Rosemary and Green Ribbons
Socially and politically the Levellers stood in contrast both to the Crown and to the Grandees who controlled the army. The early Levellers were more of a mongrel, grassroots movement than an organized political party in the sense of today’s parties. There was a significant degree of homogeneity across the movement, whose members were predominantly army men, laborers, and or tradesmen in and around London. Unusually, and significantly, there was also a large group of female Levellers. They were, as John Rees, the author of The Leveller Revolution, notes, roundly abused as “Mealymouth’d Muttonmongers wives,” “a company of Gossops,” and “Levelling sea-greene sisters.” Nonetheless, the Leveller women did much to advance the cause: approximately ten thousand women Levellers signed a petition to Parliament in 1649, which Parliament refused to accept. This was a revolutionary move: women stepped out of the subservient role that society had prescribed for them. In putting forward their petition their aim was to support the male Leveller leaders but also to “claim an equal share and interest with the men in the Common-wealth.” The reaction in Parliament was not kind; the Leveller women were told to go home and wash their dishes, to which some replied that they “had no dishes left to wash.” Yet the involvement of women in the Leveller movement is one illustration of the reach of their network, much of which sprawled across central London.2
Physical social networks—such as the coffeehouses, alehouses, and churches of the City of London—played a role in the transmission of their message. In John Rees’s book, there is a wonderful map of the main locations in London where the Levellers used to gather. Today, it constitutes a very good guide to the City of London, and readers should, if they have half a day to spare, follow it, taking care to visit some of the backstreets of the city and the pubs found there.
The behavior of the Levellers also resonates with movements today. They wore symbols—clumps of rosemary and green ribbons—to underline their identity. Also, just as today’s political movements use social media, the Levellers were adept at using the printing press to spread their message, and at times they produced print runs of pamphlets that ran into the tens of thousands.
So to a very large extent, the Levellers became an organized movement that through discussion and debate produced a set of aims and principles. There is some academic argument as to the extent to which they constituted a political party, but the manner in which their movement dissipated following the arrest and execution of some of its members, and in particular following the funeral of Colonel Rainsborough, suggests that the movement was not as well structured as some think.3
What Did They Want?
That we know much of the Levellers’ thoughts and creed owes to the prevalence of printing at the time, to the recording of the Putney Debates by Sir William Clarke and a team of stenographers, and, it should be said, to a large amount of luck.4 The transcripts of the debates were lost, mislaid, or hidden for well over two hundred years until they cropped up at Oxford in 1890. The accidental absence of the transcripts of the debates also helps explain why they have not figured more prominently in analysis, commentary, and the history of the seventeenth century.
The miracle of how the manuscripts were rediscovered is expertly told by Lesley Le Claire, a historian and librarian of Worcester College, Oxford, from 1977 to 1992.5 She relates that at the age of twenty-four, Clarke, who was a junior army secretary, scribbled down the proceedings of the debates, though he properly transcribed them only fifteen years later, in 1662. Four years after that, by which time Clarke was a well-off, senior army administrator, his leg was shattered by a cannonball during a naval battle with the Dutch, and he died soon after. As his young son George grew up, the late Clarke’s wife entrusted his papers to his son, who later became a senior academic at All Soul’s College, Oxford. Upon his death, George Clarke bequeathed his money and library to several colleges in Oxford University, with much of his library going to the relatively new Worcester College. Over 150 years later, the Clarke manuscripts lay unread in Oxford, until an eccentric librarian of Worcester College, Henry Pottinger, recommended them to a young historian of the English Civil War, Charles Firth. Firth studied and published the manuscripts, though in a very dry way, but failed to promote them. It was only with the publication in 1938 of A. S. P. Woodhouse’s book Puritanism and Liberty that historians noted the significance of the Clarke papers.
The various texts show the Levellers as distinct in their desire for equality and in the detailed, practical way in which they expressed this. The basis of the Levellers’ political code was the concept of natural rights, that is, that there should be freedom and equality among men or “freeborn” people, a principle that was developed by John Locke and Thomas Paine (Paine’s famous work Rights of Man was once derogatorily called “a levelling system”)6 and that carried through from the Levellers to the American Declaration of Independence. We might also tie natural rights to Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws because a core principle of the Levellers was the honest, unbiased making and application of the law.
Another pillar of the Levellers’ demands related to the workings of the law, which in their (justified) view was often applied in an arbitrary way and with deference to wealth and social standing. The Levellers called for a transparent expression and implementation of the law in a way that was fair and comprehensible to the ordinary man.
An important document that precedes the publication of the Agreements of the People is Richard Overton’s Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens (“A remonstrance of many thousand citizens and other freeborn people of England to their own House of Common…”).7 Overton was a prominent Leveller and a passionate pamphleteer. The Remonstrance was sparked by Overton’s indignation at the state’s attempt to control and censure the publication of pamphlets and at the imprisonment of fellow Leveller John Lilburne.
Overton’s text is full of rage and speaks to the way people today feel about political accountability and competence. For instance, he often refers to the breakdown in trust between members of Parliament and those who elected them: “They chose rather to trust unto their policies and court arts—to king-waste and delusion—than to justice and plain dealing.”8 He explicitly draws on a number of important distinctions, such as that between “principals” and “agents” and the separation of powers between those who make laws and those who implement them.
His reproaches to Parliament could well come from citizens in a post-financial-crisis country today: “Have you shook this nation like an earthquake to produce no more than this for us? Is it for this that ye have made so free use and been so bold both with our persons and estates?” And when he aims at their detachment: “For we must deal plainly with you. Ye have long time acted more like the House of Peers than the House of Commons.”9
Many people today can empathize with Overton’s focus on corruption, duplicity (“Forsake and utterly renounce all crafty and subtle intentions; hide not your thoughts from us”), and statecraft. Overton is underwhelmed by what members of Parliament have done with the power invested in them and sets out remedies, such as frequent elections and a separation between the power to make laws and to implement them, and he demands, “You must deal better with us.” He demands equality for the “freeborn” and equal treatment in law: “Nor is there any reason that they should in any measure be less liable to any law than the gentry are.”10
Overton’s Remonstrance gives a strong impression of the ethic of the Levellers. In the context of his later influence within the Levellers, it helps make the point that they were more classical republicans than socialists, as some see them. They were more interested in developing a largely political rather than social levelling, based on the autonomy of the public. A good portion of the Overton texts and parts of the subsequent agreements hang heavily on the notion of defending the people against tyranny and against arbitrariness in the application of law and state policy—for example: “We must therefore pray you to make a law against all
kinds of arbitrary government as the highest capital offence against the commonwealth.”11 This idea and the texts of the agreements chime with the philosopher Philip Pettit’s definition of a civic republic as one in which citizens are free from domination.12
Again, most likely with Lilburne in mind, Overton claimed, “Ye now frequently commit men’s persons to prison without showing cause,” and he complained of a tradition of judges and lawyers “who sell justice and injustice.”13 There is also a sense that the political class had distanced itself from the people (bear in mind that at this time the notion of equality was still a revolutionary one).
Reading through his pamphlets one might even detect a sense of prophecy, or simply of a cycle come full circle in regard to Brexit and Scotland: “When as we see apparently that this nation and that of Scotland are joined together in a most bloody and consuming war by the waste and policy of a sort of lords in each nation that were malcontents and vexed.” Some British people reading this will consider the prosecution of Brexit a waste, and many will think of their leaders as “malcontents.” Overton also has much to say on how Parliament spends the state’s money, especially on wars and on the negative effects of conscription. On this topic, he warns members of Parliament that using war as an excuse to avoid other issues will not do: “If ye could excuse yourselves as ye used to do by saying it has been a time of war, that will not do.”14
Well-Being of the People
Overton was joined at the head of the Levellers by Rainsborough, John Lilburne (whose wife, Katherine, also organized women’s Leveller groups), William Walwyn, John Wildman, and Thomas Prince. They were the primary signatories of the agreements. The first Agreement of the People was prepared at the end of October 1647, just at the beginning of the debates.15 This agreement focused on political equality and has a claim to being the first written constitution in democratic history. It carries some striking epithets, such as a terse definition of equality and good law: “that in all laws made or to be made, every person may be bound alike” and “that as the laws ought to be equal, so they must be good and not evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people.”16
A second agreement was rushed into print in mid-December 1648 as some of the Leveller leaders were threatened with arrest, and the third and final agreement appeared in May 1649.17 Against a political background colored by a despotic king and an overbearing Parliament, the aim of the Levellers was to flatten the power structure, restrain government, and end “domination” of the ordinary man—or, in the words of the Levellers, “Agree to ascertain our Government, to abolish all arbitrary Power, and to set bounds and limits both to our Supreme, and all Subordinate Authority, and remove all known Grievances.”18 The second agreement contains a few more references to policy than did the first agreement, such as the establishment of a Council of State and a sensible and fair approach to the taking on of debt.
The third and final agreement (supported by one-third of the population of London) was fashioned by John Lilburne, William Walwyn, Thomas Prince, and Richard Overton, all prisoners in the Tower of London, in May 1649. It is the most complete of the three agreements and touches on topics, such as trade, that earlier documents do not treat. It strikes a doleful note that electorates in many countries might appreciate today: “having for some yeare’s by-past, drunk deep of the Cup of misery and sorrow.”19
The Cup of Misery
We can boil down the arguments of the Levellers and try to express them in today’s terms. They wanted a simplification of the law in plain English, an end to onerous indebtedness procedures, suffrage for most males, religious freedom, and political and electoral reform.20 They demanded an end to corruption in politics and within the judiciary. They wanted integrity from those in office but pessimistically warned (in the third agreement) that they had “by woefull experience found the prevalence of corrupt interests powerfully inclining most men once entrusted with authority.”21
Practically, we can translate their wishes as more-representative parliamentary reform, measures to curb corruption, an ending of privileges and exemptions for members of Parliament and the Grandee classes, and measures to reduce politicians’ time in office. Furthermore, the Levellers signaled a preference for local or community representation and democracy (i.e., there should be no imposition of candidates or officers), probity in office, and civil behavior (the agreement was against disorder, rioting, and destruction of property).22 Legally, the state would uphold natural rights, affirm religious freedom, enforce a transparent rule of law (in “plain English”), and enact progressive legal reform.
In terms of foreign policy, they prescribed a stance based on commerce, a vigilant sense of security, and the absence of antagonism (i.e., “Don’t do stupid stuff,” to quote Barack Obama, or the former Turkish foreign-policy maxim of “Zero problem with neighbours”). The Levellers were for trade on fair terms, stating in a petition to the House of Commons in 1648 that there should be “freed all trade and merchandising from all monopolizing and engrossing by companies.”23
Again, the third agreement is the clearest on these points, committing to “the conservation of Peace and commerce with forrain Nations,” stating on free trade, “That it shall not be in their power to continue to make any Laws to abridge or hinder any person or persons, from trading or merchandising into any place beyond the Seas, where any of this Nation are free to trade,” and cautioning Parliament that “it shall not be in their power to excise Customes upon any sort of Food, or any other Goods, Wares or Commodities, longer than four months after the beginning of the next Representative, being both of them extreme burthensome and oppressive to Trade.” Financially the state would run a sensible budgetary policy and households would pay their debts, though not with their liberty (“you would have considered the many thousands that are ruined by perpetual imprisonment for debt and provided their enlargement”).24
Saddles on Their Backs
The ethic of the Levellers was, in the terms of the political thought that followed them, classically republican. Some of their political ideas later crept into American politics, from Jefferson’s deployment of the Leveller quotations (“mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs”)25 to parts of the Declaration of Independence. Other Leveller texts reek of French republicanism before its time.26 In the emerging political and intellectual spectrum of the age, the Levellers were constitutional republicans of the center, flanked on the left by the True Levellers and by groups such as the Diggers, who would be seen as left-wing environmentalists in today’s politics.
The Levellers were modern and innovative in their thoughts, in the constitution they presented, and in the way they conducted their debates. Yet one aspect of the Leveller texts and discourses that remains rooted in the mid-seventeenth century is the way in which religion (Christianity) informs them. Both the Levellers and Grandees like Cromwell were infused with the teachings of the Bible. Notably, unlike Cromwell, the Levellers preached tolerance for all religious beliefs.
The religious aspect of the Leveller texts may make them seem dated to modern readers, and it is worth mentioning that the strong religious element in the Levellers’ thought process is very un-British compared to Britain today, though it would still resonate with the political debate in the United States. Religious participation rates across Europe are also low—perhaps 10 percent or less of people attend a weekly religious service—and in many instances religion is a taboo topic, with the debate on religion colored more by prejudice against Muslims or Jews or by the role of the Catholic Church as an actor in debates on abortion and mariage pour tous (marriage for everyone, or same-sex marriage).27
Though I feel that I am now straying beyond the bounds of this book, it is worth remarking that there is relatively little mention of religion in terms of people’s everyday lives (in Europe especially) in the context of voter discontent with political institutions. It may well be, and some survey evidence backs this up, that dissatisfaction with religious ins
titutions (consider the scandals surrounding revelations of child abuse by Catholic priests in Boston and Pennsylvania and other parts of the Americas) is just another piece of a larger sense of frustration with the lack of leadership in public office.
The Levellers also had a sense of history and of their roots. Throughout the agreements they are keen to root their approach to law and equality in ancient ways of doings things that stretch back to the pre-Norman period of England, before the eleventh-century conquest and the Magna Carta. They value indigenous traditions, and in this way they leave a sense that the English Civil Wars had disrupted the cultural context in which the law was interpreted.
In the end, though, the idealism of the Levellers did not pay off. The Levellers were a threat to the statecraft and desire for power of the Grandees. Having probably held the Putney Debates as a means of drawing the ire of the ordinary soldiers, Cromwell and the other Grandees of the army soon headed off the passion of the Levellers by delaying the debates, then by changing their nature (only officers were allowed to participate in the later rounds), and then by controlling the agenda and the recording of the discussions.
The Grandees’ humoring of the Levellers provoked further anger in the ranks, and at some points the army was on the brink of mutiny, but it soon drew together following Charles’s escape from Hampton Court Palace. In the aftermath of this minicrisis, the spirit of the debates and that of the Levellers themselves begun to falter. In 1648 Rainsborough was murdered by Royalist soldiers. Although his death initially served as a rallying cry for the Levellers, it sapped their power and the movement faltered, with some of its members migrating to America. The Levellers briefly rose again following the death of Charles but were routed by Cromwell and his forces in various skirmishes.
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