Library of Congress ↗ Middle Temple ↗ Temple Church ↗
New York, First Congress
Introducing the Bill of Rights, James Madison observed that Britain’s declaration of rights restrained only the Crown, and that “their Magna Charta does not contain any one provision for the security of those rights” Americans cared about most: the press and conscience. The First Amendment filled that gap. Read more below ↓
Court of King’s Bench
Thomas Paine, born in England and a voice of American independence, was convicted in absentia of seditious libel for Rights of Man. He was defended by the barrister Thomas Erskine, and convicted while he was in France. UK National Archives ↗
Newcastle & Maryland
Frederick Douglass, on a speaking tour of Britain and Ireland, could not safely return home. English Quakers Anna and Henry Richardson raised £150 and bought his freedom. Private citizens of one country supplied the remedy the other country’s law denied. Gilder Lehrman Institute ↗
Inner Temple & Ahmedabad
Mohandas Gandhi was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1891. Tried for sedition in 1922, he told the court: “Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law.” The Inn struck him off. In 1988 it restored him. Inner Temple ↗ Trial statement ↗
New York, Washington & Fort Knox
Lincoln Cathedral’s 1215 Magna Carta crossed the Atlantic for the first time for the 1939 World’s Fair, then stayed for safety when war came. When America entered the war, the Library of Congress evacuated it to Fort Knox along with the Declaration and the Constitution. President Roosevelt joked that the Library of Congress would keep it safe from “the King John of modern days” — the executive branch. Library of Congress ↗
Off Newfoundland
In the Atlantic Charter, the United States and the United Kingdom declared that they “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.” Colonial leaders carried those words to London and held Britain to them. UWE Bristol research ↗
Paris
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose drafting committee was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, protects the freedom “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Both countries later bound themselves to the same words in a treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. UDHR ↗ UN Treaty Collection ↗
Runnymede
The American Bar Association raised the rotunda at Runnymede: “To commemorate Magna Carta, symbol of freedom under law.” ABA delegations returned to renew the pledge in 1971, 1985 and 2000. Inscriptions ↗
U.S. Capitol
For the Bicentennial, Parliament lent Congress one of the four original 1215 charters. Britain’s delegation said Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration and the Constitution had “mingled to form a common heritage.” The American reply named among the ties “a common devotion to the ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press.” And: “Our special relationship transcends time and distance.” Hansard ↗
London & Washington
British writers and scientists campaigned to end “libel tourism,” winning the Defamation Act 2013. Congress passed the SPEECH Act in 2010, barring U.S. courts from enforcing foreign libel judgments that fall short of the First Amendment. English PEN ↗ SPEECH Act summary ↗
London
Two centuries after Madison named the gap, a British think tank asked the question in reverse: “If the UK wanted to enact something like the First Amendment, what would the resulting statute look like?” The Adam Smith Institute’s model Free Speech Bill is its answer, offered for British citizens and Parliament to debate. Adam Smith Institute ↗
Runnymede, July 28
The next date on the timeline is ours to write. See the Runnymede Principles ↓
Madison’s gap · June 8, 1789
What the British tradition secured
What America added
James Madison, House of Representatives, June 8, 1789. Founders Online ↗ The Founders’ Constitution ↗
Why this matters in 2026. This is not a story of a free country and an unfree one. It is a difference in design. One tradition trusts an elected legislature to protect liberty. The other says there are some things no legislature may do. Almost every speech dispute between the two countries today comes back to that difference, and understanding it is the start of a respectful conversation instead of a shouting match.
The relay · how the idea kept travelling
Liberty did not only flow outward from London. It came back, changed. Henry David Thoreau, heir to the American strand, wrote Civil Disobedience. Gandhi, a barrister of the Inner Temple, read it in South Africa. “Why, of course I read Thoreau,” he told an American reporter in 1931. “I actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau’s essay.” Source ↗
Martin Luther King Jr. called Gandhi “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change” and travelled to India in 1959. Stanford King Institute ↗
In 1964, facing a possible death sentence, Nelson Mandela told a South African court: “The Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights, and the Bill of Rights are documents which are held in veneration by democrats throughout the world.” In the same statement he praised “the American Congress, that country’s doctrine of separation of powers, as well as the independence of its judiciary.” Statement from the dock ↗
The lesson for us: the tradition belongs to whoever takes it up. It has been used against the very powers that wrote it down, again and again.
Where we stand · 2026
The divide today is not between a free country and an unfree one. It is the question Madison raised in 1789: do rights restrain only the executive, or the legislature as well? In 2026, both governments are being tested on it.
In Britain
The Online Safety Act 2023 lets a regulator impose large fines on platforms, including platforms based outside the UK, over how they handle users’ speech. According to Big Brother Watch, more than 62,000 people in the UK were arrested for communications offences over five years, and 12,292 were convicted. Big Brother Watch ↗
In September 2026, a U.S. federal court dismissed a challenge brought by two American websites against Britain’s regulator, ruling that it had no jurisdiction. Reuters ↗
In America
In July 2026, a federal judge blocked a State Department visa policy aimed at social-media researchers, finding that it likely violated the First Amendment. Reuters ↗
The First Amendment binds Washington just as much as it shields Americans from London. Our coalition began with a case about our own government.
The common thread
In both countries, pressure on speech now works mostly through private platforms rather than through courts. It is the modern form of the general warrant, the power Britain’s own judges struck down in 1763.
A test case · West Midlands, 2026
What is on the record
On the morning of August 3, 2026, four West Midlands Police officers arrested a 15-year-old Reform UK activist at his family home over Facebook posts about a Conservative councillor on Wolverhampton City Council. One post showed the councillor edited with bunny ears; another said he was thankfully not dressed like a “rent boy.” The boy was fingerprinted, photographed, and had his DNA taken. Free Speech Union ↗ New York Post ↗
In a September 8 email to his lawyer, police wrote that “it is alleged that your client’s comments could be considered a hate crime offence.” More than two months later he had not been charged. Free Speech Union ↗
Both accounts
The councillor reported the posts to police, saying, “I was targeted by a child I had no way of dealing with.” He has described them as part of a pattern of harassment. FIRE ↗ New York Post ↗
The boy’s lawyers, supported by the Free Speech Union, call the arrest an overreach and say he is considering a claim for wrongful arrest. No court has ruled on any of it. Free Speech Union ↗
What the model bill would change
The Adam Smith Institute’s model bill states that “there is no right in law not to be offended,” repeals the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, and bars police from logging lawful speech as a “non-crime hate incident.” It keeps harassment as an offence, narrowed to a deliberate course of conduct intended to cause serious alarm or distress. Model bill, ss. 5, 10, 14 & Sch. 1 ↗
Whether Britain adopts that line is for British citizens and Parliament to decide.
Beyond Britain: the same model is moving through Brussels, Canberra and Ottawa. Read our feature on the global front →
Why we don’t discuss pending cases. Where a case is still before a court, in either country, we report only what is on the public record. Fair trials on both sides of the Atlantic are part of the liberty this page defends.
Reasons for hope
2009–2013
A British civil-society campaign and an American law together ended “libel tourism,” producing new legislation in both countries.
2024
The High Court required U.S. assurances that First Amendment protections would apply before it would allow an extradition to go ahead.
2025
Britain backed away from demanding access to Americans’ encrypted data.
2026
Parliament’s All-Party Group on Freedom of Speech has officers from more than one party.
2026
In March 2026, the Adam Smith Institute, a London think tank, published a model Free Speech Bill asking what a British First Amendment would look like. Its stated aim: “to recognise and restore the ancient liberty of free speech.” Restoration is the oldest argument in this tradition, and it is in our name.
The Runnymede Principles · a working draft
Each people is sovereign over its own law. No government may censor across the water what the other people’s law protects. Free citizens of both nations may speak, publish, petition and assemble together, regardless of frontiers.
Each nation’s speech law belongs to its own people and its own legislature.
Atlantic Charter, 1941
No regulator or court should reach speech that was lawful where it was spoken, in either direction.
UDHR Art. 19 · SPEECH Act, 2010
No government should coerce private platforms or intermediaries to suppress lawful speech.
Wilkes v. Wood, 1763 · the JAWBONE Act
Citizens must have a real remedy against officials who violate these rights.
Magna Carta, cl. 40: “to no one will we deny or delay right or justice”
The right to petition those in power, and to gather to do it, is common to both traditions and should be exercised together.
Bill of Rights, 1689 · First Amendment, 1791
Organizations in each country sign separately, and each speaks only for itself. Endorsing the Principles is not membership in the coalition and does not commit anyone to our other positions.
To add your organization, email coalition@restorethe1st.com with your organization’s name, country, and the name of the person authorizing the endorsement. We list signatories only after confirming them.
United States
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United Kingdom
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July 28, 2027 marks 70 years since the American Bar Association dedicated the memorial at Runnymede. Get occasional updates as the Principles and the anniversary take shape.
What you can do
In the United States
In the United Kingdom
Independent UK organizations run their own campaigns on these issues. They are listed here for information only and are not affiliated with Restore the First unless stated.
What we don’t claim
Not a claim that Magna Carta created modern rights. In 1215 it was a settlement among a king and powerful barons, and its “free men” were a narrow class. Its reputation as a charter of liberty was built later, by lawyers like Coke and by the people who used it. That is the point: liberty was won by interpretation and struggle.
Not a claim that the Revolution was a misunderstanding. The colonists fought a war against the British state and won independence from it. The point is narrower and better documented: they justified the break in the vocabulary of English law, and the rights they then wrote down were the ones England had left to custom. Nor was the Zenger verdict of 1735 a legal precedent; it was a jury’s refusal, and colonial printers continued to be prosecuted.
Not the “Crown Temple” theory. Claims that American lawyers secretly serve the British Crown through the Temple, or that “BAR” stands for a “British Accredited Registry,” are false. “Bar” refers to the physical barrier in a courtroom. Snopes ↗
Not “lawful rebellion.” Clause 61 of the 1215 charter gave a right of enforcement only to 25 named barons, and it was dropped when the charter was reissued. Modern claims built on it have been consistently rejected by courts.
Not an endorsement of any party or government. Restore the First takes no position on British elections or parties and accepts no money from any government. This page is historical and educational.
Where the numbers come from. Counts of American signers trained at the Inns of Court come from the Middle Temple and Temple Church. Admission to an Inn did not always mean study in London; some Americans were admitted but trained at home. Sources differ on the Declaration count (the Temple Church lists six Inner and Middle Templars; the Middle Temple lists five of its own members). We use the Inn’s own figures.
Status. The 2026 developments on this page reflect the public record as of September 25, 2026, except the West Midlands test case, which reflects the public record as of October 23, 2026. We identify no minor by name; the historical entries were expanded and re-verified against primary sources on October 13, 2026. We will update them as courts and legislatures act.
Sources and image credits
Every factual statement on this page links to its source where it appears. Key primary texts: Magna Carta clauses (UK Parliament); Bill of Rights 1689; Declaratory Act 1766; Madison, June 8, 1789 (Founders Online); Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, October 14, 1774; Burke, Speech on Conciliation, March 22, 1775; Pitt, January 14, 1766 (Franklin’s report); Massachusetts seal of 1775; Dunlap broadside and Caslon type (Library of Congress); Churchill at Fulton, 1946; Bicentennial speeches, 1976.
Images: Massachusetts seal of 1775, engraved by Paul Revere, via the Secretary of the Commonwealth and Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Runnymede memorial photo by Mark, CC BY 2.0. Magna Carta 1215, British Library Cotton MS Augustus II.106, public domain. Temple Church exterior, public domain. Middle Temple Hall photo by steve_w, CC BY 2.0. North Briton No. 45 engraving, Isaac Barré portrait (Gilbert Stuart), John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine engraving (National Portrait Gallery), Frederick Douglass portrait (Samuel J. Miller) and Gandhi in London (1906): public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.