Origins of the fifth amendment : the right against self-incrimination by Levy Leonard Williams 1923-

Author:Levy, Leonard Williams, 1923-
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Self-incrimination, Self-incrimination
Publisher: London : Oxford University Press
Published: 1971-03-15T05:00:00+00:00

and took him prisoner. That same morning Cromwell's troops also arrested William Walwyn, Richard Overton, and Thomas Prince. The four prisoners were brought before the Council of State. John Bradshaw, the presiding officer, had served as Lilburne's counsel in 1645 when he had petitioned the House of Lords to join the House of Commons in voting his Star Chamber sentence illegal and award him reparations. On that occasion Bradshaw had condemned the Star Chamber sentence because it had been grounded on Lilburne's refusal to take the oath ex officio, "it being contrary," Bradshaw had said, "to the laws of God, nature, and the kingdom, for any man to be his own accuser." But in 1649 Bradshaw was in effect Lilburne's prosecutor; he asked the prisoner whether he had written Englands Neiv Chains. 49

Lilburne, "wondering at the strangeness of the question," answered that he was "amazed" at Bradshaw's having asked it. It had been only eight years since Parliament had annihilated the Star Chamber and High Commission "for such proceedings as these," less since Bradshaw himself had argued that incriminating interrogatories were illegal. He would never, said Lilburne, commit so "un-Englishman-like" a deed as to answer. He would neither betray England's liberties nor himself. The Council should be "ashamed to demand so illegal and unworthy a thing of me as this." Bradshaw told Lilburne that they were not trying him, only seeking information for his trial. Lilburne would not even acknowledge their jurisdiction over him. Walwyn, Overton, and Prince in turn also invoked the right against self-incrimination. The four were herded into an ante-chamber while the Council debated their fate. Lilburne, listening at the keyhole, heard Cromwell bang his fist on the Council Table and shout, "I tel you Sir, you have no other Way to deale with these men, but to break them in pieces ... if you do not break them, they will break you!" The four were committed to the Tower on suspicion of high treason. They promptly published a vivid account of their arrest and examination. 50

In the succeeding months petitions flowed into Parliament demanding their release—some had as many as ten thousand signatures—and tracts written in the Tower flowed out. The four men were finally separated, kept in close confinement, and secur-

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