Apprenticed to a wholesale cloth-merchant in London, John Lilburne soon became acquainted with Bastwick and Prynne, then busy over anti-episcopal pamphlets, and, keeping such company, naturally fell into the clutches of the Star Chamber. The charge against him was that he had helped to print and circulate unlicensed books, in particular, Prynne’s News from Ipswich; and though Lilburne declared the charge to be false, on his refusal to take the usual oath to answer truly all questions put to him, the Star Chamber adjudged him guilty, and passed sentence—Lilburne was to be whipped from the Fleet to Westminster, to stand in the pillory, and to be kept in prison.
The sentence was carried out on February 13th, 1638, but Lilburne was not cowed, for he scattered some of Bastwick’s offending pamphlets on the road, and was gagged in the pillory to reduce him to silence. In prison things went hardly with Lilburne, for the authorities had him placed in irons and kept in solitary confinement, and only the compassion of fellow prisoners saved him from actual starvation in the two years and nine months of his imprisonment.
It was a rough beginning, and John Lilburne was henceforth an agitator and a rebel.
At the end of 1640 one of the first things done by the Long Parliament was to order Lilburne’s release, and in the following May the sentence was pronounced “illegal and against the liberties of the subject.” But illegal or not, the punishment had been inflicted, and with unbroken spirit, passionately resenting the tyranny that could so wrong men, Lilburne flew quickly to the attack on the authors of the injustice.
At Edgehill Lilburne held a captain’s commission, and at Brentford he was taken prisoner by the royalists. Only the threat of swift reprisals by the parliamentary army saved him from being shot as “a traitor,” and the following year he was again at liberty on an exchange of prisoners. Again, after fighting at Marston Moor, he fell into the hands of the royalists, and, shot through the arm, was kept in prison at Oxford for six months.
Brave soldier as Lilburne was, he left the army in 1645 (with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and with £880 arrears of pay owing to him) rather than take the covenant and subscribe to the requirements of Cromwell’s “new model.”
And now monarchy having fallen from its high estate, Lilburne at once saw elements of tyranny in the Parliamentary government, and did not hesitate to say so. Courageous and intrepid, with considerable legal knowledge, a passion for liberty, and clear views on democracy, John Lilburne might have given invaluable service to the commonwealth. He had shown skill and daring in the war, his character for fearless endurance had been proved, his ability as a pamphleteer was considerable, and his capacity for work enormous; the government had either to treat Lilburne as a friend or foe—he was not to be ignored. The government, unwisely, decided Lilburne was an enemy, and for the next ten years he fought the rule of parliament and the army, his popularity increasing with every new pamphlet he produced. The price the commonwealth government paid for its opposition to Lilburne was to be seen on the death of Cromwell.[114]
From 1645 to 1649 Lilburne’s vigorous criticisms of the men in power provoked retaliation, and brought him to Newgate. But in prison or out of prison Lilburne went on hammering away to establish a democratic constitution. The time was to come when Cromwell would find the Long Parliament had outlived its usefulness and would end it by main force. Lilburne was anxious in 1647 for a radical reform of parliament and a general manhood suffrage. His proposals were popular in the army, and had Cromwell supported him the whole future of English politics would have been changed.
When the Presbyterian majority in parliament proposed the disbandment of the army in 1647, the regiments chose their agitators, and, refusing to disband, drew up the “Agreement of the People” and the “Case for the Army.” These documents give the political standpoint of the Levellers and the particular grievances to be remedied.
The distribution of parliamentary seats according to the number of inhabitants was the chief proposal in the “Agreement of the People,” and the principles maintained are that “no man is bound to a government under which he has not put himself,” and that “all inhabitants who have not lost their birthright should have an equal voice in elections.”