One major legacy of Lilburne's forensic forays was confirmed and rein forced in the Restoration period. In 1670 the principle of the independence of the jury came once more to the fore in Bushell's Case. Jury independence had never been sacrosanct. Star Chamber had punished recalcitrant juries for a century and a half, and even after its demise in 1641 common law judges continued penalising jurors, particularly during the 1660s. But had they such power? John Kelyng, Chief Justice of the King's Bench from 1665 to 1671, thought so. He was ‘an unbending representative of public power, who showed little patience for supposed English traditions of liberty that interfered with the administration of criminal justice’. Once he was denounced in parliament for quoting Cromwell in calling Magna Carta ‘Magna Farta’, words he initially denied but later admitted he might have said. He favoured compelling jurors to convict not only in cases involving religious dissent but in cases of homicide – although in this he may have been trying to protect apprentices from being beaten to death by their masters. Recalcitrant jurors he would fine or imprison.

The issue came to a head when the ‘Cavalier Parliament’ determined to exact revenge on religious dissent.