John Adams: “Letters of Novanglus”

Glossary

• Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE), author of Politics; the Roman historian Livy (59 BCE–17 CE); and the English political theorist James Harrington (also spelled Harington; 1611–1677), who wrote about republicanism in The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)
• Calvin John Calvin (1509–1564), Protestant reformer whose views were held by many early Pilgrims and Puritans
• Charles I king of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1600–1649)
• Hampden, Russell, Sidney, Somers, Holt, Tillotson, Burnet, Hoadly references to John Hampden, Lord William Russell, Algernon Sidney, John Somers, Lord Chief Justice John Holt, Archbishop John Tillotson, Gilbert Burnet, and Benjamin Hoadly, all regarded as seventeenth-century English political and religious rebels
• James I king of England and Ireland and, as James VI, king of Scotland (1566–1625)
• post nati Latin for “born after”; generally applied to immigrants to the United States after the Declaration of Independence
• prerogatives privileges
• Queen Anne queen of England and Scotland (1665–1714)
• third estate the legislature, which Adams calls “the democratical branch of the constitution”