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Conclusion: the Endurance of the Levellers CONCLUSION: THE ENDURANCE OF THE LEVELLERS Historians have long identifed Burford as a Leveller turning point, but the Commonwealth regime’s action against discontented soldiers was as much a turning point in its consolidation of authority as in the history of the Levellers. I have argued that the troop disturbances were not Leveller disturbances per se. What was ‘crushed’ at Burford was, moreover, a troop rebellion rather than a well-organized Leveller movement com- mitted to undermining the Commonwealth. In fact, the Levellers lacked continuous organization, despite the strong 1649 showings of Leveller petitioners and adherents—both women and men—in London, its envi- rons, and several counties. As a distinct political faction, the Levellers were still relatively new, having separated from the Independent alliance only at the end of October 1647. They had nearly been stifed at their political birth when parliament arrested two of their leaders and dis- rupted their meetings and plans in January 1648. The renewal of civil war in the spring and summer of that year enabled Leveller spokesmen to advance the Agreement of the People again, while the revolutionary shocks of the execution of the king, the elimination of the House of Lords, and the imposition of a republic had all enhanced the Levellers’ visibility. The Levellers’ show of strength in London in April and early May 1649 was a powerful demonstration that their ideas had gained much support within the gathered churches, despite the reservations of many Independents and some of the separatist clergy. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 265 G.S. De Krey, Following the Levellers, Volume One, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-26843-3 266 CONCLUSION: THE ENDURANCE OF THE LEVELLERS Nevertheless, after Burford, the Levellers’ great opportunity to draw civilians and soldiers alike towards a remodelling of the Commonwealth—according to any version of the Agreement—receded. The Levellers’ chances to gain many of the political, legal, religious, and social reforms that they sought declined. The Leveller ethos remained alive, as additional events of the summer and autumn of 1649—events to be examined in Chap. 2 of the second volume of this study—dem- onstrate. But after Burford, the Levellers were on the defensive. The regime’s accusations that they really sought to level political and social structures rather than to end the climacteric of 1647–1649 through a just and equitable settlement countered their efforts to arouse the peo- ple. That climacteric was not yet entirely over, but the routing of the rebel troops in May 1649 made settlement on the new regime’s terms more likely. The Leveller spokesmen remained in prison through autumn 1649, which deprived the following of its leadership, and, after their release, new press regulations imposed by the Rump impeded their com- munication with their audience. Yet, neither the Commonwealth government nor the city of London had heard the last of the Leveller leaders and their civilian followers. Many of the continuing circumstances that had contributed to the rise of the Levellers were still apparent in London and the country. The demographic growth of London continued, as did the success of sec- tarian preachers in the heavily populated and less structured urban pre- cincts without the London walls. Domestic warfare was over for the time being, but not for the long term, as the continuing Irish rebel- lion, another Scottish invasion, numerous royalist risings of the 1650s, and the division of the army against itself in 1659–1660 would demon- strate. London also remained a revolutionary capital after 1649. Despite the efforts of successive Interregnum and Restoration regimes to restore some regulation of the press, to reimpose the order of patriarchal house- holds, to re-establish a comprehensive national church, and to restrict popular petitioning, the experiences of the 1640s had broadened the political participation and expectations of ordinary people in ways not easily reversed. However much abridged, the revolutionary impact of print could not be rolled back—and neither could the new ways in which tens of thousands of ordinary people had engaged in political processes that the social elite had never actually fully controlled. Would the Leveller leaders and their many followers be able to seize upon these circumstances to continue their efforts on behalf of CONCLUSION: THE ENDURANCE OF THE LEVELLERS 267 accountable and consensual representative government and liberty of conscience? The second volume of the present study addresses this ques- tion, but any answer must begin with an acknowledgement that the Levellers were actually a success in 1649, despite the blow that Burford represented. The Levellers and their programme had become central to the politics of 1647–1649. Indeed, the Leveller authors had, for the frst time in English history, enunciated a coherent agenda with signif- cant popular support for broadly participatory government—both at the national and local levels—an agenda anchored upon the ideas of popular consent and of inviolable individual rights and liberties. Moreover, the Levellers had defended an understanding of liberty of conscience in reli- gious matters that would continue to develop in early modern England and Anglo-America, and that would eventually fnd expression in the more secular words of the early Enlightenment. In the short term, conventional suggestions of a Leveller collapse in 1649 rest on mistaken historical assumptions. The imposition of a repub- lic in 1649–1653 and its transformation into a pseudo-royalist state in the Cromwellian Protectorate of 1654–1659 would stimulate the devel- opment of a variety of republican political languages, but the Levellers were the frst in the feld, and their ideas had an enduring audience. The 1650s would produce numerous outbursts of popular republicanism, continued grumbling among soldiers and some offcers about the gran- dees’ desertion of the army promises of 1647, and much sectarian anxi- ety about the state’s commitment to liberty of conscience. Neither the Rump nor any of its parliamentary successors proved capable of satisfy- ing moderates, Presbyterians, and royalists, on the one hand, or genuine republicans and libertarian sectarians on the other. The traditional elite remained largely unreconciled or unenthusiastic about new forms of gov- ernment and hostile to the role the army played in national affairs. In London, merchant princes and other wealthy people committed to mag- isterial control of the city and to monopolistic control of its trade clashed regularly with artisans and freemen who found such political and com- mercial oligarchy far too restrictive. Throughout the country, liberty of conscience remained an issue, as new sects, especially the Quakers, chal- lenged parish clergy, the tithes collected to support them, and many of the principal tenets of Protestant orthodoxy. These circumstances provided new opportunities for Leveller spokes- men like Lilburne, Overton, and Wildman, and provoked the continu- ing political activism of many one-time Leveller followers. Leveller voices 268 CONCLUSION: THE ENDURANCE OF THE LEVELLERS and Leveller echoes would be heard regularly in the confused politics of the 1650s, and Leveller ideas and strategies would be adapted to suit the times. Political memories of the Agreement of the People would remain alive, but the Agreement was only one vehicle for the participatory politi- cal expectations and popular reforms that would be advanced in differ- ent ways throughout the decade. What Leveller followers and Leveller successors of the 1650s desired continued to be the orderly succession of representative parliaments elected by the people, respectful of their rights, and mindful of the origins of the state in their consent. The re- establishment of monarchy, episcopacy, the House of Lords, and many other elements of the traditional political and social order in 1660 did not diminish the attachment of many Leveller followers and successors to these goals. No rapid collapse of the Leveller programme and no precipitous set- back to an established Leveller organization therefore followed the suppression of the troop revolt that climaxed at Burford. Rather, the government’s successful propagation of a negative ideological con- struction about the Levellers and their relationship to the revolt was an essential element of Burford’s signifcance. Detached from its polemi- cal origins, this interpretation would become part of the historical record. In its own day, the spin the regime put on events was intended to shift popular blame for the political, social, and economic ills of the Commonwealth from its leaders to the Levellers. Elements of the regime’s characterization of the imprisoned authors and of the revolting troops have continued to inform modern historical work, which gener- ally refers to them with a negative epithet that neither radical authors nor revolting troops ever truly accepted. When we refer to these authors, their followers, and (less accurately) the mutinous soldiers of 1649 as Levellers, we still often inadvertently appropriate elements of a construc- tion that Commonwealth governors encouraged. Burford thus marked the creation of an enduring negative representation of the regime’s lib- ertarian opponents, who were, in fact, the real revolutionaries of 1648– 1649. But if the propagation of this portrayal was intended to destroy the Levellers and their political perspectives, it largely
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