ABSTRACT
Lilburne's experience in the Low Countries in the early 1650s is generally discussed in terms of his fraught relations with the republican regime, with Sir Arthur Hesilrige, and with Oliver Cromwell, in relation to both his personal affairs, the property he claimed had been taken from him, and his outspoken political position. It was this complex situation that resulted in Lilburne being accused of treason and then expelled from England, and is said to have led to his conspiring with royalists in order to kill Cromwell and overthrow the Rump. The place to start is with Lilburne's known movements after his banishment. This can be done in part through contemporary newspapers, whose editors capitalised on his notoriety, as well as through the observations of contemporaries and Lilburne's own statements. Lilburne's interpretation of Scott's strategy involved the idea that Oxford was engaged in a variety of subtle schemes, not all of which were necessarily compatible.
