"Freeborn" is a term associated with political agitator John Lilburne

John Lilburne

John Lilburne , also known as Freeborn John, was an English political Leveller before, during and after English Civil Wars 1642-1650. He coined the term "freeborn rights", defining them as rights with which every human being is born, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or human law...

 (1614–1657), a member of the Levellers

Levellers

The Levellers were a political movement during the English Civil Wars which emphasised popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law, and religious tolerance, all of which were expressed in the manifesto "Agreement of the People". They came to prominence at the end of the First...

, a 17th-century English political party. As a word, "freeborn" means to be born free, rather than to be born in slavery

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 or bondage

Debt bondage

Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...

 or vassalage. Lilburne argued for basic human rights that he termed "freeborn rights", which he defined as being rights

Natural rights

Natural and legal rights are two types of rights theoretically distinct according to philosophers and political scientists. Natural rights are rights not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable...

 that every human being is born with, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or by human law. John Lilburne's concept of freeborn rights, and the writings of Richard Overton

Richard Overton

Richard Overton was an English pamphleteer and Leveller during the Civil War. Little is known of the early life of Overton, but he is believed to have matriculated at Queens' College, Cambridge, before working as an actor and playwright in Southwark. Here he picked up Leveller sympathies, and...

 another Leveller, may have influenced the concept of unalienable rights, (Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.) mentioned in the United States Declaration of Independence

United States Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...

.

Other historians, according to Edward Ashbee, consider that it is not the tradition of "Freeborn Englishmen", as espoused by Lilburne, Overton, John Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

 and John Locke

John Locke

John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

, that were the major influence on the concept of unalienable rights in the United States Deceleration of Independence but "an attempt to recreate 'civic republicanism' established in classical Greece and Rome".