TWO LETTERS: THE ONE FROM LIEUTENANT COLONEL john Lilbourne TO COLONEL HENRY MARTIN, a Member of the House of COMMONS. WITH HIS ANSWER.  

SIR;  
I Received yours of the 21. instant, even now in answer to mine of the 20th instant, and I must be necessitated to tell you, that no man so well knows where the shoe pi●cheth him, as he that wears it; and my ten year's experience of afflictions, (without to this day ever obtaining one pennyworth of Justice,) being a younger Brother, and having not one foot of land in all the world to support me, hath run me now at last in many straits, having wife and children to sustain and provide for, as well as myself, so that I must ingenuously confess unto you, if I had not a little credit now and then to borrow a sum of money, we must have been forced ere now to have eat one another: and I must tell you, that I can not always live upon that score, and debts must either be paid in some time, or else lender's will grow weary, especially when they have no other securitis but the bare word of a man in misery, and present poverty, and guilty of my own death, I dare not be, but must do the utmost that the best reason GOD hath given unto me, will dictate unto me to preserve myself, and truly and before God I speak it, I have left no means I could think of unassayed to prevail with you, to make my report, or at least vigorously to endeavour it; for feign I would have been at the House to have paid them according to their deserts, but I could not come at them so fully as I would, but I must furiously smite you, (which I protest with ingenuity I was exceeding loath to do.) In regard you never by yourself, or under your hand, or by any other way, that I could build upon for an avouched evidence, did ever give me, before now, to understand that you had faithfully endeavoured to discharge your duty, whereunto you were often preft by me. Now you tell me you have offered my report twenty times, but could not be heard by your House. I am glad to hear from yourself, you have so done, and shall give credit to it, and wish I had had the same information from you the sooner, that so I might not have fall'n so foul upon yourself, who had not a small proportion of my affection; and to your framing an answer to my printed Epistle to you of the 30th of May last, I desire with all my heart, you may go on, and not spare me, nor any man else in your way. And I must inform you, that when your friend and mine, Mr W. W. told me of it, I was very glad and earnestly entreated him to press you to finish it, telling him what ever was in it against me, if you could not get it printed, I would get it done for you, and pay for it myself. Sir, go on I beseech you with vigour and strength without delay, to discharge your duty about my report, and if upon a hearing before indifferent men, chosen by us, I have done you any wrong, I will abide the award, and punctually perform it, what ever it be, if within my power, and I doubt not but fully to make it evident, that I have been, and am as really your friend and servant, to the utmost of my power, as you are or have been;  
From my most illegal captivity in the Tower of London, July 23. 1647. John Lilburne.   

FOR LIEVT: COLONEL john Lilbourne At his Lodgings in the Tower, PRESENT THESE.  
SIR;  
BY yours of the 23th (outside and inside) I am earnesily invited to come abroad in print, for which I have not only your advice and encouragement, offering to defray the charges thereof yourself (notwithstanding your poverty;) but I have your example too, (the most taking way of persuasion;) for the same day wherein I received your last by my man, I met your former Letter printed: All which is but concurrent with my own resolution, so expressed when I wrote unto you; and if I be not altogether so early at the Press as you might expect, (because yourself would haply have made more haste thither) you may be pleased to impute it, not to a want of knowing what to say in my own behalf, nor to a loathness of being at the charge to publish it, but partly to a kind of tenderness as the first setting my foot upon that stage where I was never yet (otherwise then passively,) and partly to the multitude of other businesses, which were enough to distract a better brain than mine, and shake the pen out of a man's hand after he had sworn to write. In so much, as if every one of those whom I have wronged like you (that is, for whom I have not procured what they desired) should require the same satisfaction from me that you do, Martin's Pamphlets bound up in a volume would fill a considerable room in a Booksellers shop, though stuffed with nothing but what is most true for the matters over-red therein, and very civil to the persons mentioned. Therefore when you shall find your ungentle language answered with mildness, I do freely disclaim the deserving of any thanks at your hands, as if I spared you, where in truth I spare myself, thinking it less credit for me to outrun you in evil speaking, then to go slowly on your errands. Upon this very ground I beseech you not to trouble yourself, (much less any body else) about repairing of me, till I feel myself dilapidated; for, besides that, (in my conscience) you never meant me harm in any thing you said of me, had your meaning been never so bad toward me: I do not take myself to be within the reach of a tongue: bitter words are indeed compared to arrows, for so perhaps he fancies them that utters them, and some wise men, at whom they are well aimed, but I am such a fool as to conceive they are always shot upright into the air, and either vanish there, or (if ever you hear any more news of them) they are sure to light upon the head of him that shot them. Whether you have been mistaken or no in your censures of me, no man shall be Judge but yourself, nor should have been witness, if there had not been more need of humouring you, then of clearing:  
Sir, Your most affectionate friend and servant, H. M. Westminster 26 Julij 17.