LILBURNE, John (1618-1657), an English sectary and prolific pamphleteer, was the younger son of a gentleman of good family in the county of Durham, and was born in 1618. At the age of twelve he was apprenticed to a clothier in London, but he appears to have paid only slight attention to business, and to have early addicted himself to the “contention, novelties, opposition of government, and violent and bitter expressions” for which he afterwards became so conspicuous as to provoke the saying of Marten that, “if the world was emptied of all but John Lilburn, Lilburn would quarrel with John, and John with Lilburn.” He appears at one time to have been law-clerk to Prynne. In February 1638, for the part he had taken in importing and circulating the Merry Litany and other publications of Bastwick and Prynne, offensive to the bishops, he was sentenced to be publicly whipped from the Fleet prison to Palace Yard, Westminster, there to stand for two hours in the pillory, and afterwards to be kept in jail until a fine of £500 had been paid. Though gagged at the pillory, and confined in prison, he was not the man to give up his opinions or forego the pleasure of expressing them, and in the following year he did not improve his prospects of a speedy release by the kind of literary activity to which he devoted his enforced leisure. In point of fact he did not regain his liberty until November 7, 1640, when one of the earliest recorded speeches of Oliver Cromwell was made in support of his petition to the House of Commons. In 1641 he received an indemnity of £3000. He now entered the army, and in 1642 was taken prisoner at Brentford and tried for his life; sentence would no doubt have been executed had not the parliament by threatening reprisals forced his exchange. He soon ...