Three Levellers:
Walwyn (1600-81), Lilburne (1614-57) and Overton (birth and death dates unknown)

When the friends Milton and Williams were publishing -- from opposite sides of the Atlantic -- their treatises for enlarged freedom of speech in 1644, in Cromwell's England some Levellers were already publishing brief essays favoring religious toleration.

They had no special name for themselves. The term "Levellers" was an epithet of their enemies, who included not only Royalists but the more conservative wings of the Puritan movement, especially the Presbyterians and the non-separatist Congregation alists (also called Independents). Flourishing 1646-49, from the time of their unified action to their repression, The Levellers were a significant voice within the Puritan army, constituting at least a vigorous minority within the lower ranks, where arre ars in soldiers' pay was always part of their discontent. Speaking for them were "agitators," a term originally meaning no more than agents, or those who acted for another. But Cromwell's New Model Army held mostly relatively conservative Independents in its top officer class, which convened in the General Council.

When yet flourishing, Levellers often identified themselves with sea-green clothing or a bit of such ribbon on their caps. They were more egalitarian than most other Puritan reformers. As their critic Richard Baxter then complained, the Levellers w ere "sometimes for State democracy, and sometime for Church democracy."

Actually, they favored both and quite consistently. Consider first the Church democracy. While their critics called Leveller religion "sectarian," most were apparently either separatist Congregationalists or even more likely, Baptists.

One Leveller theorist, William Walwyn (1600-81), began humbly as a younger son who inherited nothing of the paternal estate. But in part through becoming a member of the Company of Merchant Adventurers which dominated the cloth trade, he became a f airly prosperous cloth merchant, able to support a wife and twenty children. While he never left his originally Anglican parish, he was, like Milton, an Independent (Congregationalist). But he held some rather unorthodox religious views, such as believing in the complete extinction of both body and soul before the Resurrection of the Dead. But he is the probable author of the 1649 "Manifestation" from the Tower of London, co-signed by Lilburne, Overton and Prince, which held what we would now call a commu nitarian view: "No man is born for himself only, but obliged by the laws of Nature (which reaches all) of Christianity (which ingages us as Christians) and of Publick Societie and Government, to employ our endeavors for the advancement of the communitativ e Happinesse..."

The other two leading Leveller theorists, Lilburne and Overton, both enter the period as Baptists.

Their primary spokesperson was John Lilburne (1614-57). While he came from solid, upper middle class parentage, like Walwyn, he was a younger son who inherited nothing from his father, who apprenticed him out to a cloth merchant. Eventually an uncl e loaned him money to start a brewery. He was first imprisoned by the Royalists for smuggling Protestant tracts from Holland. When the tension between King and Commons reached the critical point, Lilburne early joined the Puritan army, fighting in the Pur itan victory of Edgehill but captured by Royalists at a later battle. Fortunately, he became part of a prisoner exchange rather than executed as a traitor to the King. While Lilburne rose to Lt. Colonel rank in the Puritan army, he quit the army in protes t of a required oath. Levellers complained that mandatory religious oaths always accompanied repression of the heterodox. While making his later living by offering legal counsel, both in and out of imprisonments he busied himself at writing religio-politi cal pamphlets, usually ostensibly aimed at Parliament. Arrested and jailed recurrently by the Puritan authorities, he was also banished for a time, and he was not left in peace until the last few years of his life.

A third important thinker for the Levellers was Richard Overton (fl. 1647-49, last heard of in a political arrest of 1663), who added an element of more secular reasoning which points ultimately toward Lockean liberalism. He best articulates the Le vellers' concept of "self-propriety," which means that by a God-given right meant to aid our self-preservation, we hold a property right in our bodies and its labors. Like John Locke later, Overton conceded God's co-ownership of our bodies, from which the y draw the practical implication that suicide was morally wrong. At least for Levellers, God's co-ownership as well as our natural social inclination seems to explain why we are not born for ourselves alone. But if others could claim our charity, no other human could claim to own our bodies, unless we forfeit our body right in perpetual servitude to the state (including military service during time of war) by being three times convicted for theft. The exception aside, self-propriety meant that Levellers s uch as Overton rejected slavery, serfdom, the involuntary servitude of military drafts, or even any obligation of continued service of enlistees when Parliament was deeply in arrears in paying their wages.

Self-propriety also meant that we could lay claim to the property which is a fruit of our labors, viewed as an extension of our body right. Contrary to the name originally given to them by their critics, the three Leveller theorists defended privat e property rights. While William Walwyn seems to have left such questions open, subject to democratic decision, most Levellers opposed community of goods or even forcible redistribution of private property. They strenuously objected to being confused with those sometimes called "True Levellers" or "Diggers" (led by Gerrard Winstanley) who wanted to seize untilled wastelands for use by the propertyless. Rejecting what we now call socialism, they especially defended the interests of the lower middle class, or the small propertied, whether rural farmer or urban artisan.

As for agrarian policy, most Levellers did favor restoration of the commons in the fens (swampy wastelands) or other enclosures not to the benefit of the poor. Allowance for poor relief aside, they wanted an end to any further enclosures, the priva tizations of common lands historically often dominated by larger landowners.

Regarding interests of urban shop owners and artisans, in addition to ending imprisonment for debt, Levellers accepted some public assistance, especially to widows of Puritan army soldiers. But Lilburne especially abhorred idleness and beggary. Lev ellers hoped that government policy would somehow guide beggars toward productive labor, possibly by cultivating wastelands.

For the most Levellers pushed free market ideals, although in 1648 accepting the idea of a 6% ceiling for the rate of interest. John Wildman, a later apostate from Levelling, probably wrote much of the 1647 "The Case of the Army Truly Stated," whic h included this demand: "That all Monopolyes be forthwith removed, and no persons whatsoever may be permitted to restrain others from free trade." Some monopolies had been created to the advantage of Royal cronies. They also denounced patents, temporary m onopoly rights to manufacture something, recently begun by Charles I as a means of raising revenue. Thus he would grant an exclusive license to someone to make soap for sale, which at that time any householder would have been able to do, needing little mo re than lard and lye extracted from fireplace ashes. If patents were ultimately viewed by some historians as one seed of modern capitalism, for the Levellers they were just a theft of a common source of extra income. Levellers also opposed the exclusive C ompany of Stationers as a device aiding censorship. Against mercantilism, they feared market restriction in the London, Presbyterian-dominated Company of Merchant Adventurers (even if Walwyn was a prospering member).

The Levellers wanted frugal government with modest salaries for government officials and low taxes. They especially opposed high tariffs and any revenues which were regressive -- that is, hit lower incomes hardest, such as in excise (sales) taxes o n food. They preferred a tax somehow proportioned to levels of income. But apart from exemption for the poor, this seems to have been less a progressive than flat rate tax. Also, the government should no longer collect the tithes which had financed the es tablished Church of England (or Anglican Church) and which Presbyterians wanted shifted to their system.

Most Levellers resented religious establishment of any kind. To curb that, they wanted to defund it by selling off the Anglican Bishops' lands. While also opposing the Presbyterian structure, Levellers detested "prelacy" or "prelatry," the presence of bishops appointed by Pope or King which permitted the centralized control of an established church. To Lilburne, any church with bishops was the Beast of the Apocalypse. While some Independents would have accepted parliamentary payment of clerical sal aries, for most Levellers an ideal arrangement would adopt the Baptist model: Local parishioners would both choose their clergy and set their salaries, implying more popular influence over clergy.

In the political order, self-propriety meant to the Levellers natural equality, such that no propertied male adult would have authority over another without his consent. Government existed to protect property, not only in things but in our persons. As Colonel Rainsborough famously put it at the 1647 Putney Debates, "The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he...Every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that governme nt." The loudest political demand of the Levellers was for enlargement of the suffrage, leaning toward the idea of universal manhood suffrage. By a 1648 compromise with less radical forces, they limited their goal to expanding the vote to include at least all male adults who had any property, and hence could be expected to contribute as taxpayers. Their program included a temporary denial of suffrage for former Royalist soldiers, and it did not extend voting rights to those who were either hired "servants " (in the broadest sense of propertyless wage workers) or else taking alms, this last being what we now call being on welfare. Apparently they believed that servants, those taking alms and women not only lack independence and also have by implicit consent given up a right to equality.

While other Puritans would tend to call their constituency "multitude" rather than "people" when not needing them to fight the Royalists, the Levellers understood their lower middle class stratum as the main part of the people. Unlike Cromwell, the y did not think approval of King and Parliament was necessary for the people to change their constitutional order. We are sinners enough to make either anarchism or absolutism dangerous. While not anarchists, they did want to make the political order more egalitarian.

They were unimpressed with the "mixed regime" theory which held that King, Lords and Commons could share power, an ancestor of the United States Constitution's separation of powers idea. If eclipsed by the ultimate sovereignty of God, th e people came to be viewed by them as the "supreme power" in Leveller theory. That permitted representation of that power through the more popular chamber of parliament, conditional upon protecting the people's rights. The House of Commons must otherwise have control over all law and all public finance, including any revenue from Crown lands. However, concerned that relatively conservative forces, largely Presbyterian, dominated Parliament, the Levellers demanded that Parliament should have representation proportioned to population (no "rotten boroughs"), and that the Members of Parliament should serve annual (or at least biennial) terms with rotation (serve a year or two, stand out for a term before running again). To avoid their corruption by monarchica l appointments, no member of Parliament should simultaneously hold another public office. Lilburne began to accuse the House of Commons of corruption, dangerously asserted that MP's were siphoning off 3/4 of tax revenues for their own use. ;As for the House of Lords, Levellers approved of Cromwell's removal of Anglican bishops from it, and they wanted termination of its veto over acts of Commons. But they would have preferred abolition rather than Cromwell's mere suspension of that body unt il after execution of the King in 1649. They held that the House of Lords was an un-English institution imposed to favor cronies (who became the higher nobility of England) of William the Conqueror after the Norman invasion of 1066. The subset of the Law Lords constituted an illegitimate supreme judicial tribunal. When dragged before it, Lilburne and Overton refused to doff their hats or kneel, since that body could not be a jury of their peers. Lilburne even put his fingers in his ears rather than hear t hem.

Regarding the monarchy, Levellers vigorously opposed tendencies toward royal absolutism. They invoked the legend of a pre-Norman limited monarchy in England. They began with the idea of removing the royal negative or veto right but many came around to the idea of abolishing monarchy entirely, a viewpoint then called that of republicans or commonwealthsmen. If some were willing to abide by a restored constitutional monarchy, at least prior to Cromwell's excesses, it was perhaps only to win some supp ort from Independents (Congregationalists). Seeing absolutist rather than constitutional monarchist leanings in the Stuarts, they approved of Cromwell's trial and execution of Charles I in 1649 (Cromwell had purged the Long Parliament of Presbyterians opp osing it).

In addition to opposing the Law Lords, Levellers detested special political tribunals such as the Star Chamber. Although Lilburne once called public lawyers and jailers "Horse-leeches," the Levellers came to advocate a right to counsel so that the poor could attain some justice in the courts. They favored a Parliament-enacted law code over judge-made common law (once sound, it was allegedly corrupted toward more inequality by the Norman invaders from 1066). All of the law should be in plain English , not filled with Latin, French or other words not understood by the people. Lilburne put his trust in popular juries of his peers, proclaiming that they could judge not only fact but the rightness of law as well.

While the Levellers did not at once move to expand voting rights to all, they did favored what we have come to call a "bill of rights" which assures, along with judicial procedural rights and rights to peaceably petition Parliament and broader free dom of speech.

The Levellers favored public schooling in basic literacy, not only to read the Bible but to better communicate views. The right to petition public authorities, to have the petitions received, and to be left unpunished for it was very important to t hem. As Richard Overton complained in his 1647 "Appeale" to Parliament, "hee that Oppresseth for complainning of Oppression, must needs be a Tyrant in the highest measure." The next year in his essay addressed "To the Commons of Engla nd" he further denounced restrictions on the press, saying that the English people do not need "Masters, Tutors, and Controulers over them..."

The Leveller advocacy of what they called "liberty of conscience" in religion becomes freedom of speech in general, since religion and politics had been so closely intertwined. For them, matters religious should become questions of persuasion, not state compulsion.

From 1641, Walwyn was one of the first Leveller advocates of literal freedom for every religious view, even Catholic or pagan (which Milton, although never a critic of the Levellers, could not accept). Not unlike Sebastian Castellion, Walwyn was co nvinced that a God of love would not want us to be persecutors acting in his name. Walwyn not only denied magistrates any special authority in religious matters but emphasized that governmental repression foolishly creates enemies to a regime. Following t he lead of others such as John Robinson before him, he later adds that persecution is economically destructive, forcing emigration of economically productive workers and generally interfering with the sort of trade which brought prosperity to Holland. Ove rton adds that persecution was largely the cause of the dreadful warring in Germany of the 30 Years War, which no other people would want to see.

Lilburne, however devout and concerned for attainment of religious truth through free discourse, liked to invoke the ancient liberties of the English as equivalent to the God-given right of nature to speak freely. He blamed not religious dissent bu t the curse of persecution as behind both the absolutist turn of the Stuarts and the related civil warring of England.

The Leveller petition of March 1647 makes clear the Leveller view that religion is a matter of persuasion, not state cumpulsion, urging that censorship is more likely to protect error than truth: "That no man for preaching or publishing his opinion in Religion in a peaceable way, may be punished or persecuted as hereticall, by Judges that are not infallible, but may be mistaken (as well as other men) in their judgements, least upon pretence of suppressing Errors, Sects or Schisms, the most necessar y truths, and sincere professors thereof may be suppressed, as upon the like pretence it hath been in all ages." The 1648 "Agreement of the People" holds this statement on religious policy: "We do not empower our Representatives to continue in force or ma ke any Laws, Oaths, and covenants, whereby to compel by penalties or otherwise, any person to any thing in or about matters of Faith, Religion or Gods Worship, or to restrain any person from the professing his Faith, or exercise of Religion according to h is conscience..." This is very close to the simpler statement of 143 years later in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Cromwell, supported by his son-in-law Ireton, saw Leveller demands for suffrage as even more subversive as their call for freedom of speech, thinking it pointed toward anarchy, attack on property, and mutiny in the army. After defeating a second ri sing of Royalists in 1648 and executing the King in 1649, Cromwell no longer urgently needed Leveller support. He repressed the movement, going personally with drawn sword against Leveller regiments which against orders had tried to assemble at a rendezvo us. By lot, one of three top Leveller leaders was then shot. The Levellers thereafter held that army officers, who largely supported Cromwell, should like members of Parliament be limited to two-year terms. In his essay "The Hunting of the Foxes," Overton protested at the dictatorship, since being ruled by Commons, Court Martial and General was no different from being ruled by Commons, Lords and King. Walwyn and Lilburne, like Overton as well as Thomas Prince, a more obscure cheese merchant, were arrested by Cromwell, and they surely agreed. Lilburne, although republican, had come to the view that a restored constitutionally limited monarchy could be better than the dictatorship of Cromwell. In 1655, two years before his natural death, Lilburne left his B aptist faith and became Quaker, a pacifistic faith less threatening to Cromwell, who then let him have leaves from the prison where he had been illegally detained 1653-57, having been for the last time exonerated by a jury of his peers. On one of his leav es to visit his wife, the worn out 43 year-old man was too weak to return to prison, dying outside the walls.