X.

1649. Deter

spirit of

We have already related the political conduct of CHAP. Lilburne, and the events connected with it in the early part of the year 1649. He had been liberated from confinement on the eighteenth of July; mined and from that time the government would no Lilburne. doubt have been well contented to have left him unnoticed and unmolested, if he had been willing to adopt an inoffensive conduct. But such were not the purposes of their adversary. His spirit was unsubdued by the hardships he had experienced. On the contrary, as, after having seriously consulted in what manner he should be proceeded against, they suffered the affair to die away in silence, he was but the more incited to intrigue against a government which allowed itself to be insulted with impunity. They resolved to defend themselves against the future assaults of Lilburne and persons of a similar character, by a new law of treasons enacted in May,

III.

1649.

BOOK and reenacted with a few variations on the seventeenth of July, the day previous to his liberation. But this audacious and intrepid sower of sedition seems to have made no account of their statute. He saw in it a new feature, avoided in the act of treasons of Edward the Third, bare words being made treason on the present occasion: and he seems to have relied on the disreputableness of this innovation, and on the effects of his own popularity, intrepidity and eloquence, to preserve him from the consequences, if he should be prosecuted under this law.

He meditates

further aggressions.

In what had passed he saw every thing to encourage him. The insurrection was put down; but he, its author, was unshorn of any of his means to create confusion and contest. He determined therefore again to take the field, and to overturn the system now established, or to perish in the attempt. He built upon the fulness of his powers. He saw an usurping government, unsupported, nay, in secret condemned, by the nation they undertook to rule. Every thing in this case depended on the silent lapse of months and of years. An usurping government in time becomes a legitimate one. But the present men were newly seated at the helm. They had not opinion in their favour; they were generally looked upon as upstarts, and with dislike; and they had nothing to support them but their character for sagacity and talent, and the devotedness of a small band

of men, who confided in their integrity, and sympathised with them in their fervent passion for political liberty, religious toleration, and a frame of mind favourable to the growth of national independence and virtue.

Unawed and exasperated by the situation in which he stood, a prisoner in the Tower, committed on suspicion of treason, he published on the eighth of June a political discourse of seventyfive crowded pages, entitled The Legal Fundamental Liberties of the People of England Revived, Asserted and Vindicated. In this piece he says, "The remainder of the few knights, citizens and burgesses, that colonel Pride thought convenient to leave, as most fit for his and his masters designs to destroy the good old laws, liberties and customs of England, and by force of arms to rob the people of their lives, estates and properties, cannot properly be called the nations or peoples parliament, but the parliament of Pride and his associates." And again: "By purging parliament, and suffering none to sit, but for the major part a company of absolute schoolboys, who, like good boys, will say their lessons after their lords and masters, and so be a screen, with the name of a parliament, and the shadow of authority, to pick the peoples pockets, they have placed themselves in parallel to none but a company of murderers, thieves and robbers, who may justly be dispossessed by the first force that is able to

III.

1649.

BOOK do it." Further on, he styles them " a company of bloody and inhuman butchers." And towards the close he addresses the men whom he considered as at the head of the government, "Oh, Cromwel, Fairfax, Ireton, Haselrig, I will answer you, as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego of old answered your brother-tyrant, Nebuchadnezzar."

His challenge.

Obtains his liberation.

Finding no change produced in his situation. by this effort, towards the close of the month he tried the effect of a letter to Cornelius Holland, one of the members of the council of state, containing a proposal which we should now consider as ludicrous. "Let the house of commons," he says, "chuse two men, and let me chuse other two, and let these four, if they cannot agree, fix on a fifth. Let the debate be public, and let me have free leave to speak for myself: and, if my innocency be not thus established, I will forfeit and lose all I have, and my life to boot." He adds, "If this proposition is not accepted within the next five days, I shall hold myself free to do what I can in anatomising what I know publicly or privately of you and your associates a." This

letter obtained no notice.

On the seventeenth of July Lilburne addressed a letter to lord Grey of Groby, Henry Marten, and two other members of parliament, stating that his son had died of the small-pox the day before, and

that his wife and two other children were ill, and expressing his desire under this circumstance that he might be allowed a few days' liberty to visit them. The next day Henry Marten moved the house of commons that he should be liberated accordingly on security, which was granted.

CHAP.

X.

1649.

his im

of Cromwel

and Ireton.

This indulgence seems for a short time to have Publishes interrupted the hostilities of the disturber. But peachment early in August he appeared again from the press with a publication which he entitled an Impeachment of High Treason against Cromwel and Ireton. The body of this tract purports to be the copy of a speech delivered by Lilburne at the bar of the house of commons on the nineteenth of January 1648, when he had been summoned to give an account of a tumultuous meeting to which he had been a party d. In the course of this speech he has interwoven a charge against Cromwel, on the old story of his having been won over by the king with the offer of being made earl of Essex and knight of the garter. For this story Lilburne quotes at second hand a lady of quality, doubtless lady Carlisle. He adds, "Cromwel and Ireton's present animosity against the king (this speech was delivered about a fortnight after the vote of non-addresses) is merely because he

Preparative to Hue and Cry, p. 38.

© Journals. Rushworth, p. 969, says, he made a large, if not a tedious answer to the information against him.

e See Vol. II, p. 400.