Interregnum
During the Interregnum although some officers said that he was too sympathetic to the Levellers and the Anabaptists, he supported Oliver Cromwell during 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.
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 October 16, 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.
Read more about this topic: Robert Lilburne
Famous quotes containing the word interregnum:
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)