law, the Fourth Amendment finds its origin in English legal doctrine. In Semayne's case (1604), Sir Edward Coke famously stated: "The house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence as for his repose." Semayne's Case acknowledged that the King did not have unbridled authority to intrude on his subjects' dwellings, but recognized that government agents were permitted to conduct searches and seizures under certain conditions when their purpose was lawful and a warrant had been obtained. The 1760s saw a growth in the intensity of litigation against state officers, who using general warrants, conducted raids in search of materials relating to John Wilkes's publications. The most famous of these cases involved John Entick whose home was forcibly entered by the King's Messenger Nathan Carrington, along with others, pursuant to a warrant issued by George Montagu-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax authorizing them "to make strict and diligent search for ... the author, or one concerned in the writing of several weekly very seditious papers entitled, 'The Monitor or British Freeholder, No 257, 357, 358, 360, 373, 376, 378, and 380'", the search resulting in seizure of printed charts, pamphlets and other materials. Entick filed suit in Entick v Carrington, argued before the Court of King's Bench in 1765. Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden ruled that both the search and the seizure were unlawful, as the warrant authorized the seizure of all of Entick's papers—not just the criminal ones—and as the warrant lacked probable cause to even justify the search. By holding that "[O]ur law holds the property of every man so sacred, that no man can set his foot upon his neighbour's close without his leave", Entick established the English precedent that the executive is limited in intruding on private property by common law. Colonial America Homes in Colonial America, on the other hand, did not enjoy the same sanctity as their British counterparts, because legislation had been explicitly written so as to enable enforcement of British revenue-gathering policies on customs; until 1750, in fact, the only type of warrant defined in the handbooks for justices of the peace was the general warrant. During what scholar William Cuddihy called the "colonial epidemic of general searches", the authorities possessed almost unlimited power to search for anything at any time, with very little oversight. In 1756, the colony of Massachusetts