Any account of Elizabeth Lilburne (née Dewell)’s life and analysis of her writings must confront the fact that most of what is known of her comes through the writings of her famous husband, John Lilburne, the Leveller leader and life-long agitator, sometimes dubbed the “first celebrity radical.” The printed works and manuscript petitions under Lilburne’s name were all prompted by the sufferings of her husband and family. Her husband, indeed, claimed that he had written much of them himself, and in the autobiographical passages prominent in his own writings he contrasted his own staunch loyalty to the Leveller cause with the doubts of his wife, “the weaker vessel” prone to “drooping spirits.” Rather than accepting that she must remain mostly “beyond the historian’s reach,” this entry stresses her own agency, resilience, and judgment.