Property, Liberty, and Self-Ownership in Seventeenth-Century England

The concept of self-ownership was first articulated in anglophone political thought in the decades between the outbreak of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. This book traces the emergence and evolution of self-ownership over the course of this period, culminating in a reinterpretation of John Locke's celebrated but widely misunderstood idea that "every Man has a Property in his own Person." This is a bold, innovative study of some of the most influential concepts to emerge from this groundbreaking period of British history.