Albert Lea, city, seat of Freeborn county, southern Minnesota, U.S. It lies about 90 miles (145 km) south of Minneapolis, just north of the Iowa state line. The city is situated on Fountain and Albert Lea lakes in an agricultural area. Settled in 1855 and named for the U.S. Army lieutenant who had surveyed the region in 1835, it became the county seat in 1859 as the result of a race won by a local horse over one backed by the neighbouring town of Itasca (which no longer exists). Many of its citizens are of Scandinavian descent. At the crossroads of a highway and rail complex, it developed as a wholesale distribution centre for the surrounding farming region and later as a diversified industrial centre with large meatpacking plants. It remains a wholesaling centre with a prominent food-processing (especially meat) industry, and manufactures include store fixtures and machinery. Area agriculture is primarily corn (maize), soybeans, potatoes, and hogs. A community college campus is in the city. Myre–Big Island State Park is just east. Inc. 1878. Pop. (2000) 18,356; (2010) 18,016.


Quick Facts
Born:
1614?, Greenwich, near London, Eng.
Died:
Aug. 29, 1657, Eltham, Kent
Role In:
Levelers

John Lilburne (born 1614?, Greenwich, near London, Eng.—died Aug. 29, 1657, Eltham, Kent) was an English revolutionary, leader of the Levelers, a radical democratic party prominent during the English Civil Wars.

Coming from a family of gentry, Lilburne was apprenticed from about 1630 to 1636 to a London cloth merchant. Meanwhile, he joined the Puritan opposition to the Anglican High Church policies of King Charles I, and by 1638 he had adopted Separatist principles hostile to the notion of a state church. He helped to smuggle into England Puritan pamphlets that had been printed in the Netherlands. These illegal activities led to his arrest and trial before the Star Chamber in 1638; he was fined, publicly whipped, pilloried, and imprisoned until liberated by the Long Parliament (on a motion by Oliver Cromwell) in November 1640.

Upon the outbreak of the first Civil War between Charles and Parliament in 1642, Lilburne was commissioned a captain in the Parliamentarian army. He was taken prisoner at Brentford in November 1642 but was exchanged after narrowly missing being tried for treason. In April 1645 Lilburne, by then a lieutenant colonel, chose to resign from the army rather than subscribe to the Solemn League and Covenant with Scotland, which committed Parliament to reform the Church of England along Presbyterian lines.

Thereafter Lilburne’s career was fused with the history of the Levelers. “Free-born John,” as he was called, became a master propagandist, demanding, in his pamphlets, religious liberty, extension of the suffrage to craftsmen and small-property owners, and complete equality before the law. Lilburne was fierce in his criticism of Parliament and the army for failing to meet the Levelers’ demands. As a result, he spent most of the period from August 1645 to August 1647 in prison. After the army seized power in 1648, the Levelers were crushed. Nevertheless, Lilburne maintained his immense popularity with Londoners. A London jury acquitted him of high treason in 1649, and a second acquittal, in 1653, led to a great popular demonstration that alarmed the government of Oliver Cromwell. Lilburne was therefore kept in prison until 1655, by which time he had converted to the Quaker faith. He died two years later.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.