English Bill of Rights

About the Author

The Bill of Rights was by its very nature a collectively authored document. Since it was based on the Declaration of Rights, authorship can be attributed to the Convention Parliament, which was the first parliament convened following the arrival of William of Orange in England. The Convention Parliament comprised members who had been in Charles II's last Parliament, which he had dissolved in 1681. A small commission made up of Convention Parliament members drafted the declaration. Individual contributions of commission members, however, are difficult to determine. Many constitutional historians have argued that the political philosophy of John Locke was the intellectual foundation of the Bill of Rights. Locke had been in exile in Holland throughout much of James II's reign and had returned to England with William of Orange's wife in 1688. However, only an indirect connection can be made, since most of Locke's important works, such as Two Treatises of Government, which emphasized the concept of a separation of powers, were published after his return to England.