Lilburne, John

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Lilburne, John (1615–57). Leveller leader. Of minor Durham gentry stock, he was apprenticed to a London clothier. In 1638 he was hauled before Star Chamber, flogged, pilloried, and imprisoned for distributing illegal anti-episcopal literature. Cromwell secured his release in 1640, and he rose to lieutenant-colonel in Cromwell's Eastern Association cavalry, but left the service in 1645. Thenceforth he was in and out of prison, offending both Lords and Commons with his voluminous, unlicensed pamphlets and his claims for the rights of free-born Englishmen. Combative, indomitable, and self-dramatizing, he was the leading spirit of the Leveller movement from 1647 onward, and broke with Cromwell. In 1649 he denounced the newly established Commonwealth in Englands New Chains Discovered, fostered a serious army mutiny, and publicly demanded Cromwell's impeachment. A London jury acquitted him of treason, but the Rump banished him in December 1651. He returned without leave in 1653 to a life of captivity, which was eased latterly. He died a quaker.

Austin Woolrych

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