Levellers - Political Ambitions

Political Ambitions

The Levellers agenda developed in tandem with growing dissent within the New Model Army in the wake of the First Civil War. Early drafts of the Agreement of the People emanated from army circles and appeared before the Putney Debates of October and November 1647, and a final version, appended and issued in the names of prominent Levellers Lt. Col. Lilburne, Walwyn, Overton and Prince appeared in May 1649. It called for an extension of suffrage to include almost all the adult male population, electoral reform, for Parliament to be elected every two years, for religious freedom, and for an end to imprisonment for debt. They were committed broadly to the abolition of corruption within the Parliamentary and judicial process, toleration of religious differences, the translation of law into the common tongue and, arguably, something that could be considered democracy in its modern form - arguably the first time contemporary democratic ideas had been formally framed and adopted by a political movement. Some Levellers, like Lilburne, argued that the English Common law, particularly Magna Carta, were the foundation of English rights and liberties, but others, like William Walwyn, compared Magna Carta to a 'mess of potage'. Lilburne also harked back in his writing to the notion of a Norman yoke that has been imposed on the English people and to some extent argued that the English were simply seeking to reclaim those rights they had enjoyed before the Conquest.

Levellers tended to hold fast to a notion of "natural rights" that had been violated by the king's side in the Civil Wars. At the Putney Debates in 1647, Colonel Thomas Rainsborough defended natural rights as coming from the law of God expressed in the Bible. Richard Overton considered that liberty was an innate property of every person. Michael Mendle has demonstrated the development of Leveller ideas from elements of early Parliamentarian thought as expressed by men such as Henry Parker.