LILBURNE, George (1586-1676), of High Street, Bishopwearmouth St Michael and All Angels, Sunderland, co. Dur.

The Durham Lilburnes were descended from the Northumberland knight Sir William Lilburne, who had served as lord warden of the Middle March during the early thirteenth century.31Vis. Co. Dur. ed. Foster, 215; H.R. Leighton, The First Town Council of Sunderland 1634 (1903), 33. George Lilburne (born in 1586, not 1578 as one biographer states) was a second son, and it was his elder brother Richard – the father of Robert Lilburne* and the future Leveller leader John Lilburne – who inherited the family’s principal residence at Thickley Punchardon.32Auckland St Andrew par. reg.; Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 86; W. Dumble, ‘The Durham Lilburnes and the English Revolution’, in The Last Principality ed. D. Marcombe (Nottingham, 1987), 227. At some point early in the seventeenth century, George set up in business as a merchant in Sunderland, which was a flourishing as a port for the lucrative Durham coal trade and other local commodities.33VCH Co. Dur. v. 70-1, 73-5, 249; Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 91-2. His own prosperity grew with that of the town, and during the 1620s and 30s he acquired a major stake in the nearby collieries at Lumley, Lambton and Harraton, which were among the most profitable in the entire north-east (he was wealthy enough by the early 1640s to advance John Lilburne £1,000 to set him up as a brewer in London).34J. Lilburne, Innocency and Truth Justified (1646), 39 (E.314.21); CSP Dom. 1644, p. 393; Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 92, 107; J. U. Nef, The Rise of the British Coal Industry, ii. 35; VCH Co. Dur. v. 74-5. As a leading figure in the coal and shipping interests on the lower Wear, he championed local initiatives to challenge the monopoly of the Newcastle Hostmen – the merchant cartel that dominated the region’s coal industry.35APC 1623-5, pp. 362, 487; Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 91-3; M. James, Family, Lineage, and Civil Society, 89. The crown, however, consistently supported the Hostmen’s efforts to concentrate the coal trade in their own hands, providing the Wear men with ‘a solid economic basis for dislike of prerogative rule’.36James, Family, 88. In 1635, Lilburne represented Sunderland and County Durham in its rating dispute with Newcastle over Ship Money.37CSP Dom. 1625-49, pp. 520-1; Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 100; Dumble, ‘Durham Lilburnes’, pp. 228-9. And having initially refused to pay the levy himself, his goods were distrained, and he may also have suffered a brief spell in prison.38CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 516; 1640, p. 347; CCC 1918, 1920, 1921. In June 1640, it was reported that he was ‘now denying coat-and-conduct money [military charges for fighting the second bishops’ war] and persuading others to it, as he denied Ship Money’.39CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 346-7. John Lilburne believed that his uncle George and his own father ‘were the only two gentlemen in all the county of Durham that ever I could hear of that durst oppose the king’s will and pleasure in the point of Ship Money’.40J. Lilburne, A Just Reproof to Haberdashers-Hall (1651), 2 (E.638.12).

Hand in hand with Lilburne’s entrepreneurial spirit and defiance of vested interest went a robustly self-reliant and anti-authoritarian attitude in religious matters. ‘Prove it out of scripture or you say noth[ing]’ he told one local Arminian clergyman, only to learn that his opponent had been quoting directly from the gospels.41CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 515. The bishops’ wars lent his puritanism and patronage of godly ministers (notably, his brother-in-law, Richard Hickes, curate of Monkwearmouth) a more sinister aspect in the eyes of Durham’s churchmen, who thought him an ‘arrant Covenanter’ and resented his control over the wealth and worship of Sunderland.42CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 426, 515-19; 1640, p. 347; VCH Co. Dur. v. 64, 65, 180. By early 1640, he and his ‘anti-episcopal’ followers in the town were under investigation by the Durham court of high commission for speaking against the bishops and the liturgy and in favour of the Covenanters.43SP23/153, pp. 103, 303-4; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 516, 539-42, 546-7, 566; CCC 1918; Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 102-7, 128-32. He was briefly imprisoned by the ecclesiastical authorities and was ordered to appear before the privy council in June 1640 – although whether he obeyed this summons is very doubtful.44PC2/52, f. 282; SP23/153, p. 303; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 546-7. The two County Durham men who were arraigned before the council early in 1640 were not, it seems, Lilburne and the mayor of Sunderland – as several authorities have stated – but Anthony Smith* and another gentleman.45Infra, Anthony Smith’; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 51; VCH Co. Dur. v. 65; Dumble, ‘Durham Lilburnes’, 229; M.M. Meikle, ‘The Scottish Covenanters and the borough of Sunderland, 1639-47: a hidden axis of the British civil wars’, NH, liv. 169. Despite Lilburne’s incendiary behaviour, the bishop of Durham apparently allowed him to serve as a justice of the peace.46Shadforth, Innocency Modestly Vindicated, 3. However, it is clear that he sat on the bench merely on an ex officio basis during his five terms as mayor of Sunderland between 1635 and 1642.47C231/5, pp. 265, 411, 486; SP16/405, ff. 17v-19; Durham RO, Q/S/OB/2-3; Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 97.

With the meeting of the Long Parliament, Lilburne was able to turn the tables on his clerical opponents, presenting and forwarding petitions denouncing local Laudian churchmen and seeking parliamentary assistance in settling a godly preaching ministry in Sunderland and elsewhere in the county.48CJ ii. 77b, 458b; A Most Lamentable Information of Part of the Grievances of Mugleswick (1641, 669 f.4.69); HMC Lords, n.s. xi. 309; Dumble, ‘Durham Lilburnes’, 229; Meikle, ‘Scottish Covenanters and the borough of Sunderland’, 171. In the summer of 1642, he and another gentlemen attended Sir Henry Vane I* in London in an attempt to enlist Parliament’s support against the emerging royalist interest in County Durham, but to no effect.49G. Lilburne, To Every Individuall Member of the Honorable House of Commons (1649), 2. Faced with the growing power of the king’s party in region, Lilburne at first temporised, signing warrants for requisitioning horses for the northern royalist army of William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle (he would later claim that he had signed these warrants under duress). But that autumn he was denounced to Newcastle as ‘the greatest enemy in those parts’ and was imprisoned. Escaping captivity, he made his way to Edinburgh – very probably to help further efforts by several leading Northumbrian parliamentarians to secure Scottish military assistance. Lilburne later claimed that he had been ‘intimately acquainted’ with the Covenanter leadership. Having returned home on receiving assurances of protection from a local royalist gentleman, he was soon obliged to flee Sunderland for his own safety.50SP23/153, pp. 75, 103, 285-6, 304-5, 329, 333; Shadforth, Innocency Modestly Vindicated, 5; G. Lilburne, To Every Individuall Member, 3-4; J. Lilburne, A Letter of Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburns (1651) 8-11 (E.626.19); ; CCC 1917-18, 1920, 1921; Cttees. for Compounding ed. Welford, 275-8. But en route to join Captain John Hotham* in Yorkshire he was captured and endured fourteen months imprisonment in York before the Commons arranged his exchange early in 1644.51SP23/153, p. 305; CJ iii. 363a.

Lilburne retained his confrontational stance towards the governing interests in the north-east even under parliamentarian rule. Although his appointment as a deputy lieutenant for County Durham in August 1644 was almost certainly upon the recommendation of Vane I – Parliament’s lord lieutenant of the county – Lilburne evidently shared the opinion of his nephew John Lilburne that the ‘grandee’ Vanes were political opportunists.52CJ iii. 593a; LJ vi. 677; J. Lilburne, Englands Birthright Justified (1645), 19 (E.304.17); The Resolved Mans Resolution (1647), 18-19 (E.387.4); Dumble, ‘Durham Lilburnes’, 231. By the summer of 1645, George and his nephews John and Robert Lilburne were apparently compiling a dossier on the Vanes’ alleged dealings with the king’s party during the war.53Lilburne, Englands Birthright Justified, 20-1. From their powerbase on the Durham county committee, the Lilburnes were prepared to challenge the authority of the Vanes or the principal parliamentary commissioner in the north, Sir William Armyne*.54Lilburne, Just Reproof, 4; W. Dumble, ‘Government, Religion and Military Affairs in Durham during the Civil War and Interregnum’ (Durham Univ. MLitt. thesis, 1978), 149-51; Dumble, ‘Durham Lilburnes’, 231-2. Yet although Lilburne was keener on a strong Presbyterian church settlement than most of his protagonists, and had firm friends among the County Durham Presbyterian ministry, there is little to suggest that the in-fighting among the region’s parliamentarian leadership was much more than a series of power-struggles for control of local resources – particularly in relation to the coal trade.55SP23/153, p. 257; Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 368, 369; Dumble, ‘Government, Religion and Military Affairs in Durham’, 164-5, 236-8, 309; ‘Durham Lilburnes’, 236. Lilburne and his associates used their position as committeemen to capitalise on a Commons order of 15 July 1644 that allowed them to take possession of delinquents’ collieries; and by 1647 they enjoyed outright possession of the Lambton and Harraton mines – the latter alone reputedly worth £3,000 a year.56CJ iii. 561b; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 329; [J. Price], Musgrave Muzl’d, or the Mouth of Iniquitie Stoped (1651), 15 (E.625.11); Shadforth, Innocency Modestly Vindicated, 2, 6-7; Lieut. Colonel J. Lilburn Tryed and Cast (1653), 4-5 (E.720.2); Dumble, ‘Government, Religion and Military Affairs in Durham’, 150-1; ‘Durham Lilburnes’, 232; Meikle, ‘Scottish Covenanters and the borough of Sunderland’, 183-4. Such a concentration of wealth and power was inevitably resented in the region, and notably by the Newcastle MP and friend of the Vanes, John Blakiston. After threatening Blakiston’s royalist brother-in-law with sequestration proceedings, Lilburne was publicly accused of having collaborated with the royalists in 1642 and of using his offices to obtain ‘great bargains of lands’.57Supra, ‘John Blakiston’; SP23/153, pp. 75, 103; Shadforth, Innocency Modestly Vindicated, 2-3; T. Saunders, An Additionall Answer to a Pamphlet Called A Remonstrance, Written by Mr George Lilburne (?1650); G. Lilburne, To Every Individuall Member, 4-8; J. Lilburne, Just Reproof, 4; Lilburn Tryed and Cast, 3; SP23/153, pp. 103, 233-4; CCC 1918, 1919; Dumble, ‘Government, Religion and Military Affairs in Durham’, 156-8.

The replacement of Colonel Robert Lilburne by Sir Arthur Hesilrige* as governor of Newcastle late in 1647 marked the beginning of the end of George’s reign on the Durham county committee. Although Hesilrige had been a political ally of Lilburne’s before the civil war, he knew to expect trouble in enforcing his authority over the obstreperous Durham family: ‘they are stiff, obstinate men and opposed old Sir Henry Vane and Sir William Armyne and, in time, will oppose me’.58Lilburne, Just Reproof, 3-4. Ill-feeling between Lilburne and the equally acquisitive and power-hungry Hesilrige did not take long to surface. Lilburne resented Hesilrige’s purchase in March 1648 of the manor of Bishop Auckland from the trustees for the sale of bishops’ lands and opposed his decision that summer to raise money for the war effort in the north by increasing the excise upon coals.59Lilburne, Just Reproof, 4; Dumble, ‘Government, Religion and Military Affairs in Durham’, 154-5; ‘Durham Lilburnes’, 232. Most of the issues that the two men fell out over in 1648 were local in nature, but their quarrel may not have been entirely devoid of a national political dimension. Hesilrige, for example, seems to have misgivings about the army’s proceedings during the winter of 1648-9, whereas Lilburne helped to organise a petition from County Durham in support of the king’s trial.60Supra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; SP29/7, f. 77. Like many northern Presbyterians, he apparently found it hard to forgive Charles and the Engagers for bringing further devastation to their region in 1648.

Ironically, it was John Lilburne’s championing of his uncle’s cause that gave Hesilrige perhaps his most potent weapon. The Rump’s determination to crush the Leveller leader meant that Hesilrige was able to act with virtually impunity against George, sure in the knowledge that the House would never take the Lilburnes’ side against his own. In October 1649, he and his ally George Fenwick* seized Harraton colliery on the grounds that the sequestration order issued against it in 1644 had never been lifted – citing in support of their proceedings the various accusations of corruption (political and financial) that had been levelled against George Lilburne by Blakiston and his supporters since 1647. Hesilrige also used his considerable influence on the Committee for Compounding* to threaten Lilburne with wholesale sequestration of his estate.61Supra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige; Lilburne, Just Reproof, 7-15; J. Hedworth, A Copy of a Letter Written the Third of September 1651 (1651); The Oppressed Man’s Out-Cry (1651); Lilburn Tryed and Cast, 3-18; SP23/153, pp. 8-339; CCC 2127-30; Surtees, Co. Dur. ii. 178-82; Summers, Sunderland, i. 345-6; Cttees. for Compounding ed. Welford, 388-96; Dumble, ‘Durham Lilburnes’, 232-4; Clarke Pprs. ed. F. Henderson (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, xxvii), 45. Lilburne and his controversial nephew published counter-charges against both Hesilrige and Blakiston, but they stood little chance of prevailing against Hesilrige’s interest at Westminster, nor the antipathy of many Rumpers towards John Lilburne. In January 1652, the Commons banished the Leveller leader and imposed a heavy fine upon George Lilburne’s London financier Joseph Primatt.62Perfect Occurrences no. 114 (2-9 Mar. 1649), 888 (E.527.31); Shadforth, Innocency Modestly Vindicated, 4, 8; G. Lilburne, To Every Individuall Member, 4-8; J. Lilburne, Letter of Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburns, 2-5, 8-11; Just Reproof, 4; Hedworth, The Oppressed Man’s Out-Cry, 7-16; Lilburn Tryed And Cast, 12-17; CJ vi. 155b, 398a, 598b; CCC 198, 1918-21. Although investigation of the charges against Lilburne petered out in 1652, by this stage Hesilrige was assured in his possession of Harraton and had succeeded in removing Lilburne from all local commissions.63CCC 1922; Cttees. for Compounding ed. Welford, 394-5; [Price], Musgrave Muzl’d, 17; Lilburne, Just Reproof, 4.

Lilburne’s fortunes revived with the establishment of the protectorate, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654 he was returned with his nephew Robert for the newly enfranchised County Durham.64Supra, ‘County Durham’. As a major colliery owner and a champion of local interests since the 1620s, Lilburne was in many ways a natural choice as one of the county’s first MPs. He was named to five committees in this Parliament – two of which related to mercantile affairs.65CJ vii. 371b, 375b, 378b, 381a, 395a. Re-appointed to the County Durham bench in March 1655, he was among those specially entrusted by Whitehall to deal with the northern royalists implicated in Penruddock’s rising.66C231/6, p. 306; C181/6, p. 102; Durham RO, Q/S/OB/4, pp. 333, 343, 353; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 117. The Lilburnes reached the height of their influence in the years 1655-6, when George’s second term as high sheriff coincided with Robert Lilburne’s rule as deputy major general in charge of County Durham and Yorkshire. According to one (hostile) commentator, George and his eldest son Thomas ‘served the designs of the tyrant Oliver beyond any men in that county [Durham], in particular in persecuting and imprisoning his Majesty’s loyal subjects and by acting more violently upon the power given to the major-generals’.67SP29/7, f. 77. Lilburne’s shrievalty prevented him standing in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, but left him ideally positioned to oversee the return of Thomas Lilburne in his place.68Supra, ‘County Durham’.

Lilburne seems to have fallen out of favour in the spring of 1657, when he was purged from the County Durham bench and omitted from the commission for the proposed university at Durham.69C231/6, p. 363; Dumble, ‘Durham Lilburnes’, 251. The likeliest explanation for his apparent disgrace is that he opposed the offer of the crown to Cromwell. He had apparently regained his place as a justice of the peace by the autumn, only to be threatened with removal again after wrongfully arresting the wife of the Baptist army officer Paul Hobson for not attending parish services on the sabbath.70CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 78, 79-80, 101; Dumble, ‘Durham Lilburnes’, 241. He had evidently made his peace with the reconstituted protectorate by April 1658, when he joined his son Thomas, Anthony Smith* and other County Durham Cromwellians in an address to the protector, pledging their lives and estates in the preservation of his person and government.71Durham Dean and Chap. Lib. Allan ms 7, pp. 182-3. His error in arresting Hobson’s wife did not prevent him hounding the County Durham Quakers during the later 1650s.72CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 149; VCH Co. Dur. v. 205; Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 118.

In the final months of 1659, Lilburne supported his son Thomas in attempting to secure County Durham for General George Monck*.73Infra, ‘Thomas Lilburne’; A Narrative of the Northern Affairs (1659), 6 (E.1010.19). Nevertheless, at the Restoration he was removed from all from all public employments, and in 1662 he was forced to flee Sunderland in the face of Bishop John Cosin’s determination to exact revenge for his defiance of crown and church since the mid-1630s.74SP29/7, f. 77; Durham UL, Mickleton and Spearman ms 31, f. 93. In general, however, he seems to have lived out his final days in wealth and comfort.75Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 121-2. He died late in 1676 and was buried at Bishopwearmouth St Michael and All Angels, Sunderland, on 1 December.76Bishopwearmouth St Michael and All Angels par. reg. His will is remarkable both for its godly preface and the glimpse it affords of his extensive property holdings in Sunderland.77Durham UL, DPR/I/1/1676/L3/1-2; Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 123-5. Although he was reportedly worth £6,000 at his death, his personal estate was inventoried at a mere £37 15s.78Durham UL, DPR/I/1/1676/L3/3; Robson, ‘Lilburne’, 122. The association of the name Lilburne with the parliamentary representation of County Durham began and ended in the 1650s.