please, and may have their wills, for your petitioner humbly conceiveth that he is made a prisoner to their wills, not to the law, except their wills may be a law." On this account he appealed to the Commons "as the most sovereign Court of Judicature in the land," claiming from them, "repossession of his just liberty and freedom, or else that he may undergo the penalty prescribed by the law if he be found a transgressor." Whether Overton was supported by the Commons against the Lords does not appear, but within three years the Lower House abolished the House of Peers. [Illustration: _Sessions House, Clerkenwell Green, London_] Here is yet another petition from a better known inmate of Newgate, the obstinately independent Colonel Lilburne, commonly called "Freeborn John." Lilburne was always at loggerheads with the government of the city. In 1637, when following the trade of a bookseller, he was convicted by the Star Chamber for publishing seditious libels, and sentenced to the pillory, imprisonment, and a fine of £5,000. In 1645 he fell foul of the Parliament, and wrote a new treatise, calling in question their power. Lilburne was eventually banished by the Rump Parliament; but in 1653 he returned to England and threw himself upon the tender mercies of the Protector. Cromwell would do nothing, and left him to the law. Lilburne was then arrested, and committed to Newgate. At the next sessions he was arraigned, but refused to plead unless furnished with a copy of his indictment. He managed to put off his trial by various expedients till the next sessions, when he was acquitted by the jury. In Thurloe's State Papers it is stated that "John Lilburne was five times at his trial at the Sessions House, where he most courageously defended himself from the recorder's violent assaults with his old buckler, the Magna Charta, so that they have let him alone." "Freeborn John" was so popular with malcontents of all shades of opinion, that the authorities, from Oliver Cromwell downward, were really afraid of him. Oliver professed to be enraged against him, and anxious for his punishment, yet he privately paid him a pension equal to the pay of a lieutenant-colonel, and, as Thurloe says, "thought the fellow so considerable, that during the time of his trial he kept three regiments continually under arms at St. James'." The jury which acquitted Lilburne were summoned to answer for their conduct before the Council of State. Yet there is little doubt that the court was overawed by the mob. For Thurloe says there were six or seven hundred men at the trial, with swords, pistols, bills, daggers, and other instruments, that, in case they had not cleared him, they would have employed in his defence. The joy and acclamation were so great after he was acquitted that the shout was heard an English mile.