Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/111

 After his exchange he refused a government place in order to continue his crusade for England’s liberty. He held commissions, first as major of Colonel King’s regiment, then as lieutenant colonel of the Earl of Manchester’s dragoons. In Cromwell’s disputes with Manchester, Lilburne sided with Cromwell, becoming one of Cromwell’s witnesses against the earl in 1644. He quarreled with both Manchester and Colonel King, and preferred charges of treachery, cowardice, and embezzlement against King to a Parliament committee. He laid down his command early in 1645, refusing to take the Covenant as the New Model Ordinance prescribed.

This is the Lilburne of 1645. Already a careful observer of his life can distinguish his salient characteristics. He has a powerful intellect that will take nothing on credit, but persists, with a keenness that compensates for narrow information, in analyzing for itself any political situation. A moral courage seconds his intellect, impelling him ever to occupy the post of danger in the vindication of a new idea; at the same time self-esteem makes him conscious that the eyes of all men should be on him in his post of danger and duty. Withal, he has an instinctive insight into the thinking of the plain people that puts a force defying analysis into his long pamphlets, with their overgrown para-