Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/147

 the men of Westmoreland and Cumberland against Richard Barwis, member for Carlisle. The House of Commons, so Musgrave believed, first impeded his efforts, and then imprisoned him. In 1646 the House of Lords successively imprisoned William Larner, his brother, and his servant for selling radical books. The Lords imprisoned Richard Overton for printing such a book; for a similar offense it soon after imprisoned his wife and his brother. In all these latter cases, the prisoners pleaded the rights of commoners against the Lords; and in none of them did the House of Commons act with more expedition than it showed in the case of Lilburne.

Yet the radicals did not visit the same castigation on the House of Commons as on the House of Lords. To a dispassionate observer, the Lower House would have appeared an accomplice with the Lords in a series of high-handed attempts to suppress freedom of speech and of the press; attempts each of which furnished the radical presses with fresh ammunition. But since the House of Commons was the center of the radicals’ ideal constitution, they addressed it with respect, imploring it to assume the position of sovereignty which they assigned it.

In the course of 1646 there can be traced a distinct development in the radical program, both in the reforms sought and in the political and constitutional basis on which they were posed. The