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The commissioners being set, and proclamation for silence made; the Lieutenant of the Tower was commanded to bring forth his prisoner.
Cryer. John Lilburne, hold up thy hand.
Col. Lilburne, directing himself to Mr. Keble (the president of the court) desired he might have the privileges of a free-born Englishman, and such as were due to him by birth-right and inheritance, having fought for them. He said he mentioned not this by way of merit, to gain mercy, he scorned it, and asked none, but from the hands of God; he craved but the liberty which St. Paul had, of speaking for himself when he pleaded for his life before the heathen Roman judges; this, he said, he was allowed when he was arraigned before the House of Peers, by the king's special order, the first of May, 1641, for sticking close to the liberties of the nation, being one of those two or three men who first drew their swords in Westminster-Hall, against Col. Lunsford and his associates, when it was thought they designed to cut the throats of the chiefest men in the House of Commons. That being taken in the action at Brentford, by the king's forces, and arrainged as a traitor before the Lord-Chief-Justice Heath at Oxford, for levying war against the king, he was tried by the good old laws of England, with all the fairness and equity imaginable, and permitted to plead to the errors in the indictment, before he pleaded not guilty; and had council freely assigned him to consult and advise with, and help him in point of law as soon as he had pleaded, and before any fact was proved; all which he said was consonant to Sir Edward Coke's judgment, in his third part of his Institutes, chap. of high treason, fol. 29, 34, 137, and 230. That being no professed lawyer, he could not be supposed to understand the forms and niceties of law; and therefore it behoved him to consider (lest he hurried himself into dangers) before he held up his hand.
