John Lilburne - Early Life

Early Life

John Lilburne was the son of Richard Lilburne, a landowner of estates at Thickley Punchardon and elsewhere in County Durham. He was probably born in Sunderland but the exact date of his birth is unknown; there is some dispute as to whether he was born in 1613, 1614, or 1615. His father Richard Lilburne was the last man in England to insist that he should be allowed to settle a legal dispute with a trial by combat. John's elder brother Robert Lilburne also later became active in the Parliamentary cause, but seems not to have shared John's Leveller beliefs. By his own account Lilburne received the first ten years' of his education in Newcastle, almost certainly at the Royal Free Grammar School. He also had some schooling in Bishop Auckland.

In the 1630s he was apprenticed to John Hewson, who introduced him to the Puritan physician John Bastwick, an active pamphleteer against Episcopacy who was persecuted by Archbishop William Laud. Lilburne's connection with Bastwick, whose "Litany" he had a hand in printing, obliged him to flee to Holland.