In December Lilburne was elected to the common council of the city, but parliament promptly declared the election void. “Fiercely as Lilburne attacked Cromwell, there was at times considerable liking between the two men, and they met on friendly terms before Cromwell went to Scotland in 1650. Cromwell assured Lilburne of his desire to make England enjoy the real fruit of all the army’s promises and declarations,” and friendly relations lasted till Cromwell’s return. But, in Cromwell’s absence, Lilburne charged Hazlerigg with corruption in the administration of justice concerning a disputed colliery lease in Durham, and parliament took up the matter. In January, 1652, it declared Lilburne’s petition for redress a libel, and imposed a fine of £7,000 with a sentence of banishment for life. This proceeding by parliament revived the methods of the Star Chamber in imposing a conviction and a sentence without trial, but the House of Commons was determined to stop Lilburne’s activities at all cost. Cromwell made no effort to hinder the conviction, and Lilburne insisted that Cromwell’s professions of friendship were hypocritical, and that the general himself was responsible for the sentence. For the time Lilburne retired to Holland, where he discussed favourably the chances of a royalist restoration. But on the expulsion of the Rump of the Long Parliament the agitator at once wrote off to Cromwell for permission to return to England, and getting no answer crossed to London in June, 1653, and settled in lodgings in Moorfields. He petitioned Cromwell and the Council of State for leave to remain unmolested, promising to live peacefully, but Cromwell, with the whole government on his shoulders, had no willingness to incur the risk Lilburne and his doctrine of popular rights involved to the safety of the State. Lilburne was promptly arrested by Cromwell’s order and brought to trial at the Old Bailey on July 13th. The government case was that he had returned to England knowing that a sentence of death was decreed by parliament if he broke his exile. Lilburne’s defence, in the main, was that the parliament which had passed sentence was dead, and that if Cromwell had acted justly in dissolving it, then its unjust actions ought not to be maintained; if Cromwell had acted unjustly, why was he not punished? Again the jury acquitted him, and again the people of London expressed their satisfaction at the verdict, “the very soldiers sent to guard the court joining in the shouts, and beating their drums and sounding their trumpets as they passed along the streets to their quarters.” But “for the peace of the nation” Cromwell would not let Lilburne be at large. Back in the Tower, then at Guernsey, and then in Dover Castle for more than two years Lilburne was a prisoner.