The courts ruled in Wilkes’s favor. Upending literally centuries of power exercised by the King and his men, the courts required that the authorities have greater probable cause to support a search, and even then, that they do so in a more limited manner. The British press hailed the rulings, citing the famous phrase that every Englishman’s “house is his castle, and is not liable to be searched, nor his papers pried into, by the malignant curiosity of the King’s messengers.”11 In important respects, John Wilkes’s lawsuits marked the birth of modern-day privacy rights. These rights were the
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