Levellers
The Levellers | |
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Political parties |
The Levellers were a political movement active during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms who were committed to popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law and religious tolerance. The hallmark of Leveller thought was its populism, as shown by its emphasis on equal natural rights, and their practice of reaching the public through pamphlets, petitions and vocal appeals to the crowd.[1]
The Levellers came to prominence at the end of the
They were organised at the national level, with offices in a number of London inns and taverns such as The Rosemary Branch in Islington, which got its name from the sprigs of rosemary that Levellers wore in their hats as a sign of identification. They also identified themselves by sea-green ribbons worn on their clothing.
From July 1648 to September 1649, they published a newspaper, The Moderate,[2] and were pioneers in the use of petitions and pamphleteering to political ends.[3][4] London's printing and bookselling trade was pivotal to the movement. [5]
After
Origin of name
The term "leveller" had been used in 17th-century England as a term of abuse for rural rebels. In the
As a political movement, the term first referred to a faction of
The first ideological identification was due to Thomas Edwards, who, in his work Gangraena (1646), summed up Levellers' views and attacked their radical political egalitarianism that showed no respect for the constitution. The prime targets in part III of his work were the men who were to be recognized as the leaders of the Leveller party.[9]
The
The 19th-century historian
Political ambitions
The Levellers' agenda developed in tandem with growing dissent within the
Some Levellers like Lilburne argued that the English Common law, particularly the Magna Carta, was the foundation of English rights and liberties, but others, like William Walwyn, compared the Magna Carta to a "mess of potage". Lilburne also harked back in his writing to the notion of a Norman yoke that has been imposed on the English people and to some extent argued that the English were simply seeking to reclaim those rights they had enjoyed before the Conquest.
Levellers tended to hold fast to a notion of "
According to
Timeline
In July 1645, John Lilburne was imprisoned for denouncing
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 that 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".[19]
The soldiers in the New Model Army elected "Agitators" from each regiment to represent them. These Agitators 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 produced a pamphlet called "The Case of the Army truly stated". This was presented 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 that were to be regulated by an unalterable "law paramount".[14]
The senior officers in the Army (nicknamed "Grandees") were angered by the "Case of the Army" and ordered the unofficial Agitators to give an account of their principles before the General Council of the Army. These debates, known as the
The
The Levellers' largest petition, titled "To The Right Honourable The Commons Of England", was presented to Parliament on 11 September 1648 after amassing signatories including about a third of all Londoners.[22]
On 30 October 1648,
On 20 January 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.[23]
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, 300 infantrymen of Colonel
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 1 May 1649). It includes reforms that have since been made law in England, such as the right to silence, and others that have not been, such as an elected judiciary.[25]
Shortly afterwards, Cromwell attacked the "Banbury mutineers", 400 troopers who supported the Levellers and who were commanded by Captain William Thompson.[26][27] 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 on 17 May 1649. This destroyed the Levellers' support base in the New Model Army, which by then was the major power in the land. Although Walwyn and Overton were released from the Tower, and Lilburne tried and acquitted, the Leveller cause had effectively been crushed.
The Moderate
The Moderate[28] was a newspaper published by the Levellers from July 1648 to September 1649.[2]
Other usage
In the 1724 Levellers Rising in Dumfries and Galloway, a number of men who took part in it were called "Dykebreakers" (a dyke being a Scottish term for a stone wall without cement).[29] They first met at the annual Horse Fair at Kelton Hill.[30] They were confronted by six troops of dragoons, after which nocturnal attacks continued for six months, making it the most serious rural disturbance in 18th-century Scotland.[31] The most troublesome of these Levellers were transported to the plantations of North America as punishment.[30]
The word was also used in Ireland during the 18th century to describe a secret revolutionary society similar to the Whiteboys.
See also
- List of liberal theorists
- English Dissenters
- Good Old Cause
- Green Ribbon Club A post restoration political club. The "Green Ribbon" was the badge of The Levellers in the English Civil Wars in which many of the members had fought and was an overt reminder of their radical origins.
- Hugo Black, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States who cited John Lilburne's trial in several opinions beginning with In re Oliver in 1948
- Kett's Rebellion (1549)
- Chartism
- Republicanism in the United Kingdom
- Edward Sexby (1616–1658); English Puritan, soldier and Leveller; he turned against Cromwell and plotted his assassination
- Peasants' Revolt
- Libertarianism
- United States Bill of Rights
- Gerrard Winstanley
- Norman yoke
- Pre-Marxist communism
References
- ISBN 978-0719089367 – via Google Books.
- ^ a b Howell; Brewster (September 1970). "Reconsidering the Levellers: The Evidence of the Moderate". Past & Present (46): 68–86.
- ^ "Levelers". Columbia Encyclopedia (6th ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. 2001–2007. Archived from the original on 24 June 2008. Retrieved 2 July 2008.
- ^ Plant, David (14 December 2005). "The Levellers". British Civil Wars and Commonwealth website. Archived from the original on 13 May 2008. Retrieved 2 July 2008.
- .
- ISBN 052128712X. p. 164
- ^ Whitney Richard David Jones (2000). The Tree of Commonwealth, 1450–1793, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press,
- ^ Mendle (2001), Chapter by Blair Worden, "The Levellers in History and Memory c. 1660–1960" p. 282
- ISBN 0521247160.
- ^ "leveller, n.". OED Online. June 2017. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/107665?redirectedFrom=levellers+ (accessed October 19, 2017). s.v. "Leveller": "1644 NEEDHAM Case Commw. 77 Our Levellers now exclaim against the Parliament".
- ISBN 978-0813902777. p. ix
- ^ Gardiner, Great Civil War, iii. 380.
- ^ Mendle (2001), Chapter by Blair Worden, "The Levellers in History and Memory c. 1660–1960" pp. 280–282
- ^ a b public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Levellers". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 506. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ British Library Thomason Collection E413(15)
- ^ "J.P. Sommerville, "Free-born John" The English Rev, 1647–1649". Archived from the original on 31 May 2013. Retrieved 18 March 2014.
- Holt, Rinehart and Winston
- ^ "From a representation of the army". 2013.
- ^ "An arrow against all tyrants Richard Overton, 12 October 1646". Archived from the original on 23 December 2005. Retrieved 20 September 2005.
- ^ The Agreement of the People Archived 11 October 2004 at the Wayback Machine as presented to the Council of the Army October 1647
- ^ "The Heads of the Proposals offered by the Army". Archived from the original on 11 October 2004. Retrieved 18 October 2004.
- ^ "To The Right Honovrable The Commons Of England in Parliament assembled. The humble Petition of Thousands wel-affected persons inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark Hamblets, and places adjacent". Archived from the original on 2 February 2007. Retrieved 29 January 2007.
- ^ Agreement of the People and the places therewith incorporated, for a secure and present peace, upon grounds of common right, freedom and safety Archived 11 October 2004 at the Wayback Machine, as presented to Parliament in January 1649
- ^ The History of England: Chapter IV: The Commonwealth Archived 11 December 2004 at the Wayback Machine by John Lingard
- ^ Agreement of the Free People Archived 11 October 2004 at the Wayback Machine, extended version from the imprisonment of the Leveller leaders, May 1649
- ^ "The testimony of the Burford Levellers". Archived from the original on 11 October 2004. Retrieved 18 October 2004.
- ^ "THE Levellers (Falsely so called) Vindicated, OR THE CASE Of the twelve Troops (which by Treachery in a Treaty) was lately surprised, and defeated at Burford". Archived from the original on 9 June 2007. Retrieved 29 January 2007.
- OCLC 642444396
- ^ A. Lang, History of Scotland, vol. iv.
- ^ a b Buxbaum, Tim. Scottish Garden Buildings. p. 14.
- T. M. Devine: The Scottish Nation 1700–2007, Chapter 7
Sources
- HN Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution, edited and prepared for publication by Christopher Hill. (Cresset Books, 1961; Spokesman Books, 2nd Edition, 1983).
- Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (1972)
- Mendle, Michael (ed), The Putney Debates of 1647: The Army, the Levellers, and the English State. Cambridge, ISBN 0-521-65015-1.
- Morton, A.L (ed), Freedom in Arms: A Selection of Leveller Writings. New York: International Publishers, 1975.
- John Rees, The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640–1650. Brooklyn, Verso Books, 2016.
- Jürgen Diethe, Wir das freie Volk von England. Aufstieg und Fall der Levellers in der Englischen Revolution. Münster u.a., LIT Verlag, 2009 (Politica et Ars, 22), 280 S.
Further reading
- Annis, Ben[dead link] Have Historians Exaggerated the Significance of Radical Movements in the English Revolution?
- Anderson, Angela; Cromwell and the Levellers interviewed as part of the preparation for Cromwell: New Model Englishman by Channel 4
- OCLC 750831024 – via Google Books.
- Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard (2000). Self-Ownership and Consent: The Contractarian Liberalism of Richard Overton. Journal of Libertarian Studies 15, 1 (Fall 2000): 43–96.
- Selected works of the Levellers
- Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution Archived 5 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine
- John Lilburne and the Levellers
- BBC: Civil War & The Levellers (17th century)
- 1642–1652: 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 Archived 27 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- Feltham, Oliver, Anatomy of Failure – Philosophy and Political Action