After an adjournment[b] to the next sessions, two days were spent in arguing the exceptions of the prisoner, and his right to the oyer.  At length, on a threat that the court would proceed to judgment, he pleaded[c] not guilty.  The trial lasted three days.  His friends, to the amount of several thousands, constantly attended; some hundreds of them were said to be armed for the purpose of rescuing him, if he were condemned; and papers were circulated that, if Lilburne perished, twenty thousand individuals would perish with him.  Cromwell, to encourage the court, posted two companies of soldiers in the immediate vicinity; quartered three regiments of infantry, and one of cavalry, in the city; and ordered a numerous force to march towards the metropolis.  The particulars of the trial are lost.  We only know that the prosecutors were content with showing[d] that Lilburne was the person named in the act; that the court directed the jury to speak only to

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1653.  July 13.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1653.  August 11.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1653.  August 16.] [Sidenote d:  A.D. 1653.  August 1.]

that fact; and that the prisoner made a long and vehement defence, denying the authority of the late parliament to banish him, because legally it had expired at the king’s death, and because the House of Commons was not a court of justice; and, maintaining to the jury, that they were judges of the law as well as of the fact; that, unless they believed him guilty of crime, they could not conscientiously return a verdict which would consign him to the gallows; and that an act of parliament, if it were evidently unjust, was essentially void, and no justification to men who pronounced according to their oaths.  At a late hour at night the jury declared[a] him not guilty; and the shout of triumph, received and prolonged by his partisans, reached the ears of Cromwell at Whitehall.

It was not, however, the intention of the lord-general that his victim should escape.  The examination[b] of the judges and jurymen before the council, with a certified copy of certain opprobrious expressions, used by Lilburne in his defence, was submitted[c] to the house, and an order was obtained that, notwithstanding his acquittal, he should be confined[d] in the Tower, and that no obedience should be paid to any writ of habeas corpus issued from the court of Upper Bench in his behalf.  These measures gave great offence.  It was complained, and with justice, that the men who pretended to take up arms against the king in support of the liberties of Englishmen, now made no scruple of trampling the same liberties under foot, whenever it suited their resentment or interest.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See Thurloe, i. 324, 367, 368, 369, 429, 430, 435, 441, 442, 451, 453; Exact Relation, p. 5; Whitelock, 558, 560, 561, 563, 591; Journals, July 13, 14, Aug. 2, 22, 27, Nov. 26.  In 1656 or 1657 this turbulent demagogue joined the society of Friends.  He died Aug. 29, 1657, at Eltham, whence, on the 31st, the body of the meek Quaker was conveyed for sepulture to the new church-yard adjoining to Bedlam.—­Cromwelliana, p. 168.]