for words or books only, when there is no insurrection in the kingdom, and the ordinary courts of justice open, in which he had often (since his first commitment seven months ago) sought a legal trial, but could never enjoy that benefit, though he ought, by law and justice, either to have been tried at the first assizes in the county where his pretended crime was committed, or acquitted. Then he went on as follows:—
I never acted in an hostile manner against the present governors; I have been in many battles under their command, and hazarded my life for them, and since I left my command, have lived at home in peace. I was at the Commons door the same day they voted me a traitor, and was offered by Mr. Rigby (who now sits as judge amongst you) very great matters, in the names of some great ones, if I would follow their directions; so that I might easily have avoided the snares of mine enemies, but I thought myself secure in a safe conscience. About five o'clock next morning, two or three hundred armed forces, horse and foot, hauled me out of bed from my wife and children,—not according to the law, as is expressly provided in 1st Edward VI. chap. 12, and 5th and 6th Edward VI. chap. 11, but contrary to all good laws, (though there has been an eight year's war pretended for the laws and liberties of England) carried me through the streets of London in a terror, like an Algier captive, to their main guard at Paul's, and thence with a new and mighty host conducted me, by force of arms, to Whitehall, though (if I had been a traitor) I ought to have been proceeded against by the civil officers, according to the privileges the parliament themselves, in 1641, claimed for the six members, in their own Book of Declarations, p. 36, 37, 76, 77. I was then carried to Derby House, before a company of gentlemen who thought themselves authorized to be a committee or council of state, who, I am sure, had nothing to do with me, for pretended treason; and Mr. John Bradshaw, who had been council for me before the House of Lords, in 1645, against my unjust Star-chamber judges, urged it as illegal, arbitrary, and tyrannical, that the lords in the Star-chamber should order me to be whipped, pillored, &c. for refusing to answer interrogatories against myself; and yet Mr. Bradshaw treads in the same steps, and very seriously asked me questions against myself, and because I refused to answer, committed me for treason in general; and you are sensible generals in law signify nothing.
Judge Jermin.—Mr. Bradshaw is now Lord President of the Council of State in England, and it would become you to style him so.
Lieutenant-Colonel Lilburne.—Though several thousands of my friends, old and young, masters and apprentices, and abundance of the female sex too, jointly petitioned in behalf of myself and three fellow prisoners, that the house would not prejudge us before we were heard, but let us have a legal trial, or at least release us, and they would give any security for our forthcoming, to answer what should be laid to our charge, yet they got nothing but slights, abuses, and scorns.
