John Lilburne - Quarrels With William Prynne

Quarrels With William Prynne

Besides the feuds he had with officers in the Army, Lilburne soon engaged in a quarrel with two of his former fellow sufferers. On 7 January 1645 he addressed a letter to William Prynne, attacking the intolerance of the Presbyterians, and claiming freedom of conscience and freedom of speech for the independents, Prynne, bitterly incensed, procured a vote of the Commons summoning Lilburne before the committee for examinations (17 January 1645). When he appeared (17 May 1645) the committee discharged him with a caution. A second time (18 June 1645) Prynne caused Lilburne to be brought before the same committee, on a charge of publishing unlicensed pamphlets, but he was again dismissed unpunished. Prynne vented his malice in a couple of pamphlets: A Fresh Discovery of prodigious Wandering: Stars and Firebrands, and The Liar Confounded, to which Lilburne replied in Innocency and Truth Justified (1645). Dr. John Bastwick took a minor part in the same controversy.

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