Rachel Foxley's excellent book is part of a growing recent
interest in the Levellers. Most of which seeks to place the Levellers rightful
place in the English revolution. Given the assault on the Levellers from revisionist
historiography, it is not surprising as John Rees points out in his review for
the IHR (Institute of Historical Research) that this book is "the first
full-length study of the Levellers for fifty years since H. N.Brailsford's The
Levellers and the English Revolution was published in 1961".[1]
The absence of a systematic study of this important
political group is to found not so much in history as in politics. While some
historians would like to keep politics out of history, there is and has been a
profound connection between a rightward shift in academic circles and the type
of history being studied and written about today.
The book takes full account of recent scholarship. It
contributes to historical debates on the development of radical and republican
politics in the civil war period, the nature of tolerations thought, the
significance of the Leveller movement and the extent of the Levellers'
influence in the ranks of the New Model Army. The importance of the Levellers has been a
contentious issue amongst historians for over fifty years. During this time a historian's
dispute or Historikerstreith[2]
has existed.
The battle lines may be a little blurred at times but have
characterised this dispute the most has been the full-frontal attack on a
Marxist interpretation of historical events.
It is not within the scope of this review to examine
the revisionist revolt whose origins can be traced back to G R Elton, but the
central focus of this disparate group of historians has been to attack any
Marxist conception of the historical study. A by-product of these attacks has
been to downplay the Levellers role in the English Revolution.
As Rachel Foxley points out in her introductory
chapter on 'The Levellers and the historians' 'The revisionist historians who
have rewritten the history of the seventeenth century have questioned almost
every aspect of the historical reputation of the Levellers' (p. 3).
Foxley is not immune to these attacks as the arch
Leveller revisionist Gary de Krey picks up in his review "Foxley's
presentation of Leveller ideas is fresh and provocative, and it will
undoubtedly draw rejoinders and responses. She does occasionally make
assertions about historical questions that she has not fully pursued. Her
discussion of the exchange between New Model soldiers and the Leveller authors
in 1647–8, for instance, leads her into a less‐well‐investigated
proposal for 'cautious dialogue' (p. 154) between the generals and the
Levellers. Here, her argument insufficiently tackles the depth of suspicion
that developed on both sides by late September 1647. She also treats the
Levellers as a 'movement' (in preference to the pre‐revisionist 'party') that began as early as mid-1645. But any treatment
of the Levellers as a movement from 1645 forwards, albeit one without neat 'contours' (p. 5), structures Leveller history
in particular ways. It inevitably transposes the name and substance of the
urban Levellers of 1647–9 upon pre‐Putney
London petitioners, pamphleteers and protestors. But can these earlier
political phenomena really be termed 'Leveller'? That label emerged only around the
beginning of November 1647; and in 1645–7, Lilburne, Overton, and Walwyn
enjoyed a variety of political contacts within a broader Independent coalition
that contended with the parliamentary Presbyterians. Exactly when a distinct
Leveller faction broke away from the Independent alliance is, in fact, a
critical unresolved question. It bears heavily upon the political self‐understandings of these
authors as well as upon the political identities of those who read and
responded positively to them. Yet, dividing developing authorships into pre‐Leveller and Leveller
phases could be equally problematic in a study of this nature".[3]
It is open to question how much Foxley has adapted to
this revisionist assault. One criticism of the book is her concentration on
Leveller political theory. In other words, there is many superstructures but
very little base. She does insist that 'revisionist treatments of the later
1640s cannot wipe out the contribution of the Levellers to the radicalisation
of parliamentarian political thought.
Foxley does not see the Levellers as an independent
group of radicals or revolutionaries but places their politics within a broad
parliamentarian alliance. A view would not look out of place amongst other post
revisionist historians. She then appears to contradict herself by saying that
we should not 'dissolve them into an undifferentiated part of that complex
political world' (p. 6). It would appear that Foxley has not fully worked out
her position regarding the class and political nature of the Levellers.
One has sympathy for anyone who attempts a new evaluation
of the Levellers. Although describing another historical period, Hegel's
perceptive remarks can be applied here it "not hard to see that our time
is a time of birth and transition into a new era. Spirit has broken away from
its former world of existence and imaging; it is about to sink all that into
the past, and is busy shaping itself anew."[4]
Given the limits of this review, it is impossible to
give sufficient justice to all the arguments presented by Foxley in the book.
However, there are some areas that need comment.
Foxley is correct to emphasise the originality of
Leveller thought. She opposes that view that the Levellers merely adapted
arguments found within parliament's supporters. Despite their independence, the
Levellers had alliances with many disparate political groups and people.
The complicated relationship between the Levellers
and other political and religious groups and individuals makes it extremely
hard to gauge both the size and influence of the Levellers. This anomaly has
been seized upon by many conservative historians to dismiss the group as
irrelevant.
One of the strengths of the book is that probes these
relationships and attempts to explain them within the context of the revolution.
Given the complexity of this work, it is entirely correct to say that Foxley's
work on the Levellers is far from over.
Foxley sees the Levellers as radicals and not
revolutionaries. There is a tendency within her work to see the Levellers
as making things up as they went along. To some extent, this is correct, the
Levellers and their leaders did react to events as John Rees put it they did it
"in the midst of a political crisis not in the seminar room,"[5]. While
this was true, they did not spend all their time making up as they went along
as Ann Talbot points out the Levellers were the "ideologists of the
revolution, and they ransacked the Bible and half-understood historical
precedents for some kind of theory to explain what they were doing".[6]
The Levellers were part of a broader and
international movement that sought in a limited way to move away from a purely biblical
explanation of political social and economic problems. This is not to say as
some left historians have done that they were proto-Marxists, but they should
be seen as a group of individuals who sought to go beyond previously held
beliefs.
As the Marxist political writer David North says "Until
the early seventeenth century, even educated people still generally accepted
that the ultimate answers to all the mysteries of the universe and the problems
of life were to be found in the Old Testament. But its unchallengeable
authority had been slowly eroding, especially since the publication of
Copernicus's De Revolutionibus in the year of his death in 1543, which dealt the
death blow to the Ptolemaic conception of the universe and provided the
essential point of departure for the future conquests of Tycho Brahe
(1546-1601), Johann Kepler (1571-1630) and, of course, Galileo Galilei
(1564-1642). Intellectually, if not yet socially, the liberation of man from
the fetters of Medieval superstition and the political structures that rested
upon it, was well underway. The discoveries in astronomy profoundly changed the
general intellectual environment".[7] In
much of their political thinking, the Levellers were the forerunners not only
of the 18th century Enlightenment but of the socialist movement.
The book highlights several significant moments of
the revolution that involved the Levellers which show that the Levellers
attracted a large audience than had previously thought.
Citing the July 1646 publication of the Remonstrance
of Many Thousand Citizens Foxley believes it 'was the first Leveller text to claim a mass
following, a significant moment in the genesis of the group.'(p. 36).
John Rees claims that their work was carried out on a
considerable scale saying "In January 1648 it was claimed that 30,000 copies
of a Leveller petition were being printed for widespread distribution.28 The
same year opponents of the Levellers were complaining of Leveller plans to
print 3,000 copies of a petition.29 The Remonstrance of Many Thousands of the
Free-People of England…and those called Levelers claimed this 'is already
signed by 98064 hands, and more to be added daily'. Lilburne claimed that two
publications in 1649, the Manifestation and The Agreement of the People of 1
May, had a print run of 20,000 which were sent 'gratis all over England'. In
March 1649 The Humble Petition of Divers wel-affected Women, a plea to free
Lilburne, Walwyn, Prince and Overton from their imprisonment in the Tower
collected 10,000 names using women ward organisers. In May 1649
Leveller-supporting apprentices in the Cripplegate Without ward were using the
same method."[8]
Foxley also contests the view that the Levellers were
solely driven by religious thought. Of course, it is understandable that
the political thought of the day would be heavily cloaked in religious garb as
she states 'There is simply no need to go hunting in covenant theology or
congregational practice for Leveller political ideas of equality or "democracy,"
or for a prototype of the Agreement of the People.'[9]
For me, the best or most important chapter is the 'Levellers
and the army.' Perhaps the most hotly challenged area of Leveller
historiography has been the extent of Leveller influence in the New Model
Army. Anyone who has argued that the Levellers had significant influence
in the army is accused of falling victim to the "fallacy of social
determinism."
Austin Woolrych contentiously states that the army
had "refrained from political activity despite the tendency of the
Presbyterians both religious and political, to portray it as a hotbed of
sectaries and radicals." If this is true then did Putney drop from the
skies? Is there no connection between the activity of the army before Putney
and during? Surely history is not just a series of unconnected episodes.
According to Woolrych "Anyone who strains to
hear the voice of the soldiery in the Putney debates should be aware that,
apart from one brief interjection by an unnamed agent, the only troopers who
spoke that day were Sex by and Everard, and on the other two days recorded by
Clarke the only others who opened their mouths were Lockyer and Allen. No
agitator of a foot regiment is known to have spoken. Out of just fifty
officer-agitators listed in October, twelve spoke in the course of the
three-recorded days five of them only once, and very briefly. We should be very
cautious about treating the Putney debates, wonderful as they are as the
typical voice of the army'?
If ever an area of academic study needed more work
then it is the Levellers influence inside the New Model Army. As John points out
with "Independents, other army activists, and the Levellers all existed on
a political spectrum in which it is difficult to cleanly separate one set of
ideas or personnel from another."[10]
Other conservative historians have been prominent in
seeking to challenge the nature and extent of Leveller penetration of the army,
certainly before the high summer of 1647. John Morrill argues that Leveller
rhetoric was fundamentally opposed to a standing army and that Lillburne's own
experience made him suspicious and out of touch with its rank and file, Mark
while Kishlansky has suggested that "the dynamics of army relations with
parliament could be explained adequately in terms of the military's sense of
its honour, its legitimate demands as an army, and its own experience in war
and peace."
 |
| Rachel Foxley |
Foxley believes this is "unjustified in the
light of 'the petitioning campaign of spring 1647, the pre-existing cooperation
between the core of Leveller leaders, and the growing consistency of concerns
and demands in the sequence of joint and individual works associated with the
Leveller leaders' (p. 153).
Foxley's work on the Putney debates is hampered by
the constraints of the publishers. They could have perhaps given her more
pages. However, she presents significant proof of Leveller influence on the
Grandees of the army and establishes contact between the 'civilian' Levellers
and the military radicals. She concludes that 'the revisionist story about
Putney and its aftermath cannot easily account for these continuing connections'
(p. 159).
But still, the political and historical blindness of
some revisionist historians towards the Levellers exists with some contending
that the Levellers "were exterior to the army."
As John Rees points out, many "Levellers were of
the army themselves. Lilburne had an exemplary and widely publicised military
record. But Lilburne was not alone in this. Leveller William Allen served in
Holles' regiment. Leveller printer William Larner served as a sutler in Lord
Robartes' regiment. Thomas Prince fought in the London Trained Bands until he
was injured at Newbury in 1643. John Harris ran an Army printing press.
Leveller ally Henry Marten had a close engagement in military affairs in London
and eventually raised his own regiment in Berkshire. Thomas Rainsborough and
his brother William were Leveller sympathisers. Edward Sexby was a central
figure in the actions of the Agitators. Army chaplains Jeremiah Ives and Edward
Harrison supported the Levellers ". [11]
These connections add weight to Foxley's observation
that the Putney debates' marked not the end but the beginning of a potentially
fertile alliance between civilian Levellers and army radicals' and that this 'reverses
the picture painted by the standard revisionist historiography' (p. 158).
One aspect of the Levellers underplayed in the book
were their relationship with Cromwell and their inability to go beyond their
social base.
Leveller ideas had their roots primarily in the lower
strata of society, as Cliff Slaughter states "they become anathema to the
victorious upper-middle classes. It was as necessary for Cromwell to crush the
Ranters as to liquidate Lilburne's Levellers and Winstanley's Diggers. A few
selections from their tracts will show their lack of appeal to class so enamoured
of compromise (with its' betters,' of course) as the British bourgeoisie".
[12]
One of the compound and exciting chapters in the book
is The Laws of England and the free-born Englishman. One major criticism
of Foxley's work is her little use of Soviet historians works on the English
Revolution.
One historian comes to mind is Evgeny Bronislavovich
Pashukanis. In his work Revolutionary Elements in the History of the English
State and Law 1927 postulates that much of Lilburne's theory on state law was
adopted at a later date by the English bourgeoisie according to Pashukhanis "John
Lilburne in his work, The Fundamental Laws and Liberties, incidentally
formulates two classical principles of the bourgeois doctrine of criminal law:
no one may be convicted other than on the basis of a law existing at the moment
of commission of the act, and the punishment must correspond to the crime
according to the principle an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Lilburne
himself was, of course, the first man in England to succeed in being served
with an indictment."[13]
It is a fact that that this book was primarily
targeted at academic circles. It is perhaps natural given the complex nature of
the subject material. However, the book should be read by all history students.
Foxley's book is a significant contribution in placing Levellers in their proper revolutionary
context. Hopefully, when the book is published in paperback, a reasonable price
would mean it is getting the wider readership it deserves.
[1]
https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/1519
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historikerstreit
[3]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1750-0206.12111_4?campaign=woletoc
[4]
Preface to the Phenomenology
of Spirit- G. W. F. Hegel- https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/hegel-s-preface-to-the-phenomenology-of-spirit/
[5]
https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/1519
[6] "These the times ... this
the man": an appraisal of historian Christopher Hill
By
Ann Talbot-25 March 2003-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.html
[7] Equality, the Rights of Man and
the Birth of Socialism By David North 24
October 1996
[8]
Leveller organisation and
the dynamic of the English Revolution-John Rees
Doctoral
thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2014. http://research.gold.ac.uk/10465/1/HIS_thesis_Rees_Thesis_2014.pdf
[9] The Levellers: Radical political
thought in the English Revolution-By Rachel Foxley
[10]
https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/1519
[11]
John Rees, review of The
Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution, (review no.
1519) http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1519
[12] Cliff Slaughter Religion and
Social Revolt from Labour Review, Vol.3 No.3, May-June 1958, pp.77-82.
[13]
Revolutionary Elements in
the History of the English State and Law
(1927)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/1927/xx/english.htm
