Hi Danae,
“Anyone NOT a Christian in the eyes of the “Common Law” was a heretic and an enemy of the State.”
I understand that you are taking this from the Calvin’s Case.
But there is a footnote in the 1826 edition of Reports of Sir Lord Coke that indicates that passage from the Calvin’s Case is an error.
“(1) The position in the text seems to have been a common error founded on a groundless opinion of Justice Brooke, Anon. 1 Salk. 46, and has long since been exploded, Omichund v. Barker, 1 Atk. 21, S.C. 1 Wils 84, S.C. Willes’s Rep. 538”
It is on page 29 of the Reports on the Calvin’s Case.
No, it goes wait further back than that. Try 1200 or earlier. Some ancient vestiges are said to come from the 600’s. It got the came common because it was common over time. For example... I am reading an account of Catherine the Great Empress of Russia... the laws of Russia then were decrees issued by the sovereign (this is in the 1700’s) and implemented by the ‘senate’, though the senate also seemed to do as it willed on the side. However, that law either built upon earlier law, or abolished it, perhaps seconded it... but it was common to Russia. Catherine, being enlightened by Voltaire and many others instituted changes which would eventually lead to her great grandson ending the practice of serfdom just a few years before the United States did. But that process took generations or evolving and sometimes devolving law to come about. In Russia of that time, the law was the sovereign, and that bears striking similarity to the English. America was founded on the principles of enlightenment which so captured Catherine and changed Russian history until the Bolshevik Revolution.