Free-Born John (Lilburne)
by Pauline Gregg
by Pauline Gregg
Free-Born John by Pauline Gregg has become the classic biography about the contemporary life of John Lilburne during the Seventeenth Century. It is by no means a complete work about his life, because his legacy has outstripped the accomplishments that he made during his own lifetime.
However, the focus of this book is about the life and times of John Lilburne, and this includes a good background survey of his ancestry; his parents, his brother and wife. There is even a geneological chart which links Lilburne to the great-grandmother of President Thomas Jefferson. Pauline Gregg provides more than just the coverage of his political life, because she reveals how he began as a person with Puritan leanings and morphed into a Quietist.
Also covered are his court room trials that began with him importing unlicensed ("pirate" in today's terminology), books from Holland into England. That first case became the basis for the United States Fifth Amendment to its Constitution, and the 'Miranda' opinion handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. You will soon gain an understanding of why U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black became Lilburne's number one fan in the USA. He managed to enroll his fellow Justice William O. Douglas to his cause, and he also made a convert out of Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. This book is highly recommended to anyone who wants to know more about Freeborn John Lilburne as a person and a champion of the legal, freeborn rights of individualism. Published as a hardback in 1961 by J.M. Dent and other publishers, and republished as a paperback (over 424 pages) by Pheonix Press in 2000. It is available on line from Amazon in both hardback and paperback.
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