The great agitator

John Lilburne was only 43 when he died in 1657, an early death even for the time. But in many ways it was remarkable that he lived so long. He not only dodged Royalist bullets when fighting for Parliament in the civil war as Lieutenant Colonel Lilburne, but managed to avoid the noose or firing squad on three occasions, each time trusting his own principled legal dexterity (and a slice of luck that he would have seen as the hand of Providence) to cheat his would-be executioners.

This was an age, of course, when men of far more elevated status than this member of the minor gentry from the north east did not manage the same feat. Most famously, Charles I himself was tried, convicted and executed for his crimes, and he had been preceded by some of his most powerful subjects, including his favourite the Earl of Strafford and the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.