Piqued
by Black's claims, and coupled with curiosity and a void in our own knowledge, a question was finally put to the Genealogy Department of the
Fort Worth (Texas) Public Library, asking their staff whether they had any research that would link Thomas Jefferson to John Lilburne. Their
affirmative answer triggered the beginnings of our own research project that
eventually
resulted in the creation of YesterStudies.
By following
their initial lead which showed that President Thomas Jefferson was linked to John Lilburne by Jefferson's grandfather Isham Randolph, we learned that
his family connection descended via John's uncle George. However, we also learned that Jefferson tried to throw everyone off the scent when it came
to the origins of his family; the origins of which, he was well aware. But Jefferson's life was full of contradictions which only his most ardent
apologists try to hide in their own ideolgies.
However, neither
his sister or his brother tried to hide from the Lilburne family connection. Both of them gave one of their children the first name of Lilburne,
notwithstanding the fact that Thomas was born in a house in Virginia which was named after the parish in London where his grandfather Isham had
married a member of the Lilburne line. Yet there is scarecly any acknowledgement of his connection to the Lilburne line in his writings. At best
there is a preserved record of letters that he wrote to his sister's son Lilburne, a nephew whose disgraced life ended in a horrendous crime of murder.
But the self-deception
revealed by the apparant disinterest that was portrayed by Jefferson regarding his connection to the Lilburne family, and all that they represented, only
gets worse. In 1786, which was ten years after the USA declared its independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and twenty-eight years prior to that
same British Kingdom dispatching German mercenaries to invade the USA where they set fire to, and gutted both the White House and Library of Congress,
Thomas Jefferson decided to visit England. His travelling companion was John Adams, who also became a president of the USA.
When they arrived at
Worcester, England where, during the previous century, the British civil wars had begun and then ended in a decisive battle, it was Adams who made note
of this fact, not Jefferson. Adams made a solemn, yet seemingly impromptu speech in which he said that the battle site was more sacred than all the
churches in England. He urged all Englishmen to come to the site once a year and take note of this fact. It should also be observed that this was no
idle statement for Adams to make, because by denominational faith, he was an Anglican.
While the British attack
on the USA was yet hence, and therefore its national anthem called the Star Spangled Banner which commemorates that War of 1812 had yet to be written,
Jefferson remained a major figure on the political stage until his death shortly after the birth of Queen Victoria. The Kingdom of Great Britain over which
Victoria would reign, had been formed in 1707 by a union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland. The Kingdom of Great Britain was then expanded in 1800 to
include Ireland. But all of this nonsense was a pretense, for it obfuscated the fact that for several years the lands of England, Wales and Scotland had been
suborned into a unitary republic. This record of the past was scrubbed from the law books and the inhabitants of Great Britain were orginally forbidden by
law to talk about the republic with any degree of fondness that would in turn reflect upon the fact that the monarchy was a fraudulent institution. To make
matters worse, a pretense under the name of Interregum tried to manifest a line of continuous monarchy in order to further obliterate the existence of
the republic.
Jefferson remained silent
about that time of conflict in several members of the Lilburne family had played significant roles and thereby contributed to a form of governance that was
later adopted in America. It was not only John Lilburne who had played a major role in the years before and after the republic came into existence, his
siblings and other relatives had also played their parts as well. But Robert Lilburne, one of John's brothers, also posed a problem for Jefferson if he
was to discuss the Lilburnes without wishing to bring up the civil wars and the republic that disappeared under a blanket of censorship. Jefferson's
problem was exacerbated by the fact that Robert Lilburne had also been the stand-in military commander of all forces in Scotland during the time that
General Monck was at sea with the Navy of the republic in order to fight the Dutch.
When Jefferson was
attending the College of William and Mary in Virginia during the years when it was still a British colony, his Professor of Natural Philosophy was William
Small who had been born in Scotland during 1734 where his father was a Presbyterian minister. By Jefferson's own admission, Small had a profound effect
upon shaping Jefferson's life during his college years, before Small left Virginia for England after Small contacted malaria. Therefore it is true to
say that Jefferson also learned a little about Scotland from one of its native sons. Since Jefferson founded the University of Virginia to specifically
promote republican ideals, he would have known about General George Monck, for several reasons.
General George Monck
was given the title of '1st Duke of Albemarle' by King Charles II. As such, he became one of eight Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina, with
Albemarle Sound in what is today the U.S. State of North Carolina, being named after him. Monck had previously played a significant role in Scotland
(along with Richard Lilburne, John's brother), in uniting Scotland with England in a new, unitary republic following the 1649 execution of King Charles I.
But Monck had switched sides and staged a coup which ended the life of that republic, and Monck had helped to create two new kingdoms of England and
Scotland by pretending that the republic had never happened. That disolving of the unitary republic into two separate kingdoms was papered over by
classifying the republic an 'Interregnum' and a new law was passed which forbade that republic to be mentioned for the following three years.
It was not until one
hundred years later in 1707 that the united Kingdom of Great Britain was born, and it as from that Kingdom in 1776 which the USA declared independence.
During that Revolutionary War in which Jefferson played an important role, the name of Monck gained additional importance. It happened when American
General Benedict Arnold, using the code name of Monck, had switched sides. He abandoned support of George Washington because he thought that the
Americans would lose the War. Arnold covertly began aiding the British in the hope that he too would be rewarded with a title and lands for his treachery.
Jefferson knew that story, and in America today, the name Benedict Arnold is still synonomous with traitor. However, it is only by understanding who
General Monck was and what he did, that it is possible to appreciate what Arnold was hoping to emulate by giving himself the code name of 'Monck'.
We
