Abstract
In September and October 1645, John Lilburne, the 30-year-old leader of the Leveller movement during the English Civil War, sat in London’s Newgate prison, where he read from England’s Book of Statutes, debated politics with his jailers, and wrote England’s Birthright Justified, a pamphlet that became one of the inaugural texts of Western democracy. Despite its brutal reputation, Newgate—the site of today’s “Old Bailey”—allowed family cohabitation, so Lilburne’s pregnant wife Elizabeth and their young son John were allowed to stay with him as they pleased.1 Even more surprising was that Lilburne secured access to a pen, paper, and an outside publisher.
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Suggested Reading
Primary Sources
Haller, William, ed. Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution: 1638–1647. 3 vols. New York: Octagon Books, 1979.
Haller, William, and Godfrey Davies, eds. The Leveller Tracts: 1647–1653. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964.
Sharp, Andrew, ed. The English Levellers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Woodhouse, A. S. P., ed. Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647–49) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents. London: J. M. Dent, 1992.
Secondary Sources
Aylmer, G. E., ed. The Levellers in the English Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975.
Brailsford, H. N. The Levelers and the English Revolution. Edited by Christopher Hill. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961.
Gibb, M. A. John Lilburne the Leveller: A Christian Democrat. London: Lindsay Drummond, 1947.
Gregg, Pauline. Free-Born John: The Biography of John Lilburne. London: Phoenix Press, 2000.
Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution. New York: Penguin, 1991.
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© 2014 Philip Edward Phillips
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McDaniel, R.A. (2014). The Self-Incriminator. In: Phillips, P.E. (eds) Prison Narratives from Boethius to Zana. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428684_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428684_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49153-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-42868-4
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