Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/152

 city government of London democratic. On September 29, a citizen attempted to force himself into the meeting of aldermen and common council at which the lord mayor was to be chosen. Being forcibly excluded, he read to the assembled people a “Protestation”. The city marshal thereupon carried the disturber before the court of mayor and aldermen, who examined him as to the authorship of the Protestation, but did not push the matter. On hearing of the incident, Lilburne bestirred himself, getting books and copies of records on the liberties of London. These he sent to a friend, who based on them a protest against the legality of the city government. The protest charged with usurpation aldermen and common councils past and present, in that they had excluded the “commonalty” of the city from rights guaranteed by the charters, and had themselves presumed to make laws and choose mayors and sheriffs. The protest traced to the long continuance of this abuse the rise of monopolies in the city, the ignoble surrender in the case of ship money; worst of all, the men of the city so long as they submitted to rulers they had not chosen were freemen in name only.