Abstract
The career of William Drayton, chief justice of British East Florida, presents a problem in motives and loyalties which cannot, perhaps, be completely resolved but which deserves study, not only for its intrinsic interest, but because it must have been shared by many other Americans during the testing years of the Revolution. Drayton was an erudite and stubborn jurist in a great age of the common law, the age not only of Blackstone and Lord Mansfield but of many distinguished figures of the colonial bench and bar whose leadership in the cause of the American Revolution has been well recognized. He was both by birth and feeling an American, but his training was English, and he preferred to regard himself as a member of the British Empire, and, perhaps, the servant of the common law which, to Americans of the time, guaranteed the strongest of all forms of liberty, the rights of Englishmen.
Recommended Citation
Mowat, Charles L.
(1943)
"The Enigma of William Drayton,"
Florida Historical Quarterly: Vol. 22:
No.
1, Article 3.
Available at:
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol22/iss1/3
