tenour of the Petition of Right and all our fundamental laws most arbitarily as if the people of England were the most absolute conquered invassalized slaves upon the sace of the whole earth lay a tax of sixscore thousand pound a moneth upon the people to fill his pockets and his fat associates and doth he not do more then all the foregoing Kings and Tyrants of England durst do in chusing by himself and such of his meer mercenary Officers joyned with him as he pleaseth a Parliament or Legislators of whom he pleaseth to make laws for the people without asking their consents in the least Sure I am the Chronicles and Records of England declare that it was one of the Articles for which King Richard the second was discrowned and lost his crown That by himself and his own authority he had displaced but some Burgesses of the Parliament and â—ad placed such oâ—her in their â—oomes as would best fit and serve his own turn See William Martins Chronicle of the last Edition folio 128. Article 21. And in Article 22. He is accused for causing certain laws in Parliament to be made for his own gaine and to serve his own turn And in Article the 20. He is accused for over-awing the Members of Parliament that they durst not speak their minds freely And as for our lives it was Master Peters averment to me long since in the Tower we had no law lest in England and it was his averment yesterday being Sunday the last of July in the presence of the General before some of my acquaintance two of which aver to me that he averred to them we have now no law left or in being in England so that it seems the Generals will must be our rule to walk by and his pleasure the taker away of our lives without any crime or charge in law laid unto our charges or any defence or speaking for our selves permitted to us or required of us which is absolutely and perfectly my case as appears by the Votes of Parliament of the 15. Jan. 1651. printed in my Trial Therefore Judge seriously of your own and consider impartially whether now in your present condition under your great high and mighty pretended Christian master and lawless Lords You are not in a worse condition then ever any of our forefathers were under their Heathen Pagan Papal Episcopal or Presbyterian governours having now to deal with a company of mighty pretended Christians and Saints who yet make it their trade to get their bread and livelihood by shedding the blood and butchering of their neighbours and country-men they know not wherefore whose tables are dayly richly spread and deckt with the price of the blood of the people of England and their back and houses richly clothed and adorned with the same whose laws and liberties they have destroyed and confounded although they receive their daily wages and subsistence from them and that for no other publikely owned and declared cause but for the preserving of them And being it is against the law of God the light of nature reason and the law of England as the Officers of the Army in many of their Declarations have declared for a man to be Judge in his own case as they are with me in constantly picking and nulling my Judges of what persons they please yet in a way of equity and justice I challenge all my adversaries amongst them even from the General to the meanest Officer to chuse 2 3 4 5 or 6 honest friends and I will do the like and in the face of the Sun even to the utmost hazard of life I will refer my self to a bide by their judgement upon a fair and open publike hearing for all manner of things from my Cradle to this hour that they are able to lay to my charge and if they refuse this do they not declare thereby their own guilt which I am confident there is none of them all dare imbrace it but only continue in their belying me behind my back when I am not present to maintaine my own innocency which to preserve amongst you and other honest people in England I shall desire you seriously to read the honest papers already printed and published by my self and friends or well-wishers for my vindication and justification the names of which thus followeth 1 My three addresses to the Councel of State 2 A Jury mans Judgement 3 A defensive Declaration of Lieut. Col. John Lilburn the second Edition published July 1. 1653. 4 A Plea in Law for John Lilburne the second Edition of July 2. 1653. 5 The prisoners mournful cry or an epistle to the Lord Maior of London July 1. 1653. 6 The second Letter to the Lord Major of the 10. July 1653. 7 The fundamental laws and liberties of England claimed 12 My petition to the Parliament of the 12 July 1653. 13 Malice detected 14 A conference with the souldiers or a parley with a party of horse which with drawn swords entered the Sessions al Mr. John Lilburns trial 15 Oyes O yes O yes at the Quest of inquiry holden in the Court of common Reason 16 A cavet to those that shall resolve whether right or wrong to destroy J. L. 17 My friends petition of London of the 9 of July 1653. to the Parliament which hath relation to their large petition formerly delivered with another petition with my letter to the Lord chief Baron on the back of it dated July 14 1653. with a paper to every particular Member of the honorable Parliament to back the former 18 The honest women of Londons petition with their paper to back it unto every Individual Member of Parliament 19. The young men and Apprentices of Londons petition 20 The honest people of Kents petition 21 Tne exceptions of John Lilburne Gentleman to the Bill of Indictment printed by Rich. Moone at the seven Stars neer the great North-door of Pauls 22 The trial of John Lilburn prisoner in Newgate at the Sessions in Old-Baily the 13 14 15 and 16 of July 1653. 23 The honest men of Hartford shires petition for John Lilburn which is the onely thing of all the forementioned that is not printed But in regard I am naming of books for my vindication I beseech you to take notice that there is one of the excellentest pieces that lately I have read in England for clearing up the ancient fundamental laws rights and liberties setled by our forefathers lately published by that sober and rational man Captaine Robert Norwood and printed for the foresaid Rich. Moone Intituled An additional discourse c. which hath much relation to a most laborious piece commonly reputed to be made by Master Sadler the Town-Clark of London and which is Intituled Rights of our Kingdome or customs of our ancestors Printed at London by Richard Bishop 1649. aâ—â— in a special manner mentioned in the 27. pag. of the foresaid Captaine Norwoods book in the diligent reading of which you may exactly see what your
printed papers about the Trial of the late King upon this very subject to make you now abominate of governing by Conquest or any other way like it especially that of the Officers of the Army of the 16 of Novemb. 16â—8 dated at St. Albons and John Cook your Soliciter Generals stated Case of the King And as to the nature and extent of implied and tacid trusts read in the first part of the Parliaments book of Declarations pag. 150 151. And the Armies Declaration of the 14 of June 1647. made immediatly after their League Covenant and Contract made and signed at New market and Triplo heaths and printed in their Book of Declarations about pag. 44 45. And can any man be so irrationally brutish as to imapine and think that those that you account honest people in England whom I am sure with my individual self have adhered with lives and estates to this very day to their fundamental laws and liberties and to the primitivest and best of the Parliaments and Armies Declarations that ever they will be so fellonious to themselves as to assist and enable you with their own power with their own estates with their own lives and blouds to enable you to set up that that shall destroy them and all that 's near and dear unto them if you please and when you please but such a thing for any thing I can apprehend is that Parliament that you tell my Wise you intend speedily to set up which I cannot in the least discern is to be chosen and entrusted by the people or any part even of those that have in all things as firmly as any of your selves adhered unto this very day and ventured their lives and fortunes to maintain their fundamental laws and liberties published and declared in the best of the Parliament and Armies declaration But a Parliament picked and culled by your selves that have not with all the Officers of the Army the honest people of Englands payed and hired servants who therefore ought not by your owne principles and for quoted Declarations to act for their wo in the least but onely and alone for their weal and good any other pretence to set up such a Parl. but the right of Conquest which yet will be one of the most vildest assertions in the world for you to maintain against my self and thousands and ten thousands more that have assisted you and never acted against your declared and honest principles by which you ingaged to maintain our fundamental laws and liberties in reference to the free and secure injoyment of our lives liberties and properties which by your foresaid declared principles and declarations can be no other but a Parliament of force will and pleasure and thereby the perfect badge of Conquest and by consequence by your own acknowledgment onely fit to make lawes amongst Bears and Wolves but not amongst men and what justice or relief I may expect from such a Parliament is beyond my apprehension The third way of governing or way of administration of Government is by a Nation or company of peoples mutual agreement or contract or long setled well approved of and received customs there being not in the least in either of the Oldor New Testament any prescript form of Civil or earthly politick Government left by God to be binding and observed by all Nations and people in all ages and times men being born rational creatures are therefore left by God in or to the choice of their Civil Government to the principles of reason all which centers in general in these two viz. do as you would be done to and ye shall not do evil that good may come thereby and to chuse such a government as themselves or their chosen trustees please to impose upon themselves under which they may in a rational security live happily and comfortably which the very Charter of Nature doth intayl or intitles all men under all Civil government unto and such was our Government in England in a great measure under the establishment of Kings who as in your Declarations and the late Kings own confession it is justly avowed and truly acknowledged was to govern the people of England according to the known and declared fundamental laws and no otherwise made by common consent in Parliament or national common or supreme Councels and to grant such laws for the future as the folk or people for the good and benefit in National common Councels or Parliaments should chuse which I dare avow was with all its imperfections in the constitution of it the best rationalest and for the people of England most securest of declared and setled Governments now extant in the whole world our change for onely a nominal free State or Commonwealth hither toward I will maintain it upon my life in aboundance of particulars against the ablest man or men in England being as yet onely for the worse but not in the least to the generality of the people for the better the late Parliament of Lords and Commons being according to the declared law of England called and summoned by the Kings Writ in whose power by law it was at his pleasure to dissolve them till such time as in the year 1640. he past an Act of Parliament in full and free Parliament That they should sit during their own pleasure and not be dissolved but by their own consents all which ancient legal much approved of long setled government being absolutely and totally dissolved by you there can now according to your foresaid principles and the principles of nature and reason by no power or persons whatsoever in England be summoned called or chosen a new Parliament but by a new and rational contract and agreement of the people of England especially and at least upon your own foresaid principles made amongst those that have adhered with their lives and fortunes to their own fundamental declared laws and liberties according to the rational and just principles of the Parliament and Armies best of Declarations And therefore a Parliament called by you in any other way as you pretend now to be in a Commonwealth in my shallow apprehension can be no other but the perfect demonstration of absolute Conquest which is a title or government fit onely for Beares and Wolves but not for men much less for Englishmen by your own forementioned printed Confession and averment The constant effects of which can in reason and experience be nothing els but murther shedding of bloud war misery pover'y famine pestilence and utter desolation to now more then ever divided poor England from which good Lord deliver poor England my dear and entirely beloved Native Country for whose welfare and freedom as for many years by past to the best of my poor understanding I have been ready and I hope whilest I breath shall never cease to continue willing to become a sacrifice And I also beseech God to cause the eyes of the wise and judicious ordinary people and common souldiers thereof
was but a private businesse and the Councel were so full of the publick affairs of the Nation that they had scarce time to eat or sleep and therefore I must be patient quiet and wait with contentednesse till a new Parliament At the reading of which I was even confounded and amazed in my understanding and looked upon my wife and her stories of the Officers intended honesty and publick good to the Nation as the perfectest artificial cheats that ever was put upon me in the world to deceive and cozen me and that you that now sit as a Councel of State with your Masters and Creators viz. the General and his Officers never hated nor dissolved the Parliament for any real hatred or disgust at them for any mischief injustice or Tyranny that they exercised upon the people of England free never since they were about 4 years ago declared a free people in nothing else but bare name but onely because they grew something stubborn and surly and would not be ruled meerly as school-boyes to act as the General and his great Officers and you now his and their substitutes would have them in which regard great and glorious things was meerly pretended but never in tended for the peoples good to break the Parliament in pieces and totally dissolve them that so you alone might get the power into your own hands to do withall the lives liberties and estates of the people of England what you pleased giving the people onely good words untill you had rivited your selves fast in your power by securing your selves so with force that Julius Caesar like the General might stile and declare himself by a new name but with a power in reality far above a King as perpetual Dictator or Lord Conservator of the peace of England Scotland and Ireland and I confesse that the Generals words to my wife and some of yours together with the Officers were so far from pleasing me as they did her that I clearly see by them I had ground to believe that it is resolved privately by the General I shall never so long as he lives or at least so long as his power lasteth come into England again because it was resolved by him who I clearly then judged so rules and over aws you that you nor the Officers durst not conclude to give me a Pass without fully and plainly knowing his will and pleasure to drive on another intrest then in the least the peoples welfare peace safety liberty or freedome all which to my utmost power and the often apparent hazard of my life for many years together I have been a constant and resolute patron too and asserter of and never could be threatned there-from nor in the least by Gold Silver or promotion which hath times often enough sufficiently been proffered me courted to forsake them this being the onely and alone crime or true cause I have been hated and almost often to death persecuted by all great powerfull intresis that have been great and up in the government uf England for many years together and therefore now and for this onely reason and none else did I judge I must now be kept out from coming into England the Generals good words to my wife and yet denying my Pass for so I absolutely judged the delay of it made me immediately think of the 18 chapter of Nicholas Machiveli's Prince who is a man though through the grand corruptions of the age and place in which he lived and the safety of his own life was forced as may rationally in charity be judged to write in some kind of unhandsome disguises I must call for the excellency and usefulnes in corrupt times places for his works sake one of the most wisest judicious true lovers of his country of Italies liberties and freedomes and generally of the good of all mankind that ever I read of in my daies of a meer man who though he be commonly condemned with his Maximes and Tenents by all great state polititians as pernicious to all Christian States and hurtfull to all humane societies yet by me his books are esteemed for real usefullnesse in my streits to help me clearly to see through all the disguised deceits of my potent politick and powerfull adversaries above any one of all the human Authors in the world that ever I read which yet are very many the reading and studying of which in the day of my great streights in contesting with the great Arbitrary powers in England hath every way been as usefull advantagious necessary and requisite to me as a Compasse or Prospective glasse can be to a master of a rich laden ship fallen into dangerous and unknown seas where he is every hour in fear to be cast away and destroyed by dangerous sands Rocks or Pyrats or as a pair of spectacles can be to a weak or decayed pair of eyes in writing or reading that is compelled thereunto and must do it and can get none to help him or do it for him his book called his Prince especially if it were scarce to be got being reputed by me of more worth than its weight in beaten Gold for by my serious observing of his sayings and the practise of most of those great men that in England I have been necessitated for the safety of my life to struggle with I clearly find him and the worst of his Maximes and Tenents most practised by those great men in England that most condemns him and seems outwardly most to abhor and abhominate him and yet would willingly as the translator of his Prince in his Epistle to the Preader saith walk as Thieves do with close Lanthorns in the night that so they being undescried and yet seeing all might surprize the unwary in the dark and having him by me in my present travels I immediately turned to his 18 chapter which is contained in page 135 136 137 c. where he speaks in these very words of Pope Alexander the sixth in whose time himself lived and who was the man or Pope that quarrelled with Henry the eight K. of England Alexander the sixth saith he never did any thing else then deceive men and never meant otherwise and alwaies found whom to work upon yet never was there man would protest more effectually nor aver any thing with more solemn Oaths and observe them lesse then be neverthelesse his cozenages all thrived well with him for he knew how to play his part cunningly Therefore saith he is there no necessity for a Prince or great man to be indued withall those above written qualities of pitty faith integrity humanity and religion but it behoves well that he seems to be so or rather I will boldly say this that having these qualities and alwaies regulating himself by them they are hurtfull but seeming to have them they are advantagious as to seem pitifull faithfull mild religious and of integrity and to be so indeed provided withall thou beest of such a composition that if need require
seriously and constantly to be fixed in their thoughts upon the miseries of those unexpressible murthers devastations and desolations that were occasioned and brought upon poor England by the Conquest of the Romans and Julius Caesar as their first Captain and some hundreds of years after by the conquest of the Saxons and several yeares after that by the Conquest of the Danes and some hundreds of years after that by the conquest of the Normans under the leading of William the Conquerour afterwards admitted King of England about 600 years ago to the people or inhabitants of which he three several times took formal or solemn eaths inviolably to maintain their laws and liberties all which the said people and private souldiers may particularly reade in our English Chronicles but especially in that excellent History or Chronicle of famous and laborious John Speed that so their souls may for ever loath the exposing of themselves and their poor Native Countrey with their fundamental laws and rational and just liberties to the conquest and unlimited will of any forreign or domestique power in the world though never so specious in their religious pretences of godliness and piety All men by reason of Adams fall and his own corruption thereby being naturally if left to their own wils and pleasures more brutish bloudy and barbarous then the brutishest or savagest of wilde Beasts that seldom or never prey upon and devour their own kinde may plentifully be seen even in the civil moralised and much refined Commonwealth of Rome in the bloudy proscriptions massacres and barbarismes of savage Marius and Sylla when they got absolute and uncontroulable sword-power into their own hands and the bloudy and most unmatchable Plot and Conspiracy of Catiline and his accomplices Therefore I have read amongst the wisest and rationallest speeches of the high esteemed for reason and justice Parliament men at the be-beginning of the late Parliament that they do avow in their long since printed Speeches for constant successive Parliaments that all rational just imperial and wise Law-givers or Law-makers in the making of Laws must proceed with a sinister opinion of all Mankinde as supposing it impossible for a just man to be born either to have them to be executed upon or to be an executer of them and therefore should proceed to make them so rational just and exactly strickt as that as little as possible in reason should be left to the discretion will or pleasure of the Administrator or he upon whom they are to be administred so that as much as rationally may be they should become a rational and equitable bridle and curb upon them both to keep them off for their own safety and well being sake from incroaching upon one anothers rights or destroying of one anothers bâ—ings In the third place As to that demand whether if I come home I will be quiet or no I answer First I am as free born as any man breathing in England and therefore should have no more fetters then all other men put upon me And I have actually done as much in my poor contemptible sphere for the real preservation of the FVNDAMENTAL LAWS liberties and freedoms of England held out in the best and choisest of the Parliaments and Armies Declarations as any man breathing in England I dare with confidence and truth avow it what ever he be excepting never a one nor never coveted nor desired either gain or riches therefore but onely my bare common share in the enjoyment of the felicity and happiness that would redound to the universality of the people in general by a rational setling and for the future securing to them the free enjoyment of their lives liberties and estates and that so I might truly and solidly upon good grounds call that my own which with the sweat of my brewes the labour of my hands or in dustry or honesty of my brains or tongue I had justly got And that it might not be taken in the least from me but onely in a common equal just way for a common end and good or for a transgression of a rational and just declared law reaching the universality as wel as me and that I might truly and upon rational grounds call my wife that great and chiefest earthly delight of many men my own and the children that I got by her or at least confidently beleeve so my own and not have me taken from them nor them from me by will and pleasure as often hath been practised upon me already which give me leave truly to aver and avow is more the propper issue of the Government of Bears and Wolves then of rational and just men Secondly I answer it is ridiculous and foolish to ask me such a question if honesty justice righteousness and the true freedom and liberty of the Nation be in the least your real intentions for if I come home and finde you as before is expressed it is my interest which is that great thing that swayes and rules the world and all the men therein not onely to be quiet with you but hazardously venter my life and all that ever in this world I have in common with you for the good of the whole Nation And give me leave with confidence and as much modesty as I can to aver it my interest is none of the meanest in England but even amongst the hob-nails clouted shooes the private souldiers the leather and woollen Aprons and the laborious and industrious people in England is as formidable as numerous and as considerable as any one amongst your whole selves not excepting your very General let him but lay down his sword and become disarmed as I am a cleerer proof for the manifestation of which cannot be given in the world then was given at my fore-mentioned late Tryal at Guild-Hall London in Octob. 1649. where the Officers of the Army and in manner the whole Parliament and Councel of State and Magistrates of London were universally my bitter enemies yet at my deliverance from death by the Verdict of my honest Jury the private Troopers of the very Guard there upon the very place made their Trumpeters as from good hands I have been informed in spight of their Officers sound Victoria themselves shouting and discharging of their pistols for joy of my deliverance from complotted death yea and some of their Comrades begun to build bone-fires at Fleet bridge which all my then bloody Judges nor their Officers of the Army that to their Lodgings guarded them for fear of the peoples rage and sury with many Troopes and Companies of Horse and Foot could not prevail with the souldiers either of Horse or Foot to put out the said bone-fires nay nor none of the Parliament nor Councel of State nor Lord Major nor Court of Aldermen of London durst none of them appear to hinder the people from filling the streets of London in a wonderful manner with bone-fires that very night of my deliverance thousands and ten thousands of the
King that ever since the Creation of the World Ruled in England that ever in the least pretended to govern by Law and Justice Nay I do hereby avow it and will pawn my life in every circumstance to make it good that the present dealing with me by the General and his Confederates aforesaid is an action as full of injustice in it self as it would be for the present Parliament to say Resolved upon the Question That all the Men Women and Children in England besides our selves and our Wives and Children be forthwith hanged drawn and quartered And then when such a Vote is past endeavour with all their might to put it in execution without mercy or compassion For I am endeavoured to be destroyed and hanged as a Felon without in the least having any action of Felony committed by me laid unto my charge or any other crime whatsoever but that my name is John Lilburn and that I am in the Land of my Nativitie and continue as honest as ever I was in my dayes in all which considerations premised I am forced to insert a Copy of my Letter to the General from Dunkirk which is rendred to be so strange a kinde of monstrous piece and so unlike an Englishman that hath the least spark of affection to his Native Countrey in him and judge my self a thousand times more able to defend every line and clause in it now I am alive which by all meanes the General intends shall not be long then any other man whatsoever is after my death which is now so violently persued to be perfected and consummated And therefore the Copy of the said Letter thus followeth For the Right Honorable Oliver Cromwel Esq Gen. of the forces of England these at Whitehall present My Lord THough I know it hath been your constant designe to pursue my life like a Partridge upon the Mountains for these six or seven yeers together with all the unhansome and unmanlike ways of ignobleness and unworthiness that possible could be acted or invented with any seeming pretence or colour And though now and then in the midst thereof you have seemed to carry an outward face of respect unto me yet it hath always been with a double heart and onely at those times when your own wickedness and unrighteousness and turning your back upon all your declared promises and principles hath brought you into such streights snares and dangers as that in the eye of Reason the Kings party and the Presbyterians have had you fast in their mouse-traps your own life and safety and nothing else then forcing and compelling of you to houl and cry like the great hypocrites in the days of old mentioned in the Old-Testament to me or such sturdy fellows as I was and also to acknowledge your own baseness and for the future promise the performance of honest and just things on purpose to engage our helping hands to be conjoyned in the day of your great straights brought upon you by your own constant unworthiness and habituated falseness to yours either to help you through your present streights or at least to fit still without any prosecuting revenge of you in your streights which by reason of your constant meeting with ingenuous spirits amongst those sturdy people whom with my self you on set purpose at Putney reproachfully baptized or maliciously nick-named Levellers and men that minded in their own thoughts the publick interests more then their own particular concernments And because the King and his party was never so wise for their own ends and advantages as to make that fair and rational use of those signal advantages that they often had by your folly and madness to hold out publickly rational security to the body of the people of England of all interests for their future enjoyment of their lives liberties and estates from the fear of arbitrary destruction at pleasure but rather chose to act the contrary by slights contempts scornes and abuses by means of which you have enjoyed constant and valiant helps to free you from the dreadful fear of your many blots even by those persons that you have formerly highly disobliged from which you have been no sooner delivered but you have immediately been like the dog that returns to his vomit a gain and with the greatest detestation in the world have immediately endeavoured the destruction of your very preservâ—rs which I having so many known and certain experiments of as I have and of those bloody ways and means you have pursued the total destruction of me my wife and children three of whom as the chiefest earthly instrument I dare aver rationally to evince you have murthered and been the death of and of your activity and zeal if I may believe the relation of an able and rational member of the late Parliament that heard you in the house to appear openly in the late Parliament as the principal man to have me banished in which unrighteous and unjust sentence I do with confidence here avow it no honest nor just man could have a hand or finger in approving of it or acting in it and thereby to be robbed of my estate and not now lest worth a groat to buy me bread and thereby to be deprived of the comfortable enjoyment of my wife and tender babes the greatest delight formerly to me in the whole earth and of all other comforts of this life yea to breath in the ayr of the Land of my nativity yea and by you causlesly exposed to an exilement amongst worse then barbarians for baseness and most detestable falseness even amongst my contriving plotting lying and bloody enemies set on on purpose to destroy me as I have too much grounded cause to believe by large gifts and pensions flowing originally by your instructions to your late vassal and slave Tho. Scot late Secretary of State one of the most basest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and rotten whoremasterly villains in the whole world In all which regards it was below me and inferior to me and inconsistent with my interest and reputation in many respects to write of late in any respectful way unto you without a kinde of compulsive force and necessity but in regard first for that â—nderedness of affection that I owe to her whom I formerly entirely loved as my own life though your late barbarous tyrannical dealing with me hath exposed her to so much folly and lowness of spirit in my eys in some of her late childish actions as hath in some measure produced an alienation of affection in me to her Yet by reason of her perswasive and urgent importunity in the first place and 2. many ways for my own politick ends and 3. to leave you without all manner of excuse in the eys of rational men was I induced and in a manner compelled upon the 14 of May last to write an Address into England in a respective way particularly to your self who to deal plainly with you I then did and still do believe was so engaged in interests
wrath and malice in your own heart as rather sooner as I have often told my poor simple wise to hazard your life and well-being then ever suffer me again to breath in Englands Ayr in peace security and quietness In which regard I told her if she were wise she would willingly permit me according to my own well and rationally grounded genius to scuffle neither with small nor great but you alone as the chief author of my banishment and chief Patron and true earthly causer of all the grand mischiess and Tyranny acted in poor England yet though I could not draw her to that I so penned my said Address as that if upon the speedy delivery of it my Pass were denyed or delayed I could in my own thoughts make sufficient use of the publishing and printing of it and therefore confidently believing you would be like that grand Tyâ—ant Pharoah hardened in heart to your own destruction I got 1000 of them in these parts printed in Dutch and English and immediately sent another copy to Paris to be printed in French and English there and also sent another copy to Amsterdam to be printed in Dutch and Latin there which I hope if it be not already done it will be speedily done and another copy by another hand then my wife to be printed besides the original I sent to London but my wife having heard of it hath most irrationally hindered it so that now I must take some other course to get it printed whether she will or no let the issue be good or bad I care not and fully understanding by this Post by six or seven several Letters that my desired Pass is delayed which I have cause by the length of time to take for an absolute denyal and also have too just cause to judge that you alone are the principal cause of it in which regard not to complement with you which now I scorn but in my own imagination to leave you amongst all rational men the more without excuse I send you these lines upon which most particularly I do most heartily and earnestly entreat you who I know is able with the bare lifting up of your finger if you please to send me speedily without any the least further delay my Pass to return into the Land of my nativity from my causless illegal and unjust banishment and if when I come into England you have any thing to say to me for any evil I have done you either in word or action or any way else I do hereby engage to give you real satisfaction face to face either first as a Christian or secondly as a rational man or thirdly as a sturdy though very much wounded and cut fellow that dare yet subscribe himself From Dunkirk Monday the 2 of June 1653. Dutch or New stile Honest and stout JOHN LILBURNE that neither fears death nor hell men nor Devils A second piece that I intended when I begun this to have produced to evince my strong and earnest affection to my native country and its liberties and freedomes and my constant study to indeavour its welfare even while I was beyond the seas whilst I was daily strugling with the complotted-designes of my death by the barbarous wicked and most vile agents of Master Thomas Scot the Generals Secretary of State and as I am informed is yet his bosome cabinet and darling friend although in all manner of wickedness and baseness he is so vile and putrified that I am confident honest Job would have scorned to have set so unworthy a man with the dogs of his flock I say the second piece that I intended to produce was an Epistle writ by me from Bridges in Flanders the last of October last English stile unto Colonel Martin which is printed beyond Sea at the latter end of a book Intituled John Lilburn revived and which hath so many clear demonstrations in it of my true affection to my Native Country and its welfare and prosperity and that in the way of a Commonwealth rightly constituted that by no understanding man that shall read it can I I am confident of it in the least be judged a man in league with any manner of Royallist in the world to do England or its liberties and freedoms the least hurt in the earth but it would make this Epistle much too long and take up too much of my precious time to look after my second tryal drawing on so nigh at hand as Wedensday come seven dayes is and that with that fury and rage that I understand the General c. drives it on with and therefore I shall here earnestly desire some of the seriousest amongst you for your further satisfaction in this point to make a journey to London to one very well known to the most if not all of you and that is Master William Kiffin one judged even by my great adversaries sufficiently well-affected to the present interest that now rules and ask him but these two questions First whether since my aboad in Flanders c. beyond the seas he did not receive divers letters from me Secondly desire to know of him the particular contents of those letters and particularly whether divers of them were not fill'd with as clear demonstrations of my real affection to the welfare of England as any letters possible could be filled and whether they did not selve him often to use for the good of England or no. But now my friends should I put you upon a serious consideration of the publike wayes of Major William Packer and his great masters truly I think I might truly aver that all the histories of the whole world will not afford a generation of men that in printed Declarations have promised more to a people of good and in actions done less then they there being not the least suitableness in the world betwixt their publike Declarations and their Actions for although it was onely Law and Liberty that declaredly we fought to secure for these eleven together against the King yet I would now but ask any ingenious man in England this question Whether there be any law in reality liberty or propriety left in England but the Generals will and pleasure who although he was but a mean man a while ago and now at most but the peoples daily hired and paid mercenary servant Doth he no pick and cull Parliaments at his pleasure and when those that he hath left hath given him and his associates out of that that is none of their own many thousand pound lands of inheritance a yeer doth he not at his pleasure pluck them up by the tooâ—s although by his consent and seeking they had hem'd themselves about with divers laws to make it treason for any man or men of England whatsoever but to indeavor to raise force against them to dissolve them and doth not he and his Officers when they have created necessities of their own making without the least shaddow of Parliamentary authority expresly against the