ABSTRACT
Hailed as "Free-Born John" for his defiance of Britain's Star Chamber court, John Lilburne wrote jeremiads in defense of liberty and became the most celebrated political prisoner of his age. Lilburne's combativeness and contempt for England's established church kept him in almost constant legal peril while also making him into a popular hero. At young age, Lilburne leaped into the contentious politics of post-Reformation England. Lilburne proclaimed his innocence but refused to swear an oath, a common Puritan tactic but one never before used at the Star Chamber. Lilburne earned his freedom when a long- suspended Parliament reconvened in 1640, and Oliver Cromwell made his unjust imprisonment a public cause. Cromwell moved to suppress the Levellers and had Lilburne and the others arrested. Cromwell kept him imprisoned until his death in 1657, a cruel fate for a man who had committed his life to liberty and whose ideals have inspired liberal legal reforms in both England and the United States.
