The Death of the English Right to Bear Arms

14 min read

Published on 08/23/2021

In the 21st century United Kingdom, we are used to the government running things. It’s simple: we pay our taxes and keep our heads down and they do what is best for us. Naturally, as a result, we trust them completely with our personal protection and the protection of our property.

We also have an appreciation for the very long history of the British Isles, our history. This is abundantly apparent when travelling around the country: Roman roads, Tudor houses and Gothic churches can all be found in places with Latin, Saxon, Norman or Norse derived names. This island, like Europe and the East, has hundreds of years of modern history alone.

A nagging question for me, and one that I would like to explore further, is the following: How does the relationship between the British people and government differ now by comparison to the past, from times when the country was arguably at the height of its success?

I have considered several aspects of British society when thinking about this, and I would like to start the discussion in perhaps an unusual place for anyone outside of the United States: firearms regulation. The reason behind this is that it reveals a lot about the relationship between two parties looking at the ways in which one prevents the other from defending itself.

To understand this we should start right at the beginning, even before the invention of firearms. It is interesting to note the attitude towards an armed populace held by both Saxon and Norman kings of England: Free men of a given shire were expected to defend it from raids (by Vikings or otherwise), this was known as *fyrd* duty.

According to the laws of King Ine of Wessex; there were fines for neglecting military service scaling with the station of the man. A nobleman who held land refusing this service would be forced to pay twice as much as a landless nobleman, who would in turn pay twice as much as a commoner [1]. What is most important to us here is that these men were required, by the same laws, to provide their own weapons and armour, they were mandated by law to personally own the tools of their home’s defence.

Here we can make a comparison to a modern parallel: the famous 2nd Amendment to the United States’ Constitution, which reads as follows:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”.

This is intended as a protection against the state, such that the state can not deny its citizens the ability to bear arms, recognising that a well armed and regulated militia is 'necessary to the security of a free state' (‘well regulated’ simply meaning ‘well organised’ or ‘well equipped’), and modern conversations mainly revolve around proposing or thwarting legislation that would circumvent this protection. This does not state that the right to bear arms is granted by the government, it says that the government should not infringe on this pre-existing, or God given, right.

Rarely do we discuss the idea of the state mandating that its citizens bear arms, which is exactly what The Laws of Ine did. Indeed, in contrast to the 2nd amendment which recognises merely a right to bear arms, should we wish to, they convey an absolutely mandatory duty to do so.

What happened to this obligation? A reasonable explanation for its disappearance is that nowadays English shires are not under much threat of a Viking raid, but it still leaves the lingering question of other criminal elements that may break into our homes, take our belongings and/or do us bodily harm. After all, the violent crime rate is still non zero, and significantly so in certain areas of the UK. Where was the Saxon police force in AD700? Why weren’t they defending men’s homes for them?

The next destination on our tour of English history is the reign of Norman King Henry II of England and his Assize of Arms in 1181. This was a revival of the Saxon fyrd duty for Englishmen, but included some restrictions regarding what could be owned by Jews etc. The full text of this act is worth a read, but the gist of it is that it is the duty of an Englishman to bear arms (the richer you are, the more you are mandated to have), you cannot sell your arms abroad, you must pass your arms on to your heir, and if a man did “not have such arms as have been specified above, the lord king will take vengeance, not merely on his lands or chattels, but on his limbs” [2]. A grave threat from a medieval king, highlighting the importance placed on the idea of free men personally owning their own weapons. As an interesting note, a logical conclusion from the law as written is that if you were not able to own your own weaponry, you were not considered free.

71 years later, under Henry III, another Assize of Arms was proclaimed. This one had more to do with the enforcement of the 1181 decree, and included the appointment of constables from the general citizenry to help organize these free men bearing arms [3]. Here we’re witnessing the birth of the English police force, near enough as close to the fall of Rome as it is to the modern day. However, as previously stated the enforcement of the law was explicitly down to the individual free man, the constables were simply there to organise them if they were needed en masse.

Jumping another century or so, we find ourselves face-to-face with a great military king of England: Edward III. Edward and his son, Edward the Black Prince, saw great success in the Hundred Years War, especially at the battles of Crécy and Poitiers. Despite ultimately failing to secure France, the successes that were enjoyed are undoubtedly due, in part, to the adoption of the Longbow by the English as their signature weapon.

However this adoption was not just in war, again there were royal proclamations on the duty of an Englishman and his weapons. In 1363 Edward proclaimed the following [4]:

"Whereas the people of our realm, rich and poor alike, were accustomed formerly in their games to practise archery, whence by God’s help, it is well known that high honour and profit came to our realm, and no small advantage to ourselves in our warlike enterprises, that every man in the same country, if he be able-bodied, shall, upon holidays, make use, in his games, of bows and arrows, and so learn and practise archery.”

To reinforce this, Edward "forbade, on pain of death, all sport that took up time better spent on war training especially archery practise" for Sundays and other holidays [5]. This is why (much to the hilarity of schoolchildren) many English towns contain areas called “The Butts” or “Butt lane/street”, referring to the medieval practice ranges required by each town to comply with this law.

Obviously this has less to do with personal defence and more to do with the individual longbowman being a powerful weapon of war. Despite the stated goal of the legislation, the practical reality was that Edward demanded that his people personally own their own long range military grade weapons, and not only that but that they were also forbidden from doing any leisure activity other than practise with them on certain days.

What relevance does this have today then? Very little from a legal point of view. The point of highlighting these events is to show that the current western attitude on this topic is both recent and would be looked upon as frankly weird by the majority of people who came before us.

1688 sees the formation of the English Bill of Rights. In the 300 years since Edward III the longbow has been rendered all but obsolete as a weapon and firearms were in widespread use. During this time a number of minor acts were introduced to allow local government personnel the ability to seize arms from people judged as a threat to the “Peace of the Kingdom”, although entering a rural house at night for this purpose was forbidden and there was a process for the reclaiming seized weaponry.

The Bill of Rights is a codification of the “Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown''. It lays out the relationship between the new joint (Protestant) monarchs King William and Mary and their people. It declares that the previous (Catholic) King James II and his ministers “Did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant Religion and the Laws and Liberties of this Kingdom” in a whole list of ways. Of most interest to us is that he did so “By causing several good Subjects being Protestants to be disarmed at the same time when Papists were both Armed and employed contrary to Law.” [6]

As a part of the ongoing Catholic-Protestant infighting in the British Isles at the time, it appears the Protestants were not happy with King James allegedly disarming them and allowing Catholics to be armed. So much so that further down the Bill of Rights they lay out the rights of the subject and declare that “Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law”

This is an explicit guarantee of the right to bear Arms for English Protestant subjects, granted by parliament and with caveats allowing for reasonable legal regulation on ownership, but no specifics on the trade of weapons or ownership of certain types or categories of weapon. This also is where the USA’s 2nd amendment can trace it’s legislative ancestry back to, and is a far cry from the restrictions they suffer from today in most states.

Whether or not you are invested in the Catholic-Protestant struggle, the point is that being disarmed by the state was seen as a bad thing and something to fight against. It was inconceivable for a group to disarm themselves, or worse seek for the government to disarm them.

This is further organised and expanded upon by the works of William Blackstone in his 1770 magnum opus “Commentaries on the Laws of England”, considered even into the 20th century to be an important and complete overview of English Law. In the first volume, on the topic of the “Rights of the Subject” [7], he writes:

“The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law.”

Here, he is re-stating the 1688 Bill of Rights almost word for word, although notably omitting the religious aspect nearly a century before the official emancipation of Catholic subjects and some 60 years after the Jacobite rebellions. As well as this, he concludes:

“And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated or attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next, to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and, lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence.”

In other words, it is a feature of English constitutional law that to defend their freeborn rights, Englishmen are entitled to do so by force of arms if they deem it necessary. It is a part of the legal system, not contrary to it, as is the case now. Expanding on the “and such as are allowed by law” clause of the Bill of Rights he says:

“And all these rights and liberties it is our birthright to enjoy entire; unless where the laws of our country have laid them under necessary restraints: restraints in themselves so gentle and moderate, as will appear, upon further inquiry, that no man of sense or probity would wish to see them slackened. For all of us have it in our choice to do everything that a good man would desire to do; and are restrained from nothing but what would be pernicious either to ourselves or our fellow-citizens.”

Blackstone is making the point that restrictions on weapon ownership by Englishmen are properly defined in relation to English cultural norms and pragmatism surrounding daily life, and are not to be imposed on them from on high at the whim of the powerful. They are pre-existing in local communities, discovered by those above, then formalised, rather than forced from the top down. They are a part of the Rights of the Subject, and are particular to them, as opposed to the Rights of the King or Parliament.

Blackstone has many interesting things to say on this topic, one of the more offensive to modern ears is his defence of killing a burglar if you, as a homeowner, are able to, and his assertion that this principle is as applicable to civil society as it is to the “state of nature” [8].

The early 19th century is marked by the Wars of the Coalition, global in scale and with some quarter of a million British soldiers involved at their height. As always during crises such as this, acts were passed that would never have been considered in peacetime, but remained on the books long after. As an aside, one such act is the establishment of Income Tax in the UK in preparation for war and, despite it being abolished and reinstated several times between 1799 and 1842, it remains a temporary measure that is still in place over 200 years later. [9]

Another such law is the “Act for the Punishment of idle and disorderly Persons, and Rogues and Vagabonds, in that Part of Great Britain called England” of 1824 [10], which reads:

“And be it further enacted, That every Person… being armed with any Gun, Pistol, Hanger, Cutlass, Bludgeon, or other offensive Weapon, or having upon him or her any Instrument, with Intent to commit any felonious Act … and every such Picklock Key, Crow, Jack, Bit, and other Implement, and every such Gun, Pistol, Hanger, Cutlass, Bludgeon, or other offensive Weapon, and every such Instrument as aforesaid, shall, by the Conviction of the Offender, become forfeited to the King's Majesty.”

This is a multiplier to the severity of an already existing crime. If you are found with obvious intent to do anything illegal, with a weapon on your person, then your other crime would be judged as more severe. Carrying a weapon was not (yet) a crime in itself. The justification for this at the time was the large quantity of men returning from the continental wars with either their own weapons or those that they had liberated from the French and their allies.

This was undoubtedly perceived as a problem, but was it a greater problem than it had been after the previous globe spanning wars that the UK had been involved with? After all, the Golden Age of Piracy picked up pace from a similar situation after the War of Spanish Succession ending in 1713, but was post Napoleonic UK gripped with violence and thievery on a similar scale?

It is at this point that the decline really starts to become obvious. The first shooting licenses were introduced to stop illegal game hunting in the UK shortly after the Napoleonic period, it is from this point in time that the restrictions increase rapidly, culminating in the “Act to grant a Duty of Excise on Licences to use Guns” [11] of 1870. The act explicitly states that it was put in place to raise public money, not to control anyone’s access to firearms, beginning as follows:

“We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled, towards raising the necessary supplies to defray Your Majesty's public expenses, and making an addition to the public revenue, have freely and voluntarily resolved to give and grant unto Your Majesty the rate and duty herein-after mentioned”

It establishes the need for a license to carry a firearm, that should be renewed yearly at a cost of 10 shillings to the carrier, or around £30 today. There were exemptions for military personnel, gun makers, farmers shooting vermin, etc, and only applied in public spaces, not on private property. The license was not even required to buy a gun, only to carry it in public, however it was the first real restriction on carrying.

The first general restriction on selling certain weapons was the Pistols Act of 1903 [12] which came into force around 30 years later. This Act forbade the selling of weapons with barrels less than 9 inches in length to people who could not produce a license, could not prove they were exempt from carrying one, could not prove they were about to go abroad for a period of 6 months or more, and similar. Selling weapons to children, the drunk or the insane was also prohibited, although lending temporarily was not.

It is important to note that even at this point that general attitudes towards weapon ownership seem to have deviated little from days gone by, indeed the Conservative Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, even went as far as to state in 1900 that he would "laud the day when there was a rifle in every cottage in England". [13]

Following the Pistols Act, there was an avalanche of legislation throughout the 20th century, with Firearms Acts in 1920, 1937 and 1968. The 1937 act is particularly interesting as it removed self defence as a reason for owning a gun license, with the Home Secretary at the time, the National Liberal MP for Spen Valley, Sir John Simon, remarking that “firearms cannot be regarded as a suitable means of protection and may be a source of danger" [14]. Neither his reasoning for this nor what he considered a suitable means of protection were given, despite his decision in one instant overturning over 1000 years of English Law and the expectation of the Englishman to defend himself and his home. This came only 67 years after the introduction of the gun license, and only 37 years after Lord Salisbury’s statement.

The legislation became more extreme from here, with amendments to the 1968 act being passed in 1988 and again in 1997 after both the Hungerford and Dunblane massacres respectively. The 1997 amendment even forbade the UK Olympic pistol shooting team from training on the British mainland [15], they instead were relegated to Northern Ireland, to Crown Dependencies such the the Isle of Mann, or simply to other countries entirely.

The United Kingdom remains to this day thoroughly disarmed, and there seems little will, political or otherwise, to change this. The Wellington Project maintains the Burke-like position that traditions and values are that which are passed down to us by our ancestors, and which we have a duty to pass on to our children.

What would our ancestors make of our current disarmed status? The Englishman who defended his hearth from Viking raiders with his father’s axe under pain of kingly sanction? The Englishman who showered the French nobility with hand-made arrows from his own bow, after having been made to practise weekly from boyhood for just such a moment? The Englishman who objected to being disarmed by their king on religious grounds? The Englishman who brought captured French pistols home from Waterloo?

What would he think of us, and will our children forgive us for not passing on to them the rights of their ancestors?