In my last column in this series I ended by reviewing some of the ancient British customs regarding arms and defense.  This article concerns those more readily available but still usually uncited English legal traditions dating to several hundred years before the American Revolution.  Again, as with purely ancient intellectuals, those who preserved and lived this period of history regarded the rights of defense, self-preservation, and, necessarily, arms to be the stuff of natural law.  They regarded these rights as to defense from criminals, defense against foreign threats, and, particularly, as to thwarting domestic tyranny.

This common law tradition was already set in writing in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with the Assize of Arms (1181) and the Magna Carta (Great Charter, 1215).  In 1285 the Statute of Winchester mandates that all citizens provide arms, according to their respective abilities, for militia usage.  Through this period and until the seventeenth century, England had little in…