Note 120 — John Lilburne and the Levellers 1647–1653

“Unfortunately his friends, in petitioning for his release, rested their case on the ground that all sentences given by a court-martial were made illegal by the Petition of Right and the law of the land. Such a doctrine would have dissolved the army into chaos, and when Lilburne and Overton wrote to Fairfax, threatening him with the fate of Joab and Strafford, all chance of pardon was at an end. Lockyer firmly believed himself to be a martyr to the cause of right and justice.”—S. R. Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth.