But Lilburne was unsubdued. His new “Agreement of the Free People,” published on May 1st, called for annual parliaments elected by manhood suffrage--pensioners, militant royalists, and lawyers excluded--and for the free election of unendowed church ministers in each parish. At the same time he disclaimed all connection with Winstanley’s “Diggers”--political reform was Lilburne’s demand.[123] Released on bail in July, Lilburne issued in August an “Impeachment for High Treason against Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law, James Ireton.” In this his hatred of government by the army compels the admission that monarchy is preferable to a military despotism: “If we must have a king, I for my part would rather have the prince than any man in the world.... For the present army to set up the pretended Saint Oliver or any other as their elected king, there will be nothing thereby from the beginning of the chapter to the end thereof but wars and the cutting of throats year after year; yea, and the absolute keeping up of a perpetual army under which the people are absolute and perfect slaves.” Thereupon, instead of bringing him to trial, the government merely issued a warrant for Lilburne’s arrest. The agitator met this by a stronger manifesto, “An Outcry of the Young Men and Apprentices of London,” calling on the army to rise in support of a democratic parliament and to vindicate the men executed at Burford. Some response came from the garrison at Oxford, who summoned their officers to join in the demand for a free parliament, but no success attended this step. At last in October Lilburne was brought to trial at the Guildhall, not on the charge for which he had been first committed to the Tower in March, but for the “treason” of his later pamphlets. The trial is memorable for Lilburne’s demand that counsel should be assigned to him in the event of legal technicalities arising, and for his bidding the jury remember they were judges of law as well as of fact. His real defence lay in the question he had put so often: Was England to be governed by the sword and a mock parliament, or by duly elected representatives of the People? The jury understood that Lilburne was on trial for putting that question, and, agreeing with him, they acquitted him. The verdict was received with tremendous applause, and “a loud and unanimous shout” of triumph went up from the citizens of London in the Guildhall.[124]