ABSTRACT
John Lilburne was a charismatic figure who could rally impressive popular support in London. As one of the leaders of the Leveller movement, which flourished from the mid-1640s in the period of uncertainty following the end of the first English civil war, he was in and out of prison repeatedly, and communicated his experiences and his political vision in his prolific pamphlet writing. Central to these was his self-depiction as a 'free-born Englishman'. Lilburne drew on the concept of granting a set of quasi-native rights to (foreign) denizens in order to reinforce his own conceptualisation of just such a coherent set of rights belonging to natives by birth. Lilburne's use of old legal terms such as 'privilege', 'immunity', 'liberty', and 'franchise' is part of this project to unify the entitlements of English law. All of these terms denoted specific rights or exemptions granted piecemeal to individuals or bodies, and they were overlapping concepts.
