Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/105

 whom he had trusted had accused him of printing ten or twelve thousand books in Holland, and of receiving money for them from Wharton.

With his examiner Lilburne took a defiant tone. He showed a marked unwillingness to answer questions, and denied all knowledge of the charge; finally he protested that it was unwarrantable by the law of God and the law of the land to examine him against himself on matters other than those he was charged with, and not confront him with his accuser. Ten or twelve days later Lilburne was brought before the Court of Star Chamber, and here Lilburne speedily found many things in the court’s routine to which he could not conscientiously conform. He refused to pay the clerk his fees; he refused to take the ex officio oath that was used to examine men on the charges against them, for “he wished to be better advised of the lawfulness of it.” Wharton’s conduct, when he and Lilburne were summoned before the court for sentence, showed where Lilburne had learned to be scrupulous about oaths. He thundered out that the oath of churchwardenship, the oath of canonical obedience, and the oath ex officio were alike against the law of the land. No court could very well brook such contempt of its orders; much less a seventeenth-century court; least of all one of the august composition of the Star Chamber. Wharton and Lilburne were fined five hundred pounds each, and