Free-born John Lilburne: A hero for our time

| | | | | | | |

Geoffrey Bindman (London, BIHR): My old school in Newcastle, founded in 1545, was proud of famous former pupils. Several of them were mentioned in the school song. Eldon was the procrastinating judge caricatured by Dickens in Bleak House, Armstrong an armament manufacturer, Collingwood was Nelson’s second-in–command at Trafalgar. Absent was John Lilburne, leader of the Levellers at the time of the English Civil War, who I discovered years later had been at the school in the early 17th century.

Lilburne is only now coming to be recognised as a fundamentally important figure in our political and constitutional history. He was also a man of extraordinary personal courage and determination. Cromwell thought highly of him and made him a colonel in his army but he became disillusioned with Cromwell when he abandoned the democratic programme which Lilburne passionately advocated.

In his early twenties Lilburne was brought before the Star Chamber accused of “sending of factious and seditious libels out of Holland into England.” When questioned he refused to answer, saying “I know it is warrantable by the law of God, and I think by the law of the land, that I may stand on my just defence, and not answer your interrogatories, and that my accusers ought to be brought face to face, to justify what they accuse me of”. Lilburne was whipped and pilloried but his claims to the right of silence and to hear and challenge the evidence against him foreshadowed the safeguards later built in to our criminal justice process.

In 1641 he was vindicated by the House of Commons which resolved “that the sentence of the Star Chamber given against John Lilburne is illegal and against the liberty of the subject: and also bloody, cruel, barbarous, and tyrannical.” Later however, he accused the Commons of reviving the practices of the Star Chamber when he was arrested for publishing pamphlets advocating religious toleration and attacking suppression of dissent. Again he refused to answer incriminating questions, condemned the secrecy of the proceedings, and cited the authority of Magna Carta. Later he refused to kneel before the House of Lords. He was the first to reject this humiliating practice.

Lilburne described the Levellers as “the middle sort of people” and “the hobnails, clouted shoes, the private soldiers, the leather and woollen aprons and the laborious and industrious people of England.” They had massive support among Cromwell’s New Model Army. They produced the first draft of a written constitution – the “Agreement of the People”.Their ideas were debated in Putney Church in 1647 when Cromwell himself presided. It was at one of the debates that the Leveller Colonel Rainborough uttered the memorable words:”For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore, truly, Sir, I think it’s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that Government.” Two years later King Charles I was beheaded in Whitehall.

The Levellers have almost been airbrushed out of history but their ideas have much relevance to-day. And the contribution of Lilburne to our democracy and our law has never been properly recognised. Channel Four is about to screen a four-part drama, “The Devil’s Whore” based on the events of this period. If, as is reported, it will highlight the the Levellers, that is all to the good. It is time they were taken seriously and given their proper place in history.

| | | | | | | |