the House of Commons which followed the king's attempt to arrest the five members (4 January 1641/2), he made an eloquent speech in defence of parliamentary privilege. In the following May he accepted a deputy-lieutenancy of militia under the parliament, and on 12 June 1643 was nominated a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. He took the covenant on 25 September following, and was one of the managers of the impeachment of William Laud in January–March 1643/4. With his friend Bulstrode Whitelocke, Maynard attended, by Essex's invitation, a meeting of the anti-Cromwellian faction, held at Essex House in December 1644, to discuss the expediency of taking public action against Cromwell as an 'incendiary.' The idea, which seems to have originated with the Lord Chancellor of Scotland Loudon, met with no favour from the English lawyers, and was in consequence abandoned. A curious testimony to Maynard's reputation at this time is afforded by a grant made in his favour by parliament in October 1645 of the books and manuscripts of the late Lord Chief Justice Bankes, with liberty to seize them wherever he might find them. In the House of Commons he was heard with the profoundest respect, while he advocated the abolition of feudal wardships and other salutary legal reforms. He also prospered mightily in his profession, making in the course of the summer circuit of 1647 the unprecedentedly large sum of £700. As a politician he was a strict constitutionalist, protested against the first steps taken towards the deposition of the king, and on the adoption of that policy withdrew from the house as no longer a lawful assembly (November 1648). State trials under the Commonwealth Nevertheless, on the establishment of the Commonwealth he did not scruple to take the engagement, and held a government brief at the trial of Major Faulconer for perjury in May 1653. Assigned by order of court to advise John Lilburne on his second trial in July 1653, Maynard at first feigned sickness. A repetition of the order, however, elicited from him some exceptions to the indictment which confounded the court and secured Lilburne's acquittal by the jury. The jury were afterwards interrogated by the council of state as to the grounds of their verdict, but refused to disclose them, and Maynard thus escaped censure, and on 9 February 1653/4 was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law. In the following year his professional