ABSTRACT
In Semayne’s Case (1605), the principle that an ‘Englishman’s home is his castle’ was judicially declared. Two early cases reveal judicial boldness in the protection from unlawful entry into property. In Wilkes v Wood (1763), an Under Secretary of State, accompanied by police, entered Wilkes’s home, broke open his desk and seized papers. In an action for trespass against the Under Secretary, Lord Pratt CJ stated that the power claimed would affect ‘the person and property of every man in this kingdom, and is totally subversive of the liberty of the subject’. Moreover, such action, being without justification and unlawful, was ‘contrary to the fundamental principles of the constitution’.
