LAMBERT, JOHN, is said to have been born of a good family, probably about 1620, and to have been educated for the bar. On the breaking out of the contest between the king and the parliament, he abandoned the study of the law, and joined the parliamentary army, io which he is mentioned as holding the rank of colonel at the battle of Marston Moor (2nd of July 1644). After distinguishing himself at Naseby, with Cromwell in Scotland, at Worcester, and on other occa sions, and rising to the rank of major-general, the appointment of Fleetwood on the death of Ireton (November 1651) to the chief command of the forces in Ireland produced an alienation between Lambert and Cromwell which was never wholly healed, although he was one of the officers whom Cromwell summoned in June 1653 to take upon them the settlement of the government, and be was in May 1655 appointed by the Protector one of his eleven major-generals, as they were styled, or commanders of the military forces in the several districts of the kingdom. Lambert's district comprehended the five northern counties of Durham, Cumberland, Northumberland, West morland, and Yorkshire. He took little part in public affairs however during the life of the Protector. The most important part of Lam bert's career is comprised within the apace of about twenty months that elapsed between the death of Oliver Cromwell and the return of the king. He became the soul of the confederacy of discontented officers, which after the meeting of his first parliament, in January 1659, was formed against the new protector Richard, and which speedily effected the deposition of that feeble and unambitious person age. [Ceomseem, Rtcrrann.] Lambert was now accounted the head of the Fifth-monarchy Men, or extreme republican and Independent party. On the breaking out of the Royalist insurrection in July, he
was sent by the Rump Parliament to suppress it, a business which he performed with extraordinary vigour; but immediately after his success he turned round upon the parliament, and, on its resistance to his demands, dispersed it by military violence on the 13th of October. The pert taken by Monk however, and the falling away of their partisans on all hands, soon reduced Lambert and the cabal of officers, or Committee of Safety, as they called themselves, to extremities ; and by the beginning of January 1660, having been deserted by almost the whole of the force with which ho had set out for the north to encounter Monk, he was seized by orders of the restored parliament and committed to the Tower. On the 9th of April following he made his escape from confinement, but Colonel Lagoldsby recaptured him at Daventry, on the 22nd of the same month, when he was already at the head of a considerable body of barge, the greater part of which however deserted him at the critical moment. Ile was excepted from the Act of Indemnity passed after the Restoration ; but although he was in June 1662 brought to trial before the Court of King's Bench along with Sir Harry Vaue, be war, after being found guilty, reprieved at the bar, the distiuction made between the two prisoners being expressly placed by the judges to the account of his comparatively dutiful and submissive' behaviour in the course of the trial. lie was eventually banished to the Ialand of Guernsey, where he lived for above thirty yeare.