In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Corrigendum
  • Edward Vallance

History Workshop Journal 74, 2012, pp. 1–26, doi:10.1093/hwj/dbs012

In my article, ‘Reborn John? The Eighteenth-century Afterlife of John Lilburne’ (History Workshop Journal 74, autumn 2012), I mistakenly stated that the only mention of Cartwright’s Case came in ‘the Star Chamber proceedings against John Lilburne in 1637’.

In fact, Francis Hargrave, the lawyer who employed this legal precedent in the landmark ‘Somerset’s Case’ of 1772, took his information from the second part of John Rushworth’s Historical Collections (London, 1680), pp. 468–9. Rushworth was in turn repeating arguments made by Lilburne’s lawyers when Lilburne later sought compensation for his Star Chamber punishment in late 1645/early 1646. The House of Lords found the arguments of Lilburne’s advocates, the future regicides John Cook and John Bradshaw, convincing and ordered on 13 February 1646 that the Star Chamber judgement was illegal and unjust and should be taken off file (however, they left the matter of ‘reparations’ for Lilburne’s sufferings undecided: Journal of the House of Lords: vol. 8: 1645–7 (1767–1830), pp. 164–5). Lilburne swiftly published the proceedings and judgement as A true relation of ... Lilburnes sufferings (1646). It was from this pamphlet (specifically pages 5, 6 and 11) that Rushworth drew his information, but he misdated the Lords’ judgement as coming in 1640. Rushworth’s error misled Hargrave who read these arguments as having received official approval when Parliament ordered Lilburne’s release from the Fleet prison in November of that year. As noted in my article, for Hargrave, it was the sanction of Parliament rather than its invocation on behalf of the ‘famous John Lilburne’ which made this sixteenth-century legal precedent credible. Yet, while the Lords agreed in general that the Star Chamber’s treatment of Lilburne was ‘contrary to the Liberty of the Subject’, they gave no specific verdict on the accuracy of his lawyers’ account of Cartwright’s Case. [End Page 306]

Edward Vallance
25 September 2012
Advance Access Publication 13 October 2012
...

pdf

Share