t under the guidance of Colonel John Lilburne, an
officer distinguished by his talents, his eloquence, and

[Footnote 1: If the reader compares the detailed narrative of these
proceedings by Clarendon (iii. 265-270), with the official account in the
Journals (March 7, 8), he will be surprised at the numerous inaccuracies
of the historian. See also the State Trials; England's Bloody Tribunal;
Whitelock, 386; Burnet's Hamiltons, 385; Leicester's Journal, 70; Ludlow,
i. 247; and Hutchinson, 310.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 398, 399.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Mar. 9.]

his courage.[1] Lilburne, with his friends, had long cherished a
suspicion that Cromwell, Ireton, and Harrison sought only their private
aggrandizement under the mantle of patriotism; and the recent changes had
converted this suspicion into conviction. They observed that the same
men ruled without control in the general council of officers, in the
parliament, and in the council of state. They contended that every question
was first debated and settled in the council of officers, and that, if
their determination was afterwards adopted by the house, it was only
that it might go forth to the public under the pretended sanction of the
representatives of the nation; that the council of state had been vested
with powers more absolute and oppressive than had ever been exercised by
the late king; and that the High Court of Justice had been established by
the party for the purpose of depriving their victims of those remedies
which would be afforded by the ordinary courts of law. In some of their
publications they went further. They maintained that the council of state
was employed as an experiment on the patience of the nation; that it was
intended to pass from the tyranny of a few to the tyranny of one; and
that Oliver Cromwell was the man who aspired to that high but dangerous
pre-eminence.[2]

A plan of the intended constitution, entitled "the

[Footnote 1: Lilburne in his youth had been a partisan of Bastwick, and had
printed one of his tracts in Holland. Before the Star-chamber he refused
to take the oath _ex officio_, or to answer interrogatories, and in
consequence was condemned to stand in the pillory, was whipped from the
Fleet-prison to Westminster, receiving five hundred lashes with knotted
cords, and was imprisoned with double irons on his hands and legs. Three
years later (1641), the House of Commons voted the punishment illegal,
bloody, barbarous, an