Written Rights: Puritan and Quaker Procedural Guarantees
B EFORE 1690 AMERICAN COLONISTS ENJOYED a large degree of autonomy within the English empire. In that context of relative freedom, they achieved a significant reform of felony law and criminal procedure. That the colonists achieved statutory guarantees of procedural rights was the realization of a reform then being advocated in England. Evidence of this legislative reform of common law practice is found primarily in the Puritan and Quaker colonies. Beginning in the 1680s and proceeding with greater force after 1695, the English government made a sustained effort to enforce its mercantile policy in America. Because the procedural rights of colonists interfered with the agencies of law enforcement, Privy Council repealed the statutes guaranteeing those rights. Thus Anglicized, the procedural rights of colonists necessarily shifted back onto the common law base. After 1760 a new British attempt at law enforce-