John Lilburne, known as "Free-born John, " was an English political activist and pamphleteer.
Background
He was probably born in Sunderland but the exact date of his birth is unknown; there is some dispute as to whether he was born in 1613, 1614, or 1615. His father Richard Lilburne was the last man in England to insist that he should be allowed to settle a legal dispute with a trial by combat. John's elder brother Robert Lilburne also later became active in the Parliamentary cause, but seems not to have shared John's Leveller beliefs.
At an early age he was undoubtedly impressed by scenes of the suppression of Puritan preachers who attacked the doctrine and ceremonies of the Church of England as being too popish.
Education
By his own account Lilburne received the first ten years' of his education in Newcastle, almost certainly at the Royal Free Grammar School. He also had some schooling in Bishop Auckland.
Career
In 1638 he was tried and convicted in the Court of Star Chamber for printing and circulating scurrilous literature. He was whipped, pilloried, and then imprisoned until released by the sympathetic Long Parliament in 1641. This marked the beginning of a long career of persecution and imprisonment.
Lilburne served the parliamentary cause against King Charles I from 1642 to 1645, when he gave up his commission in protest against signing the Covenant of the Presbyterians. He then became a leading pamphleteer in the cause of the Independents and later its more radical offshoot, the Leveller movement.
He soon openly defied the more conservative Puritan elements and in 1646 was imprisoned and fined a large sum. Again released, Lilburne achieved perhaps the acme of his power in 1647 in the document that bears the stamp of his influence, An Agreement of the People. This statement of army radicals and Levellers called for representative government through guaranteeing the rights of Parliament and extending suffrage. Once again he was jailed, this time by authority of Parliament, and eventually brought to trial in 1649. He conducted his own defense superbly; he was acquitted by a jury and released in November of 1649 amid much popular jubilation.
A climax was soon reached with Lilburne's vituperative attacks against Sir Arthur Hesilrige, one of the leaders in Parliament. Lilburne was found guilty of slanderous accusations, was fined and required to pay damages, and finally was banished from England for life by act of Parliament in January 1652. His exile, chiefly in Holland, was restless and troubled.
In 1653 Lilburne defiantly returned to England and was promptly jailed. Though he was acquitted by the jury, Oliver Cromwell's government considered him too dangerous to be let loose, and he was imprisoned until released-now a convert to Quakerism - by special permission of the Lord Protector. He lived only another year. He paid heavily for his pamphleteering, much of which was beyond the realm of decency and fairness, though he was never happier than as a center of contention and defiance.
He was a supporter of extreme democracy in government. Later Lilburne's pamphleteering then took a new direction as he struck out against trade monopolies of all sorts, and he championed the cause of some dispossessed tenants.
Views
Quotations:
Lilburne once described himself as "an honest, truebred, free-born Englishman, that never in his life loved a tyrant nor feared an oppressor. "
Connections
Lilburne married Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Dewell. During his imprisonment in 1649 he lost two sons, but a daughter and other children survived him.