Gender, Class and the English Revolution: A Critique of Ann Hughes’s Gender and the English Revolution

Ann Hughes’s Gender and the English Revolution (Routledge, 2011) transcends being just another entry in the extensive historiography of the mid-seventeenth century. It exemplifies a significant ideological transformation that has influenced universities over the last forty years: replacing class as the primary lens for historical analysis with the more abstract, idealist idea of “gender.” This change did not develop naturally from historical study but is instead linked to specific social changes—most notably, the shift to the right among the affluent middle class and the political decline of the large workers’ movements that once provided a material basis for Marxist theory.

Hughes is a dedicated historian with well-established archival research, which is beyond dispute. The focus of critique is the theoretical approach she uses regarding the English Revolution. Her analysis is based on contemporary feminist historiography, especially the idea — influenced by Joan Scott and her followers — that patriarchy is a transhistorical framework of male dominance that can explain women’s experiences across diverse social contexts. However, this perspective is not just flawed; it is misleading because it replaces specific social relationships with an abstract, overarching category, ignoring the complex social realities that influenced the lives of both men and women in seventeenth-century England.

Against the Gender Turn: Hughes, Scott, and the Eclipse of Class in Early Modern Studies

A troubling trend in early modern scholarship over the past four decades is the gradual disappearance of class from historians' analytical tools. In its place, a new orthodoxy has emerged—placing gender as the primary category, viewing patriarchy as a universal explanation, and prioritising “identity” over the material relations that truly shape society. Ann Hughes’s Gender and the English Revolution exemplifies this trend with its polished approach. Still, it was Joan Scott’s 1986 essay on gender as a “useful category of historical analysis” that served as the theoretical catalyst. Together, these works illustrate a historiographical shift that has significantly hindered our understanding of the English Revolution.

Let us speak plainly. The English Revolution was not a quarrel between men and women. It was a class struggle of world‑historic significance: the first bourgeois revolution, in which the rising capitalist class, supported by plebeian layers and the radicalised soldiery of the New Model Army, broke the political power of feudal absolutism. Women participated in this upheaval — as petitioners, prophets, pamphleteers, and political actors — but they did so as members of classes, not as an abstract gender bloc.

Scott’s intervention prompted historians to view gender as an independent power structure, separate from economic and social relations that shape it. She presents patriarchy as a transhistorical system, detectable across different eras with minimal reference to evolving modes of production. This conceptual shift has been highly influential, not for shedding light on historical realities, but because it suits the ideological interests of a middle-class academic class that has largely disengaged from class politics.

Hughes’s analysis demonstrates how Scott’s framework, when applied to the English Revolution, reduces class to merely “social status.” The material realities of seventeenth-century England—such as property, labour, exploitation, and the decline of feudalism—are overshadowed by a focus on gendered agency. Both Margaret Cavendish and a poor London woman are categorised as “women” within patriarchy; while their vastly different class standings are recognised, they do not influence the analysis. This leads to a history where gender becomes the sole explanation for events, while class is disregarded.

This is more than just an intellectual mistake; it reflects an ideological shift rooted in social change. The gender focus in history aligns with the periods when the organised working class weakened, socialist movements declined, and a privileged academic elite adopted identity politics both as a worldview and a career move. Moving away from class analysis mirrors the political path of this elite, whose interests often diverge from those of the working class, despite claiming to represent "the oppressed.”

The historical evidence reveals the flaws of this method. Women who accompanied the Diggers to St. George’s Hill, filled Parliament’s galleries, petitioned against the Norman Yoke and the tithe, and preached in Baptist and Fifth Monarchist churches were not acting as a unified gender group. Instead, they acted as part of an oppressed class sharing material conditions with their husbands, brothers, and fathers. Their radicalism was driven by the same social forces that inspired the Levellers, the Diggers, and the grassroots unrest within the New Model Army.

Alice Clark, a socialist and Quaker businesswoman in 1919, grasped this concept far better than many scholars of her time. She understood that women’s oppression is deeply intertwined with the class structures shaping society. This vital insight has largely been forgotten in the post-1980s academic landscape, overshadowed by discourse analysis, identity theory, and the expanding use of “gender” as a universal explanation.

The focus today is not to dismiss the significance of studying women’s oppression, but to free that study from the idealism that has overshadowed it. Gender should be viewed as intertwined with class, rather than separate from it. The English Revolution cannot be fully understood through patriarchy alone; it requires a materialist analysis of the class forces involved.

Hughes, Scott, and the broader feminist historiography of recent decades have steered the field into a dead end. It’s time to reconsider—not by following current academic trends, but by returning to a rigorous, class-based analysis that can truly explain the revolutionary upheaval of the seventeenth century.

The English Revolution was primarily a bourgeois revolution rather than a gender conflict. It was a major struggle in which the rising capitalist class, supported by parts of the gentry and driven by the urban poor, yeomanry, and radicalised soldiers of the New Model Army, dismantled the weakening feudal absolutist regime. Women took part in this upheaval as petitioners, preachers, pamphleteers, prophets, and political participants. Still, their involvement must be viewed within the context of the class forces that fueled the revolution.

Hughes’s framework conceals this reality by dividing women’s experiences into categories like “age, marital status, religion, and political allegiance,” overlooking the key factor in seventeenth-century English social life: class. This omission is intentional and central to her argument. Discussing “women” as a single political entity during the English Revolution ignores the vast divide between a propertied aristocrat such as Margaret Cavendish and a poverty-stricken woman begging in London. The aristocrat's concerns — actual and deeply felt — represented a specific class’s grievances, excluded from full participation in political and intellectual spheres. Meanwhile, the impoverished woman faced hunger, war requisitions, disease, and harsh exploitation. To bundle these disparate experiences under “patriarchy” effectively erases class differences from the start.

This erasure follows a clear social logic. The rise of gender-focused historiography aligns with the period when the organized working class weakened, social-democratic parties abandoned their socialist rhetoric, and a middle-class elite—many of whom were once radicals—shifted toward identity politics as a profession and worldview. The academic move away from class analysis reflects this group's political path, whose interests increasingly differ from those of the working class, even as they claim to represent "the oppressed.”

The historical evidence contradicts Hughes’s framework. The women who joined the Diggers on St. George’s Hill, filled Parliament galleries, petitioned against the Norman Yoke and the tithe, and preached in Baptist and Fifth Monarchist churches were primarily acting as members of an oppressed class. They shared the same material conditions with their husbands, brothers, and fathers. Their political radicalism was driven by social forces that also gave rise to the Levellers, the Diggers, and the grassroots movements within the New Model Army. Alice Clark, writing in 1919 as a socialist and Quaker businesswoman, recognized this more clearly than many modern scholars: women’s oppression is inseparable from the class relations shaping society.

None of this denies the importance of examining how women’s oppression was shaped by patriarchal law and tradition. However, such analysis must be grounded in a materialist perspective of seventeenth-century English society. Without considering class, gender becomes merely an ideological concept that conceals more than it uncovers.

Hughes’s book is valuable for its extensive archival material. However, its main argument — that gender, not class, drove the revolutionary upheaval of the mid-seventeenth century — is problematic. This view does not reflect the true dynamics of the English Revolution but instead aligns with the ideological preferences of a modern academic scene that favors identity-based frameworks over class analysis. To truly understand the English Revolution, a historical perspective must dismiss this approach and re-embrace the materialist foundations essential for comprehending the period.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary and Seventeenth‑Century Sources

• Cavendish, Margaret. The Blazing World and Other Writings. Edited editions vary.
• Chidley, Katherine. The Justification of the Independent Churches (1641).
• Clark, Alice. Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century. London: Routledge, 1919.
• The Leveller Petitions (1646–1649). In: Wolfe, Don M. (ed.). Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution.
• Winstanley, Gerrard. The Law of Freedom (1652).
• The Putney Debates (1647). In: Clarke, Peter & Lamont, William (eds.). The Putney Debates.

Ann Hughes and Early Modern Gender Historiography

• Hughes, Ann. Gender and the English Revolution. London: Routledge, 2011.
• Hughes, Ann. The Causes of the English Civil War. London: Palgrave, 1998.
• Hughes, Ann. Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Hughes, Ann. “Gender and Politics in the English Revolution.” History Compass 7 (2009): 1290–1301.

Joan Scott and the Post‑1980s Gender Turn

• Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–1075.
• Scott, Joan W. Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
• Scott, Joan W. Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man. Harvard University Press, 1996.
• Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990.
• Fraser, Nancy. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition. Routledge, 1997.
• Hemmings, Clare. Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory. Duke University Press, 2011.

Materialist, Marxist, and Class‑Centred Historiography

• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972.
• Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution. London: Routledge, 1961.
• Hill, Christopher. The Experience of Defeat. London: Penguin, 1984.
• Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution. London: Bookmarks, 1991.
• Manning, Brian. Revolution and Counter‑Revolution in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1658–1660. London: Bookmarks, 2003.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism. London: Verso, 1999.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Liberty and Property. London: Verso, 2012.
• Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Gollancz, 1963.
• Morton, A.L. A People’s History of England. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1938.

Historiography, Identity Politics, and the Academy Since the 1980s

• Anderson, Perry. In the Tracks of Historical Materialism. London: Verso, 1983.
• Anderson, Perry. The Origins of Postmodernity. London: Verso, 1998.
• Callinicos, Alex. Against Postmodernism. Cambridge: Polity, 1989.
• Eagleton, Terry. The Illusions of Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
• Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Lasch, Christopher. The Revolt of the Elites. New York: Norton, 1995.
• Bourdieu, Pierre. Homo Academicus. Stanford University Press, 1988.
• Collini, Stefan. What Are Universities For? London: Penguin, 2012.

Feminist Social History with Class Emphasis (Counter‑Tradition)

• Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch. New York: Autonomedia, 2004.
• Rowbotham, Sheila. Hidden from History: 300 Years of Women’s Oppression and the Fight Against It. London: Pluto Press, 1973.
• Hartmann, Heidi. “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism.” Capital & Class 8 (1979): 1–33.
• Barrett, Michèle. Women’s Oppression Today. London: Verso, 1980.

Useful Collections and Reference Works

• Cust, Richard & Hughes, Ann (eds.). Conflict in Early Stuart England. London: Longman, 1989.
• Reay, Barry. Radical Religion in the English Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
• Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. Yale University Press, 1992.
• Foster, Henry. The Politics of the New Model Army. Manchester University Press, 2020.
• Holstun, James. Ehud’s Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution. London: Verso, 2000.

 

A Short Q&A with Historian Catherine Fletcher

Catherine Fletcher latest book is called Our Man in Rome is set in the six-year period of Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. It's the story of Gregorio Casali, Henry VIII’s ambassador in Rome from 1525 to 1533, but also the first book-length account of the diplomatic intrigues behind the divorce for several decades.

Q. What made you tackle an already crowded field of historical study of the Tudor's especially Henry viii? My interest was originally focused on Renaissance Italy and the way today’s diplomatic system grew up there. I started looking at Henry VIII’s ‘divorce’ from Catherine of Aragon as a case-study of how monarchs negotiated in Rome, and realised that the Italian side of the story really hadn’t been told before in any detail. I found so much fascinating material that I thought it would be worth writing up.

Q How would you described your historiographical style. Who were your mainly influenced as a younger historian/writer.
?

Writing The Divorce of Henry VIII I was influenced by microhistories that take one small example – in my case the ambassador in Rome – and use it to tell a bigger story. Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms and Natalie Zemon Davis’s The Return of Martin Guerre are a couple of the classics. Microhistories tend to focus on people lower down the social scale, but I don’t see why they can’t be used to look at the experience of elite figures like ambassadors too. I also had Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana at the back of my mind (my book was first published as Our Man in Rome). That’s a great book about diplomatic duplicity – and makes an important point for historians that you can never be quite sure that envoys’ letters are telling the truth.

Q What advice would you give to an upcoming historian.

First, I’d say go and explore the archives. There’s a huge quantity of documentation out there – in local record offices, family holdings, and the like – that’s never been properly sorted through. Find a story that interests you and follow it through. And second, I’d say that it’s well worth taking the time to learn languages other than your own. Being able to read material in other languages can give you a very different perspective on historical issues.

Q How do you view the development of history blogs and other internet based historical resources.

History blogs are a great way for historians to discuss work in an informal way – and to find out what’s going on in the world of history. I wish I had more time to read them! They can make for much wider interaction between members of the public and academic historians than would otherwise be possible. The internet has also allowed the creation of some great digital databases of original source material. The Medici Archive Project in Florence has put thousands of letters online, and the Old Bailey Online site is a brilliant resource for anyone researching English legal and social history. My only concern is that we may now see a bias towards research on those themes that have good online resources at the expense of areas which don’t.

Q What are you working on now.

I’m trying to finish an academic book about the development of diplomacy in Renaissance Rome. After that, my plan is to write another book based in Renaissance Italy, and I’m working through the options for that now. There are so many good stories to tell about the great dynasties: the Borgias and the Medici, for example. I’m trying to make up my mind which one to write first!

  

The Leveller Women and the Class Struggle in the English Revolution

Women Enter the Stage of History as Political Actors

In spring 1649, during the peak of the English Revolution, thousands of women in London actively engaged in national politics. Their petitions to Parliament, signed by around 10,000 women, mark one of the earliest examples of mass political activism by women in modern history. These women explicitly and boldly claimed that they shared an equal stake with men in the liberties gained through their struggles. This moment was not merely an isolated instance of “proto-feminism” or a timeless voice of “women’s agency.” It resulted from a major social upheaval that shattered traditional hierarchies and brought new segments of society into political participation.

The English Revolution was fundamentally a class conflict, with the monarchy and traditional aristocracy opposing a coalition of merchants, rising gentry, yeomen, and the urban middle class. London’s artisans, apprentices, and journeymen also supported them, and their activism repeatedly pressured Parliament beyond its cautious approach. The formation of the New Model Army in 1645—made up of paid volunteers influenced by radical Protestant ideas—significantly altered politics. When Parliament tried to disband the army unpaid in 1647, the soldiers elected Agitators and openly defied their supposed authorities.

The Levellers emerged in this intense environment as a political movement with defined policies, a press, subscriptions, regional networks, and a large petitioning system. Their impact extended deeply into the New Model Army and was highlighted during the October 1647 Putney Debates. At these debates, Colonel Thomas Rainsborough stated that “the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he.” Women, involved in gatherings, printing activities, and street protests, also adopted this perspective—“the poorest she.”

The women’s petitions of 1649 directly challenged the new Commonwealth government led by Cromwell and the Grandees. After prominent Leveller leaders—John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn, and Thomas Prince—were arrested and imprisoned, groups of women marched to Westminster demanding their release. Parliament responded dismissively, telling them to return home and “meddle with their housewifery.” In response, the women returned days later with a more pointed petition, asking whether their lives, liberties, and property were any less vulnerable to arbitrary power than men's. Their actions marked a political awakening among London’s artisan and trading women—individuals whose daily lives had been significantly affected by the upheavals of the 1640s.

Figures like Katherine Chidley, Elizabeth Lilburne, and Mary Overton rose as leaders of this movement. Chidley, a long-standing separatist who opposed clerical authority, helped organise the churches that formed much of the Levellers' support base. Elizabeth Lilburne faced repeated imprisonment and poverty as she petitioned tirelessly for her husband’s release. Mary Overton was taken to Bridewell with her infant due to her involvement in the underground press. Their actions contributed to a widespread plebeian mobilisation: when Leveller soldier Robert Lockyer was executed in April 1649, women marched at his funeral, wearing sea-green ribbons and transforming it into a political protest.

For centuries, Whig historians concealed this history by framing it within constitutional myths. Later, postmodernist identity politics disconnected the women’s petitions from the class struggle that created them, portraying them as mere acts of “gender performance.” In truth, the Leveller women were not merely defining an identity; they were fighting with men of their class for a democratic settlement against the Commonwealth's wealthy rulers.

Their story demonstrates a fundamental truth: the struggle against gender oppression advances only when bound up with the wider struggle of the exploited and oppressed against class rule. The Leveller women stand at the beginning of a long line of revolutionary women—from Versailles in 1789 to Petrograd in 1917—whose political interventions were inseparable from mass movements of the working and oppressed.

The English Revolution as a Social and Class Struggle

The English Civil Wars (1642–51) were not simply a “war of three kingdoms” caused by administrative failure or religious conflicts, as some revisionist historians suggest. Instead, they represented a social revolution, pitting the monarchy and traditional aristocracy against a coalition of merchants, rising gentry, yeomen, and the urban “middling" classes.

This alliance drew support from artisans, apprentices, and journeymen in London—groups whose protests often compelled Parliament to exceed its leaders' cautious preferences. The creation of the New Model Army in 1645, an army composed of paid volunteers driven by radical Protestant beliefs, markedly transformed the political landscape. When Parliament attempted to disband the army without paying the soldiers in 1647, the ordinary troops elected Agitators and openly challenged their supposed authority. During this tumult, the Levellers emerged—a political movement with a program, a press, subscriptions, regional networks, and a large-scale petitioning system. Their influence extended deeply into the New Model Army, culminating in the Putney Debates of October 1647.

The Women’s Petitions of 1649

In late April 1649, shortly after Charles I's execution, London saw a significant political act during the English Revolution. Groups of women—representing artisans, traders, and common citizens—marched to Westminster with a petition calling for the release of Leveller leaders John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn, and Thomas Prince. These leaders had been taken from their beds and imprisoned in the Tower by the Council of State, in an effort to silence a strong democratic opposition to the new Commonwealth.

The Parliament's reaction was not just dismissive but openly hostile. The Serjeant-at-Arms told the women that the issue was too complex for them and ordered them to “go home, look to their own business and meddle with their housewifery.” With this disdainful remark, the ruling elite reaffirmed class and gender hierarchy: political power was reserved for property-owning men, while women—particularly common women—were to stay within domestic roles. This rebuke highlighted the limits Cromwell and the Grandees aimed to enforce as they built a republic focused on property rights rather than expanding democracy.

Nevertheless, the women refused to accept the traditional roles assigned to them. Their resistance was not just an isolated act of “proto-feminism" or a timeless display of “women’s agency.” Instead, it resulted from a significant social revolution that dismantled old structures and brought new segments of the population into political participation. The upheavals of the 1640s—characterised by mass mobilisation, religious radicalism, the rise of the New Model Army, and the emergence of the Levellers—created opportunities for those previously shut out. Women, involved in congregations, print shops, and neighbourhood networks, began acting based on the same principle expressed by Colonel Thomas Rainsborough at Putney: “the poorest he”—and more and more “the poorest she”—deserve to live as fully as the wealthiest.

On May 5, the women came back to Westminster with a more pointed petition. This time, they directly challenged Parliament by boldly asserting gender equality. They questioned whether women shared the same interest as men in the rights protected by the Petition of Right and common law. They asked if their lives, limbs, liberties, and property were any more protected from arbitrary authority. Furthermore, they wondered if Parliament wanted women to stay at home while soldiers took away their husbands and neighbours.

These questions hit at the core of the Commonwealth’s class structure. The Levellers stood for small producers—artisans, shopkeepers, and yeomen—whose push for democracy challenged the new regime's property-centred values. Women's petitions intensified this challenge by arguing that political rights should not be limited to male householders. Their involvement revealed a contradiction: the Grandees’ claims of liberty versus their desire to restrict political participation to those with a “fixed interest” in property.

The women who participated in the march—many of whom were connected to figures like Katherine Chidley, Elizabeth Lilburne, and Mary Overton—did not act as a separate gendered group. Instead, they were part of a wider plebeian movement, advocating for demands that challenged the boundaries of bourgeois republicanism. Their petitions collectively asserted that democratic rights should belong to all freeborn individuals, regardless of gender or property ownership. This episode powerfully illustrates how fights against gender oppression are more likely to succeed when integrated with broader movements of the exploited and oppressed. The Leveller women’s resistance in 1649 is a notable early example of political awareness emerging from grassroots efforts, questioning both patriarchal authority and the new Commonwealth's class dominance.

Women Leaders of a Plebeian Democratic Movement

Katherine Chidley stands out as a significant figure of the English Revolution, with her political and religious resistance rooted in the upheavals of the 1640s that dismantled the old social order. A separatist from Shrewsbury, she had previously challenged clerical authority in the 1620s by refusing the churching ceremony after childbirth, a ritual aimed at reinforcing female subjugation within the church hierarchy. Her refusal was more than a private act of dissent; it was an early demonstration of the revolutionary ideals that would later shape the Leveller movement: asserting that conscience, liberty, and political agency belong to the “poorest he,” and increasingly, the “poorest she".

In 1641, Chidley wrote The Justification of the Independent Churches of Christ, defending congregations self-governed by their members rather than controlled by the state or established clergy. This book presented a bold idea for its era: that an unbelieving husband lacked authority over a believing wife's conscience. During a time when women’s legal and political identities were subsumed under their husbands—meaning their status was entirely defined through male householders—Chidley’s position challenged the core of patriarchal and church authority. Her argument directly contested the interconnected systems of class and gender domination that supported the early modern state.

Chidley’s importance extended beyond her writings to her organisational contributions. She helped establish independent congregations and played a key role in the network of gathered churches that supported the Levellers’ social base. These congregations served not only as religious communities but also as political arenas where artisans, apprentices, small traders, and their families discussed scripture, authority, and the meaning of liberty. They provided the infrastructure for circulating Leveller pamphlets, organising petitions, and fostering political awareness among London's lower classes.

Alongside Elizabeth Lilburne and Mary Overton, Chidley was widely recognised for leading the women’s petitioning efforts of 1649. These efforts went beyond mere symbolic acts; they represented large-scale political actions. When Leveller leaders John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn, and Thomas Prince were arrested and imprisoned, it was Chidley and her colleagues who organised thousands of women to march on Westminster. Their petitions claimed that women shared “an equal interest with the men of this nation” in the liberties won through struggle. They questioned whether their lives, limbs, and property were any less vulnerable to tyranny than men's.

Such questions were inseparable from the class struggle driving the revolution. The Levellers represented the interests of small producers—independent artisans, shopkeepers and yeomen—whose democratic aspirations threatened the property‑based logic of the new Commonwealth. The women who petitioned were drawn from the same social layers. Their political intervention was not an early form of liberal feminism but a plebeian challenge to the ruling elite’s attempt to restrict political participation to propertied men.

Chidley’s activism continued into the 1650s, including renewed agitation for John Lilburne’s release in 1653. Her persistence reflected the broader trajectory of Leveller women, who refused to retreat even as Cromwell’s regime moved decisively to crush the movement. Their actions showed that women's political consciousness did not arise in isolation, but through participation. Katherine Chidley’s legacy rests on her combination of religious independence, political activism, and resistance to class oppression. She reminds us that the fight against gender oppression is linked to the broader struggle of the oppressed against class dominance—an important lesson that remains as relevant today as it was in 1649.

Elizabeth Lilburne’s life offers one of the most striking examples of how the English Revolution’s political storms fell with disproportionate force upon women who stood beside its most radical figures. Her story is not simply an adjunct to John Lilburne’s biography; it is a narrative of endurance, political agency, and suffering in its own right. Across the 1640s and 1650s, she lived under a level of state harassment that would have broken many of her contemporaries. Instead, she became one of the most persistent petitioners of the revolutionary decades, navigating the shifting centres of power—Parliament, the Council of State, the Army Council—with a tenacity that matched her husband’s polemical fire.

Persecution defined the rhythm of her domestic life. The Lilburne household was raided repeatedly, often violently, as agents searched for “dangerous books” and seditious pamphlets. These invasions were not merely political acts; they were intimate assaults on the space where she raised her children. The emotional toll was compounded by devastating personal loss. Most of her children died in infancy, a tragedy common in the seventeenth century but sharpened in her case by the instability created by her husband’s imprisonments and exiles. The home was never secure, never free from the threat of disruption, confiscation, or surveillance.

Her political labour was relentless. For a decade she petitioned on John’s behalf, drafting, presenting, and circulating appeals that demanded justice, due process, and humane treatment. Petitioning was one of the few formal political tools available to women, yet Elizabeth wielded it with unusual persistence and sophistication. She understood the mechanics of influence: when to approach MPs, when to appeal to Army officers, when to mobilise public sympathy. Her petitions were not passive pleas but interventions that kept John’s case alive in the public sphere, forcing authorities to confront the consequences of their repression.

During John’s exile in the Netherlands, poverty pressed hard. She managed the household alone, relying on irregular support from sympathisers while continuing to lobby for his return. This period reveals her resilience most clearly: she sustained her family, maintained correspondence, and preserved her husband’s papers despite material hardship and political hostility.

Elizabeth Lilburne’s life illuminates the gendered dimensions of radical politics. She endured the state’s coercive power up close, yet transformed her suffering into political action. Her perseverance kept the Leveller struggle visible even when its leading male figures were silenced. In this sense, she stands not merely as John Lilburne’s wife but as one of the Revolution’s most steadfast—and most overlooked—actors.

Mary Overton’s life stands as one of the clearest demonstrations of how the English Revolution’s radical print culture depended on the courage of women who operated in its most dangerous spaces. As the wife of Richard Overton—printer, polemicist, and one of the most hunted Leveller figures—she lived at the centre of the underground press that sustained the movement’s agitation. But Mary was not merely an adjunct to her husband’s work. She was an active participant in the production and circulation of illicit pamphlets, and she paid for that commitment with a level of brutality that exposes the Commonwealth regime’s deep hostility to plebeian women who entered political life.

Her arrest in 1647 marked the state’s determination to crush the Leveller press. Seized with her infant in her arms, she was dragged through the streets to Bridewell—a punishment deliberately designed to humiliate and terrorise. Bridewell was not simply a prison; it was a house of correction associated with the disciplining of the poor, the disorderly, and the sexually transgressive. To consign a political dissenter there was to mark her as socially deviant, a woman who had stepped outside the boundaries of obedience and domesticity. The spectacle of her arrest, carried out in full public view, was intended to send a message: women who entered the political arena would be treated with the same violence as men, but with an added layer of gendered degradation.

From her cell, Mary Overton responded with a petition that remains one of the most powerful documents produced by a Leveller woman. She denounced her treatment not as a private grievance but as a violation of the liberties of the freeborn—rights supposedly guaranteed by common law and celebrated by Parliament in its struggle against the monarchy. Her argument was radical in its simplicity: if liberty belonged to the people of England, then women were part of that people. The state’s assault on her body, her child, and her household was therefore an assault on the very principles the revolution claimed to defend.

Her petition also revealed the political consciousness forged among London's artisan and plebeian women. These women understood that the repression of the Leveller press was not merely an attack on individual printers but an attempt to silence a wider movement demanding accountability, legal reform, and democratic participation. Mary’s imprisonment was part of a broader campaign against the networks of wives, sisters, and neighbours who carried manuscripts, hid type, and kept presses running when their husbands were jailed.

Mary Overton’s experience illuminates the gendered violence of the Commonwealth and the indispensable role women played in sustaining radical politics. Her courage ensured that the Leveller voice continued to circulate even under the harshest repression. In doing so, she asserted a political truth the authorities feared: that the struggle for liberty could not be confined to men, nor contained within the narrow boundaries of property and obedience.

A Mass Movement of Plebeian Women

These three were the most prominent, but the petitions represented thousands. When Leveller soldier Robert Lockyer was executed in April 1649, his funeral became a mass demonstration in which women marched wearing the sea‑green ribbons of the movement. This was politics conducted by the plebeian layers of the capital—women included—on a scale never before seen in England. For two centuries, Whig historians treated the English Revolution as a constitutional quarrel among gentlemen. The Levellers were dismissed as an embarrassing excess; their women doubly invisible.

Recovery began in the early twentieth century with Ellen McArthur’s study of women petitioners. Keith Thomas’s 1958 essay showed how gathered churches opened space for women to preach and argue. Patricia Higgins’s 1973 study placed the Leveller petitions within a broader wave of female political intervention.

The key perspective originated with Marxist historians from the Communist Party Historians’ Group, especially Christopher Hill. In The World Turned Upside Down, Hill argued that the revolution sparked a “revolt within the revolution” among plebeian radicals whose ideas surpassed those of the victorious bourgeoisie. H. N. Brailsford’s The Levellers and the English Revolution, edited by Hill, extensively explores Leveller women and remains a vital resource.

From the 1970s, revisionists such as Conrad Russell and John Morrill attacked the social interpretation, reducing the Levellers to a marginal sect and the women petitioners to a curiosity. More recent scholarship—Ann Hughes, John Rees—has partly restored the picture. However, much academic literature remains mired in postmodernist concerns with “discourse” and “identity,” severing the petitions from the class struggle that produced them.

The Leveller women were not “negotiating gender norms.” They were fighting, alongside men of their class, for a democratic settlement against the propertied rulers of the Commonwealth.

The Limits of the Leveller Programme

The Levellers did not propose votes for women. Their Agreements of the People excluded servants and those receiving alms, because dependent men lacked political independence. Women, legally subsumed under husbands and fathers, fell under the same logic.

The women’s petitions pressed against this boundary without breaking it. They demanded equal protection under law and equal rights to petition, but not the franchise. They framed their arguments partly through their roles as wives and mothers of persecuted men.

This was not timidity. It reflected the social relations of a society of small producers, where the household remained the basic unit of production and political representation. The Levellers spoke for independent artisans, small traders, and yeomen—a petty‑bourgeois layer, not a modern working class. Their class's property relations bounded their democratic programme, and they recoiled from Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers' communism.

A consistent programme of social and sexual equality required material conditions that did not yet exist: above all, the emergence of the industrial proletariat and the socialisation of production.

The Crushing of the Levellers and the Restoration of Class Rule

The Grandees understood the danger the Levellers represented. In May 1649, days after the second women’s petition, Cromwell surprised Leveller‑led mutineers at Burford and had three shot in the churchyard. The movement never recovered.

The bourgeoisie, having used the plebeian masses to defeat the king, turned its guns on them. Eleven years later it restored the monarchy rather than risk renewed revolutionary upsurge from below.

The fate of the Leveller women—rebuffed by a Parliament of property‑owners and crushed along with their movement—demonstrates that democratic rights granted or withheld by the ruling class remain at its mercy.

A Heritage for the International Working Class

The Leveller women stand at the beginning of a long line: the market women who marched on Versailles in 1789; the women of the Paris Commune; the Chartist women’s associations; the textile workers of Petrograd whose International Women’s Day strike in 1917 opened the Russian Revolution. In each case, women entered political life not as a separate interest group but as part of a mass movement of the oppressed.

The lesson is not that gender oppression is secondary. It is that its roots lie in class society, and that the struggle against it has advanced only when bound up with the broader struggle against exploitation.

Today, as democratic rights are under attack across the world and ruling elites promote identity politics to divide working people, the history of the English Revolution remains urgent. The Leveller women deserve study not as icons of gender‑based politics, but as participants in the first great revolutionary upheaval of the modern era—an upheaval whose unfinished tasks passed to the international working class.

Bibliography

Primary and Secondary Sources Referenced in the Article

• Brailsford, H. N. The Levellers and the English Revolution. 1961.
• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. 1972.
• Hughes, Ann. Gender and the English Revolution. 2012.
• Rees, John. The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640–1650. Verso, 2016.
• Rees, John (ed.). John Lilburne and the Levellers: Reappraising the Roots of English Radicalism 400 Years On. Routledge, 2017.
• Higgins, Patricia. “The Petitioners and the Levellers.” 1973.
• Thomas, Keith. “Women and the Civil War Sects.” Past & Present, 1958.
• McArthur, Ellen. Women Petitioners to the Long Parliament. Early 20th century.
• Winstanley, Gerrard. The Law of Freedom.

 

 

Against Continuity: Trotsky, the Transition Debate, and the Pseudo Left’s Political Dead End

Introduction

The debate over the transition from feudalism to capitalism remains a contentious topic in Marxist historiography. For more than a century, it has stood for deeper theoretical and political conflicts: debates about historical change, the relationship between economic and political shifts, and their implications for socialist strategies. Recently, however, the focus of this debate has shifted. An increasing number of pseudo-left scholars prefer ideas of continuity, national contexts, and eclectic methodologies, drifting away from Marxism’s revolutionary foundation toward a sociological perspective of gradual change. Henry Heller’s book, "The Birth of Capitalism: A 21st Century Perspective" (2012), exemplifies this development. Although it aims to elucidate capitalism’s origins, it ultimately obscures them through national exceptionalism, misapplied categories, and political pessimism.

This essay argues that the pseudo-left’s view of history is not only wrong but also politically damaging. It warps facts, overlooks capitalism’s global and revolutionary roots, and often weakens support for socialist efforts. Conversely, the traditional Marxist approach—especially Trotskyism—provides a straightforward way to understand capitalism’s uneven development and the various forces at play, helping us see its origins and ongoing crises. The significance of this matter goes beyond theory; it directly influences the future of revolutionary politics.1

The Continuity Turn in Marxist Historiography

The historiographical stance of the pseudo-left is based on a wider intellectual change that started in the late 20th century. Revisionist historians began to focus more on continuity rather than sudden breaks, viewing revolutions as part of enduring structural trends. The English Revolution was seen as a constitutional matter; the French Revolution was framed as a fiscal issue; the Industrial Revolution was regarded as a demographic shift. This revisionist trend paralleled the decline of Marxist thought in academia and the rise of post-structuralist scepticism toward overarching narratives.2

Within Marxist circles, the continuity perspective was articulated through the work of Maurice Dobb and Paul Sweezy, whose mid-century debate on transition shaped later discussions. Sweezy’s book, The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942), sought to move beyond his neoclassical education. Still, it significantly diverged from Marx, particularly regarding the falling tendency of the profit rate. This Dobb–Sweezy debate facilitated interpretations that minimised sudden breaks and focused on sustained long-term commercial growth.

By the 1970s, this trend became a deliberate attack on the very idea of revolution. As Dominic Alexander points out, mainstream history started to dismiss the notion that capitalism arose from truly revolutionary changes, instead seeing its development as part of an ongoing global trading network. The pseudo-left adopted this revisionist view wholesale, confusing its scholarly appearance with genuine theoretical depth.

Political Marxism and the National Straitjacket

The most impactful pseudo-left perspective in the transition debate is Political Marxism, linked to Robert Brenner and his followers. Brenner’s influential article, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe” (1976), contended that capitalism arose primarily at the national level—in England—driven by shifts in agrarian class relations. He regarded international trade, colonial expansion, and global disparities as minor or insignificant factors.3

This idea of methodological nationalism is deliberate, reflecting a political stance that rejects the core internationalism of Marxism. Since capitalism has historically developed along national lines, socialism must follow the same path. If capitalism didn't require a global upheaval, socialism wouldn't either. The working class becomes a national entity, confined within national borders and limited to national strategies. Trotsky refuted this narrow view a century ago through his theory of uneven and combined development, which explains that capitalism doesn't emerge uniformly. Still, through conflicts between advanced and backward forms, it creates intense contradictions: “The law of uneven development governs the entire history of mankind.”[4] Capitalism is born, grows, and can only be overthrown on an international scale. Any history that denies this fact is not truly Marxist but nationalist.

The English Revolution and the Pseudo‑Left’s Historical Myopia

The pseudo-left’s view of the English Revolution illustrates the political impact of its approach. Brenner’s Merchants and Revolution (1993) simplifies the Revolution to a conflict between merchants and landlords, removing its revolutionary significance. Heller criticises Brenner on minor aspects but agrees with his broader national perspective.

Yet the historical evidence contradicts this reductionism. Valerie Pearl’s study of London merchants demonstrated that the wealthiest traders — those controlling the chartered companies — were overwhelmingly royalist, while “merchants of the middle rank” tended to support Parliament.[5] Brian Manning further cautioned that allegiance is difficult to establish even for well‑documented groups, complicating any attempt to map class position neatly onto political alignment.[6]

Revisionists seized on bourgeois participation on both sides to deny the Revolution’s bourgeois character. But as Ann Talbot argues, no revolution is “chemically pure.”[7] The English Revolution was uneven, contradictory, and impure — yet revolutionary nonetheless. It shattered feudal structures, opened the path to capitalist development, and demonstrated that political revolution is inseparable from economic transformation.

To deny the revolutionary character of 1640–60 is to deny the revolutionary character of capitalism itself. And to deny that is to deny the revolutionary capacity of the working class today.

The Global Birth of Capitalism

Marx’s description of primitive accumulation challenges pseudo-left nationalism. Capitalism didn’t originate solely in England but developed through various global events: the conquest of the Americas, the Atlantic slave trade, the collapse of Asian economies, the formation of worldwide commodity networks, and European commercial expansion. These weren’t continuous processes; instead, they caused ruptures across the world, exemplifying uneven and combined development at its most evident. Marx clearly depicted these dynamics, stating: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extermination, enslavement, and mining of indigenous populations… marked the beginning of capitalist production’s new era.”[8]

The pseudo-left struggles to accept this because it would mean recognising that capitalism’s contradictions are worldwide, which in turn implies that socialism’s conditions are also global. Their nationalism compels them to reject the very processes that Marx outlined. This historical perspective of the pseudo-left inevitably fosters political pessimism. Since capitalism developed gradually and nationally, without deliberate revolutionary action, socialism must follow the same pattern. Heller’s conclusion—that socialism is “centuries” away and should be approached through “experiments in socialism"—represents the logical conclusion of this continuity theory.[9]

This represents a revival of Menshevism, masquerading as scholarly analysis. It dismisses the revolutionary potential by prioritising academic credibility. In contrast, classical Marxism emphasises that capitalism operates as a worldwide system with global contradictions, crises, and the need for a global overthrow. The working class is capable of conscious revolutionary action without any need for experiments, long apprenticeships, or national detours. Conditions for socialism emerge directly from capitalism’s inherent global contradictions, not from pseudo-leftist gradualism.

Conclusion: Reclaiming Marxism from the Pseudo‑Left

The pseudo-left’s historiography on continuity is not only incorrect but also poses political risks. It dismisses the idea of rupture, agency, internationalism, and the revolutionary potential of the working class. Instead of Marxism, it promotes a cautious sociology of incremental change. To truly reclaim Marxism, one must embrace its proper historical method: dialectical, internationalist, and revolutionary. Trotsky’s concept of uneven and combined development offers the most compelling framework for understanding the origins of capitalism and its current crises. It reaffirms what the pseudo-left seeks to erase: the explosive, contradictory, and global nature of historical change. Capitalism’s emergence was not a gradual process but a storm. Its overthrow will not be a peaceful sunset, but a rupture—conscious, international, and revolutionary—driven not by isolated experiments but by the organised power of the working class.

Notes

1. Nick Beams, “Marxism and the Political Economy of Paul Sweezy,” World Socialist Web Site, 7 April 2004.
2. Dominic Alexander, review of The Birth of Capitalism, Counterfire, 2012.
3. Robert Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre‑Industrial Europe,” Past and Present, 1976.
4. Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, Part I, Section 4.
5. Valerie Pearl, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1961).
6. Brian Manning, The English People and the English Revolution (1976).
7. Ann Talbot, “The English Revolution and the Problem of Class,” World Socialist Web Site.
8. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 31.
9. Henry Heller, The Birth of Capitalism: A 21st Century Perspective (Pluto Press, 2012).