Reborn John? The eighteenth-century afterlife of John Lilburne 1

Many scholars argue that the relatively high profile of the Levellers today, in both popular and academic works, is a recent phenomenon. Historians such as Royce MacGillivray, Alistair MacLachlan, and, most notably, Blair Worden, have claimed that the Levellers received virtually no attention from historians until the late nineteenth century and only really gained prominence in the twentieth century, through the work of liberal, socialist, and Marxist authors. Lilburne, as Rachel Foxley and Jason Peacey (among others) have shown, was one of the most written-about individuals of the 1640s and the subject of sophisticated propaganda campaigns. Indeed, Lilburne's fame was such that Mike Braddick has christened him the 'celebrity radical'. Lilburne's trial and punishment in 1637–38 set a pattern for most of the rest of his life, in which dramatic courtroom battles were followed by lengthy periods of imprisonment that nonetheless did not stop him from continuing his arguments in print.