Praise-God Barebone - Later Career

Later Career

Barebone was re-elected to the Common Council for the three years from 1657 to 1660. After the restoration of the Rump Parliament he was nominated to the London militia committee under the Act of 7 July 1659. In 1660, Barebone endeavoured to prevent the Restoration of the English monarchy. He published Marchamont Needham's book News from Brussels in a Letter from a Near Attendant on His Majesty's Person..., which related unfavourable anecdotes about the prospective king of England, Charles II. In July 1660, following the Restoration, a royalist tract called The Picture of the Good Old Cause Drawn to the Life reprinted a petition he had made in February calling for Members of Parliament to deny rule by Charles II or any other single person. As a result of these views, he was arrested on 25 November 1661 and charged with treason alongside James Harrington and Samuel Moyer. He was then imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was freed on 27 July 1662 after a petition from his wife pleading his illness. In 1666, his premises were one of the most westerly buildings to be engulfed in the Great Fire of London. Barebone died at the end of 1679 and was buried on 5 January 1680 in the parish of St. Andrew Holborn.