"That since we are assured of our creation in the image
of God, and of an interest in Christ equal unto men, as also of a proportional
share in the freedoms of this commonwealth, we cannot but wonder and grieve
that we should appear so despicable in your eyes as to be thought unworthy to
petition or represent our grievances to this honourable House. Have we not an equal
interest with the men of this nation in those liberties and securities
contained in the Petition of Right, and other the good laws of the land? Are
any of our lives, limbs, liberties, or goods to be taken from us more than from
men, but by due process of law and conviction of twelve sworn men of the
neighbourhood? Would you have us keep at home in our houses, when men of such
faithfulness and integrity as the four prisoners, our friends in the Tower, are
fetched out of their beds and forced from their houses by soldiers, to the
affrighting and undoing of themselves, their wives, children, and
families?" [2]
History and Historians in general have not been kind to Leveller
women who were radicalised during the English Revolution. There is a dearth of
material on women’s struggle during this time. No major biography exists of two
of the most important Leveller women Katherine Chidley and Elizabeth Lilburne.
As Christopher Hill observed the English revolution:
"helped many women both to establish their own independence and to visualise
a total escape for the poorer classes”.It was the poorer classes that suffered the
greatest degradation regularly through jail, torture, war and disease.
Women who joined the Levellers joined a"party" that took on
many of the characteristics of a modern political party. Placing the Leveller’s
in the political spectrum of the 1640s has been a contentious issue. Some
historians have placed them as part of the radical wing of an Independent
coalition.
I tend to side with John Rees[3],
who believed the levellers were a stand-alone organisation. The levellers were responsible
for using for many of modern-day political techniques such as mass
demonstrations, collecting petitions, leafleting and the lobby of MPs. William Clarke, who provided us with the report
of the Putney Debates was an avid collector of books, pamphlets and leaflets.
Over eighty Leveller pamphlets were found in his collection. The Levellers
strength mainly lay in London and other towns and had significant support in
the army.
The main plank of its manifesto was the call for a
democratic republic in which the House of Commons would be more important than
the House of Lords. A Leveller would have a wanted redistribution and extension
of the franchise, legal and economic reform on behalf of men of small property,
artisans, yeoman, small merchants, and the very layers which made up the
composition of the Levellers themselves.
The Levellers were the pioneers of modern democracy, but
radical as they were in the 17th century they were in favour of an extension of
the voting franchise only for men and to the exclusion of women. They also
refuted"childish fears" that their object was to"make all men's estates equal
and to decide laws by telling noses”.
When women joined the Levellers, they had two major fights
on their hands. The first being a struggle against social inequality and
secondly a struggle to have equal rights as men. It is a contradiction that
they joined an organisation that wanted to extend the franchise except for
women.
For many women, the fight for social and political equality
would be their first involvement in any kind of political work. It can be said
without contradiction that women like Katherine Chidley and Elizabeth Lilburne
laid the basis for future struggles of working-class women such as the suffragettes.
Women Levellers mounted large scale demonstrations and
organised petitions in favour of social equality. They were met with differing
levels of brutality depending on which class they belonged to. On the whole
middle-class women were treated with derision, but largely no violence was
committed against them. This is not the case with the poorer sections of the
women's movement who were often treated severely by MP's and soldiers alike. Many were thrown into prison, mental institutions or workhouses. Middle-class
women were simply escorted away by soldiers and told to 'go back to women's
work”.
A typical response to the women's demonstrations on 26 May
1647 can be seen by Thomas Case who warned the House of Commons that if they
allowed "liberty of conscience," then "see ... how long your
civil peace will secure you when religion is destroyed. . . . Liberty of
conscience may in time improve itself into the liberty of estates and . . .
houses and ... wives, and in a word liberty of perdition of souls and bodies”[4]
Sir Simonds D'Ewes[5],
who was in attendance at parliament when the first women's protest took place
on Tuesday, 8 August 1643, said in his diary “a multitude of women described
elsewhere" as two to three hundred oyster-wives, 'taking example by the
unlawful and tumultuary proceedings of the former faction. . - came to the very
doore of the House and there cryed . . . Peace, Peace, and interrupted divers
of the members both as they went in and as they came out of the House,' and
threatened violence to those members who were enemies to peace”.[6]
Women in the 17th century had little or no rights at all,
and according to The Lawes Resolutions of Woman’s Rights, 1632 women’s legal
position depended solely on their husband’s goodwill. The husband had complete
control “over an unmarried daughter and a similar husband authority over his
wife. Married women were not considered legal persons. An independent woman was
viewed suspiciously”. [7]
What moved women to go into a struggle. According to
Christopher Durston, not a lot up until the outbreak of the Civil War. It is
true to some extent that radical activity amongst men and women was low at the
beginning of the 17th century. The English Revolution changed all that. The
struggle for equal rights inside and outside the family was a powerful
motivating force. Most of the women’s protest from an ideological standpoint
was cloaked in religious phraseology.
Significantly recent historiography has downplayed the role
of economic factors in motivating people. Historian Soma Marik asked the
question “What kind of economic pressure was brought to bear on the labouring
poor in this age of transition”. The impact of these economic crises, as well
as of political crises, could be contradictory. Women were paid less than men,
who in turn were ill-paid. So they were certainly greatly burdened. But women
were often hired as domestic servants, which reduced family/husband's control.
During the civil war, the absence of husbands due to exile or military service
also proved to be a two-edged sword. Women faced greater hardship”.[8]
This "poverty" was questioned by Ian Gentles, who thought
that "Chidley’s’ uncompromising radicalism did not prevent them from prospering
under the Commonwealth and Protectorate. An examination of their financial and
administrative careers shows that they may be counted among the tangible
beneficiaries of the English revolution. Katherine won at least two substantial
contracts to supply stockings to the army in Ireland, while Samuel obtained a
job in the State's service. He was appointed in 1649 to Worcester House where
he took up lodgings as registrar of the debentures used to purchase crown fee
farm rents. How he landed this appointment is unknown, though his fellow saint,
David Brown, asserted that it was thanks to his influence in high places”.[9]
It is to Gentles credit that he is one of the few historians
that establishes a link between Chidley’s economic position and her political
activity. What kind of political activity did women take part in? As with their
male counterparts, it is difficult to match Leveller women’s petitions to their
authors and far more research is needed but the women Levellers did release a
substantial number of petitions to parliament on a number of issues. They
demanded the release of the Leveller leaders, redress from high taxes, and lack
of work, dictatorial government and opposition to meddling in Irish affairs.
While some historians have disputed the figures it is
believed that in 1649 ten thousand Leveller women signed a second women's
petition to parliament. The significance of this document is that regardless of
class background the petitioners called for equal rights for all women and
equality with men. “Since we are assured of our creation in the image of God,
and of an interest in Christ equal unto men, as also of a proportionable share
in the freedoms of this commonwealth, we cannot but wonder and grieve that we
should appear so despicable in your eyes as to be thought unworthy to petition
or represent our grievances to this honorable House. Have we not an equal
interest with the men of this nation in those liberties and securities
contained in the Petition of Right, and other the good laws of the land? Are
any of our lives, limbs, liberties, or goods to be taken from us more than from
men, but by due process of law and conviction of twelve sworn men of the
neighborhood? And can you imagine us to be so sottish or stupid as not to
perceive, or not to be sensible when daily those strong defenses of our peace
and welfare are broken down and trod underfoot by force and arbitrary power?
“Would you have us keep at home in our houses, when men of
such faithfulness and integrity as the four prisoners, our friends, in the
Tower, are fetched out of their beds and forced from their houses by soldiers,
to the affrighting and undoing of themselves, their wives, children , and
families? Are not our husbands, o[u]r selves, our children and families, by the
same rule as liable to the like unjust cruelties as they? And are we
Christians, and shall we sit still and keep at home, while such men as have
borne continual testimony against the injustice of all times and
unrighteousness of men, be picked out and be delivered up to the slaughter? And
yet must we show no sense of their sufferings, no tenderness of affections, no
bowels of compassion, nor bear any testimony against so abominable cruelty and
injustice?”[10]
The petition written by Katherine Chidley (though this has
been disputed) is beautifully written and shows the writer was well educated
with a substantial political acumen. Little is known of Chidley's origins or
social background. Given the level of education needed to write highly
political tracts, it must be assumed she came from a reasonably well off
family. Katherine married Daniel Chidley who by profession was a tailor from
Shrewsbury, Shropshire.
Before the revolution, Chidley had a stable family
environment. She gave birth to seven children. Given her family commitments, it
is nothing short of staggering that she was able to combine a busy family life
with no help from modern equipment with an extremely active and brave political
life. While it is clear that outbreak of the civil war fired Chidley's
radicalism she was politically active in the early 1620s. Along with her husband
she was according to Ian Gentles “active in a Shrewsbury conventicle which carried on a running quarrel
with the rector of St Chad's, Peter Studley. In 1626 she and Daniel were among
twenty people presented to the consistory court for non-attendance at church”.[11]
The amount of irreligion in the English revolution has been
contested by numerous historians. Christopher Hill in his pamphlet Irreligion
in the Puritan Revolution quoted Richard Baxter who believed that those who
rejected mainstream religion were ‘a rable“ if any would raise an army to
extirpate knowledge and religion, the tinkers and sow-gelders and
crate-carriers and beggars and bargemen and all the rable that cannot read….
Will be the forwardest to come in to such a militia” It goes without saying
Baxter argued for their suppression with violence if necessary.
Gentles says that Chidley was reported for refusing ‘to come
to be churched after childbirth’. It
would appear that this brush with authority was an early marker for her later radicalism.
If she had remained in Shrewsbury it is open to debate whether she would have
had the opportunity to express her radical beliefs further. But as fate would
have it her hounding by the religious authorities forced her to go to London
were she had the luck to join up with other Levellers such as john Lilburne and
John Duppa.
Chidley’s first pamphlet was published in 1641 by the
printer William Larner. It was called The Justification of the Independant
Churches of Christ (1641). It was a reply to the right wing fanatic Thomas
Edwards, a London preacher. Chidley readily admitted that it was ‘not laid down
in a schollerlik way’, she defended her actions saying they were the plaine
truth of holy Scripture’. She believed according to Gentles that "churches ought to
be exclusive in their membership, because as Chidley puts it, when God brought
his people into the promised land, he commanded them to be separated from the
idolater”
Edwards countered with an attack in Gangraenah by saying
“There is, one Katherine Chidley an old Brownist, and her sonne a young
Brownist. who not content with spreading
their poyson in and about London, goes down into the Country to gather
people to them”.
Edwards attack on Chidley in his book Gangraena for
separatist “errors “could be dismissed as nothing more than an aberration if it
were not for the fact that it expressed in general terms a widespread fear in
ruling circles of a growing radicalism amongst the more educated sections of
the population. The other fear was that these educated radicals would spread
their ideas of equality and democracy to the poorer sections of society.
Chidley believed that even the poorest sections of society ‘whether they be
Taylors, Felt-makers, Button-makers, Tent-makers, shepherds or ploughmen, or
what honest trade soever’, were better qualified to create churches than
‘ill-meaning priests’.
Elizabeth Lilburne, a Leveller, was the daughter of Henry
Dewell a London merchant. Like Chidley next to nothing is known of her origins
and social background. She shared a similar background with that of Chidley in
so much as she was involved in irreligious circles. She shared her husband's politics. Her life with John Lilburne was in
many ways dominated by his persecution at the hands of parliament and later on
by Cromwell.
John Lilburne was frequently jailed and exiled. Far from
cowering Elizabeth she tirelessly lobbed for his release. According to Ann
Hughes when “John, a captain in Lord Brooke's regiment, was captured by
royalists at Brentford and sentenced to death it was Elizabeth's determined
petitioning that persuaded parliament to threaten retaliation on royalist
prisoners if Lilburne was hanged. It was a pregnant Elizabeth who carried to
Oxford the life-saving letter from the speaker of the Commons”.
Leveller women did not fight just as individuals. According
to the historian Gaby Malhberg the wives of leading figures of the English
revolution “formed their own networks, discussing political issues in the
absence of their husbands. Edmund Ludlow recorded, for instance, that he had
little hope of a pardon from the King because the wife of his fellow republican
Sir Henry Vane had informed Elizabeth ‘that she was assured [General George]
Monke’s wife had sayd she would seeke to the King, upon her knees, that Sir Henry
Vane, Major Generall [John] Lambert and myself should be hanged.”[12]
The civil war put tremendous strain on the Lilburne’s
marriage so much so that John Lilburne's writings in exile are full of attacks
on his wife's “mournfull arguments”. John was critical of his wife’s
persistence in asking him to “make peace with Cromwell”.
Ann Hughes presents another picture of Elizabeth saying “Almost
everything known about Elizabeth Lilburne comes from the writings of her
self-regarding husband—and his presentations of his suffering wife may well owe
as much to the demands of particular polemical situations as they do to the
reality of her personality or their life together. The impression is left of a
brave and realistic radical woman, determined to preserve herself and her
children in the most difficult public circumstances”.
On the political side, it must also be said that while the
Leveller women were the left-wing of the English revolution, they were not the
only women in a society that led struggles against the King. In some sense,
these women were lucky in that they had access to printing materials and
presses.[13]
Women that were even luckier in their access to print
because of their class background were women of the Aristocracy that were
opposed to the king.
One such woman was the formidable and extremely intelligent
Lady Eleanor Davies. For criticising Charles 1st she was imprisoned four times.
Her most important trial was in 1633 when she was found guilty of publishing
unlicensed books and “of circulating false prophecies".
The fact that an increasing number of women had access to licensed and unlicensed printing
presses is significant because it tells us that the radicalisation of
society went much deeper than had originally been thought. Secret printing
allowed popular ideas and protests to develop. In Davies's case she was fined
£3,000 which a significant sum in those days and sent to prison. If that was
not all her books were burnt by Archbishop Laud. Laud was not the only person
to burn her books. Both her husbands took delight in burning her books.
Davies was an aggressive anti-papist. Her aggressiveness
sometimes spilt into vandalism. In one instance in 1636 along with people went
to Lichfield Cathedral, damaged its altar and sat on the bishop's throne. For
her trouble, she was sentenced to sixteen months in prison. One problem for
modern-day researchers is that in Seventeenth-century England, according to one
writer “very few women, compared with men, wrote for publication their works
form less than one per cent of the total number of texts published in the
period.”
To conclude the study of these women would not only be
fascinating but would provide the brave historian with a rich vein of
historical study. A systematic study would deeply enrich our understanding of
the radical women of the 17th century and their role in the English revolution.
As a wise man once said it was a man’s world, but it would be nothing without a
radical woman.
[1]
Women's Petition (1649)-From J. O'Faolain and L Martines, Not in God's Image
(New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 266-267.
[3]
The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640-1650
[4]
Source: Puritanism and Liberty, being the Army Debates (1647-9) from the Clarke
Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents, selected and edited with an
Introduction A.S.P. Woodhouse, foreword by A.D. Lindsay (University of Chicago
Press, 1951).
[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simonds_d%27Ewes
[6]
Women Petitioners and the Long Parliament-Ellen A. M'Arthur-The English
Historical Review-Vol. 24, No. 96 (Oct., 1909), pp. 698-709
[7]
See- The Family in the English Revolution Christopher Durston-Basil Blackwell
1989.
[8]
Christopher Hill -Women turning the World Upside Down-Soma Marik Social
Scientist vol 32 2004 pp. 50-70
[9]
Ian Gentles, ‘London Levellers in the English revolution: the Chidley's and
their circle’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 29 (1978), 281–309
[10]
Quoted in Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook: Constructions of Femininity in
England
edited by Kate Aughterson
[11]
Ian Gentles, ‘London Levellers in the English revolution: the Chidley's and
their circle’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 29 (1978), 281–309
[13]
Hughes, Ann. "Gender and Politics in Leveller Literature." In
Political Culture and Cultural Politics in England: Essays Presented to David
Underdown, edited by Susan Amussen and Mark Kishlansky, 162-188. Manchester:
Manchester University Press; New York: St Martins, 1995.
