Levellers

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Leveller

Aka, Levelers, a Puritan sect of the 1640's, organized as a radical political movement arising in the Parliamentarian forces of the era.

The sect, like many other groups in English politics, were named by their opponents, 1647, in derision of their pro-equality agenda. Their leader of the movement was the propagandist John Lilburne.

Levelers advocated fundamental constitutional reforma written constitution, a single supreme representative body elected by universal male suffrage, proportional representation, and the abolition of monarchy and noble privilege. Certain "native rights" were declared sacrosanct for all Englishmen: freedom of conscience, freedom from impressment into the armed forces and equality before the law. Their ideals, obviously ahead of their time, were those of complete religious and political equality. Levellers mastered the art of mass petitions and extensive pamphleteering to arouse public support and outrage.

The Long Parliament did not accept their proposals, so they tried to build support with some success within the Army ranks. A number of the most radical army officers formed as the Agitators, also known as "The New Agents". They identified themselves with the armys demands for arrears of pay, and Lilburnes pamphlet The Case of the Army Truly Stated was presented by them in (1647) to Thomas Fairfax (later 3d Baron Fairfax of Cameron).

The Putney Debates

The Grandees responded by inviting the Agitators to debate their proposals before the General Council of the Army. A later revision of Lilburne's pamphlet, Foundations of Freedom; or, An Agreement of the People, describing the whole Leveler program, was included in the Putney debates (Oct., 1647) between the elected army council and their commanding officers.

Fairfax was not present, so Cromwell hosted. Cromwell flatly refused to accept any compromise in which the King was overthrown, while Henry Ireton (son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell) pressed the case that his own The Heads of the Proposals offered by the Army] covered all of the concerns raised by the New Agents in The Case of the Army while being far less radical. The Agitators accepted the meeting, sending Colonel Thomas Rainsborough (M.P. for Droitwich) John Wildman, and Edward Sexby as their representitives

The debates opened on October 28, and were transcribed by secretary William Clarke and a team of stenographers. From November 2nd, however, all recording ceased. The debates were not reported and Clarke's minutes were not published at the time. They were lost until 1890 when they were rediscovered at the library of Worcester College, Oxford and subsequently published as part of the Clarke Papers.

Cromwell and Ireton's main complaint about the Agreement was that it included terms for universal male sufferage, which Cromwell considered to be anarchy. Instead they suggested sufferage should be limited only to landholders. The Leveler proposals were totally rejected by Gen. Henry Ireton as subversive of property interests (though this primarily meant the property interests of nobility in ownership of white slaves, however dilution of the vote by spreading suffrage was another concern). The Agitators, on the other hand, felt they deserved the rights in payment for their service during the war. Eventually a compromise of sorts was arranged, the Agitators agreeing to exclude servants and beggars, the Grandees agreeing that all soldiers of the war were entitled.

The debates concluded with the understanding that the Agreement would not be the basis of the Army's official consitutional reform, but that it would be presented to the Army itself at a mass meeting. However, Cromwell feared a complete breakdown of discipline in the Army, and on the 8th proposed that everyone return at once to their regiments to restore order. A new group then met to draw up a manifesto in the name of Lord-General Fairfax and the Army Council to be presented to the troops in place of the Levellers' Agreement. The commanders decided to require that all soldiers accept the modified Ireton plan with a compelled oath of loyalty to Fairfax.

The Mutinies of the New Model Army

The presentation itself was split from one mass meeting to three smaller ones, so that Cromwell could count on having sufficient loyal troops on hand to contain any outbursts. At one of these the troops (as many as two regiments) initially refused to agree to the new terms or sign the loyalty oath, leading to the Corkbush Field Mutiny on November 15th, resulting only in the execution of Private Richard Arnold. By this point Charles' escape from Hampton Court on November 11th had changed the situation and the entire matter was dropped, never to be seen again.

However the issues raised did not go away and over the next year civilian agitators were active promoting the ideas in the "Agreement of the People". As the impossibility of reaching agreement with the duplicitous Charles I of England became clear, many of the officers in the army who had not been in favour of the Leveller's suggestion that the King be removed, were in favour of the regicide of Charles on January 30, 1649 and had to reconsider their political positions. This allowed the Levellers to regain support in the army.

The next Leveller mutiny in the New Model Army was the Bishopsgate mutiny in April 1649. When soldiers in the regiment of Colonel Edward Whalley's regiment of the New Model Army refused to obey orders and leave London, one soldier, a supporter of the Levellers, Robert Lockier, was executed by firing squad.

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

300 infantrymen of Colonel John Hewson's regiment, who declared that they would not serve in Ireland until the Leveller programme had been realised, were cashiered without arrears of pay. Which was the threat that had been used to quell the Corkbush Field mutiny.

When Soldiers of the regiment of Colonel Edward Whalley stationed in Bishopsgate London made similar demands they were ordered out of London. They refused to go fearing that once outside the City of London they too would be given the choice of obey or be cashiered without arrears of pay. The mutineers surrendered after a personal appeal by Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. Fifteen soldiers were arrested and court marshalled, of whom six were sentenced to death. Five were pardoned and Robert Lockier, a former Agitator within the regiment, was executed by firing squad in front of St Paul's Cathedral on April 27, 1649.

The next mutiny in Banbury, the mutineers did not achieve all of their aims and some of the leaders were hanged shortly afterwards on May 17, 1649.

The mutiny was over pay and political demands. The pay issue was defused by Oliver Cromwell acknowledging the justice of the soldiers' financial grievances and securing £10,000 towards payment of arrears from Parliament. However, 400 troopers under the command of Captain William Thompson who were sympathetic to the Levellers set off from Banbury, where they were billeted to speak with other regiments at Salisbury about their political demands.

Major White was sent by Cromwell and Fairfax to mediate with Thompson's troops and give assurances that force would not be used against them. However on May 13 Cromwell launched a night attack. Several mutineers were killed in the skirmish. Captain Thompson escaped only to be killed a few days later in another skirmish near the Digger community at Wellingborough. After being imprisoned in Burford Church, three other leaders were hanged: William Thompson's brother, Corporal Perkins and John Church on May 17, 1649. This destroyed the Leveller's power base in the New Model Army.

A later pamphlet, Englands New Chains, published after the execution of Charles I, and the several Leveler mutinies (1649) resulted in severe suppression of the Levelers by Oliver Cromwell, who had constantly opposed them.

In March 1649, three months after the execution of Charles, Overton in The Hunting of the Foxes recalled how the officers had refused to continue to sit with the Agitators, the representatives of the regiments, in a Common Council:

> This was a thing savoured too much of the peoples authority and power, and therefore inconsistent with the transaction of their lordly interest; the title of free election (the original of all just authorities) must give place to prerogative patent (the root of all exorbitant powers) that Councel must change the derivation of its session, and being from Agreement and election of the souldiery to the patent of the Officers, and none to sit there but commission Officers, like so, many patentee Lords in the High Court of Parliament, deriving their title from, the will of their General as the other did theirs, from the will of the King; so that the difference was no other, but in the change of names: Here was (when at this perfection) as absolute a Monarchy, and as absolute a Prerogative Court over the Army, as Commoners, as ever there was over the Common-wealth and accordingly this Councel was overswarmed with Colonels, Lieut-Colonels, Majors, Captains, etc. contrary to and beyond the tenour of the Engagement.

Cromwell's Suppression

Withouth democracy, the Levellers charged, Cromwell was no less an absolute tyrant than Charles. Overton demanded the army be ruler: that the country temporarily be governed by a joint council of officers and men representing the regiments, he called upon the soldiers and the people to fight for it. Cromwell and the Presbyterian Parliament tried to shift the regiments to Ireland. In their mutiny against this, Crowell won out and had Trooper Lockyer shot.

Lockyers funeral in London became a great demonstration. One hundred people went before the corpse in a parade, then came the corpse itself adorned with bundles of rose-mary, one-half stained with blood, and the sword of the deceased borne with it. Six trumpets sounded a soldiers knell. Then came the troopers horse, clothed in mourning and led by a footman. Thousands of the rank and file followed, wearing green and black ribbons sea-green was the color of the Levelers, The women brought up the rear. In Westminster at the churchyard, some thousands more of the better sort who had not wanted to march through the city joined the demonstration. The people of London and the surrounding counties had previously presented a Leveler petition which was said to have been signed by nearly a hundred thousand people.

Thousands of women, led by Lilburnes wife, had presented a special womens petition. The Parliament had told them to go home and wash their dishes. They replied that they had at home neither food nor dishes.

At the same time as the mutiny at Burford, there were thousands in Somersetshire in the West ready to revolt. Thousands of miners in Derbyshire were organized to rise under the banner of the Levelers whose revolutionary organization calling for Councels everywhere was spread all over the country.

Thus the Levelers themselves both in theory and practice consciously wanted a popular, democratic government opposed to the dictatorship of Cromwell, revolutionary though it was. To the new rulers this could mean only one thing communism. Cromwell commented on what he called the leveling principle. Immediately after the execution of the King, Cromwell warned the Council of State against the Levelers:

*> I tell you ... you have no other way to deal with these men but to break them in pieces. If you do not break them, they will break you. In 1654, five years after the defeat of the Levelers, Cromwell called his first parliament. He opened the session with a review of the past and painted a picture of the country in 1649:

What was the face that was upon our affairs as to the Interest of the Nation? As to the Authority in the Nation; to the Magistracy; to the Ranks and Orders of men whereby England hath been known for hundreds of years ? A nobleman, a gentleman, a yeoman; the distinction of these that is a good interest of the Nation, and a great one! The natural Magistracy of the Nation, was it not almost trampled under foot, under despite and contempt, by men of Levelling principles ?

I beseech you, for the orders of men and ranks of men, did not that Levelling principle tend to the reducing of all to an equality? Did it consciously think to do so; or did it only unconsciously practise towards that for property and interest? At all events what was the purport of it but to make the Tenant as liberal a fortune as the Landlord? Which, I think, if obtained, would not have lasted 1ong. The men of that principle, after they had served their own turns, would them have cried up property and interest fast enough! This instance is instead of many. And that the thing did and might well extend far, is manifest; because it was a pleasing voice to all Poor Men and truly not unwelcome to all Bad Men."*

Cromwell warned Parliament its proposals at pacification should not forget this danger: To my thinking, this is a consideration which, in .your endeavours after settlement, you will be so well minded of, that I might have spared it here. He described the country in 1649 as rent and torn in spirit and in principle from one end to the other ... family against family, husband against wife, parents against children; and nothing in the hearts and minds of men but Overturn, overturn, overturn!"

In August 1649, after the Levelers had been defeated in May, Lilburne told Cromwell that if he continued with the military dictatorship, the restoration of the monarchy was inevitable: democracy alone could save the new liberties. Lilburne's warning, in fact, came quite true: after Crowell died, Parliament was quick to invite Charles II back to England to reclaim the crown for his family, who, with the help of James II, reimposed many of the injustices of his father, eventually resulting in the Glorious Revolution, deposition of James II, and the placement of William and Mary upon the throne, who favored the liberal Enlightenment and many of the principles that the Levellers sought, though hardly all.

Historical Impact

The Levellers had a major impact upon the evolution of the thinking of Marx and Engels, however their greatest impact was upon the work of John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and the authors of the American Declaration of Independence and the US as well as the various state Constitutions.

Marxists from 1929 onward have considered the Puritan revolution of the 1600's to be a result of a crisis in bourgois democracy. Liberal intellectuals tend to preoccupy themselves with the Levellers, while the Stalinists pay closest attention to Winstanley and the Diggers, though some Catholics also look to the Diggers. Marx called the Levellers "a functioning communist party," however the Levellers did not have a revolutionary program which proposed confiscation of bourgeois property. Their mutinies after the death of Charles I did aim directly at the overthrow of Cromwell's military junta, in the name of the people. Execution of the King was not as important to them as the positive reorganization of society.

External Articles

Levelers, Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition

References

T. C. Pease, The Leveller Movement (1916, repr. 1965)
W. Haller and G. Davies, ed., The Leveller Tracts, 16471653 (1944, repr. 1964)
J. Frank, The Levellers (1955, repr. 1969)
N. H. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution (1961)
C. H. Shaw, The Levellers (1968).