utly maintained the doctrine that the jury had a right to judge of the
law as well as of the fact. It was in vain that the court pronounced this
opinion "the most damnable heresy ever broached in the land," and that the
government employed all its influence to win or intimidate the jurors;
after a trial of three days, Lilburne, obtained a verdict of acquittal.[1]

Whether after his liberation[a] any secret compromise took place is
uncertain. He subscribed the engagement, and, though he openly explained it
in a sense conformable to his own principles, yet the parliament made to
him out of the forfeited lands of the deans and chapters the grant[b] of
a valuable estate, as a compensation for the cruel treatment which he had
formerly suffered from the court of the Star-Chamber.[2] Their bounty,
however, wrought no change in his character. He was still the indomitable
denouncer of oppression wherever he found it, and before the end of the
next year he drew upon himself the vengeance of the men in power, by the
distribution[c] of a pamphlet which charged Sir Arthur Hazlerig and the
commissioners at Haberdashers'-hall with injustice and tyranny. This by the
house was voted a breach of privilege, and the offender was condemned[d]
in a fine of seven thousand pounds with banishment for life. Probably the
court of Star-chamber never pronounced a judgment in which the punishment
was more disproportionate to the offence. But his former enemies sought

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1649, Sept 11, Oct. 30. Whitelock, 424, 425. State
Trials, ii. 151.]

[Footnote 2: Whitelock, 436. Journ. 1650, July 16, 30.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Dec. 29.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. July 30.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Dec. 22.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1652. Jan. 15.]

not justice on the culprit, but security to themselves. They seized the
opportunity of freeing the government from the presence of a man whom they
had so long feared; and, as he refused to kneel at the bar while judgment
was pronounced, they embodied the vote in an act of parliament. To save his
life, Lilburne submitted; but his residence on the continent was short: the
reader will soon meet with him again in England.[1]

The Levellers had boldly avowed their object; the royalists worked in the
dark and by stealth; yet the council by its vigilance and promptitude
proved a match for the open hostility of the one and the secret
machinations of the other. A doubt may, indeed, be raised of the policy of