Levellers

See Levellers (disambiguation) for alternative meanings.

The Levellers were a mid 17th century English political movement, who came to prominence during the English Civil Wars. They were not a political party in the modern sense of the word, so people who historians have labeled as Levellers did not subscribe to a specific party manifesto, nevertheless many Levellers agreed with the view expressed in the Agreement of the People. Leveller views and support was to be found in the populace of the City of London and in some regiments in the New Model Army. The Levellers came to prominence at the end of the First English Civil War and were most influential before the start of the Second Civil War. After Pride's Purge and the execution of Charles I, power lay in the hands of the Grandees in the Army, (and to a lesser extent with the Rump Parliament). The Levellers along with all other opposition groups were marginalized by those in power and their influence waned. By 1650 they were no longer a serious threat to the established order.

Brief history

Origin of name

The term 'leveller' had been used in seventeenth century England as a term of abuse for rural rebels. In the Midland Revolt of 1607 the name was used to refer to those who 'levelled' hedges in enclosure riots. The name Leveller first appears in a letter of 1 November 1647, although the 19th century historian S.R. Gardiner suggested that it was in existence as a nickname before this date (Gardiner, Great Civil War, iii. 380). However, Blair Worden, the most recent historian to publish on the subject, concluded that the 1 November date was the first recorded use of the term (see Worden, 'The Levellers in History and Memory c.1660-1960' in Michael Mendle, The Putney Debates of 1647 (Cambridge 2001) pp.280-282). The 1 November letter referred to extremists amongst the Army agitators: "They have given themselves a new name, viz. Levellers, for they intend to sett all things straight, and rayse a parity and community in the kingdom". As Worden shows, the name first appeared in print in a book written by Charles I called 'His Majesties Most Gracious Declaration'. This tract was a printing of a letter that had been read in the House of Lords on 11 November 1647. Although George Thomason did not date this tract, the last date internal to the document was Saturday 13 November 1647, suggesting a publication date of 15 November 1647 (see British Library Thomason Collection E413(15)).

At first the use of the term leveller did not refer to John Lilburne, Richard Overton and William Walwyn per se but referred to a faction of New Model Army agitators and their London supporters who were allegedly plotting to assassinate the king. The books published during 1647-1648 often repeat this terminological uncertainty, but gradually, the term 'Leveller' attached to Lilburne, Overton, Walwyn and their 'faction'. This public 'identification' was largely due to the aspersions cast by Marchamont Nedham, the author of the newspaper Mercurius Pragmaticus. Lilburne, along with John Wildman later thought that the name was invented by Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton during the Putney Debates of late October and early November 1647. The charge of levelling was a charge that they vehemently denied, but ironically after their arrest and imprisonment in 1649 four of the 'Leveller' leaders- Thomas Prince, William Walwyn, Richard Overton and John Lilburne signed a manifesto which called themselves Levellers.

Political ambitions

The Levellers had no coherent agenda. Before 1649, there is no record of their having sat down together to develop a manifesto. However, they were committed broadly to the abolition of corruption within the Parliamentary and judicial process, toleration of religious differences, the translation of law into the common tongue, and some kind of expansion of the suffrage. These aims fluctuated. Some Levellers like John Lilburne argued that the English Common law, particularly Magna Carta, were the foundation of English rights and liberties, but others, like William Walwyn, compared Magna Carta to a 'mess of potage'.

Foundation

Levellers tended to hold fast to a notion of "natural rights" that had been violated by the king's side in the Civil Wars. At the Putney Debates in 1647, Colonel Rainborough defended natural rights as coming from the law of God expressed in the Bible. Richard Overton considered that liberty was an innate property of every person. Michael Mendle has demonstrated the development of Leveller ideas from elements of early Parliamentarian thought as expressed by men such as Henry Parker.

Timeline

In July 1645, John Lilburne was imprisoned for denouncing Members of Parliament who lived in comfort while the common soldiers fought and died for the Parliamentary cause. His offence was slandering William Lenthall, the Speaker of the House of Commons, whom he accused of corresponding with Royalists. He was freed in October after a petition requesting his release, and signed by over two thousand leading London citizens, was presented to the House of Commons.

In July 1646, Lilburne was imprisoned again, this time in the Tower of London, for denouncing his former army commander the Earl of Manchester as a Royalist sympathiser, because he had protected an officer who had been charged with treason. It was the campaigns to free Lilburne from prison which spawned the movement known as the Levellers. Richard Overton was arrested in August 1646 for publishing a pamphlet attacking the House of Lords. During his imprisonment he wrote an influential Leveller Manifesto, An Arrow Against All Tyrants and Tyranny.

The soldiers in the New Model Army elected Agitators from each regiment to represent them: these were recognised by the Army's commanders and had a seat on the General Council. However, by September 1647 at least five regiments of Cavalry had elected new unofficial agitators and produce a pamphlet called The Case of the Army truly stated. This was present to the commander-in-chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax, on 18 October 1647. In this they demanded a dissolution of Parliament within a year and substantial changes to the constitution of future parliaments, which were to be regulated by an unalterable "law paramount".

The senior officers in the Army (nicknamed "Grandees") were incensed by the Case of the Army an ordered the unofficial Agitators to give an account of their principles before the General Council. These debates are known as the Putney Debates, and they were held in St. Mary's Church, Putney, in the county of Surrey, between October 28 and November 11 1647. The Agitators were assisted by some civilians, notably John Wildman and Maximillian Petty, who had been connected to the Army as civilian advisers since July 147. On 28 October the Agitator Robert Everard presented a document entitled An Agreement of the People. This manifesto, which was inherently republican and democratic, appeared to conflict with the terms of settlement that had already been endorsed by the General Council of the Army in July entitled The Heads of the Proposals. The Heads of Proposals contained many demands that looked towards social justice but relied on the King agreeing to them and bringing those proposals into law through acts of Parliament. The new Agitators, who were inherently distrustful of the King, demanded that England be settled from 'the bottom up' rather than the 'top down' by giving the vote to most adult males. The debates help to throw light on the areas on which supporters of the Parliamentarian side agreed and those on which they differed. For example, Ireton asked whether the phrase in the Agreement "according to the number of the inhabitants" gave a foreigner just arrived in England and resident in a property the right to vote? He extends this argument to say that a person must have a "permanent interest of this kingdom" to be entitled to vote. He then argued that "permanent interest" means owning property, which is where he and the Levellers disagreed. To modern eyes the debates seem to draw heavily on the Bible to lay out certain basic principles, but this is to be expected in an age still racked by religious upheavals in the aftermath of the reformation, and particularly in an army where soldiers were, in part, selected for their religious zeal. It is notable that John Wildman, resisted religious language arguing that the Bible produced no model for civil government and that reason should be the basis of any future settlement.

The Corkbush Field rendezvous on November 17 1647, was the first of three rendezvous to take place as agreed in the Putney Debates. The Army commanders Thomas Fairfax and Cromwell were worried at the strength of support that the Levellers had in the Army, so they decided to impose The Heads of the Proposals as the army's manifesto instead of the Levellers' Agreement of the People. When some refused to accept this, because they wanted the army to adopt the Levellers' document, they were arrested, and one of the ringleaders, Private Richard Arnold, was executed. At the other two rendezvous, the troops who were summoned agreed to the manifesto without further protest.

The Levellers' largest petition, entitled To The Right Honovrable The Commons Of England, was presented to Parliament on September 11 1648 after amassing signatories including about a third of all Londoners.

On October 30 1648, Thomas Rainsborough was killed. He was a Member of Parliament and also a Leveller leader who had spoken at the Putney Debates. His funeral was the occasion for a large Leveller-led demonstration in London, with thousands of mourners wearing the Levellers' ribbons of sea-green and bunches of rosemary for remembrance in their hats.

On January 20 1649 a version of the Agreement of the People that had been drawn up in October 1647 for the Army Council and subsequently modified, was presented to the House of Commons.

At the end of January 1649, Charles I of England was tried and executed for treason against the people. In February, the Grandees banned petitions to Parliament by soldiers. In March, eight Leveller troopers went to the Commander-in-Chief of the New Model Army, Thomas Fairfax, and demanded the restoration of the right to petition. Five of them were cashiered out of the army.

In April three hundred infantrymen of Colonel John Hewson's regiment, who declared that they would not serve in Ireland until the Levellers' programme had been realised, were cashiered without arrears of pay, which was the threat that had been used to quell the mutiny at the Corkbush Field rendezvous. Later the same month, in the Bishopsgate mutiny, soldiers of the regiment of Colonel Edward Whalley stationed in Bishopsgate London made demands similar to those of Hewson's regiment; they were ordered out of London. When they refused to go, fifteen soldiers were arrested and court martialled, of whom six were sentenced to death. Of this six, five were subsequently pardoned while Robert Lockyer (or Lockier), a former Levellers agitator, was hanged April 27 1649. "At his burial a thousand men, in files, preceded the corpse, which was adorned with bunches of rosemary dipped in blood; on each side rode three trumpeters, and behind was led the trooper’s horse, covered with mourning; some thousands of men and women followed with black and green ribbons on their heads and breasts, and were received at the grave by a numerous crowd of the inhabitants of London and Westminster."

In 1649, Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne, William Walwyn, Thomas Prince, and Richard Overton were imprisoned in the Tower of London by the Council of State (see above). It was while the leaders of the Levellers were being held in the Tower that they wrote an outline of the reforms the Levellers wanted, in a pamphlet entitled An Agreement Of The Free People Of England (written on May 1 1649). It includes reforms that have since been made law in England such as the right to silence, and others, such as an elected judiciary, that have not.

Commemoration plaque for two Levellers in Gloucester Green, Oxford.

Shortly afterwards Cromwell attacked the "Banbury mutineers", 400 troopers who supported the Levellers and who were commanded by Captain William Thompson. Several mutineers were killed in the skirmish, Captain Thompson escaped only to be killed a few days later in another skirmish near the Diggers community at Wellingborough. The three other leaders – William Thompson's brother, Corporal Perkins, and John Church – were shot May 17 1649. This destroyed the Leveller's support base in the New Model Army, which by this time was the major power in the land. Although Walwyn and Overton were released from the Tower, and Lilburne was tried and acquitted, the Leveller cause had effectively been crushed.

Other usage

In 1724 there was a rising against enclosures in Galloway, and a number of men who took part in it were called “Levellers” or “Dykebreakers” (A. Lang, History of Scotland, vol. iv). The word was also used in Ireland during the eighteenth century to describe a secret revolutionary society similar to the Whiteboys.

See also

• Good Old Cause
• Edward Sexby (1616–1658) was an English Puritan, soldier and Leveller. He turned against Cromwell and plotted his assassination.
• 17th century denominations in England
• Kett's Rebellion a revolt in 1549

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• Contributions to liberal theory

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• US Bill of Rights and Hugo Black - US Supreme Court Justice who cited John Lilburne in his written legal Opinions beginning in 1949.

Further reading

• Annis, Ben; Have Historians Exaggerated the Significance of Radical Movements in the English Revolution?
• Anderson, Angela; Cromwell and the Levellers interviewed as part of the preperation for Cromwell: New Model Englishman by Channel 4
• Selected works of the Levellers
• John Lilburne and the Levellers
• BBC: The Levellers (17th century)
• 1642-52: Levellers and Diggers in the English Revolution
• A Time-line for the Levellers
• The Levellers: Overton, Walwyn and Lilburne Note 1 in this link includes an explanation of the origins of the word Levellers.
• Hoile, David; The Levellers: Libertarian Radicalism and the English Civil War