It was a provision in the charters of the Virginia settlers granted by James I
in 1606 and 1609, and in the charter to the colonists of Massachusetts in
1629; of the Province of Maine in 1639; of Connecticut in 1662; of Rhode
Island in 1663; of Maryland in 1632; of Carolina in 1663; and of Georgia
in 1732; that they and their posterity should enjoy the same rights and liberties which Englishmen were entitled to at home. Such privileges were implied by the law, without any express reservation.
James Kent, Commentaries on American Law (1826)
Formal declarations of rights, drawn from the common law, were incorporated in the earliest colonial legislation. Plymouth Colony, in the first of
these, enumerated, among other privileges, that justice should be impartially and promptly administered, with trial by jury, and that no person
should suffer in life, limb, liberty, good name, or estate, but by due process
of law. Connecticut, in 1639, adopted an act closely similar. New York enacted, in 1691, that no freeman should be deprived of any rights, or liberties, or condemned, save by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land;
that no tax should be levied except by act of the legislature in which the
colonists were represented. . . . Massachusetts, in 1641, promulgated a
Body of Liberties. . . . In like manner, declaration of rights was made by the
legislature of Virginia in 1624 and 1676; by the legislature of Pennsylvania
in 1682; of Maryland in 1639 and 1650; and of Rhode Island in 1663; and
also by the proprietaries of Carolina in 1667, and of New Jersey in 1664,
1683, and at other dates. The assembly of Maryland of 1638–1639 declared
Magna Carta to be the measure of their liberties.
C. Ellis Stevens, Sources of the Constitution
of the United States (1927)