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Medieval & Early Modern
Richard Overton
c. 1600–1664 · Leveller
Every person is their own proprietor.
The most radical of the Leveller pamphleteers, Overton argued that every individual is given an individual property by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any power. From that premise of self-ownership he drew religious toleration, protection against arbitrary arrest, and a hard limit on the reach of any authority. Anarchist historians treat him as an early ancestor of individualist liberty.
Why it matters for freedom
His pamphlets made the individual the source of all just authority, decades before Locke wrote it down.
Who they stood against
both the crown and the Parliament, each claiming a power over persons it never received