[Footnote 1: Lilburne in his youth had been a partisan of Bastwick, and had printed one of his tracts in Holland. Before the Star-chamber he refused to take the oath _ex officio_, or to answer interrogatories, and in consequence was condemned to stand in the pillory, was whipped from the Fleet-prison to Westminster, receiving five hundred lashes with knotted cords, and was imprisoned with double irons on his hands and legs. Three years later (1641), the House of Commons voted the punishment illegal, bloody, barbarous, and tyrannical.--Burton's Diary, iii. 503, note.] [Footnote 2: See England's New Chains Discovered, and the Hunting of the Foxes, passim; the King's Pamphlets, No. 411, xxi.; 414, xii. xvi.] agreement of the people," had been sanctioned by the council of officers, and presented[a] by Fairfax to the House of Commons, that it might be transmitted to the several counties, and there receive the approbation of the inhabitants. As a sop to shut the mouth of Cerberus, the sum of three thousand pounds, to be raised from the estates of delinquents in the county of Durham, had been voted[b] to Lilburne; but the moment he returned from the north, he appeared at the bar of the house, and petitioned against "the agreement," objecting in particular to one of the provisions by which the parliament was to sit but six months, every two years, and the government of the nation during the other eighteen months was to be intrusted to the council of state. His example was quickly followed; and the table was covered with a succession of petitions from officers and soldiers, and "the well-affected" in different counties, who demanded that a new parliament should be holden every year; that during the intervals the supreme power should be exercised by a committee of the house; that no member of the last should sit in the succeeding parliament; that the self-denying ordinance should be enforced; that no officer should retain his command in the army for more than a certain period; that the High Court of Justice should be abolished as contrary to law, and the council of state, as likely to become an engine of tyranny; that the proceedings in the courts should be in the English language, the number of lawyers diminished, and their fees reduced; that the excise and customs should be taken away, and the lands of delinquents sold for compensation to the well-affected; that religion should be "reformed according to the mind of God;" that no one should be molested or incapacitated [Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. Jan. 20.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. Feb. 26.] on account of conscience; that tithes should be abolished; and that the income of each minister should be fixed at one hundred pounds per annum, to be raised by a rate on his parishioners.[1]