Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/121

 formers and repeated the charges against the speaker. The House forthwith voted Lilburne and Hawkins to the custody of the sergeant.

Bastwick later tried with small success to disprove Lilburne’s accusation that the information was malicious. Bastwick said he had supposed that Hawkins had told his story to Lilburne more fully, and that Lilburne would be able to inform further; but Bastwick had worded his information unnaturally with the apparent purpose of bringing Lilburne in as principal instead of accessory. But while disclaiming any malicious intent, Bastwick unconsciously revealed what was perhaps the real motive for his persecution of Lilburne. In his Ivst Defence, he made no secret of his belief that the various persons concerned in the charges against Lenthall and Holles were members of a desperate Independent faction willing to attain its ends by the complete ruin of Presbyterianism and Parliament alike. Therefore, it is very likely that on July 19 he had scented a deep-laid plot in the various conferences among the Independents at Westminster, and had hastened to strike at the man who seemed to him the ringleader.

On July 24, Lilburne was summoned before a