But this lenity made no impression on his mind.  In the course of six weeks he published[d] two more offensive tracts, and distributed them among the soldiery.  A new mutiny broke out at Oxford; its speedy suppression emboldened the council; the demagogue was reconducted[e] to his cell in the Tower; and Keble, with forty other commissioners, was appointed[f] to try him for his last offence on the recent statute of treasons.  It may, perhaps, be deemed a weakness in Lilburne that he now offered[g] on certain conditions to transport himself to America; but he redeemed his character, as soon as he was placed at the bar.  He repelled with scorn the charges of the

[Footnote 1:  Journals, 1649, April 11, May 12, July 18.  Council Book May 2.  Whitelock, 414.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1649.  April 11.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1649.  May 12.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1649.  June 8.] [Sidenote d:  A.D. 1649.  July 18.] [Sidenote e:  A.D. 1649.  Sept. 6.] [Sidenote f:  A.D. 1649.  Sept. 14.] [Sidenote g:  A.D. 1649.  Oct. 24.]

prosecutors and the taunts of the court, electrified the audience by frequent appeals to Magna Charta and the liberties of Englishmen, and stoutly 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.]