COMMON FREEDOM OF THE PEOPLE: john lilburne and the english revolution

416 Pages·2018·47.797 MB·English

by  Braddick, Michael

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/03/18, SPi
THE COMMON FREEDOM
OF THE PEOPLE
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/03/18, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/03/18, SPi
the
COMMON
FREEDOM
PEOPLE
of the
John Lilburne & the English Revolution
MICH A EL BR A DDICK
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/03/18, SPi
3
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For Cora and Melissa
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[My] great love and respect [are] justly due unto you, for your constant
zealous affection to the Common Wealth, and for your undaunted reso-
lution in defence of the common freedome of the People
William Walwyn to John Lilburne, 1645
Quoted from The Levellers in the English Revolution,
ed. G. E. Aylmer (London, 1975), p. 64
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/03/18, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/03/18, SPi
Preface
At the heart of this book is a remarkable life. The second son of a modest
gentry family in the north-east, John Lilburne was apprenticed to a London
woollen merchant in 1632. Through his master’s connections he became
involved in opposition to the religious policies of Charles I, and in the pub-
lication of dangerous books, leading to a first arrest in 1637. He was eventually
to be accused of treason four times, and was on trial for his life three times.
Over twenty years he was subjected to brutal physical punishment, harsh
prison conditions, and lonely exile, but he also managed to fit in active mili-
tary service in the civil war. He fought bravely at a number of the key battles,
was shot through the arm, nearly lost an eye in a pike accident, and rose
to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Initially in trouble for his opposition to
Charles I’s regime, he was subsequently at odds with every government under
which he lived. He died in his early forties, having spent the major part of
his adult life in prison or exile.
In the course of this dramatic life he fought some important legal battles:
for the right to remain silent (one of the issues on which he has been cited
by US constitutional lawyers) and to an open trial (an issue on which he has
been cited in the US Supreme Court), while his argument that juries were
judges of law as well as of fact long outlived him. He made ample use of
habeas corpus, and his example became central to the image of the freeborn
Englishman of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.1 Most strikingly of
all, he was closely associated with the Leveller-led campaign for a written
constitution, an Agreement of the People, which would have established a gov-
ernment answerable to the will of the people two centuries before the
advent of mass representative democracy in Europe.
This was a remarkably courageous career, but the strength of character on
which it drew made Lilburne an unreliable friend. It was Oliver Cromwell,
in his first recorded parliamentary speech, who called for Lilburne’s release
from imprisonment imposed by Charles I’s regime. Yet Lilburne was also tried
for treason in the first year of republican rule, and Cromwell was probably