Timeline
In July 1645, John Lilburne was imprisoned for denouncing Members of Parliament who lived in comfort while the common soldiers fought and died for the Parliamentary cause. His offence was slandering William Lenthall, the Speaker of the House of Commons, whom he accused of corresponding with Royalists. He was freed in October, after a petition requesting his release, signed by over 2,000 leading London citizens, was presented to the House of Commons.
In July 1646, Lilburne was imprisoned again, this time in the Tower of London, for denouncing his former army commander the Earl of Manchester as a Royalist sympathiser, because he had protected an officer who had been charged with treason. It was the campaigns to free Lilburne from prison which spawned the movement known as the Levellers. Richard Overton was arrested in August 1646 for publishing a pamphlet attacking the House of Lords. During his imprisonment, he wrote an influential Leveller manifesto, "An Arrow Against All Tyrants and Tyranny".
The soldiers in the New Model Army elected "Agitators" from each regiment to represent them. These Agitators were recognised by the Army's commanders and had a seat on the General Council. However, by September 1647, at least five regiments of Cavalry had elected new unofficial agitators and produced a pamphlet called "The Case of the Army truly stated". This was presented to the commander-in-chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax, on 18 October 1647. In this they demanded a dissolution of Parliament within a year and substantial changes to the constitution of future parliaments, which were to be regulated by an unalterable "law paramount".
The senior officers in the Army (nicknamed "Grandees") were angered by the "Case of the Army" and ordered the unofficial Agitators to give an account of their principles before the General Council of the Army. These debates are known as the Putney Debates, and were held in St. Mary's Church, Putney, in the county of Surrey, between October 28 and November 11, 1647. The Agitators were assisted by some civilians, notably John Wildman and Maximillian Petty, who had been connected to the Army as civilian advisers since July 1647. On 28 October, the Agitator Robert Everard presented a document entitled "An Agreement of the People". This manifesto, which was inherently republican and democratic, appeared to conflict with the terms of settlement that had already been endorsed by the General Council in July entitled "The Heads of the Proposals" The "Heads of the Proposals" contained many demands that looked towards social justice but relied on the King to agree to them and bring them into law through acts of Parliament. The new Agitators, who distrusted the King, demanded that England be settled from 'the bottom up' rather than the 'top down' by giving the vote to most adult males. The debates help to throw light on the areas on which supporters of the Parliamentarian side agreed and those on which they differed. For example, Ireton asked whether the phrase in the Agreement "according to the number of the inhabitants" gave a foreigner just arrived in England and resident in a property the right to vote. He argued that a person must have a "permanent interest of this kingdom" to be entitled to vote, and that "permanent interest" means owning property, which is where he and the Levellers disagreed. To modern eyes, the debates seem to draw heavily on the Bible to lay out certain basic principles, and this is to be expected in an age still racked by religious upheavals in the aftermath of the reformation, and particularly in an army where soldiers were, in part, selected for their religious zeal. It is notable that John Wildman resisted religious language, arguing that the Bible produced no model for civil government and that reason should be the basis of any future settlement.
The Corkbush Field rendezvous on November 17, 1647, was the first of three meetings to take place as agreed in the Putney Debates. The Army commanders Thomas Fairfax and Cromwell were worried by the strength of support for Levellers in the Army, so they decided to impose "The Heads of the Proposals" as the army's manifesto instead of the Levellers' "Agreement of the People". When some refused to accept this, because they wanted the army to adopt the Levellers' document, they were arrested, and one of the ringleaders, Private Richard Arnold, was executed. At the other two meetings, the troops who were summoned agreed to the manifesto without further protest.
The Levellers' largest petition, entitled "To The Right Honourable The Commons Of England", was presented to Parliament on September 11, 1648 after amassing signatories including about a third of all Londoners.
On October 30, 1648, Thomas Rainsborough was killed. He was a Member of Parliament and a Leveller leader who had spoken at the Putney Debates. His funeral was the occasion for a large Leveller-led demonstration in London, with thousands of mourners wearing the Levellers' ribbons of sea-green and bunches of rosemary for remembrance in their hats.
On January 20, 1649, a version of the "Agreement of the People" that had been drawn up in October 1647 for the Army Council and subsequently modified was presented to the House of Commons.
At the end of January 1649, Charles I of England was tried and executed for treason against the people. In February, the Grandees banned petitions to Parliament by soldiers. In March, eight Leveller troopers went to the Commander-in-Chief of the New Model Army, Thomas Fairfax, and demanded the restoration of the right to petition. Five of them were cashiered out of the army.
In April, 300 infantrymen of Colonel John Hewson's regiment, who declared that they would not serve in Ireland until the Levellers' programme had been realised, were cashiered without arrears of pay. This was the threat that had been used to quell the mutiny at the Corkbush Field rendezvous. Later that month, in the Bishopsgate mutiny, soldiers of the regiment of Colonel Edward Whalley stationed in Bishopsgate London made demands similar to those of Hewson's regiment; they were ordered out of London. When they refused to go, 15 soldiers were arrested and court martialed, of whom 6 were sentenced to death. Of these, 5 were later pardoned, while Robert Lockyer (or Lockier), a former Levellers agitator, was hanged on April 27, 1649. "At his burial a thousand men, in files, preceded the corpse, which was adorned with bunches of rosemary dipped in blood; on each side rode three trumpeters, and behind was led the trooper’s horse, covered with mourning; some thousands of men and women followed with black and green ribbons on their heads and breasts, and were received at the grave by a numerous crowd of the inhabitants of London and Westminster."
In 1649, Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne, William Walwyn, Thomas Prince, and Richard Overton were imprisoned in the Tower of London by the Council of State (see above). It was while the leaders of the Levellers were being held in the Tower that they wrote an outline of the reforms the Levellers wanted, in a pamphlet entitled "An Agreement Of The Free People Of England" (written on May 1, 1649). It includes reforms that have since been made law in England, such as the right to silence, and others that have not been, such as an elected judiciary.
Shortly afterwards, Cromwell attacked the "Banbury mutineers", 400 troopers who supported the Levellers and who were commanded by Captain William Thompson. Several mutineers were killed in the skirmish, Captain Thompson escaped only to be killed a few days later in another skirmish near the Diggers community at Wellingborough. The three other leaders—William Thompson's brother, Corporal Perkins, and John Church—were shot on May 17, 1649. This destroyed the Leveller's support base in the New Model Army, which by then was the major power in the land. Although Walwyn and Overton were released from the Tower, and Lilburne was tried and acquitted, the Leveller cause had effectively been crushed.
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