John Lilburne Research Institute

John Lilburne Research Institute was created by John England, Genie Baskir, Paul John Lilburne-Byford and Eric Gilder as the research and educational arm of the Four Freedoms Federation in Arlington, Texas during 1985 although it did not function as a separate unit at that time. Its original purpose was to develop articles and scripts for the 4FWS and 4FTN broadcasting services of the Four Freedoms Federation and by 1991 maintained an address in Washington, D.C..

Brief history

Background

John Lilburne Research Institute was created during 1985 in order to continue research that was commenced following an investigation into the copyright recording laws of the United Kingdom. These events began with Don Pierson who had obtained an FCC license for KVMX-FM to serve his home town of Eastland, Texas.

In the 1960s Don Pierson had revolutionized British broadcasting by creating three offshore commercial radio stations called Wonderful Radio London; Swinging Radio England and Britain Radio. In 1982 Don Pierson invited the creation of an oldies show called Swinging Radio England for his new Eastland station. That show was soon replaced by a new program called Wonderful Radio London and it featured the latest British hits. At that time the British music charts were about one year ahead of the charts in the USA.

When Don Pierson began attempting to syndicate the Wonderful Radio London show at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), his inspiration went one stage further to suggest the recreation of his original offshore radio station as Wonderful Radio London International. It was during research into the copyright and broadcasting laws then prevailing in the UK, that discovery was made of an article by United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black that attributed the freedoms enjoyed by Americans as a result of the U.S. Bill of Rights, to the third edition of a proposed constitution for England that was written during the time of the republic between 1649 and 1660. That document was in turn attributed to Freeborn John Lilburne. In 1985 very little publicity had been given to John Lilburne or to the cause for which he had fought. Most history books had written him off as a worthless troublemaker who, regarding of the strife that he had caused, achieved absolutely nothing.

The intrigue created by the Hugo Black article created a study of John Lilburne, and because of the similarity of individual liberty esposed by Thomas Jefferson, it sparked a study of the known sources of his inspiration. At that time the primary biographer of Thomas Jefferson was Dumas Malone who cited Jefferson's dismissal of his own family history as being of little importance. But resting upon nothing more than suspicion of a possible link between Lilburne and Jefferson, the founding members of the John Lilburne Research Institute turned to the Fort Worth Public Library Genenealogy Department for assistance and it was there that a link was made.

Research

Several decades before, a member of the Virginia Historical Society had asked the same question and it had been answered in an edition of the Virginia Quarterly Review: Thomas Jefferson had been linked by family to John Lilburne. From this beginning, renewed attention was then paid to the writings of Hugo Black while he had been creating opinions for cases coming before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Beginning in 1947 with Adamson v. California, a landmark case in which the massive dissenting opinion of Hugo Black had attempted (but failed) to make the U.S. Bill of Rights applicable to the various states, Hugo Black began referencing John Lilburne in his writings. A steady stream of these references appeared until this climaxed in the landmark 1966 case of Miranda v. Arizona (the Miranda Warning.) In the majority opinion joined by both Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the majority Opinion in which he quoted the words of John Lilburne from his 1637 Star Chamber trial. From this Opinion had also sprung the 1968 Pulitzer Prize winning book for 1969 called Origins of the Fifth Amendment by Leonard W. Levy which attributed the right to remain silent directly to the work of John Lilburne.

Genie Baskir then contacted and interviewed the son of Hugo Black to discover how much of an influence John Lilburne had been on his life. She was told that as a boy he had grown up with tales of Lilburne being told at the breakfast table. Later, Hugo Black enticed his wife to ghost-write the article about the legacy of John Lilburne that was then published in the 1968 Yearbook of Encyclopædia Britannica. It had been the initial discovery of that article which had prompted further investigation into the background of Thomas Jefferson, although the article made no mention of the president having a connection to Lilburne.

Further investigation was undertaken in various libraries during field research attempting to trace the family members of Thomas Jefferson, while looking for links between the Lilburne and Jefferson families.

Lilburne-Jefferson family ties

• The grandfather of Freeborn John Lilburne was born in 1538 and he died in 1605. He was also named John Lilburne and he had two sons: Richard Lilburne who was born in 1583 and died in 1667), and George Lilburne, who was born in 1586 and died in 1676.

• Richard Lilburne was the father of Robert Lilburne who was born in 1614 and died in 1665. During the birth of the English Republic in 1649, he became a regicide when he signed the death warrant of King Charles I. Robert's brother was Freeborn John who was born in c.1615 and died in 1657.

• George Lilburne, brother of Richard and uncle of Freeborn John, had a son named William Lilburne who was born in 1635 and died in 1681. He was the first cousin of Freeborn John and his brother Robert.

• William Lilburne had several children of interest: His own son named John Lilburne married Isabel Quiney who was a great niece of William Shakespeare. Another son, also named William, in 1699 became Commander-in-Chief of British forces in Newfoundland. But it was the sister of John and William who passed on the Lilburne name to the Jefferson family.

• William's daughter Jane Lilburne married twice. Her second marriage to Charles Rogers produced a daughter they named Jane Rogers.

• Jane Rogers was living at home in London with her mother Jane Lilburne when Isham Randolph of Virginia first got to know her. Jane Rogers married Isham Randolph in the parish chapel of St Paul's church at Shadwell (London, England) in 1716 and then moved to Virginia.

• The marriage of Jane and Isham Randolph produced two daughters: Jane Randolph and Mary Randolph. Jane married Peter Jefferson, the father of Thomas Jefferson, while Mary Randolph married Charles Lewis.

• Jane and Peter had several children in addition to Thomas, and they all grew up in Virginia in a home named Shadwell which related to Shadwell Parish in England. Their son Randolph later married and named one of his sons Lilburne Jefferson. Jane and Peter also had a daughter named Lucy (sister of Thomas and Randolph). She married her first cousin, who was the son of Mary Randolph and Charles Lewis. They named their son Charles Lilburne Lewis.

• Later, Lucy and Charles Lilburne Lewis had children and one of them they named Lilburne Lewis. Thomas Jefferson kept in contact and tried to influence his nephew's education, but a few years later he dragged his family into disrepute with the bloody murder of a slave during the time of the Great New Madrid, Missouri earthquake.

From John Lilburne to Thomas Jefferson:

1. GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER: William Lilburne (born 1635 and first cousin of Freeborn John Lilburne.) Daughter: Jane.
2. GREAT-GRANDMOTHER: Jane Lilburne married Charles Rogers. Daughter: Jane.
3. GRANDFATHER: Jane Rogers married Isham Randolph (Shadwell Parish, London, then moved to Virginia.) Daughter: Jane.
4. FATHER: Jane Randolph married Peter Jefferson (named their home Shadwell.) Son: Thomas Jefferson.

See also

• Four Freedoms Federation – the founding organization of the John Lilburne Research Institute.
• Province of the Carolanas – a research project taken up by the John Lilburne Research Institute following the original discovery by Dr. Kenneth Brown.
• John Lilburne – Identified in U.S. Supreme Court opinions as the foundation of the Miranda Warning and identified by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black as the original inspiration for the U.S. Bill of Rights.
• Thomas Jefferson – President of the United States
• Lucy Jefferson – Sister of Thomas.
• Isham Randolph – Grandfather of President Thomas Jefferson. Isham was married at St. Paul's Church in the Shadwell parish of London, England.
• Peter Jefferson – named his home Shadwell after the parish in London. After Shadwell in Virginia burned down, Peter moved his family to the Virginia estate named Edge Hill, which had been named after the first battle of the English Civil Wars where Lt. Colonel John Lilburne first took up arms against King Charles I.
• John Rushworth – author of the Historical Collections and covered the various trials of John Lilburne.

References:

• Origins of the Fifth Amendment, by Levy, Leonard W. – Macmillan, New York. 1986. ISBN 0–02–919580–2
• Texas Education Agency, Presentation to the Textbook Committee for the Commissioner of the State Board of Education concerning recommended changes and correctons in Textbooks, Austin, Texas. November 6, 1986.
• Group seeks to revamp textbooks, by Manuel, Christina. – Dallas Times Herald. April 1, 1987. (Article about Genie Baskir of the John Lilburne Research Institute and presentation to Texas Education Agency over proposed textbooks which failed to mention the importance of John Lilburne with regards to the foundation of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
• Book critics hopes lawsuit gets attention, by Crowe, Deborah. – Citizen-Journal, Arlington, Texas. April 5, 1987. ("...We have in essence been told, it's your right to complain but we won't listen to you." Baskir said. "... the fine points in British and American history do not have the crowd appeal of such controversial educational concerns as secular humanism or sex education, making it difficult to get attention. ... the writings of little-known 17th century British (sic) revolutionary, known as 'Free Born' John Lilburne had more influence on Thomas Jefferson's notions of 'unalienable rights' thatn the British (sic) Magna Carta.")
• Five Myths about Magna Carta, by England, John. (Genealogy of John Lilburne and ancestry of Thomas Jefferson with details of family and ideological links – tracing history of first Magna Carta through English Civil Wars to U.S. Declaration of Independence.) – John Lilburne Research Institute, Texas. 1988.
• The Frame of Reference to individualism and collectivism, by England, John and Baskir, Genie. Multi-part work in 11 volumes first published by StarText, Fort Worth, Texas in 1990, and then as a limited edition book by the John Lilburne Research Institute, Washington, D.C. 1991.
• Who is John Lilburne? Textbooks don't tell us, by England. John – Feature article, StarText Ink, Fort Worth, Texas. January, 1992. (History of the creation of the Four Freedoms Federation and the work of the John Lilburne Research Institute concerning Texas school textbooks.)
• Mass Media Moments in the United Kingdom, the USSR and the USA, by Gilder, Eric. – "Lucian Blaga" University of Sibiu Press, Romania. 2003 ISBN 973–651–596–6

External sources

• Ancestors of Lucy Jefferson – sister of President Thomas Jefferson who named her son Lilburne Lewis.
• History of the 'Wonderful Radio London Story' – events leading to the creation of the Four Freedoms Federation and the John Lilburne Research Institute.