"Though we fail, our truths prosper" - John
Lilburne.
"That an inequitable thing it is for one man to have
thousands, and another want bread, and that the pleasure of God is, that all
men should have enough, and not that one man should abound in this worlds good,
spending it upon his lusts, and another man of far better deserts, not be worth
two pence, and that it is no such difficulty as men make it to be, to alter the
course of the world in this thing, and that a few diligent and valiant spirits
may turn the world upside down, if they observe their seasons, and shall with
life and courage ingage accordingly."
--- attributed to William Walwyn
'Each generation ... rescues a new area from what its
predecessors arrogantly and snobbishly dismissed as 'the lunatic fringe,"' Christopher
Hill
The essays contained in this book are primarily the product
of a conference held at Bishopsgate Institute to celebrate the 400th
anniversary of the birth of John Lilburne leader of the Leveller Party. The
remit of this new book is a daunting one. To reappraise any historical topic or
figure is usually a fraught undertaking to do so after 400 years have passed
has to be applauded. This article will examine the extent the authors of these
essays have achieved this aim.
The central thrust of this collection of essays is to
establish John Lilburne (1615–1657), or 'Freeborn John' as the central
revolutionary figure of the English Revolution. The book also contends that his
party the Levellers played a significant part in this glorious revolutionary
period.
The subjects covered in the book range from an
examination of Lilburne's writings and ideas, the role he played as a lead
activist in the revolutionary drama. Personal and political relations with his
wife Elizabeth are examined, his exile in the Netherlands, and contentious
decision to become a Quaker.
If Thomas Carlyle was correct about removing the dead dogs
from Cromwell's reputation, the same could be said about Lilburne. Looking back,
it is hard to believe that Lilburne was such a feared figure and was subjected
to "sophisticated propaganda campaigns". Out of all this
Lilburne has, according to Mike Braddick, become the 'celebrity radical'.
On a more serious note, The book is also testimony to
the strength and contemporary nature of his ideas. As Edward Vallance points
out, it is debatable whether the radicals of the eighteenth century or even
nineteenth-century would have been so radical without Lilburne laying the
foundations for their revolutionary activity.
The last decade or so has seen a significant rise in
the interest in John Lilburne and his Leveller Party. In the last few years
alone there have been four significant studies beginning with Elliot Vernon, and P. Baker's the Agreements
of the People, the Levellers, and the Constitutional Crisis of the English
Revolution followed by Rachel Foxley's The
Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution. John Rees's The
Leveller Revolution. A further examination of the Levellers will be released at
the End of October by, Gary S. De Krey Following the Levellers, Volume One,
volume two will be released in 2018.
All these studies attempt to answer one primary question How
radical were the Levellers. This is a contentious issue even today? Out
of these studies and I am well aware of generalising too much there appear to
be two strands. One takes a more cautious and conservative approach this is
represented by the essays contained in Elliot Vernon and P. Baker's The
Agreements of the People, the Levellers, and the Constitutional Crisis of the
English Revolution and more radical approach as represented by these essays.
The Paper by Elliot Vernon and Phillip Baker called What was
the first Agreement of the People tends to argue that the Levellers were far
from a cogent group but were, in fact, part of a far more significant political
grouping centred on the Independent Alliance. They argue that" the very
concept of 'the Levellers', in the sense of a political group which, in Taft's
opinion, existed from mid-1646 'as a distinct party with a programme and an
organisation to advance it', is problematic in itself. As is now well
documented, at the level of nomenclature, any talk of 'the Levellers' before
the Putney debates is a terminological anachronism, for although the word had
been used to describe enclosure rioters earlier in the century, it was not
first used as a proper noun until Nov. 1 1647.
Naturally, the absence of a name does not preclude the existence of such a grouping, and a small number of individuals, including Overton and William Walwyn, evidently came together in the mid-1640s through their involvement in a petitioning campaign in support of Lilburne and their common belief in religious toleration.22 For both Gentles and David Como, the triumvirate of Lilburne, Overton, and Walwyn was sufficiently interconnected by 1645 or 1646 to constitute the leadership of an identifiable group with their distinctive political agenda.23 Yet, and in common with Kishlansky,24 we maintain it remains difficult to distinguish members of this group from the much larger alliance of political and religious Independents, sectaries, and self-styled 'well-affected' Londoners. They banded together at the same time through their support for the New Model Army and common hostility to Presbyterianism" [1].
Another question that comes to mind is what accounts for
this plethora of studies. Which mostly have taken on the revisionist
historiography. The historian Christopher Hill answered this when he was
asked in 1992 How do you see the development of the debate around the English
Revolution over recent years? Would you agree that the revisionists have taken
some ground?
He replied "They have made a lot of useful points, but
their more extreme views are now being attacked by the younger generation of
historians. Although the revisionists had all sorts of useful ideas, they had a
narrow political approach in that they tried to find the causes of the English
Revolution solely in the years 1639–41. This simply assumes what you are
setting out to prove. If you look just at those years then, of course, it is a
matter of political intrigue and not long-term causes.
"I think people are reacting against that now. The
better of the revisionists are themselves switching around a bit. John Morrill,
for instance, who thought everything depended on the county community and
localism, is now taking a much broader point of view. Moreover, Conrad
Russell has become aware that long-term factors must be considered – he
does not like it, but he recognises that religion has some long-term effects on
what happened in 1640, a rather elementary point but he left religion out
altogether in the early days. Now he has bought it in. He still leaves out the
cultural breakdown in the society of that period, but he is moving a bit. I
think a consensus will arise and then there will be another explosion in 20
years or so. These debates occur regularly – ever since 1640 people have
been arguing about what it was all about". This analysis is being
vindicated today.
Also, I believe the attempt to reappraising both
Lilburne and the Levellers is a partial reflection of contemporary events. We
are, after all witnessing social upheavals that have few parallels in history.
Maybe the fact that we could be on the brink of a nuclear war between North
Korea and America has sharpened a few minds.
Again when Hill was asked why he wrote a particular book, he
said: "there was no direct connection to events going on around him, but
he did admit there was no conscious decision to write the book because of the
events at the time, but inevitably as I wrote, I was seeing analogies between
the 17th century and contemporary events all the time".
Introduction: John Lilburne, the Levellers, and the
English Revolution by John Rees
The writer John Rees is quickly becoming a leading expert on
John Lilburne and the Levellers. Rees acknowledges in this introduction that
despite being called Levellers at the Putney Debates of 1647, they were, in
fact, a recognisable political entity well before that.
It was clear very early on that Lilburne, and his Leveller's
represented a force that went well beyond their class base. Moreover, their
propaganda began to reach a broad section of society. You only have to funerals
of Levellers that were killed by Royalists such as Thomas Rainborough or
Levellers killed by Cromwell to see that the sheer size of these funerals
indicates a level of support beyond their class.
Lilburne was a member of the gentry. As Rees points out,
this was a "discontented and volatile group". Lilburne and his fellow
Levellers could have a reasonably comfortable life, but they choose to tackle
injustice poverty and a lack of democracy by carrying out political agitation.
Rees correctly points out that Lilburne's ability to reach a
broad audience was done not just with his physical bravery and undoubted talent
as an agitator but helped enormously by the growth of new technology such as
the colossal growth of secret printing.
He sums up "How Lilburne's reputation and the history
of the Levellers have come down to us is long, complex and contested. There has
never been a moment when it has not interacted with contemporary politics or
refracted through modern political debate. In Reborn John? Edward Vallance
charts the first of these great transitions as radicals and others in the
eighteenth century debated the lineage of the first modern revolutionary leader
and the movement he represented".
Chapter 1: John Lilburne and the Citizenship of 'Free-born
Englishmen' (Rachel Foxley)
This essay was not written for the Conference; it is, in
fact, a reprint from 2004. It is quite ironic that as Foxley wrote this essay
back in 2004, citizenship rights were being attacked all over the world. Many
people were and are still being stripped of their citizenship by governments
who have cynically used the Magna Carta to do this.
People seeking to defend these rights could do no better
than study Lilburne's struggle to establish them in the 17th century.
As Foxley correctly brings out in her essay.Lilburne had used the Magna Carta
to justify extending citizenship rights to a broader section of the population.
His battle-cry for democracy was a progressive one in that it sought to
eradicate social relations based on Feudal laws and social customs.
As Hoffman and Read point out "In the context of
medieval England itself, the social reality behind the formal rights of freemen
and the continuing struggles of the peasantry was revealed in the Peasants'
Revolt of 1381, 166 years after the Magna Carta. Led by Watt Tyler and Jack
Straw, 60,000 peasants marched on London to demand the abolition of serfdom,
tithes, and the poll tax. The rallying cry of the peasants was the rhyme "When
Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?"
Nevertheless, the formal rights and freedoms, and
constraints on arbitrary power, enunciated in the Charter also contained
universal content. Essentially, they gave early expression to the assertion of
the inherent rights of man, however necessarily constrained and formed within
the current historical realities and class relations of the early 13th century
England. These political rights were the subject of centuries of struggles
waged by the masses against the property-owning classes in England, the
Continent and, later, America[3].
When Lilburne fought for his and other citizenship rights,
his ideas were also were constrained and formed within the current historical
realities. These realities were not products of his gifted mind but reflected
material reality.
Foxley correctly points out that there is no consensus
amongst historians as to what Lilburne meant by citizenship. "Lilburne's
writing emerges out of the context of parliamentarian argument during and after
the first
civil war. There has been a tendency to classify political theories of the
early to a mid-seventeenth century in England by asking whether they resulted
from historical or theoretical modes of thought". Alternatively, put
another way does social being determined social consciousness.
This subjective was taken up by the Russian Marxist Evgeny
Pashukanis who pointed out "the contrast between the Levellers and those
movements which sought social revolution and attacked the existing property
relations was, so to speak, confirmed. However, this was only the case if we
are to be satisfied by the consideration of ideological formulae and not the
objective meaning of the given revolutionary movement. The ideology of the
Levellers was a typical bourgeois ideology, and the overwhelming majority of
the Levellers acted as defenders of the principle of private property and this
by no means contradicts the fact that the victory of the Levellers' movement
should have objectively led to the most decisive infringement on the right of
feudal property. Moreover, this success and this victory could not have found
its expression other than in the elimination of feudal ownership. Therefore,
when the opponents of the Levellers accused them of attacking property, and of
favouring communism, this was not merely slander. It was a statement of
uncontested fact that for the privileged feudal owners, the radical democratic
transformation for which the Levellers strove would have presented a most real
threat. The affirmations of the leaders of the Levellers, concerning their
adherence to the principle of private property, were a very weak consolation.
And, on the contrary, the preaching of the communality of ownership and the
clouded communist ideology of the extreme left leaders of the German peasant
war, was, in fact, less of a threat to embryonic capitalist social
relationships, but was instead the banner of the implacable, most consistent
opponents of feudal ownership and all serf and semi-serf relationships. It is
here that it seems possible for us to find a series of elements which bring the
two movements closer together even though they are so different in their
ideological bases".[4]
Like many of the historians who have contributed essays to
this collection, Foxley believes that the Levellers were radical to a degree,
but she does not believe they were revolutionary. She tends to separate the
ideas developed by the Levellers from their material base in society. Foxley is
correct to point out that revisionist historians have not only attacked Marxist
conceptions of the Leveller's 'The revisionist historians who have rewritten
the history of the seventeenth century have questioned almost every aspect of
the historical reputation of the Levellers'. How far Foxley intends to go in
defence of the Leveller's is another matter.
It is open to question to what extent Foxley herself has
adapted to this revisionist assault. One criticism of her is a concentration
on Leveller political theory to the detriment of their economic and social
base.
As John Rees correctly points out that this "approach
runs the risk of producing the effect that the philosopher Hegel describes as 'night
in which all cows are black', meaning that it is impossible to differentiate
the object of study from its background.
Chapter 2: Lilburne, Toleration and the Civil State
(Norah Carlin)
Norah Carlin who wrote the Causes of the English Civil War
and has published much on religious toleration during the English revolution
correctly states in this chapter that Lilburne was a man of profound principle
and unlikely to compromise on the matter of perspective or strategy.
Carlin's chapter covers a subject that has been widely
neglected by modern-day historians that is religious toleration. As she
correctly points out in a previous essay,
"out of the Independent and Separatist congregations of
London, there emerged in 1646, under attack from the Presbyterians, a movement
for religious toleration. As the Presbyterians organised for their attempted
coup in 1647, it became evident that this movement would have to defend civil
liberties as well, for one of its leaders, John Lilburne, was thrown into
prison for his writings. Moreover, as the soldiers of the New Model Army began
to organise spontaneously in their defence against disbandment, a group of
those active in the movement turned to address the army and work among the
soldiers for a new constitution that would guarantee both religious and civil
liberties. This is the group known to their contemporaries and history (though
they disliked the name themselves) as the Levellers.[5]
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 table that cannot read…. Will
be the forwardest to come in to such a militia" It is understood Baxter
argued for their suppression with violence if necessary.
Carlin's viewpoint and many other aspects of the Leveller's
philosophy has as John Coffey mentions in his paper Puritan and Liberty "fallen
on hard times". Meaning that the sustained attack of the revisionists has
won the day. Carlin rejects this premise.
Carlin-like Coffey believes that the revisionist
historians have deliberately downplayed the extent of religious toleration
argued by groups such as the Levellers. Carlin brings out that Leveller views on toleration were not
confined to their own organisation but spread to the New Model Army whose airm "is to over throw Presbyterie, or hinder the settlement thereof, and to
have the Independent government set up, we doe clearely disclaime, and disavow
any such designe; We one∣ly desire that according to the
Declarations (promising a provi∣sion for tender consciences) there
may some effectuall course be ta∣ken according to the intent
thereof; And that such, who, up∣on conscientious grounds, may
differ from the established formes, may not (for that) bee debarred from the common
Rights, Liberties, or Benefits belonging equally to all, as men and Mem∣bers
of the Common wealth, while they live soberly, honestly, and inoffensively
towards others, and peaceably and faithfully towards the State".[6]
Carlin's work on toleration of the various religious groups
is a refutation of the current wave of revisionism which seems to reject
everything that has been written on the Levellers from a left viewpoint. Carlin has held a relatively consistent position on the
Levellers. She perhaps holds the most orthodox Marxist positions on their
development and class outlook. Her article Marxism and the English Civil War
should be the starting point for any discussion on the English revolution.
While not agreeing with every statement, she makes her views
on the Levellers are worth a read and study. She believes that far from being a
radical wing of the Independents she belives the Levellers "broke with
Puritan politics and even with Puritan language to develop a secular and
democratic perspective. Their main social base was the small independent
producer, and their most important achievement was their intervention in the
army in 1647, which forced Cromwell and the army officers at least to listen to
them for a few months. Their programme, designed to separate political power
from wealth, foreshadowed the nineteenth century People's Charter, and their
organisation in the City of London on a ward-by-ward basis – with
weekly subscriptions, a central committee, a regular newspaper and door-to-door
canvassing –
was the seed from which all grassroots organisations were to spring" [7].
Her summation of the Levellers is also significantly
different from many contemporary radical historians in that she believes that "It
is wrong to see the Levellers as simply the most revolutionary section of the
bourgeoisie. Both their social criticism and their political principles were
opposed to the continued growth of capitalism. That the reforms they proposed
could not have stopped the development of capitalism in practice is another
matter. The least that can be said of the Levellers is that they made a
long-range social forecast of an era of exploitation, oppression and
imperialism, and tried to stop it from happening. In doing so, they left a
legacy of organisational and political principle which bore fruit in the
development of Chartism and the nineteenth-century working-class movement. They
deserve, at the very least, our recognition of their struggles"
[8].
Chapter 3: Women and the Levellers: Elizabeth and John
Lilburne and their associates (Ann Hughes)
This chapter is a long-overdue appreciation of not only
Elizabeth Lilburne but other women Levellers. The Leveller women were the
backbone of the movement. It is safe to say that the influence of the Levellers
would not have been so significant without the political work of female
Levellers. Indeed without the intervention of his wife Lilburne himself would
have been killed.
Studies of the role of women during the English revolution
both in the past and present have been few and far between. Ann Hughes's
last book, Gender and the English Revolution, was an attempt to rectify this
anomaly.
History and for that matter, historians have not been kind
to women who took part in political activity on both sides of the English Civil
War. There is a dearth of material on women's struggle at this time. As far as
I can ascertain no significant biography exists of two of the most famous
Leveller women Katherine Chidley and Elizabeth Lilburne. It is only now that Lucy Hutchinson is now getting serious
attention. For the last few hundred years, she has only been known as the wife
of Col Hutchinson.
While being part of the Leveller movement of the party they
were in some respects an independent movement themselves. It is high time that
a serious study of the women who took part in the English revolution.
After all, as one Leveller petition put it "have we not
an equal interest with the men of this Nation, in those liberties and
securities contained in the Petition of Right, and the other 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" [9]?
Leveller women did not fight just as individuals. According
to historian Gaby Malhberg the wives of leading figures of the English
revolution "formed their networks, discussing political issues in the
absence of their husbands."
If their male counterparts underestimated women Levellers,
this was nothing to the treatment they received when they started to carry out
political agitation independently.
When Women Levellers mounted large-scale demonstrations and
organised petitions for social equality, they were met with differing levels of
brutality depending on which class they belonged. Overall, middle-class women
were treated with derision, but mostly no violence was committed against them.
It 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 quietly
escorted away by soldiers and told to 'go back to women's work".
While it is difficult to gauge the size of the support for
the women Levellers, one cannot be blind to the fact that when The Levellers
organised petitions, ten thousand Leveller women signed them. Many of these
petitions were calling for equality with men as this quote states:
"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 neighbourhood? Moreover, can you imagine us to be so sottish or stupid
as not to perceive, or not to be sensible when daily those strong defences of
our peace and welfare are broken down and trod underfoot by force and arbitrary
power" [10].
To conclude even the small amount of research needed for
this article has uncovered that for historians who like a challenge detailed
study writing of the radical women of the 17th century will in the future
provide us with a much deeper understanding of the radical Women today who are
still struggling for social equality today could do no worse than study the
struggles of the women Levellers.
Chapter 4: Lilburne and the law (Geoffrey Robertson)
Robertson concentrates in this chapter not so much on
Lilburne's political activity but his impact on English law. It is hard not to
agree with Ed Valance that "his legal struggles exerted a tangible influence
on British law, helping to change legislation relating to libel, the power of
juries and even the legal status of slaves on British soil"
[11].
It is again ironic that the very democratic rights that
Lilburne fought for are coming under sustained attack today. As Robertson
warned, "in a country where Parliament is now the sovereign, that any
attempt to pass laws that deny to the people the rights which "Freeborn
John" extrapolated from the Great Charter – to a jury
trial, access to justice, free speech and to call government to account – will
be struck down by the High Court because they are rights which may now be
implied from the Australian Constitution. You cannot have a true
democracy without Magna Carta's guarantee of the rule of law"
[12].
Chapter5: John Lilburne as a revolutionary leader (John
Rees)
John Rees points out in this chapter that Lilburne was many
things to many people. To say that he was a complex character would not be an
overstatement.As Rees brings out despite his many weaknesses he was a man
of profound principles "I walk not, nor act, from accidents," but
from principles, and being thoroughly persuaded in my soul they are just,
righteous and honest, I will by God's goodness never depart from them, though I
perish in maintaining them."
Rees is correct to call Lilburne a revolutionary leader of
what was a revolutionary movement or party. Rees believes that Lilburne far
reacting to events in an empirical way had a strategic sense in that his
writings and ideas were a guide to action, not the other way around. Rees's
work in this chapter is an extension of his PhD thesis[13]. Rees has
sought to oppose some prevailing views of the Levellers one such attitude is
that Levellers had no history before the 1640s. This point has proved most
controversial because up and till now there has been little evidence to counter
this view.
Rees's also counters some historians who have tried to
present Lilburne as a leader of a free collection of radicals. Rees provides
extensive evidence to the contrary. While not being a party in the modern sense,
they nonetheless were a well organised and firmly coherent group.
As Rees puts "by 1646, the group' both in the eyes of
their opponents and in the internal ideological support they deliver to each
other, is a functioning collective organisation'.
Perhaps Rees's most salient point in the chapter is at the
end when he points out that Lilburne had no revolutionary precedent for his
actions.
Chapter 6: Print and principles: John Lilburne, civil war
radicalism and the Low Countries (Jason Peacey)
Peacey has written extensively on the secret and not so
secret printing world of the Levellers, and it is an area that requires a lot
more work to give us an even more precise evaluation of the Levellers and their
influence.
While ground-breaking is perhaps an overused word in the
lexicon of English revolution studies, it is justified in Peacey's case. In
many ways, the study of the printing capabilities of the Levellers holds many
secrets to their popularity and their influence.
Like many historians in this book Peacey has challenged many
of the conceptions held by revisionist historians. Many of these revisionists
have sought to downplay not only the radicalism of the Levellers but also an influence
as Dr David Magliocco points out in his review of Peacey's Print and Public
Politics in the English Revolution.
"Historians to have long been fascinated by the
mid-century collision of print and revolutionary politics. Thus whilst
acknowledging that this field has been 'hotly contested', Peacey boldly claims
that it has, nonetheless, been 'inadequately conceptualised'. At one level then
this work is a counter-blast to the preceding claims of revisionism. Alongside
their insistence that printed sources could not provide access to historical
truth, revisionists questioned earlier assumptions about the social depth and
geographical reach of early modern political culture.
The print itself, and the
revolutionary politics it had been associated with, were both written out of
their accounts of the mid-17th century. Certainly, as Peacey recognises,
revisionism itself now occupies an increasingly marginalised position. Social
historians, for instance, have demolished the notion of an apolitical (but
silently conservative) 'country'.
Similarly, post-revisionists have demonstrated the
importance of print in fostering ideologically-engaged publics. While
acknowledging these advances, Peacey takes both groups to the task. Social
historians, he claims, have failed to connect local and national contexts and
to properly integrate print into their accounts. Post-revisionists, for their part,
have been unwilling to tackle the issue of reception, while concentrating on
explicitly 'public' genres within print" [14].
Peacey points to another area that needs to be studied, and
that is Lilburne's and the Levellers debt to the Dutch and their radical
pamphlets culture. Lilburne drew a lot from the work of the Dutch.
Chapter 7: The resurrection of John Lilburne, Quaker
(Ariel Hessayon)
There is no small degree of controversy surrounding Lilburne's
conversion to Quakerism. The historian Christopher Hill believes that after the
defeat of the Levellers many former Levellers joined the Quakers.
As Hill says "The spread of Quakerism, emptying the
churches of Anabaptists and separatists, witnessed both to the defeat of the
political Levellers and the continued existence and indeed an extension of
radical ideas". Hessaayon believes Hill's comments were an "overstatement."
Hessayon believes that although Lilburne may have changed movements, Lilburne
was still Honest John Changing one shirt for another.
Chapter 8, Reborn John? The eighteenth-century afterlife
of John Lilburne.
As Christopher Hill correctly observes 'Each generation ...
rescues a new area from what its predecessors arrogantly and snobbishly
dismissed as 'the lunatic fringe".
The purpose of Ed's chapter is to examine Lilburne's
political afterlife. He does a superb job. The fact that Lilburne and his work
have endured down the centuries is not solely due to his personality or his
undoubted courage and sacrifice.
Vallance is clear not to personalise his struggle but
attempts to place it in a more objective light. "there is a danger that in
emphasising the separateness of historical epochs, historians have undervalued
the degree of intellectual sympathy and continuity between the radicalism of
the seventeenth century and that of the eighteenth. We do not need to invest in
a grand narrative of an English' radical tradition' to acknowledge that the
English Revolution of the seventeenth century had both intellectual and
practical consequences for the eighteenth century. A life which ended in
political retreat in Eltham in 1657 was resurrected in the 1700s to take up the
'temporal sword' once more.
Conclusion
This collection will be of enormous interest to academics,
researchers, and readers with a general interest in the English Civil War
and the radical political tradition. Hopefully, with the book being
published in paperback, at a reasonable price would mean it is getting
the more large readership it deserves.
As AL Morton said, "A Party that held the centre
of the stage for three of the most crucial years in our nation's history,
voiced the aspirations of the unprivileged masses, and was able to express with
such force ideas that have been behind every great social advance since their
time, cannot be regarded as wholly a failure or deserve to be wholly forgotten".
[1] The Agreements of the People, the
Levellers, and the Constitutional Crisis of the English Revolution- Authors:
Vernon, Elliot-Editors: Baker, P. (Ed.)
[3] The Magna Carta and democratic rights.
By Richard Hoffman and Mike Head .15 June 2015.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/15/citi-j15.html
[5]Norah Carlin-The First English Revolution-First
published by Socialists Unlimited for the Socialist Workers Party in April
1983. -(April 1983)
[6] A Declaration, or Representation from
his Excellency, S. Tho. Fairfax, and of the Army under his Command.
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A39976.0001.001/1:2?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
[7] Marxism and the English Civil
War-(Autumn 1980) From International Socialism 2: 10, Autumn 1980, pp. 106–128.
[8] Marxism and the English
Civil War-(Autumn 1980) From International Socialism 2: 10, Autumn 1980, pp.
106–128.
[9] To the Supreme Authority of England,
the Commons Assembled in Parliament. The Humble Petition of Divers Well-Affected
Women of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark,
Hamlets and Parts Adjacent. Affecters and Approvers of the Petition of Sept.
11, 1648. (May 5, 1649)
[13] Leveller organisation and the dynamic
of the English Revolution. [14] http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1614
