ABSTRACT
Meanwhile, the rage against military despotism that was John common to Cavaliers, Presbyterians, Levellers, and ordinary LUbnrne
Englishmen, was concentrated in the defence of John Litburne's remarkable personality. Many who cared little for his democratic theories saw that individual liberty was in danger. The press was gagged, the pulpits silenced on political topics, by the very men who two years before had saved liberty of thought. Lilburne stood for the property and freedom of the individual. Himself a political leveller, he disowned the communistic theories of the social levellers who were demanding the restoration of the land to the people .. He thus retained the sympathy of the proprietary classes. Within two months of the King's execution • Freeborn John' was standing before the Council of State, refusing to take off his hat in the presence of a company of gentlemen who, as he observed, had no more legal authority than he had himself. Then, affecting to perceive for the first time some members of Parliament at the board, he ostentatiously uncovered in their honour. Removed for a moment into the adjoining room, he heard through the door the voice of Cromwell raised loud in anger, .) tell you, Sir, you have no othcr way to deal with these men but to break them, or they will break you '. )n August, twenty file of musqueteers, sent to take Lilburne alive, shrank back in fear from the formidable presence, and yet more formidable language, of the prophet of England's liberties. His sacred person seemed fenced about by the Majesty of the People. When in October the great pamphleteer was at last brought into court, he bullied the Judges as he had bullied the Councillors and the musqueteers. It required a Jeffreys to put down a Lilburne, and Jeffreys was not yet old enough to scold anybody except his nurse. At this famous trial, the prisoner at the bar ruled that it lay with the jury alone to decide whether his writings had contravened the law. He had written that the Government was a tyranny and a usurpation, and to write thus had been made treason by an Act of the Republican Parliament. The issue in law was clear, but it was freely left to the decision of the jury by the brow-beaten Judges. A verdict of acquittal, boldly defying the new law and the new Government, called forth • such a loud and unanimous shout as is believed was never heard in Guild Hall, which lasted for about half an hour without intermission; which made the Judges for fear tum pale and hang down their heads'. Such a demonstration in the presence of a tribunal backed by the political power of Government, had been a thing unknown in England in the time of the Tudor and Stuart Kings.
