On 18 April 1638 John Lilburne, future Leveller, future Quaker, was whipped at the cart's tail from the Fleet prison to Westminster, where he was pilloried; he was afterwards imprisoned in dire circumstances. His offence was to arrange for the production in the Netherlands of a radical Puritan tract by John Bastwick, and its subsequent importation and distribution. While resisting the particular charge, he made in a moment of great extremity an endorsement of the place of radical oppositional writing in the process of reformation he believed he served. In the pillory he advised the largely sympathetic crowd on appropriate reading: 'If you lease to reade the second and third parts of Doctor Bastwicks Letany . . .' Gagged by his tormentors, he reached into the pockets of his breeches where, showing a wise anticipation, he had concealed copies of tracts by Bastwick which he threw into the crowd.