Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/252

 ment (Clarke Papers, i. 171). When the army marched through London and Fairfax was made lieutenant of the Tower, Lilburne's expectations of immediate release were again disappointed. Though the committee at last reported (14 Sept.), the Commons referred the report back to it again, and appointed a new committee specially to consider the legal questions involved (15 Oct.). Lilburne was allowed to argue his case before the committee (20 Oct.), and on 9 Nov. the Commons ordered that he should have liberty from day to day to come abroad, to attend the committee and to instruct his counsel, without a keeper (The Grand Plea of Lieutenant-colonel John Lilburne; The Additional Plea; Commons' Journals, v. 301, 334). Before his release Lilburne offered, if he could obtain a reasonable proportion of justice from the parliament, to leave the kingdom and not to return as long as the present troubles lasted (Additional Plea; Commons' Journals, v. 326; Tanner MSS. lviii. 549). But ever since June his suspicions of Cromwell had been increasing, and he now regarded him as a treacherous and self-seeking intriguer. The negotiations of the army leaders with the king, and the suggestions of royalist fellow-prisoners in the Tower, led him to credit the story that Cromwell had sold himself to the king (Jonah's Cry; Two Letters by Lilburne to Colonel Henry Marten; The Jugglers Discovered, 1647). Cromwell's breach with the king, in November 1647, which Lilburne attributed solely to the fear of assassination, did not remove these suspicions, and the simultaneous suppression of the levelling party in the army seemed conclusive proof of Cromwell's tyrannical designs. Regardless of his late protestations, Lilburne, in conjunction with Wildman, with the ‘agents’ representing the mutinous part of the army, and with the commissioners of the levellers of London and the adjacent counties, drew up a petition to the commons, as ‘the supreme authority of England,’ demanding the abolition of the House of Lords and the immediate concession of a number of constitutional and legal changes. Emissaries were sent out to procure signatures, and mass meetings of petitioners arranged. Information of these proceedings was given to the House of Lords on 17 Jan. 1648, and on their complaint the House of Commons summoned Lilburne to the bar (19 Jan.), and after hearing his lengthy vindication committed him again to the Tower (Lords' Journals, ix. 663–666; Commons' Journals, v. 436–8; Truth's Triumph, by John Wildman; The Triumph Stained, by George Masterson; A Whip for the present House of Lords, by Lilburne, A Declaration of some proceedings of Lieutenant-colonel John Lilburne and his associates; An Impeachment of High Treason against Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton, by Lilburne, 1649). Six months later the presbyterian leaders in the Commons, calling to mind the charge which Lilburne had brought against Cromwell at his last appearance before the house, resolved to set him free. On 27 July Sir John Maynard, one of the eleven members impeached by the army in 1647, set forth his case in a powerful speech. On 1 Aug. the Commons passed a vote for Lilburne's release, and next day the Lords not only followed their example but remitted the fine and sentence of imprisonment which they had imposed two years earlier (A Speech by Sir John Maynard, 1648; Commons' Journals, v. 657; Lords' Journals, x. 407).

On the day of Lilburne's release Major Huntington laid before the lords his charge against Cromwell. Lilburne states that he was ‘earnestly solicited again and again’ to join Huntington in impeaching Cromwell, ‘and might have had money enough to boot to have done it,’ but he was afraid of the consequences of a Scottish victory, and preferred to encourage Cromwell by a promise of support (Legal Fundamental Liberties, 1649 ed., ii. 32). Nevertheless all Lilburne's actions during the political agitation of the autumn of 1648 were marked by a deep distrust of the army leaders. He refused to take part in the king's trial, and, though holding that he deserved death, thought that he ought to be tried by a jury instead of by a high court of justice. He also feared the consequences of executing the king and abolishing the monarchy before the constitution of the new government had been agreed upon and its powers strictly defined. The constitutional changes demanded by Lilburne and his friends had been set forth in the London petition of 11 Sept. 1648 (, vii. 1257), and he next procured the appointment of a committee of sixteen persons—representing the army and the different sections of the republican party—to draw up the scheme of a new constitution. But when the committee had drawn up their scheme, the council of officers insisted on revising and materially altering it. Lilburne, who regarded these changes as a gross breach of faith, published the scheme of the committee (15 Dec.) under the title of ‘The Foundations of Freedom, or an Agreement of the People,’ and addressed a strong protest to Fairfax (‘A Plea for Common Right and Freedom,’ 28 Dec. 1648). The council of officers also, on 20 Jan. 1649, presented their revised version of the scheme to parliament, also