John Maynard (MP) - State Trials Under The Commonwealth

State Trials Under The Commonwealth

Nevertheless, on the establishment of the Commonwealth he did not scruple to take the engagement, and held a government brief at the trial of Major Faulconer for perjury in May 1653. Assigned by order of court to advise John Lilburne on his second trial in July 1653, Maynard at first feigned sickness. A repetition of the order, however, elicited from him some exceptions to the indictment which confounded the court and secured Lilburne's acquittal by the jury. The jury were afterwards interrogated by the council of state as to the grounds of their verdict, but refused to disclose them, and Maynard thus escaped censure, and on 9 February 1653/4 was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law.

In the following year his professional duty brought him into temporary collision with the government. One Cony, a city merchant, had been arrested by order of the council of state for non-payment of taxes, and Maynard, with Serjeants Thomas Twysden and Wadham Wyndham, moved on his behalf in the upper bench for a habeas corpus. Their argument on the return, 18 May 1655, amounted in effect to a direct attack on the government as a usurpation, and all three were forthwith, by order of Cromwell, committed to the Tower of London; they were released on making submission (25 May).