Leaders of the People: Studies in Democratic History

by Joseph Clayton

The particular demands in the “Case for the Army” were the abolition of monopolies, freedom of trade and religion, restoration of enclosed common lands, and abolition of sinecures.

While Cromwell and Ireton were both bitterly against manhood suffrage, the council of officers to whom the Levellers appealed agreed to support it, without approving the rest of the programme.

Cromwell, relying on the army to prevent a royalist reaction—for Charles was plotting from Carisbrooke for aid from Scotland, and the royalists in the House of Commons were anxious to effect a reconciliation—would give neither time nor patience to the demands of Lilburne and the Levellers.

In vain the Levellers exclaimed, in 1648, “We were ruled before by King, Lords, and Commons, now by a General, Court Martial, and Commons: and, we pray you, what is the difference?” Cromwell, at all costs, was determined to preserve the discipline of the army, and to suppress mutiny with an iron hand. For him the army which had beaten the cavaliers was the one safeguard against the return of the old order in Church and State. Lilburne and the Levellers, with the “Fifth Monarchy” men, had been the strength, the very life of the army that had conquered at Marston Moor and Naseby. The petition of the Fifth Monarchy men for the reign of Christ and His saints (which, according to prophecy, was to supersede the four monarchies of the ancient world) had no terrors for Cromwell; in other words, they demanded government exclusively by the godly, Independents and Presbyterians combining to elect all representatives, “and to determine all things by the Word.” “Such a proposal might attract fanatics; it could not attract the multitude. The Levellers who stood up for an exaggeration of the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy were likely to be far more numerous.”[115] To Cromwell the immediate thing was the royalist danger; it was no season for embarking on democratic experiments with which he had no sympathy. The breach between Cromwell and the Levellers widened, and as Cromwell became more and more impatient of their agitation, distrust and suspicion of Cromwell and of the newly-appointed Council of State ripened, in 1649, into revolt.[116] It is the perennial misunderstanding between the statesman and the agitator. The one weighted by responsibility can rarely travel at the pace of the other, untrammelled by office, and as the distance between the two lengthens, it seems they are not even pursuing the same course—as, indeed, very often they are not.

Lilburne had none of Cromwell’s anxieties as to a possible royalist reaction; for him the danger could not come from the dethroned king and his defeated cavaliers, but from a parliamentary oligarchy or a military dictatorship. But he overestimated the strength of the Leveller movement in the army. With the presentation of the “Agreement of the People” the bulk of the discontent in the army diminished, and while the Levellers who remained became in several regiments openly mutinous, the movement generally died down, so that when the revolt came, it was suppressed without difficulty.[117]

Lilburne was out of prison at the beginning of 1649. He took no part in the trial of Charles I., and let it be known that he doubted the wisdom of abolishing monarchy before a new constitution had been drawn up.

As neither the remnant of the Long Parliament nor Cromwell and Fairfax were doing anything to set up this new constitution, Lilburne proceeded to lay a remonstrance before parliament, and to follow this up by his two pamphlets on “England’s New Chains.” He now urged that “committees of short continuance” should supersede the Council of State, that the Self-denying Ordinance should be put in force, “seeing how dangerous it was for one and the same persons to be continued long in the highest commands of a military power,”[118] that a new parliament should be elected, and the “Agreement of the People” proceeded with heartily. At the same time he called for army reform by a reconstruction of the General Council and the election of agitators.

The expulsion of five troopers from the army for directly petitioning parliament provoked another pamphlet—“The Hunting of the Foxes from Newmarket to Whitehall by five small beagles late of the army.” The argument here was that Cromwell, Ireton, and Harrison ruled the council of officers, and that the council of officers ruled parliament and the nation. “The old king’s person and the old lords are but removed, and a new king and new lords with the commons are in one House, and so we are under a more absolute arbitrary monarchy than before.”

There was only one answer to be made to Lilburne’s pen, and that was to arrest the man who held it, for the commonwealth had no one on its side who could reply to him. At the end of March Lilburne and three of his supporters, Walwyn, Prince, and Richard Overton were arrested as traitors, “England’s New Chains” having been voted by parliament seditious and destructive of the government, and were committed to the Tower to await trial.

At once a petition was got up and signed by 80,000 persons for Lilburne’s release, and a fortnight later—April 18th—another petition was taken to the bar of the House of Commons to the same effect. Parliament promised that the prisoners should have a legal trial, but declared the course of justice must not be interfered with. A large deputation of women also appeared at Westminster on April 23rd with a similar petition; but these were forbidden to enter the House, and, admonished by members to “go home and wash their dishes,” answered they would soon have no dishes to wash.[119]