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 until Abraham Thornton did so in 1818.

[8] On his return from Holland, Lilburne was arrested (11 December 1637) for printing and circulating unlicensed books,[8] particularly William Prynne's News from Ipswich, that were not licensed by the Stationers' Company.

[12] On 18 April 1638, Lilburne was flogged with a three-thonged whip on his bare back, as he was dragged by his hands tied to the rear of an ox cart from Fleet Prison to the pillory at Westminster.

[13] While in prison, however, he managed to write and to get printed in 1638 an account of his own punishment styled The Work of the Beast, and in 1639 an apology entitled Come out of her, my people for separation from the Church of England.

[citation needed] In the First English Civil War he enlisted as a captain in Lord Brooke's regiment of foot in the Parliamentary army commanded by the Earl of Essex and fought at the Battle of Edgehill.

He then joined the Eastern Association under the command of the Earl of Manchester as a volunteer at the siege of Lincoln, and on 7 October 1643 he was commissioned as a major in Colonel King's regiment of foot.

The historian C. H. Firth argued Lilburne had gained a great reputation for courage and seems to have been a good officer, but his military career was unlucky.

He spent about six months in prison at Oxford, was plundered of all he had at Rupert's relief of Newark (22 March 1644), was shot through the arm at the taking of Walton Hall, near Wakefield (3 June 1644), and received very little pay.

[20] A second time (18 June 1645) Prynne caused Lilburne to be brought before the same committee, on a charge of publishing unlicensed pamphlets, but he was again dismissed unpunished.

Prynne vented his malice in a couple of pamphlets: A Fresh Discovery of prodigious Wandering: Stars and Firebrands, and The Liar Confounded, to which Lilburne replied in Innocency and Truth Justified (1645).

[citation needed] At the same time that Lilburne began his campaign, another group led by Gerrard Winstanley styling themselves True Levellers (that became known as Diggers), advocated equality in property as well as political rights.

[citation needed] Some recent scholarship suggests that Lilburne's role in the development of radical ideas may be more nuanced than traditionally thought.

As Como argues, "...celebrated print propagandists were merely collating, synthesizing, and subtly reshaping ideas, programs, and assumptions which they knew from experience were widely shared in the radical parliamentarian circles they occupied."

This suggests that Lilburne's contribution lay in systematizing and disseminating these ideas through his prolific pamphlet writing, exemplified by works like The Free Man's Freedom Vindicated.

[21] Lilburne was imprisoned from July to October 1645 for denouncing Members of Parliament who lived in comfort while the common soldiers fought and died for the Parliamentary cause.

It was while he was in the Tower of London that Lilburne, William Walwyn, Thomas Prince and Richard Overton wrote the third edition of An Agreement of the Free People of England.

Armed with this evidence parliament published a long declaration against the Levellers and passed a motion to try Lilburne for high treason, using a court similar to that which had tried Charles I.

When the jury found him not guilty, the public shouted their approval so loudly and for so long that it was another half hour before the proceedings could be formally closed.

On 22 December 1648 he had obtained an ordinance granting him £3,000, in compensation for his sufferings from the Star Chamber, the money being made payable from the forfeited estates of various Royalists in the county of Durham.

As this source had proved insufficient, Lilburne, by the aid of Marten and Cromwell, obtained another ordinance (30 July 1650), charging the remainder of the sum on confiscated chapter-lands, and thus became owner of some of the lands of the Durham chapter.

Lilburne took up their cause, assisted by his friend, John Wildman, and headed a riot (19 October 1650), by means of which the commoners sought to obtain possession of the disputed lands.

In 1649, Lilburne had published a violent attack on Hesilrige, whom he accused of obstructing the payment of the money granted him by the parliamentary ordinance of 28 December 1648.

John Lilburne intervened with a violent attack on Hesilrige and the committee, terming them "unjust and unworthy men, fit to be spewed out of all human society, and deserving worse than to be hanged".

[40] He next joined with Josiah Primat—the person from whom George Lilburne asserted that he had bought the collieries—and presented to parliament, on 23 December 1651, a petition repeating; and specifying the charges against Hesilrige.

Parliament thereupon appointed a committee of fifty members to examine witnesses and documents; who reported on 16 Jan. 1652, that the petition was "false, malicious, and scandalous".

"He performed the great feat which no one else ever achieved, of extorting from the court a copy of his indictment, in order that he might put it before counsel, and be instructed as to the objections he might take against it".

[47]The government filled London with troops, but in spite of their officers, the soldiers shouted and sounded their trumpets when they heard that Lilburne was acquitted.

[56] In the summer of 1657, while visiting his wife, who was expecting their tenth child,[58] Lilburne died at Eltham 29 August 1657, and was buried at Moorfields, "in the new churchyard adjoining to Bedlam".

He was ready to assail any abuse at any cost to himself, but his passionate egotism made him a dangerous champion, and he continually sacrificed public causes to personal resentments.

It would be unjust to deny that he had a real sympathy with sufferers from oppression or misfortune; even when he was himself an exile he could interest himself in the distresses of English prisoners of war, and exert the remains of his influence to get them relieved.