LILBURNE, Robert (1614-65), of Thickley Punchardon, Auckland St Andrew, co. Dur. and The Great Lodge, New Park, Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorks.

The Durham Lilburnes were a cadet branch of an ancient Northumberland family and had settled at Thickley Punchardon (about ten miles south of Durham) by the end of the fourteenth century.40Vis. Co. Dur. ed. Foster, 215; P. Gregg, Free-born John: a Biography of John Lilburne (1961), 22, 23. Lilburne’s father, ‘old litigious Dick of Thickley’, earned some notoriety in the late 1630s for claiming the right of trial of combat – the last person in England to do so.41Mercurius Elencticus, no. 6 (29 Dec. 1647-5 Jan. 1648), 48 (E.421.34); J.S.A. Adamson, ‘The baronial context of the Eng. civil war’, TRHS ser. 5, xl. 103. But it was Lilburne’s younger brother, the Leveller leader and polemicist ‘Free-born John’, who made the name Lilburne a national byword for pugnacious individualism.

In contrast to John, Robert Lilburne seems to have kept a relatively low profile before the civil war. It is likely that both brothers were raised in a godly environment, and they both responded to the impending outbreak of civil war by securing commissions in the the parliamentarian army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex – John as a captain in Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke’s regiment of foot and Robert as a cornet in Brooke’s troop of horse (his fellow cornet was John Okey*).42Catalogue of the Names of the…Lords that have Absented themselves from the Parliament, 9, 13. The two brothers transferred to the Eastern Association army of the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) in 1643, and by 1644 Robert had attained the rank of captain.43CSP Dom. 1644, p. 127; CJ iii. 469b. With much of the north-east cleared of royalist forces by the spring of 1644, he quit Manchester’s command to raise a regiment of horse in County Durham for service in the northern parliamentarian army under Ferdinando 2nd Baron Fairfax*.44Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 264. Lilburne and his regiment saw out the remainder of the war helping to clear Yorkshire of royalist strongholds.45Jones, ‘War in north’, 391. His fellow officers in Lord Fairfax’s army included several that would become valued friends, notably John Lambert*, Sir William Constable* and Adam Baynes*.46Add. 21417, ff. 71, 80, 106; Add. 21420, f. 63, 86, 172, 207; Add. 21421, f. 105

Having acquired a taste and reputation for soldiering, Lilburne attended Sir Thomas Fairfax* and Oliver Cromwell* in the west country in the autumn of 1645 and was given the New Model regiment of foot that Ralph Weldon* relinquished in the summer of 1646.47Add. 72437, f. 119v; J. Lilburne, Jonahs Cry out of the Whales Belly (1647), 12 (E.400.5); Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 453; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, i. 58, 69. It would be interesting to know whether Lilburne’s friendship with Fairfax’s secretary, John Rushworth*, played any part in his appointment.48Infra, ‘John Rushworth’; Add. 21420, f. 207. In the spring of 1647, Lilburne was among the handful of senior officers that took a lead in defying the Westminster Presbyterians over their plans to dismember the army. He attended the various councils where the army’s grievances were formulated, was summoned to attend the Commons twice for his perceived complicity in the army’s defiance of the House, and urged his troops to reject service in Ireland on the Presbyterians’ terms as a thing no godly man would countenance.49CJ v. 129a, 132a, 154b, 159a, 184a; LJ ix. 112b, 113a, 115a, 153b-155b, 257; Clarke Pprs. i. 9, 109; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 457, 497, 555; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 32-3, 37, 45, 46, 48-50, 56; R. Howell, Puritans and Radicals in North Eng. (1984), 180-2; D. P. Massarella, ‘The Politics of the Army 1647-60’ (York Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1977), 23, 25, 27, 41. ‘Upon the late contest betwixt the Parliament and army’, in July-August 1647, he ‘was thought the fittest by the chief officers of the army’ to be appointed governor of Newcastle in place of Major-general Philip Skippon*.50J. Lilburne, A Just Reproof to Haberdashers-Hall (1651), 2-3 (E.638.12). Lilburne had received this new charge by 11 August, when he ordered Newcastle corporation to repair the town’s walls.51Tyne and Wear, MD.NC/2/1, Newcastle Common Council Order Bk., p. 163.

In Lilburne’s absence in the north, his regiment proved susceptible to Leveller ideas and, consequently, played a prominent part in the abortive mutiny at Ware in November.52LJ ix. 527b-528a; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 457-8. In a declaration to Fairfax late in November, Lilburne and his officers denounced these ‘malcontented spirits’ who had tried to divide the army by ‘pleading necessity when there is none and for such things as are in themselves very disputable, whether just or unjust, and, which is more than probable, may be more destructive to the commonwealth if granted than the refusal of them will be’.53Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 913-14. Lilburne evidently put army unity above any Leveller notions of a law paramount and popular sovereignty.

Lilburne’s kinship with John Lilburne – by now a fierce critic of the Independent grandees – was probably a factor in his replacement as governor of Newcastle in December 1647 by Sir Arthur Hesilrige*.54Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 949; Mercurius Elencticus no. 6 (29 Dec. 1647-5 Jan. 1648), 48. During his brief spell on the Tyne, Lilburne had shown ‘many respects and favours’ to the corporation, and at his departure the town fathers presented him with two silver flagons worth £20.55Extracts from the Newcastle upon Tyne Council Minute Bk. 1639-56 ed. M.H. Dodds (Newcastle upon Tyne Recs. Cttee. i), 77, 85. According to John Lilburne, his brother had been ‘privately undermined and worm-eaten out of his governorship’ by Hesilrige and, ‘like a soft and quiet-spirited man, gives way unto it, without so much as a ruffle’ – although another source alleged that Robert had raged ‘to see how decently [sic] he is laid aside’.56Lilburne, Just Reproof, 3; Mercurius Elencticus no. 6 (29 Dec. 1647-5 Jan. 1648), 48. Hesilrige was also given the colonelcy of Lilburne’s mutinous New Model regiment, while Lilburne returned to his old cavalry command, which was now part of the Northern Brigade under Major-general Lambert.57Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 459. If Lilburne was indeed angered at this re-shuffle, he did not let it affect his military duties. By the spring of 1648 he was effectively Lambert’s second-in-command, and during the second civil war he scored an important victory against the Northumberland royalists before going on to win further laurels in the Preston campaign.58Clarke Pprs. ii. 21; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 168; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 266-7. Even his harshest detractors have been forced to acknowledge his ‘great bravery and conduct’ in 1648.59M. Noble, Lives of the Regicides (1798), 378-9.

Lilburne worked with Lambert in December 1648 to secure the Northern Brigade’s endorsement of the army’s Remonstrance demanding an end to the Newport treaty and justice against the king.60York Minster Lib. BB53, pp. 30-3; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 164-6. In mid-January 1649, Lilburne travelled down to army headquarters in Whitehall, where he was active on the council of officers’ committees for ordering garrisons and field forces.61Add. 21417, f. 27; Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXXII, unfol.; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 193, 198, 203. The only senior officer of the Northern Brigade named to the high court of justice, he attended seven meetings of the trial commission, all four sessions of the trial itself and signed the king’s death warrant.62Muddiman, Trial, 76, 86, 96, 105, 201, 203, 206, 210, 222, 225, 226, 228. His motives for regicide are not known. Noble’s claim, that John Lilburne’s persecution by the court of star chamber during the personal rule of Charles I had given Robert ‘a prodigious hatred of the court, and even the person of his Majesty’, hardly bears consideration.63Noble, Lives of the Regicides, 378. Although Robert was to stand by John during his 1649 trial (repeatedly petitioning the Rump on his brother’s behalf), he ignored his second trial in 1653 and was never one to be guided by his brother’s beliefs or quarrels.64J. Lilburne, The Triall of Lieut. Collonell John Lilburne (1649), 159-161, 166-7 (E.584.0); The Innocent Mans’s Second Proffer Made unto His Present Adversaries (1649, 669 f.14.85); Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 183-4; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 252-3. A much more likely spur to regicide was Charles’s conduct at his own trial. His obduracy in the face of demands that he forswear future resort to Scottish or Irish arms seemed to threaten England, and the north in particular, with renewed devastation. Even Lilburne’s Presbyterian uncle and cousin, George* and Thomas Lilburne*, seem to have supported calls for the king’s trial, if not necessarily his execution.65CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 113. Charles’s refusal to renounce his perceived design to ‘vassalise’ the English to the Celtic nations may have convinced many of the regicides (Lilburne perhaps among them) that the providential moment for justice against ‘that man of blood’ had finally arrived. At the trial of James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton – who had commanded the Scottish invasion of England in 1648 – in February 1649, Lilburne testified that his own understanding of ‘preserving the duke’s life’ in the articles of surrender ‘was only to preserve him from the violence of the soldiers and not from the justice of the Parliament’.66Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXX, ff. 107v, 108, 108v, 109, 112v, 114v; G. Burnet, The Memoires of the Lives and Actions of James and William, Dukes of Hamilton (1677), 387-8.

Lilburne’s signature on Charles’s death warrant tends to contradict his testimony at his own trial in 1661 that he had favoured granting Charles’s final request for a hearing before the Lords and Commons, and that ‘upon the day… that the king was put to death, I was so sensible of it that I went to my chamber and mourned and would, if it had been in my power, have preserved his life’.67An Exact and Most Impartial Accompt of the…Trial…of Nine and Twenty Regicides (1660), 253-4. Yet it is perhaps significant that Lilburne was among a group of 13 commissioners who had not attended the trial commission on the day that the warrant was produced for signatures (29 Jan.) and who therefore had to be sought out in the Commons or wherever and prevailed upon to sign it.68Muddiman, Trial, 226-8; S. Kelsey, ‘The death of Charles I’, HJ xlv. 751.

Lilburne served valiantly in Cromwell’s campaign against the Scots in 1650-1, and in December 1652 he was appointed acting commander-in-chief in Scotland under Major-general Richard Deane, who resumed his duties as a general-at-sea.69Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XXV, f. 71; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 267-9. Having backed the army’s campaign of 1652-3 for the dissolution of the Rump, Lilburne approved of the forcible termination of the House in April 1653, conceiving (as he informed Cromwell) ‘the Lord hath put it into your heart and the officers to appear … so eminently against corrupt men and things’.70Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XXV, ff. 44v-45; Scotland and the Commonwealth ed. C.H. Firth (Scottish Hist. Soc. xviii), 135; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 295, 309. The council of officers considered him for membership of the Nominated Parliament in the spring of 1653, ‘but in regard he was commander-in-chief in Scotland, that was laid aside’.71Clarke Pprs. ed. F. Henderson (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, xxvii), 86. He willingly acquiesced in the establishment of the protectorate late in 1653, desiring that the Lord would direct Cromwell ‘in the managing these great affairs before you for the glory of His name and the satisfaction of all good people under your lordship’s protection’.72Scotland and the Commonwealth ed. Firth, 303; TSP ii. 18; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 349-50.

Lilburne’s own management of ‘great affairs’ in Scotland was not a success. Plagued by a shortage of supplies and overwhelmed by the scale of the problems facing him, he reacted too slowly and hesitantly to the Glencairn rising in Scotland. He showed greater vigour, if not necessarily better judgement, in his determination to break the power of the Scottish Kirk, which he regarded as a stalking horse for royalist revanchism. Lilburne was profoundly hostile towards the Presbyterian ministry, describing the ‘strange creatures’ of the Kirk as ‘trumpets of sedition, not only expressing those things in the pulpit that do not become them, but for promoting or countenancing this [Glencairn’s] rebellion’.73Scotland and the Commonwealth ed. C.H. Firth (Scottish Hist. Soc. xxxi), 62; Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 186-90. Lilburne’s own religious sympathies by this stage lay with the Baptists, and he did much to encourage their ministry among the soldiery in Scotland and in the north-east of England.74T. Gumble, Life of General Monck (1671), 80; D. Douglas, Hist. of the Baptist Churches in the North of Eng. (1846), 33, 38, 40-2; A. Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains (1990), 135, 176. He and many of his soldiers were also sympathetic towards the Quakers – indeed, several captains in his regiment became Friends themselves.75B. Reay, The Quakers and the Eng. Revolution (1985), 19, 90; H. Reece, The Army in Cromwellian Eng. 1649-60 (Oxford, 2013), 122, 123; D. Scott, ‘Politics, Dissent, and Quakerism in York, 1640-1700’ (York Univ. D. Phil. thesis, 1990), 30-1, 51.

Lilburne’s promotion, or at least toleration, of sectarianism in the ranks, as well as his failure to make headway against the Glencairn insurgents, may have influenced the council’s decision early in 1654 to replace him as commander-in-chief in Scotland – initially with Lambert and then with General George Monck*. But Lilburne himself had recognised that he was not up to the job and had made his concerns known to the council and to Cromwell.76TSP ii. 414; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 269-70; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 300-1. To claim, as Monck’s biographer did, that Cromwell had regarded Lilburne as ‘a man not of any conduct and unqualified for such a government’, is undoubtedly an exaggeration.77Gumble, Monck, 79. On returning from Scotland, Lilburne’s regiment was quartered in northern England, with two of his troops stationed at York from the spring of 1655. He himself seems to have taken up residence in the city – apparently at King’s Manor – at about the same time, and within a year he had taken charge of York Castle, making him, in effect, the city’s governor.78York City Archive, York House Bk. 37, f. 84; VCH York, 190, 530; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 376; ‘Reg. of burials in York Minster’ ed. Scaife, 239. The letter in which the Quaker evangelist Thomas Aldam praised the city’s governor for his ‘great friendship and love’ towards Friends was apparently written in 1652 or 1653 and therefore does not refer to Lilburne, as is generally thought, but to his predecessor, whose indentity is not known.79Friends’ House Lib. Ms 352, Swarthmore mss, item 373; Reay, Quakers and the Eng. Revolution, 19.

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Lilburne was returned for the newly enfranchised County Durham, where his father and uncle (who was also elected) had been champions of the parliamentary cause since the early 1640s.80Supra, ‘Durham County’. He was named to seven committees in this Parliament – including the committees for Scottish and Irish affairs – and on 19 January 1655 he was a majority teller with Sir William Strickland on a division relating to the tenants of the former bishop of Durham.81CJ vii. 366b, 370b, 371b, 380a, 381a, 407b, 420a. He played a leading role in hounding the northern royalists in the wake of Penruddock’s rising early in 1655 and was clearly disappointed when legal technicalities in trying those accused suggested ‘that the nail cannot be driven into the head’.82TSP iii. 359-60; Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 190-1.

Lilburne’s willingness to jettison ‘known ways’ in the service of the good old cause was recognised in October 1655 with his appointment as deputy major-general under Lambert, with responsibility for Yorkshire and County Durham.83CSP Dom. 1655, p. 387. Lilburne threw himself wholeheartedly into his new role, and he operated with more severity against the cavaliers – ‘such kind of cattle’ as he referred to them – than his colleagues to the west and south, Charles Howard* and Edward Whalley*. Although the decimation tax in his region produced a substantial surplus, he was eager to increase its scope and impact, informing Cromwell that ‘if I were reduced to corporal I should as cheerfully undertake it [the business of decimation] rather than this work should want my best assistance to carry it on’. He supported the work of the triers and ejectors and, in common with most of the major generals, was keen to suppress illicit alehouses and ‘unlawful pastimes dishonourable to God and disturbing the peace of the commonwealth’. Another priority was purging the magistracy and ministry, and indeed all walks of public life, of any who failed to meet his exacting standards of political and personal probity – a category that included not only royalists, but also those ‘who were justly reputed unworthy’. He advised against the appointment of Richard Robinson* as sheriff of Yorkshire in 1656, for example, ‘as one somewhat of a loose conversation and one that is too much addicted to tippling and that which is called good fellowship’. And he urged that a postmaster be removed for performing his duties merely ‘upon grounds of prudence and policy’ rather than ‘real affection’ to the public interest.84Bodl. Rawl. A.40, ff. 113r-v; TSP iv. 283, 294, 321, 397, 402, 442, 541, 643; v. 185, 229; CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 41, 64, 147, 225, 235, 236, 357, 378; Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 191-3; C. Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals (Manchester, 2001), 81, 84-5, 90, 99-100, 112, 113, 117, 128, 130, 136, 157. Applying the same high standards to his own conduct, he preferred to sell his army debentures rather than employ them in the sometimes shady transactions surrounding the purchase of forfeited property.85D. Farr, John Lambert, Parliamentary Soldier and Cromwellian Major-General (Woodbridge, 2003), 165, 199; I. Gentles, ‘The Debentures Market and Military Purchases of Crown Lands, 1649-60’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1969), 170. He rebuked Baynes, who handled the Northern Brigade’s debenture dealings in London, for profiteering at his fellow soldiers’ expense.86Add. 21421, f. 105.

Examination of quarter sessions and municipal records in the north east during Lilburne’s term as major-general suggests that his impact in promoting godly reformation and cleansing public office was relatively light. He proved hardly more effective as a manager of the Cromwellian interest in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656. A third of the 24 MPs returned for County Durham and Yorkshire were excluded by the protectoral council, including men that he had identified as notorious enemies of the protectorate but had failed to force out of contention.87Supra, ‘Durham County’; ‘Yorkshire’; TSP v. 296; Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 193-4; Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals, 200. That said, he may have helped Newcastle corporation arrive at the wise decision to jettison Hesilrige (the town’s MP in the first protectoral Parliament) in favour of the Cromwellian councillor Walter Strickland*.88Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’; TSP v. 296. Lilburne himself was elected for the North Riding of Yorkshire, and it was probably no coincidence that this was the only riding for which all of the men returned were deemed friends of the government.89Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. He was named to 39 committees in this Parliament, of which approximately a third related either to the northern counties, the maintenance of a godly ministry, legal reform, or efforts to crackdown on corrupt brewers, vintners, alehouse-keepers and excisemen.90CJ vii. 430a. 434a, 436b, 438a, 440b, 446b, 456a, 464a, 469a, 472b, 504a, 528a, 538a, 557b.

Although Lilburne had entered the second protectoral Parliament as a loyal Cromwellian, the protector’s shift towards those Members eager to demolish the rule of major-generals and to introduce more traditional forms of government was to push Lilburne into opposition. An early indication of his political re-alignment is evident on 27 December 1656, when he and his friend Luke Robinson were the only men in the House to vote against a motion for adding 2,000 acres to the estate settled upon Henry Cromwell* in Ireland.91Burton’s Diary, i. 260. When Lord Broghill spoke against the bill for continuing the decimation tax and proposed that those who had enforced the tax should be indemnified for their over-zealous proceedings (7 Jan.), Lilburne was heard to declare, ‘underhand’, that ‘he scorned to accept that indemnity’.92Burton’s Diary, i. 311-13. Broghill was answered by Luke Robinson, who undoubtedly voiced Lilburne’s own sentiments in declaring that the Cavaliers were ‘a false people’ and should be rigorously proceeded against.93Burton’s Diary, i. 313. Unlike Robinson, Lilburne remained at Westminster after the introduction of the Humble Petition and Advice and was named to several committees for modifying the new protectoral constitution in accordance with Cromwell’s repeated refusal of the crown.94CJ vii. 519b, 535a, 540b, 557a. Lilburne explained his reason for staying at Westminster in a letter to Robinson in May 1657: ‘the lawyers and that party are so affected with kingship that they will not be satisfied without a limb of the branch; but many others strongly opposing of it will bring it to some good issue at last, I hope, in some measure to satisfy honest men’.95TSP vi. 292.

Several of his four tellerships are also revealing of his alignment in the House.96CJ vii. 449a, 497b, 554a, 564b. On 28 February 1657, he was a minority teller in favour of showing leniency towards the Quaker evangelist and alleged blasphemer James Naylor.97CJ vii. 497b. And on 10 June, he was a minority teller with Lambert against making any reduction in the monthly assessments that sustained the military establishment.98CJ vii. 554a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 213-18. By the summer of 1657, at the latest, Lilburne seems to have reposed more faith in the army as an upholder of the good old cause than he did in Parliament. In contrast to Lambert, he was allowed to retain his commission after the adoption of the Humble Petition and Advice, although General George Monck* saw fit to purge his regiment (which had moved back to Scotland in May 1657) of sectarian officers. By the spring of 1658, Lilburne was reportedly ‘malcontent’.99TSP vii. 85; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 272-3.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Lilburne and Luke Robinson stood for Malton as opponents of the court. Their years of service to the ‘good old interest’, combined with Robinson’s influence as the North Riding’s chief magistrate, were enough to secure them the support of New Malton, but the inhabitants of Old Malton preferred the Cromwellian – or possibly crypto-royalist – Philip Howard* and another opponent of the army and the sects, George Marwood*, and the result was a double return. The dispute sparked off a long-running battle at Westminster between the opponents of the protectorate (led by the commonwealthsmen), who backed Robinson and Lilburne, and the opponents of the republican and army interest (led by the court interest), who favoured their rivals. After ‘much labour and sweat’, the Cromwellians on the committee of privileges swung the verdict in Howard and Marwood’s favour.100Supra, ‘Malton’. But when the committee reported its decision on 7 March, the commonwealthsmen forced a division on the issue, with Adam Baynes and his fellow Yorkshire republican Colonel Matthew Alured acting as tellers for the Lilburne-Robinson camp. Once again, however, the commonwealthsmen found themselves outnumbered, and Howard and Marwood’s return was duly upheld.101CJ vii. 611a. Lilburne reportedly stood as a candidate for the seat vacated by Lambert at Aldborough, but no election was held there before Parliament was dissolved in April.102Supra, ‘Aldborough’.

The House’s rejection of Lilburne’s return for Malton probably sharpened his antipathy towards the Cromwellian regime, and by April 1659 he was a leading figure among those radical officers agitating against the protectorate.103Clarke Pprs. iii. 183, 187, 196; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 499-500; Baker, Chronicle, 639; Complete Prose Works of John Milton ed. D.M. Woolfe et al (1980), vii. 62; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 524, 528-9, 537, 538. With the fall of Protector Richard later that month, he was closely involved – reportedly as Lambert’s man-of-business – in the talks among the republican interest that led to the restoration of the Rump.104Henry Cromwell Corresp. 509; Baker, Chronicle, 642. Lilburne was one of the signatories to the 13 May petition from a group of senior officers, headed by Lambert, pledging their loyalty to the restored Rump. One of the petitioners’ proposals for securing the ‘fundamentals of our good old cause’ was the establishment of a ‘select senate, coordinate in power’ with a unicameral Parliament – a scheme favoured by Lambert and Sir Henry Vane II*, but firmly opposed by Hesilrige and his closest parliamentary allies.105The Humble Petition and Addresse of the Officers of the Army (1659, E.983.7); Prose Works of Milton, vii. 71-3; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 566-8.

For the remainder of his public career, Lilburne adhered firmly to Lambert and the English army grandees. Appointed commander of the militia ‘and other forces of the army’ in the northern counties in July 1659, he marched to assist Lambert in suppressing Sir George Boothe’s* royalist-Presbyterian uprising. He backed Lambert’s army faction in October when it dissolved the Rump and set up a new executive, the committee of safety. He himself was named to the committee, but he remained in the north to secure the region for the new regime.106Bodl. Rawl. C.179, pp. 183, 258, 311; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 49, 59, 69, 86, 90; True Narrative of the Procs. in Parl. 41; Public Intelligencer no. 202 (7-14 Nov. 1659), 845-7 (E.773.7); Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 274-5; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 631. As Lambert’s right-hand man in the north, he was regarded by General Monck and his adherents – who included Lilburne’s cousin Thomas and uncle George – as a particularly determined and dangerous opponent.107Clarke Pprs. iv. 87; v. 327, 332-3, 347; A Narrative of the Northern Affairs (1659), 6 (E.1010.19); Reece, Army in Cromwellian Eng. 179. According to Thomas Lilburne, his cousin Robert was ‘altogether his [Lambert’s] creature’ and that after the final restoration of the Rump in December he had expressed the hope that ‘never a true Englishman would name the Parliament [i.e. the Rump] again and that he would have the House pulled down where they sat for fear it should be infectious’.108CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 295. With his army on the borders disintegrating by this stage, Lambert sent Lilburne to secure York as a fall-back position, but most of Lilburne’s regiment likewise deserted him and he was forced to abandon the city to Lord Fairfax and his forces.109Baker, Chronicle, 666; Reece, Army in Cromwellian Eng. 210-11, 212; A. Woolrych, ‘Yorks. and the Restoration’, Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xxxix. 491-2, 496-7. When Monck arrived at York in mid-January 1660 he gave the command of Lilburne’s regiment to Major George Smithson*.110Baker, Chronicle, 678; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 276.

In defeat, Lilburne withdrew quietly to his residence of New Park, near York, and was already requesting leave to journey south when he was summoned to attend the council of state in March 1660.111Clarke Pprs. iv. 265; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 381. In June, he surrendered himself in accordance with the king’s proclamation against the regicides and petitioned to be included in any general pardon, claiming that he had been kind to the ‘contrary party’ and had been no contriver of Charles I’s death – indeed, would have prevented it if he could.112W. Kennet, Register (1728), 183; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 8. He maintained this somewhat weak line of defence at his trial in October.

I shall not willfully nor obstinately deny the matter of fact. But … I must and I can with a very good conscience say that what I did, I did it very innocently without any intention of murther, nor was I ever plotter or contriver in that murther. I never read in the law, nor understood the case thoroughly; whatever I have done I have done ignorantly.113Trial…of Nine and Twenty Regicides, 253.

The court found him guilty of treason and left him to the mercy of Parliament, which had ordered that he and 19 other regicides who had voluntarily surrendered themselves should not be executed except by special parliamentary act.114Trial…of Nine and Twenty Regicides, 255; R. Hutton, The Restoration, 133; Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 196. He immediately petitioned for pardon again, repeating the claim that he had made at his trial that he was ‘not at all any disturber of the government’ – either in 1647 in the case of the Eleven Members, in 1648 during Pride’s Purge, or at any time thereafter.115Trial…of Nine and Twenty Regicides, 254; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 318. Technically speaking, this was correct. He had not been a ‘contriver’ of any of the changes of government since 1642 – the possible exception being the fall of protectorate in April 1659. But it was a most disingenuous line of argument, and his claim that he had always been ‘civil’ to the king’s friends was manifestly untrue. Nevertheless, neither king nor Parliament was disposed to demand the capital sentence that formally applied to a condemned traitor, which was commuted to what amounted to life imprisonment.

In the autumn of 1661, Lilburne was sent to St Nicholas Island, near Plymouth, where he died late in the summer of 1665 and was buried in the Quaker burial ground at Plymouth on 27 August. It appears that Robert, like his brother John, died a Quaker.116CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 130; Selleck, ‘Plymouth Friends’, 298. Lilburne and his uncle George and cousin Thomas were the first and last of the Durham Lilburnes to sit in Parliament.