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Robert Lilburne

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Robert Lilburne

Robert Lilburne (1613–1665) is most notable as the elder brother of radical Leveller agitator John Lilburne. During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, when the English Parliament fought against King Charles I, he had a distinguished military career as a colonel in the Parliamentarian armies; he was most prominent during the during the Second English Civil War in Scotland, as an officer of Oliver Cromwell in the New Model Army. Under Cromwell's rule as Lord Protector, he was elected as an MP to all three Protectorate Parliaments and raised to the rank of deputy major-general. In 1660 he took arms to resist the restoration of the monarchy.

In January 1649, he was a signatory to the death warrant of King Charles I, for which he was tried and convicted of treason as a regicide in October 1660. He died in prison in August 1665.

Origins and Family

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Robert Lilburne was the eldest son and heir of Richard Lilburne of Thickley Punchardon in County Durham.[1] He was baptised on 2 February 1614.[2]

He married Margaret, only daughter of Henry Beke of Hadenham, Buckinghamshire, and High Sheriff of that county in 1644. She was a relative by marriage of Oliver Cromwell.[3] Robert and Margaret had three sons, who were all reported to be living in 1688:[4]

  • Robert - b. 1650
  • Richard - b. 1652
  • Ephraim - b. 1662

First Civil War

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In 1642, at the outbreak of the First English Civil War Lilburne served first as Cornet in Lord Brooke’s troop of horse and later as Lieutenant in Richard Crosse’s troop, in the Earl of Essex’s Army, from 1642 to 1643. Brooke's unit fought at the Battle of Edgehill, the first major engagement of the war. In 1644, Lilburne, having reached the rank of captain, returned to the north where he raised his own regiment of horse, which became part of Lord Fairfax's Northern Association army.[5]

In February 1645, Parliament "new-modelled" its armies to create a professional force under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax, later Lord Fairfax. At the end of 1645, Ralph Weldon, colonel of the New Model Army's 8th Regiment of Foot, resigned to become governor of Plymouth, and Robert Lilburne was promoted to take his place early in 1646.[6] He took part in the siege of Wallingford, which surrendered on 19 July 1646.[7][8] Robert Lilburne remained an officer in the Army for the rest of his military career, rising to be named deputy major-general.[5]

Army Mutiny

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On 5 May 1646, King Charles surrendered to the Scots, marking the end of the first phase of the war. Parliament thereupon began to plan the reduction of the Army as surplus to requirements, some of the most troublesome regiments to be sent to Ireland, without addressing their arrears of pay. The Army, however, had been radicalized, in part by the activities of the Levellers, led by Robert Lilburne's imprisoned brother John.[9] The soldiers addressed a petition to General Fairfax, supported by some of the most radical officers, among whom was Robert Lilburne, who was called before the House on 29 March to defend his action.[10][11] At the same time, most of the officers in his regiment, who had formerly served under Colonel Weldon, petitioned Parliament to replace Lilburne with their lieutenant-colonel, Nicholas Kempson, and volunteer for service in Ireland. [12]

At some point during the ensuing revolutionary action, General Fairfax removed Liburne from the field by appointing him governor of distant Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was thus not present with his regiment, called by some "the most mutinous regiment in the whole army",[11] when on 15 November it drove off most off its officers and marched without orders onto the Corkbush Field rendezvous at Ware, with copies of John Lilburne's democratic manifesto [13] The mutiny failed. Cromwell had eight or nine of Lilburne's troopers arrested, and three ringleaders were sentenced to death, with one, private Richard Arnold, shot on the spot before the rest.[9][14]

Second Civil War

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The dispute between Parliament and the Army was interrupted by Charles I, who on 26 December 1647 signed an engagement with a parts of the Scots under the Duke of Hamilton to establish Presbyterianism in England in exchange for military assistance in regaining his throne. Hamilton's party was called the Engagers; he was opposed by the more extreme Kirk Party.[15]

Beginning in May, Royalist uprisings took place in several places in England, which the Army under Fairfax put down.[16] The most crucial threat, however, came from the north, where Lilburne was then serving under Colonel John Lambert as colonel of a regiment of horse.[5] On 28 April 1648, Royalist forces under Marmaduke Langdale attacked Berwick-upon-Tweed and Carlisle in Northumberland, and took Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, in order to establish a bridgehead for the Scots army. Lambert sent Colonel Lilburne against the rising in Northumberland, where on 1 July he captured two Royalist commanders and took 400 prisoners. [17]

On 8 July, Hamilton invaded England and occupied Carlisle, and Cromwell marched north to meet him.[18]

Battle of Preston

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The Battle of Preston was a decisive defeat for both Hamilton's Scots and his Royalist allies. According to Reid,[19] Hamilton's plan had been to act as support for the Royalist uprisings, which by the time he reached England had already been put down, so that with the exception of Langdale, he was left to face the Army largely alone. At the time of the invasion, Cromwell had been in Wales besieging the Royalist forces holding Pembroke Castle, and following its capitulation on 1 July, he immediately marched north with such speed that he left his artillery train behind. His armies have been numbered at about 8500 men, while Hamilton had a nominal force of perhaps at most 24,000, but they were disorganized and uncoordinated in the face of the well-disciplined veterans of the Army.[20]

Lambert's cavalry delayed the invaders while Cromwell was en route, so that Hamilton reached Hornby in Lancashire only by 9 August, when he turned west toward Preston and the bridge over the River Ribble. By 12 August, Cromwell met up with Lambert near Wetherby in Yorkshire. The combined force advanced to engage Hamilton on his eastern flank, with the Scots army strung out in disorder along the road leading to the bridge crossing the Ribble. On the morning of 17 August, with Hamilton's forces half-way across the bridge - most of the cavalry across, most of the infantry still on the north side - Lambert's vanguard, with Lilburne's horse, began the attack on Langdale's position in the moors north-east of Preston. However, the terrain was cut up by hedgerows and unsuitable for cavalry action. Dupuy believes it was a battle of pikemen on both sides;[20] Reid supposes that Lilburn's horse was left in reserve. [21]>

During this action, Hamilton continued to push his infantry across the bridge, and after a long struggle, some of Langdale's troops retreated across. Cromwell then deployed his musketeers above the bridge and cut off the line of retreat. The next day, Cromwell's cavalry began a pursuit of the enemy already on the south side of the bridge. They reached Wigan that night and made a stand at Winwick the next day. At Warrington on the 19th, the beaten army surrended 10,000 prisoners by Cromwell's count. On the 22nd, at Uttoxeter, Hamilton and his remaining cavalry surrendered to Lambert, ending the invasion.[22]

During the advance on Preston, Robert Lilburne suffered a personal loss. His youngest brother Lt.-Colonel Henry Lilburne,[5] who had served with him in several of his commands since 1644, had recently been named Deputy Governor of Tynemouth Castle, when on 9 August he switched sides to support the king. Two days later, the castle was attacked by Sir Arthur Haslerig. Henry Lilburne was killed, and his head displayed over the castle's gate. [23]

Regicide

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. In December 1648, Lilburne was nominated as one of the Commissioners at the trial of Charles I, he attended the trial and signed the king's death warrant. He also took part in the siege of Pontefract Castle, which held out against Parliament until March 1649.

During the Third English Civil War he fought under Oliver Cromwell during his Scottish campaign, and when the Scottish army invaded England Lilburne defeated English Royalists, under the command of the Earl of Derby, at the Battle of Wigan Lane on 25 August 1651. This prevented them from joining the Scots on their march to defeat at the Battle of Worcester and the end of the English Civil Wars. In November 1651 he returned to Scotland as part of Major-General Richard Deane's army of occupation. In December 1652, Lilburne took over command of the army in Scotland, but when he was not given promotion or the support he thought he needed from the Government in London to put down the Glencairn's uprising, he was happy to hand over command to General George Monck in early 1654.

Interregnum

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During the Interregnum although some officers said that he was too sympathetic to the Levellers and the Anabaptists, he supported Oliver Cromwell during the first years of the Protectorate. In 1654 he was appointed Governor of York and the next year he commanded the army units that put down the Sealed Knot uprising in York. In 1654 he was elected MP for County Durham in the First Protectorate Parliament. During the Rule of the Major-Generals (1656) he was deputy to John Lambert, responsible for the day-to-day administration of Yorkshire and County Durham. He was elected MP for the East Riding of Yorkshire in the Second Protectorate Parliament. However, he opposed the offer of the crown to Cromwell and was uneasy with the constitutional arrangements of the later Protectorate.

Restoration

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With the death of Oliver Cromwell, Lilburne did not support Richard Cromwell but instead supported the restoration of the Rump Parliament and the reinstatement of the English Commonwealth. He was appointed to the Army's Committee of Safety and supported General John Lambert when Lambert marched to stop General George Monck marching on London. When that failed and the Restoration occurred Lilburne was arrested along with all the other regicides still living in Britain. On 16 October 1660 Lilburne was found guilty of high treason, and was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but later this was commuted to life imprisonment. He died a prisoner on Drake's Island in Plymouth Sound in August, 1665.

Family

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Lilburne married Margaret, daughter of Richard Beke of Hadenham, Buckinghamshire, with whom he had three sons who survived him.[24]

Notes

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  1. ^ Pedigrees recorded at the visitations of the county palatine of Durham. Joseph Foster, ed. London: 1887. p. 215. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t28941m1d&view=1up&seq=229&q1=Lilburne
  2. ^ Gregg, Pauline. Free-Born John, p. 19. London: Phoenix Press, 2000.
  3. ^ Beke, Charles Tilstone. Colonel Richard Beke, of Haddenham. J B Nichols & Son, 1852.[1]
  4. ^ Wood, Anthony. Athenae Oxonienses. London: 1817. p. 358.https://archive.org/details/athenaeoxoniense03wooduoft/page/n185/mode/2up?q=lilburne
  5. ^ a b c d Surnames beginning 'L', in The Cromwell Association Online Directory of Parliamentarian Army Officers , ed. Stephen K Roberts ( 2017), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/cromwell-army-officers/surnames-l
  6. ^ Temple, Robert. "The Original Officer List of the New Model Army", p. 59. https://www.robert-temple.com/papers/Offprint-OfficerList.pdf
  7. ^ John Rushworth, 'Historical Collections: The surrender of Oxford, etc.', in Historical Collections of Private Passages of State: Volume 6, 1645-47(London, 1722), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/rushworth-papers/vol6/pp276-298
  8. ^ Note: Some sources have conflated the activities of Colonel Robert Lilburne during this period with his brother Lt.-Colonel John Lilburne. Gregg, pp. 109-10.
  9. ^ a b Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down, pp. 61-70. London: Penguin Books, 1991.
  10. ^ Gardiner, Samuel Rawson. History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649, vol. 3, pp. 224 ff. London: Longman, Greene & co. 1905.
  11. ^ a b Firth, Charles. "Lilburne, Robert" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 33. pp. 250–253.
  12. ^ "The ancient officers of the Kentish regiment now under the command of Colonel Lilburne." SP 16/539/4 f. 23 (1647) https://petitioning.history.ac.uk/investigating-petitioners/1647-thirteen-officers-of-the-kentish-regiment-complain-about-their-commander-colonel-lilburne/
  13. ^ Agreement of the People http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur074.htm
  14. ^ Gregg, p. 223.
  15. ^ Reid, Stuart. All the King's Armies, p. 220 ff. Spellmount: 2007.
  16. ^ Gardiner, Vol. 4. pp.36-155.
  17. ^ Reid, p. 224.
  18. ^ Gardiner Vol. 4, p. 167.
  19. ^ Reid, p. 227
  20. ^ a b Dupuy & Dupuy, The Encyclopedia of Military History, p. 553. Harper & Row, 1977.
  21. ^ Reid, p.227.
  22. ^ Gardiner Vol. 4, pp. 181-192.
  23. ^ Gardiner Vol 4, p. 179.
  24. ^ Firth 1893, p. 251 cites: Biographia Britannica.

References

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