Lilburne was not brought to trial till October, and in the six months’ interval, though the output of democratic pamphlets continued from the Tower, the Leveller movement in the army ended in open mutiny and defeat.
Carlyle tells the story accurately enough of the mutiny in Whalley’s regiment in Bishopsgate, London, on April 25th:
They want this and that; they seize their colours from the cornet, who is lodged at the “Bull” there; the general (Fairfax) and lieutenant-general (Cromwell) have to hasten thither, quell them, pack them forth on their march, seizing fifteen of them first to be tried by court-martial. Tried by instant court-martial, five of them are found guilty, doomed to die, but pardoned; and one of them, Trooper Lockyer, is doomed and not pardoned.[120] Trooper Lockyer is shot in Paul’s Churchyard on the morrow. A very brave young man, they say; though but three-and-twenty. “He has served seven years in these wars,” ever since the wars began. “Religious,” too, “of excellent parts and much beloved”; but with hot notions as to human freedom, and the rate at which the milleniums are attainable. Poor Lockyer! He falls shot in Paul’s Churchyard on Friday, amid the tears of men and women. Lockyer’s corpse is watched and wept over, not without prayer, in the eastern regions of the city, till a new week come; and on Monday, this is what we see advancing westward by way of funeral to him:
About one thousand went before the corpse, five or six in a file; the corpse was then brought, with six trumpets sounding a soldier’s knell, then the trooper’s horse came, clothed all over in mourning, and led by a footman. The corpse was adorned with bundles of rosemary, one half stained in blood, and the sword of the deceased along with them. Some thousands followed in ranks and files, all had sea-green and black ribbon tied on their hats and to their breasts, and the women brought up the rear.
At the new churchyard at Westminster some thousands more of the better sort met them, who thought not fit to march through the city. Many looked upon this funeral as an affront to parliament and the army; others called these people “Levellers”; but they took no notice of any of them.[121]
In May one Corporal William Thompson rallied a body of Levellers at Banbury, published a manifesto called “England’s Standard Advanced,” and inveighed against the tyranny of courts-martial. Overwhelmed by force of numbers, Thompson escaped, and later died fighting alone near Wellingborough. Some twenty of his followers joined the mutineers of Scrope’s regiment at Salisbury. Numbering some 1,200, these Levellers made their way by Marlborough and Wantage to Burford. Here Cromwell came up with the mutineers, and surprised them at midnight. Resistance was hopeless, and the majority at once surrendered. All were pardoned except Cornet Thompson (brother to William), and two corporals—Church and Perkins—who showed neither fear nor admitted any wrong on their part. These three men were shot in Burford churchyard on May 15th,[122] and with their deaths the Leveller movement was at an end.
But Lilburne was unsubdued. His new “Agreement of the Free People,” published on May 1st, called for annual parliaments elected by manhood suffrage—pensioners, militant royalists, and lawyers excluded—and for the free election of unendowed church ministers in each parish. At the same time he disclaimed all connection with Winstanley’s “Diggers”—political reform was Lilburne’s demand.[123]
Released on bail in July, Lilburne issued in August an “Impeachment for High Treason against Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law, James Ireton.” In this his hatred of government by the army compels the admission that monarchy is preferable to a military despotism: “If we must have a king, I for my part would rather have the prince than any man in the world.... For the present army to set up the pretended Saint Oliver or any other as their elected king, there will be nothing thereby from the beginning of the chapter to the end thereof but wars and the cutting of throats year after year; yea, and the absolute keeping up of a perpetual army under which the people are absolute and perfect slaves.”
Thereupon, instead of bringing him to trial, the government merely issued a warrant for Lilburne’s arrest. The agitator met this by a stronger manifesto, “An Outcry of the Young Men and Apprentices of London,” calling on the army to rise in support of a democratic parliament and to vindicate the men executed at Burford. Some response came from the garrison at Oxford, who summoned their officers to join in the demand for a free parliament, but no success attended this step.
At last in October Lilburne was brought to trial at the Guildhall, not on the charge for which he had been first committed to the Tower in March, but for the “treason” of his later pamphlets. The trial is memorable for Lilburne’s demand that counsel should be assigned to him in the event of legal technicalities arising, and for his bidding the jury remember they were judges of law as well as of fact. His real defence lay in the question he had put so often: Was England to be governed by the sword and a mock parliament, or by duly elected representatives of the People? The jury understood that Lilburne was on trial for putting that question, and, agreeing with him, they acquitted him. The verdict was received with tremendous applause, and “a loud and unanimous shout” of triumph went up from the citizens of London in the Guildhall.[124]