The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Foreword
• Postscript to the 1950 Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Introduction
• Part I.: The Putney Debates
• At the General Council of Officers 1 At Putney, 28th October 1647.
• Putney, 29th October 1647
• Putney, 1st November 1647 At the General Council of the Army
• Part II.: The Whitehall Debates a
• General Council 1 At Whitehall, 14th December 1648 B
• Council of Officers, 8th-11th January 1649
• Whitehall, 13th January 1649 General Council 1 a
• Part III.: Puritan Views of Liberty a
• I.: Some Principles of the Puritan Parties
• From John Saltmarsh, Smoke In the Temple (1646) B
• From J[ohn] G[oodwin], Independency God’s Verity (1647) a
• II.: The Law of Nature
• From William Ames, Conscience (1639) a
• III.: Religious Principles of Resistance
• Christian Obedience and Its Limits From Calvin’s Institution of Christian Religion (thomas Norton’s Translation) a
• Presbyterian Principles of Resistance From [samuel Rutherford], Lex, Rex (1644) a
• Independent Principles of Resistance From John Goodwin, Right and Might Well Met (1649) a
• IV.: The Law and the Gospel: Christian Liberty
• From Luther’s Commentary Upon Galatians (edition of 1644) a
• Milton On Christian Liberty
• V.: The Privileges of the Saints
• The Elect and the Reprobate From William Prynne, Anti-arminianism (1630) a
• The Millennium At Hand [hanserd Knollys], 1 a Glimpse of Sion’s Glory (1641) a
• The Rule of the Saints 1 Certain Queries Presented By Many Christian People (1649) a
• VI.: Liberty of Conscience
• Independent Position From the Ancient Bounds (1645) a
• Separatist Position From Roger Williams, the Bloody Tenent of Persecution 1 (1644) a
• VII.: Models of a Free Church
• The Power of the People From Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye’s Introduction to John Cotton’s the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (1644) a
• The Church Covenant From [richard Mather], an Apology For Church Covenant (1643) a
• From the Saints’ Apology (1644) a
• A Spiritual Church From William Dell, the Way of True Peace and Unity 1 (1649) a
• VIII.: Leveller Principles 1
• God and Man From John Lilburne, the Free-man’s Freedom Vindicated (1646) a
• An Appeal to Parliament From the Large Petition of the Levellers 1 (march 1647) B
• An Appeal to the People From Richard Overton, an Appeal From the Commons to the Free People (1647) a
• Parliament Once More From the Levellers’ Petition to the House of Commons, 1 11th September 1648. A
• Agreements of the People the History of the Second Agreement 1 From John Lilburne, Legal Fundamental Liberties (1649) a
• The Second Agreement of the People (1648) From John Lilburne, Foundations of Freedom a
• The Female of the Species From a Petition of Women, Affecters and Approvers of the Petition of Sept. 11, 1648 1 (5th May 1649) a
• Democracy In the City From London’s Liberties Or a Learned Argument of Law and Reason 1 (dec. 1650) a
• IX.: Digger Principles
• From the True Levellers’ Standard Advanced 1 (1649) a
• Appendix a
• A.: the Spirit of the New Model
• 1.: Reports of Observers
• 2.: A Sermon At Putney From Thomas Collier, a Discovery of the New Creation a (preached At the Headquarters, Putney, 29th Sept. 1647)
• B.: the Army Organizes: May—june 1647
• 3.: Apology of the Soldiers to Their Officers 1 (3rd May ) a
• 4.: Advertisements For the Managing of the Counsels of the Army, 1 Walden, 4th May 1647 B
• 5.: From the Grievances of Regiments, Presented At Saffron Walden, 13th-14th May a
• 6.: Letters to the Agitators 1
• 7.: From a Solemn Engagement of the Army 1 (5 Th June ) a
• 8.: From a Representation of the Army (14th June) a
• C.: The Reading Debates
• 9.: Summary, With Selections, of the Debate In the General Council of the Army, At Reading, 16th July 1647, On the Proposals of the Agitators For Five Points to Be Insisted On By the Army and Enforced By a March On London a
• 10.: Account of the Debate, In a Newsletter From Reading, B 17 Th July.
• D.: Documents Relating to the Putney Debates
• 13.: From the Heads of the Proposals a
• 14.: The Levellers’ Discontent With the Heads of the Proposals From [john Wildman], Putney Projects a
• 15.: From [john Wildman], the Case of the Army Truly Stated a 15th Oct.
• 16.: A Letter From the Agents to the Whole Soldiery From Two Letters From the Agents of the Five Regiments (28th Oct.) a
• 17.: Letter of John Saltmarsh to the Council of War (28th Oct.) a
• 18.: From a Call to All the Soldiers of the Army By the Free People of England 1 (29 Th Oct.) a
• 19.: An Agreement of the People ( Printed 3rd Nov.) a
• 20.: Summary (with Quotation) of the Reports of the Committee On the Army’s Papers and the Agreement of the People a
• 21.: Proceedings In the General Council, 4th-9th Nov. From a Letter From Several Agitators to Their Regiments (11th Nov.) a
• E.: Documents Relating to the Whitehall Debates
• 22.: Petition of 11th September 1648:
• 23.: From a Remonstrance of Fairfax and the Council of Officers 1 (16th November 1648) a
• 24.: History of the Second Agreement of the People:
• 25.: From the Declaration of the Army, On the March to London, 30th November 1648 a
• 26.: Text of the Second Agreement of the People:
• 27.: Summary of the Debates On the Agreement, In the Council of Officers, 16th December-6th January; and of the Examination of Elizabeth Poole On 29th December and 5th January. a
• 28.: The Levellers’ Dissatisfaction With the Debates From John Lilburne, a Plea For Common Right and Freedom (28th Dec. 1648) a
• F.: Retrospect
• 29.: From a Declaration of the English Army Now In Scotland, 2 1st Aug. 1650 a
• Notes On Text

VIII.

LEVELLER PRINCIPLES1

God and Man

From John Lilburne, The Free-man’s Freedom Vindicated (1646)a

A Postscript containing a General Proposition.

God, the absolute sovereign Lord and King of all things in heaven and earth, the original fountain and cause of all causes, who is circumscribed, governed, and limited by no rules, but doth all things merely and only by his sovereign will and unlimited good pleasure, who made the world and all things therein for his own glory,b by his own will and pleasure gave man, his mere creature, the sovereignty (under himself) over all the rest of his creatures (Gen. 1. 26, 28, 29) and endued him with a rational soul or understanding, and thereby created him after his own image (Gen. 1. 26-7, and 9. 6). The first of which was Adam, . . . made out of the dust or clay, out of whose side was taken a rib, which by the sovereign and absolute mighty creating power of God was made a female . . . called Eve. Which two are the earthly original fountain . . . of all and every particular and individual man and woman . . . in the world since, who are, and were, by nature all equal and alike in power, dignity, authority, and majesty, none of them having by nature any authority, dominion, or magisterial power one over or above another; neither have they, or can they exercise any, but merely by institution or donation, that is to say, by mutual agreement or consent, given, derived, or assumed by mutual consent and agreement, for the good benefit and comfort each of other, and not for the mischief, hurt, or damage of any; it being unnatural, irrational, . . . wicked, and unjust, for any man or men whatsoever to part with so much of their power as shall enable any of their Parliament-men, commissioners, trustees, deputies, . . . or servants, to destroy and undo them therewith. And unnatural, irrational, sinful, wicked, unjust, devilish, and tyrannical, it is for any man whatsoever, spiritual or temporal, clergyman or layman, to appropriate and assume unto himself a power, authority and jurisdiction, to rule, govern or reign over any sort of men in the world without their free consent, and whosoever doth it . . . do thereby, as much as in them lies, endeavour to appropriate and assume unto themselves the office and sovereignty of God (who alone doth, and is to, rule by his will and pleasure), and to be like their Creator, which was the sin of the devils, who, not being content with their first station,a would be like God, for which sin they were thrown down into hell, reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day (Jude, ver. 6). And Adam’s sin it was, which brought the curse upon him and all his posterity, that he was not content with the station and condition that God created him in, but did aspire unto a better and more excellent, namely to be like his Creator, which proved his ruin, yea, and indeed had been the everlasting ruin and destruction of him and all his, had not God been the more merciful unto him in the promised Messiah (Gen., chap. 3). * * *

An Appeal to Parliament

From the Large Petition of the Levellers1 (March 1647)b

But such is our misery, that after the expense of so much precious time, blood, and treasure, and the ruin of so many thousands of honest families, in recovering our liberty, we still find the nation oppressed with grievances of the same destructive nature as formerly, though under other notions, and which are so much the more grievous unto us because they are inflicted in the very time of this present Parliament, under God the hope of the oppressed.

For as then all the men and women in England were made liable to the summons, attachments, sentences, and imprisonments of the Lords of the Council-board, so we find by woeful experience, and the suffering of many particular persons, that the present Lords do assume and exercise the same power, than which nothing can be more repugnant and destructive to the Commons’ just liberty.

As then the unjust power of the Star Chamber was exercised in compelling men and women to answer to interrogatories tending to accuse themselves and others, so is the same now frequently practised upon divers persons, even your cordial friends, that have been, and still are, punished for refusing to answer questions against themselves and nearest relations.

As then the great oppression of the High Commission was most evident in molesting of godly, peaceable people for nonconformity, or different opinion or practice in religion, in judging all who were contrary-minded to themselves to be heretics, sectaries, schismatics, seditious, factious, enemies to the state and the like, and under great penalties forbidding all persons, not licensed by them, to preach or publish the Gospel: even so now at this day, the very same, if not greater, molestations are set on foot and violently prosecuted by the instigation of a clergy no more infallible than the former, to the extreme discouragement and affliction of many thousands of your faithful adherents, who are not satisfied that controversies in religion can be trusted to the compulsive regulation of any, and after the bishops were suppressed did hope never to have seen such a power assumed by any in this nation any more.

And although all new illegal patents are by you abolished, yet the oppressive monopoly of Merchant Adventurers and others do still remain, to the great abridgment of the liberty of the people, and to the extreme prejudice of all such industrious people as do depend on clothing or woollen manufacture (it being the staple commodity of this kingdom and nation), and to the great discouragement and disadvantage of all sorts of tradesmen, seafaring men, and hindrance of shipping and navigation.

Also the old tedious and chargeable way of deciding controversies or suits in law is continued to this day, to the extreme vexation and utter undoing of multitudes of families—a grievance as great and palpable as any in the world. [And] that old and most unequal punishment of malefactors is still continued, whereby men’s lives and liberties area liable to the law’s corporal pains (as much inflicted for small as for great offences, and that mostb unjustly) upon the testimony of one witness, contrary both to the Law of God and common equity—a grievance very great, but little regarded.

And also tithes and other enforced maintenance are still continued, though there be no ground for either under the Gospel, and though the same have occasioned multitudes of suits, quarrels, and debates both in former and latter times.

In like manner multitudes of people, poor distressed prisoners for debt, lie still unregarded in a most miserable and woeful condition throughout the land, to the great reproach of this nation.

Likewise, prison-keepers or gaolers are as presumptuous as ever they were both in receiving and detaining of prisoners illegally committed, [and are] as cruel and inhumane to all, especially to such as are well-affected, as oppressive and extorting in their fees, and are attended with under-officers of such vile and unchristian demeanour as is most abominable.

Also thousands of men and women are permitted to live in beggary and wickedness all their life long, and to breed their children to the same idle and vicious course of life; and no effectual means used to reclaim either, or to reduce them to any virtue or industry.

And last, as those who found themselves aggrieved formerly at the burdens and oppressions of those times, that did not conform to the church-government then established, refused to pay ship-money or yield obedience to unjust patents, were reviled and reproached with nicknames of Puritans, heretics, schismatics, sectaries, or were termed factious or seditious, men of turbulent spirits, despisers of government, and disturbers of the public peace: even so it is at this day in all respects with those that show any sensibility of the fore-recited grievances, or move in any manner or measure for remedy thereof; all the reproaches, evils, and mischiefs that can be devised, are thought too few or too little to be laid upon them, as Roundheads, sectaries, Independents, heretics, schismatics, factious, seditious, rebellious, disturbers of the public peace, destroyers of all civil relations and subordinations. Yea, and beyond what was formerly, nonconformity is now judged a sufficient cause to disable any person (though of known fidelity) from bearing any offices of trust in the commonwealth, whiles neuters, malignant and disaffected, are admitted and countenanced. And though it be not now made a crime to mention a Parliament, yet it is little less to mention the supreme power of this honourable House. So that in all these respects this nation remains in a very sad and disconsolate condition, and the more because it is thus with us after so long a session of so powerful and so free a Parliament, and [one that] hath been so made and maintained by the abundant love, and liberal effusion of the blood, of the people. And therefore . . . we . . . do most earnestly entreat that you will stir up your affections to a zealous love and tender regard of the people who have chosen and trusted you, that you will seriously consider that the end of your trust was freedom and deliverance from all kind of grievances and oppressions.

1. And that, therefore, in the first place, you will be exceeding careful to preserve your just authority from all prejudices of a negative voice in any person or persons whatsoever, which may disable you from making that happy return unto the people which they justly expect, and that you will not be induced to lay by your strength till you have satisfied your understandings in the undoubted security of yourselves and of those who have voluntarily and faithfully adhered to you in all your extremities, and until you have secured and settled the commonwealth in settled peace and true freedom, which is the end of the primitive institution of all government.

2. Secondly, that you will take off all sentences, fines, and imprisonments imposed on commoners by any whomsoever, without due course of law or judgment of their equals, and to give due reparations to all those who have been so injuriously dealt withal, and for preventing the like for the time to come, that you will enact all such arbitrary proceedings to be capital crimes.

3. Thirdly, that you permit no authority whatsoever to compel any person or persons to answer to any questions against themselves or nearest relations, except in cases of private interest between party and party in a legal way, and to release such as suffer by imprisonment or otherwise, for refusing to answer to such interrogatories.

4. Fourthly, that all statutes, oaths, and covenants may be repealed so far as they tend, or may be construed, to the molestation and ensnaring of religious, peaceable, and well-affected people, for nonconformity or difference of opinion or practice in religion.

5. Fifthly, that no man for preaching or publishing his opinion in religion in a peaceable way, may be punished or persecuted as heretical, by judges that are not infallible but may be mistaken as well as other men in their judgments, lest upon pretence of suppressing errors, sects, or schisms, the most necessary truths, and sincere professions thereof, may be suppressed, as upon the like pretence it hath been in all ages.

6. Sixthly, that you will for the encouragement of industrious people, dissolve that oppressive company of Merchant Adventurers, and the like, and prevent all such others by great penalties for ever.

7. Seventhly, that you will settle a just, speedy, plain, and unburdensome way for deciding of controversies and suits in law, and reduce all laws to the nearest agreement with Christianity, and publish them in the English tongue, and that all processe[s] and proceedings therein may be true, and also in English, and in the most usual character of writing without any abbreviation, that each one who can read may the better understand their own affairs, and that the duties of all judges, officers, and practisers in the law, and of all magistrates and officers in the commonwealth, may be prescribed, their fees limited under strict penalties, and published in print to the knowledge and view of all men; by which just and equitable means this nation shall be for ever freed of an oppression more burdensome and troublesome than all the oppressions hitherto by this Parliament removed.

8. Eighthly, that the life of no person may be taken away [but] under the testimony of two witnesses at least, of honest conversation; and that in an equitable way you will proportion punishment to offences, so that no man’s life be taken away, his body punished, nor his estate forfeited, but upon such weighty and considerable causes as justly deserve such punishment; and that all prisoners may have a speedy trial, that they be neither starved nor their families ruined by long and lingering imprisonment; and that imprisonment may be used only for safe custody until time of trial, and not as a punishment for offences.

9. Ninthly, that tithes and all other enforced maintenances may be for ever abolished, and nothing in place thereof imposed, but that all ministers may be paid only by those who voluntarily choose them, and contract with them for their labours.

10. Tenthly, that you will take some speedy and effectual course to relieve all such prisoners for debt as are altogether unable to pay, that they may not perish in prison through the hard-heartedness of their creditors; and that all such who have any estates may be enforced to make payment accordingly, and not shelter themselves in prison to defraud their creditors.

11. Eleventhly, that none may be prison-keepers but such as are of approved honesty; and that they be prohibited under great penalties to receive or detain any person or persons without lawful warrant; that their usage of prisoners may be with gentleness and civility, their fees moderate and certain; and that they may give security for the good behaviour of their under-officers.

12. Twelfthly, that you will provide some powerful means to keep men, women, and children from begging and wickedness, that this nation may be no longer a shame to Christianity therein.

13. Thirteenthly, that you will restrain and discountenance the malice and impudency of impious persons in their reviling and reproaching the well-affected with the ignominious titles of Roundheads, factious, seditious, and the like, whereby your real friends have been a long time, and still are, exceedingly wronged, discouraged, and made obnoxious to rude and profane people; and that you will not exclude any of approved fidelity from bearing office of trust in the commonwealth for nonconformity, but rather neuters, and such as manifest disaffection or opposition to common freedom, the admission and continuation of such being the chief cause of all our grievances. * * *

An Appeal to the People

From Richard Overton, An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People (1647)a

It is confessed that our English histories and records of the actions and transactions of our predecessors, both of ancient and late times, so far as I can understand, do not afford me any example or precedent for any appeal from parliaments to people. Neither is there any such liberty provided in the letter of our law. So that by such as prefer precedents and formalities, forms and figures, before the substance, life, and spirit of all just precedents and laws, I may probably be censured and condemned for this present enterprise, as an open and desperate enemy to parliaments and magistracy, a subverter and destroyer of all national laws and government, and a reducer (to my power) of kingdoms and people into confusion. To such I shall return even the late words of our now degenerate Parliament: that reason hath no precedent; for reason is the fountain of all just precedents. . . . Therefore where that is, there is a sufficient and justifiable precedent.

And if this principle must be granted of, and obeyed by all (as by no rational man can be denied), then the act of appeal in this nature, if grounded upon right reason, is justifiable and warranted, even by that which gives an equitable authority, life, and being, to all just laws, precedents, and forms of government whatsoever. For reason is their very life and spirit, whereby they are all made lawful and warrantable both for settlement, administration, and obedience; which is the highest kind of justification and authority for human actions, that can be, for greater is that which gives being and justifieth than that which receiveth and is justified. All forms of laws and governments may fall and pass away, but right reason (the fountain of all justice and mercy to the creature) shall and will endure for ever. It is that by which in all our actions we must stand or fall, be justified or condemned; for neither morality nor divinity amongst men can or may transgress the limits of right reason. For whatsoever is unreasonable cannot be justly termed moral or divine, and right reason is only commensurable and discernible by the rule of merciful justice and just mercy. It is gradual in its quantity, but one in its quality. Several are its degrees, but its perfection and fulness is only in God. And its several branches and degrees are only communicable and derivated from him, as several beams and degrees of heat from the body of the sun—yet all heat. So in reason there are different degrees, as from morality to divinity, and under those two heads several subordinate degrees, all derivated and conveyed from the Creator (the original fountain) to the creature, yet all one and the same in nature—the difference only lying in the degree of the thing, not in the thing itself, as a dwarf is as much a man as a giant though not so big a man. And soa the gifts and graces of God are one radically, yet different in their species, and all from one and the same Spirit, which canb act nothing contrary to its own nature. And God is not a God of irrationality and madness, or tyranny. Therefore all his communications are reasonable and just, and what is so is of God.

And upon this principle, as upon a firm and sure foundation, all just laws and governments are founded and erected, and in particular the fundamental laws and government of this kingdom. For it is a sure and radical maxim in our law, Nihil quod est contra rationem est licitum (Nothing which is against reason is lawful), reason being the very life of the law of our land; so that should the law be taken away from its original reason and end, it would be made a shell without a kernel, a shadow without substance, a carcass without life, which presently turns to putrefaction. And as reason only gives it a legal being and life, so it only makes it authori[ta]tive and binding. If this be not granted, lust, will, pride (and what the devil and corruption will) may be a law. For if right reason be not the only being and bounder of the law over the corrupt nature of man (that what is rational, the which injustice and tyranny cannot be, may only and at all times be legal, and what is legal, to be simply and purely rational, the which mercy and justice must be whensoever, wheresoever, and by whomsoever it be . . .),c all would fall into confusion, disorder, madness, and cruelty; and so magistracy would cease, and be converted into inhumanity and tyranny.

So that it being most evident and clear to the eye of rational man that this fundamental principle may not (in being [fundamental] to magistracy itself) be expulsed the precincts of magisterial government, but must be preserved . . . entire and absolute therein . . . as a sure and safe refuge to fly to, in all straits and extremities whatsoever, for preservation, safety, removal of oppressions, &c.; or else no safety or relief from oppression, either public or private, to be lawfully attempted, pursued, or had—so that where that principle is, there legality and authority must be, and is concomitant to, and inseparable therefrom, never to be altered while the sun and the moon endures. By it kings and kingdoms have their essential legal being, without which they cease from being either kings or kingdoms. Therefore, that which doth institute, constitute, and authorize the regality of kings and kingdoms, certainly must needs be sufficiently authori[ta]tive for a particular, as for this expedient of mine or the like, in case it be found under the protection and authority of the said principle of right reason—as I shall clearly evidence it to be.

First, then, be pleased to consider that it is a firm law and radical principle in nature, engraven in the tables of the heart by the finger of God in creation, for every living, moving thing, wherein there is the breath of life, to defend, preserve, guard,a and deliver itself from all things hurtful, destructive and obnoxious thereto, to the utmost of its power. Therefore from hence is conveyed to all men in general, and to every man in particular, an undoubted principle of reason: by all rational and just ways and means possibly he may, to save, defend, and deliver himself from all oppression, violence and cruelty whatsoever, and (in duty to his own safety and being) to leave no just expedient unattempted for his delivery therefrom. And this is rational and just. To deny it is to overturn the law of nature, yea and of religion too; for the contrary lets in nothing but self-murder, violence, and cruelty. Now the unreasonable oppression of myself, my wife, brother, and children, under the arbitrary tyranny of the Westminster Lords, and the ways and means that I have used for delivery therefrom, considered and weighed in the balance of this natural radical principle of reason, this, mine attempt of appeal (though of a desperate nature) will be found the only mean wherein I may discern any probability of relief. . . .

Secondly, necessity is a law above all laws. And this principle conveyeth and issueth forth authority and power, both to general and particular cases, even to the taking up of unusual and un-exemplary courses for public and particular deliverances. . . . And upon this principle the Netherlanders made an hostile defence and resistance against the King of Spain, their then sovereign lord, for the recovery of their just rights and freedom. And upon the same point rose the Scotch up in arms and entered this kingdom without all formal countenance or allowance of king or parliament, and were justified for that very act by this present Parliament. Yea, and even this Parliament upon the same principle took up arms against the King. And now, right worthy patriots of the Army, you yourselves upon the same principle, for recovery of common right and freedom, have entered upon this, your present honourable and solemn Engagement against the oppressing party at Westminster, and plead yourselves justifiable thereby, and tell them . . . that the Parliament hath declared it no resistance of magistracy to side with the just principles and law of nature and nations, being that law upon which you have assisted them. So that if I be condemned for a traitor by all or any of you, whether Scotch, Parliament, or Army, for proceeding upon the said just principles and law of nature, for common right and freedom, I tell you plainly that out of your own mouths you shall be judged no less traitors than myself, yea, allowers of that in yourselves, which for treason you condemn in others. * * *

Thirdly, the equity of the law is superior to the letter, the letter being subordinate and subject thereto. And look how much the letter transgresseth the equity, even so much it is unequal, of no validity and force. * * * And by this principle, worthy officers and soldiers, you have charged the Parliament from their own declarations, to warrant this your present expedition; . . . bya which principle, together with yourselves and with them, I lay claim to a title for an equal justification and protection from the letter of the law. * * *

Fourthly, all betrusted powers, if forfeit[ed], fall into the hands of the betrusters, as their proper centre.b And where such a forfeit is committed, there it disobligeth from obedience, and warranteth an appeal to the betrusters, without any contempt or disobedience to the powers in the least; for such an appeal in that case is not at all from the power, but from the persons; not forsaking the power, but following of it in its retreat to the fountain. For as formerly the Parliament averred, and as now this honourable Army assumeth, . . . all authority is fundamentally seated in the office, and but ministerially in the persons. Therefore, the persons in their ministrations degenerating from safety to tyranny, their authority ceaseth, and is only to be found in the fundamental original rise and situation thereof, which is the people, the body represented. For though it ceaseth from the hands of the betrusted, yet it doth not, neither can it, cease from its being; for kings, parliaments, &c., may fall from it, but it endureth for ever. For were not this admitted, there could be no lawful redress in extremity. Yea, magistracy itself should be transitory and fading like as is corruption—of no certain duration or moment; but it is unchangeable and certain; man perisheth, but it endureth. It always is either in the hands of the betrusted or of the betrusters. While the betrusted are dischargers of their trust it remaineth in their hands, but no sooner the betrusted betray and forfeit their trust but (as all things else in dissolution) it returneth from whence it came, even to the hands of the trusters. For all just human powers are but betrusted, conferred, and conveyed by joint and common consent; for to every individual in nature is given an individual propriety by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any (as in mine Arrow against Tyranny is proved and discovered more at large); for every one as he is himself hath a self propriety—else could he not be himself—and on this no second may presume without consent; and by natural birth all men are equal, and alike born to like propriety and freedom, every man by natural instinct aiming at his own safety and weal. And so it is that there is a general communication amongst men from their several innate properties to their elected deputies for their better being, discipline, government, property, and safety. * * *

Now these premises considered, I do confidently conclude (if confidence may be derived from the just principles of nature) that the transgression of our weal by our trustees is an utter forfeiture of their trust, and cessation of their power. Therefore if I prove a forfeiture of the people’s trust in the prevalent party at Westminster in Parliament assembled, then an appeal from them to the people is not anti-parliamentary, anti-magisterial; not from that sovereign power, but to that sovereign power. For the evidence whereof I shall first present a discovery of their dealings with me, relating to the public, and then their common course to the general.1 * * *

But for brevity’s sake I shall omit the several new oppressions, exactions, and burdens, wherewith the people are loaded everywhere, even till their backs are ready to break, as every man by woeful experience can witness, and shall only relate to the main and principal end of their election and session, which is for hearing the cries and groans of the people, redressing and easing their grievances. And as touching this matter, this is their course: instead of relief for oppression, themselves do oppress, and, which is worst, then stop the mouths of the oppressed, . . . slight, reject and crush their just and necessary petitions, which is the highest kind of tyranny in the world, shut their doors and ears against the cry of the people both of country and City, yea, though the burdens of the oppressed are so great that multitudes in a peaceable manner have attended the House daily with petitions for no other thing than for the removal of oppression and recovery of freedom, according to the fundamental laws of this kingdom, which they [have] often declared, covenanted, protested, and sworn with hands lifted up to the most high God, to perform faithfully and truly.

Yet these very men, contrary to their many oaths, covenants, declarations, vows, and protestations, call the petitioners rogues, villains, seditious, factious fellows . . .; and not only so, but imprison some of them, as Mr. Nicholas Tew, Mr. Browne, and Major Tulidah,a the two first of them prisoners to this hour, the third under bail. And they stay not here, but their arrogance mounts higher and higher: [they] even vote their petitions seditious breach of their privileges, and cause them to be burnt by the hand of the common hangman—even such petitions wherein was contained the liberties and freedoms of the Commons of England, and no jot of anything . . . that was not just, honest and reasonable, and their sworn duties to perform.1 * * *

Halters and gallows is more fit for them than places in Parliament. What! will you be more fearful of them, to bring them to justice, than they were of you, to burn your laws and liberties? For shame! Never let an English spirit be taxed with that dishonour. You have Othniels, Ehuds, Baraks, and Gideons, before you, even a mighty and puissant, virtuous army, which hath most gallantly and honourably engaged for you and their own safety and protection from those unnatural tyrants and usurpers, to remove them from the seat of your authority, and to bring them to justice, that you, and your children after you, may be delivered from the fear and prejudice of their cruelties, dwell in peace and safety, enjoy the price of your labour and travail quietly and freely to yourselves, be absolute lords and possessors of your own, andb be made true and real freemen indeed. Fall therefore into their assistance and protection, and trust no longer your perjured, traitorous trustees dissembled at Westminster, but save yourselves from that cursed and wicked generation. Now is the opportunity. Do not procrastinate nor delay, lest your destruction be of yourselves. * * *

Dear friends, our destruction is beyond the privilege of Parliament. It is out of the compass of that betrusted authority. While they move in the sphere of our safety, their motions are parliamentary, legal and author[it]ative, and to be obeyed, defended and maintained. But on the contrary, the contrary must be concluded; for contraries have contrary consequents. For there is a difference betwixt their parliamentary and their own personal capacity, and their actions are answerably different. Therefore the rejection, disobedience, and resistance of their personal commands, is no rejection, disobedience, or resistance of their parliament[ary] authority; so that he that doth resist their personal commands, doth not resist the Parliament. . . .

And upon this principle of justice and reason they grounded and justified their war against the King. * * * Even so may the commonalty of England reply to their Parliament-members, that they are made for the people, not the people for them, and no otherwise may they deal with the people than for their safety and weal, for no more than the people are the King’s, no more are the people the Parliament’s, [they] having no such propriety in the people as the people have in their goods, to do with them as they list. As they will not grant it to be the prerogative of kings, neither may we yield it to be the privilege of parliaments. For the safety of the people is the reason and end of all governments and governors. Salus populi est suprema lex: the safety of the people is the supreme law of all commonwealths. * * *

Therefore it is in vain for our members in Parliament to think that we will justify or tolerate the same among them which we would not endure in the King—to pluck off the garments of royalty from oppression and tyranny, to dress up the same in Parliament-robes. No, no, that was ever, and is, far from our hearts, and we shall justify or allow the same no more in the one than in the other. For to allow it in the one is to justify it in the other, for it is equally unequal in both, and in itself resistible wheresoever it is found. For were it not resistible, all defensive war whatsoever were unlawful. And upon this point we moved against the King, the equity thereof arising from an inherent principle of nature concording with the commandment of God. For were not tyranny in itself resistible, then a man might lawfully murder himself or give power to another to be his butcher. But . . . by the law of God in nature and in his word, both the one and the other is verily unlawful. * * * And upon this ground, in case we have to deal with a mighty and furious enemy, we are bound to the utmost of our power to arm and fortify ourselves for our just and necessary defence, and by force of arms to repel and beat back the invading, assaulting enemy, whether it be an enemy for the confusion and extirpation of our persons or for destruction and ruin of our laws, our freedoms and liberties. For bondage and slavery are not inferior to death, but rather to be more avoided, condemned and resisted than present destruction, by how much the more that kind of destruction is more languishing than present. * * *

And against the justice of this defensive principle no degrees, orders, or titles amongst men can or may prevail; . . . all laws, customs and manners . . . must be subject to give place and yield thereunto, and it unto none; for all degrees and titles magisterial . . . are all subservient to popular safety, . . . all instituted and ordained only for it. For without it can be no human society, cohabitation, or being; which above all earthly things must be maintained as the earthly sovereign good of mankind, let what or who will, perish or be confounded. For mankind must be preserved upon the earth, and to this preservation all the children of men have an equal title by birth, none to be deprived thereof but such as are enemies thereto. And this is the groundwork that God in nature hath laid for all commonwealths, for all governors and governments amongst men. * * * And from hence ariseth the true definition of treason. For indeed treason is no other than a destruction to human society, or actions . . . tending to the utter overthrow of public safety, cohabitation, and peace, or to the . . . thraldom of a people or country. * * *

Now in regard the body natural, for its own safety, may prune, amputate, and cut off the corrupt, putrefied members from the body representative, yea, utterly renounce . . . and dissolve all the members therein, upon total forfeiture of, and real apostasy from, the true representative capacity of Parliament; . . . it then inevitably followeth, that this natural body, by virtue of its instincted, inherent natural sovereignty, may . . . depute any . . . persons for their . . . deputies for the removal of those dead, corrupt, putrefied members from the seat and name of their formal authority, and for the suppression of injustice and tyranny, [and the] recovery of liberty and freedom. But it may be, it will be objected that, by reason of . . . confusion and disorder at such an exigency in the body natural, such a new deputation . . . cannot possibly be formally effected, and therefore those forementioned members, though never so corrupt and destructive, must be continued and subjected unto. I answer that the body natural must never be without a mean to save itself, and therefore, by the foresaid permanent unalterable rule of necessity and safety, any . . . persons (in discharge of their duty to God, themselves, and their country) may warrantably rise up in the cause and behalf of the people, to preserve them from imminent ruin and destruction, such . . . persons doing in that act no more than every man by nature is bound to perform. For as every man by the very bond of nature and neighbourhood, in case his neighbour’s house be on fire, is bound forthwith without any formal or verbal deputation of the owner, to endeavour the quenching thereof with his utmost power and ability; even so, and much more, may the same be saida of a whole country or kingdom; for necessity in that case of extremity justifies the act of safety and preservation in any, though without any formal election . . . from the people in general thereto. For such formalities must give place unto the main, being but circumstances in comparison thereof, and a kingdom or commonwealth must not be neglected and lost for a trifle. * * * It is not the part of the just and merciful freemen of England to behold the politic body of this commonwealth fallen amongst a crew of thieves, as Hollis, Stapleton,b&c., stripped of its precious raiment of freedom and safety, wounded and left grovelling in its blood, even half dead, and pass by on the other side like the merciless priest and the Levite. No, now is the time for the compassionate Samaritan to appear, to bind up its wounds, to pour in wine and oil, to engage in the defence and preservation of a distressed, miserable people; for greater love and mercy cannot be amongst men than to take compassion over the helpless and destitute.

Therefore this evangelical principle of mercy (being of the nearest communication to the nature of God) is a warrantable ground for the Solemn Engagement of the Army, like the compassionate Samaritan, to bind up the wounds of the almost murdered laws and liberties of England. * * * And in case they be enforced to a defensive resistance, in so doing they will be no resisters, despisers, condemners or oppugners of magistracy, authority or government. For tyranny is no magistracy. Therefore the resistance of tyrants is no resistance of magistrates, except it be of such [as are] so nominally, but really and essentially monsters and pests of humanity. * * *

Now magistracy in its nature, institution, and administration, is for such a kind of safety, national and general, as wherein every . . . particular person, of what sort . . . soever, may fully and freely enjoy his liberty, peace, and tranquillity, civil and human. It is an ordinance amongst men, and for men, that all men may have a human subsistence and safety, to live as men amongst men, none to be excepted from this human subsistence but the unnatural and the inhuman. It is not for this opinion or that faction, this sect or that sort, but equally and alike indifferent for all men that are not degenerated from humanity and human civility in their living and neighbourhood. And therefore the destroyers and subverters of human society, safety, cohabitation, and being, are to be corrected, expulsed, or cut off for preservation of safety and prevention of ruin, both public and private. And thus is magistracy for the praise of them that do well, and for the punishment of those that do evil.

And as for matters of conscience or opinion about religion or worship, with which human society, cohabitation, and safety may freely subsist and stand together—that doth not fall under the power of the magisterial sword, either for introduction and settlement, or for extirpation and subversion. For the limits of magistracy extend no further than humanity or human subsistence, not to spirituality or spiritual being; and no further than its own nature extends, no further may its compulsive power be stretched. And this is the true distinction, for matter of subjection, betwixt God and Caesar; and what is God’s we must in the first place give unto God, and what is Caesar’s, in the second place, freely and readily we must give unto Caesar. The inward man is God’s prerogative; the outward man is man’s prerogative. God is the immediate Lord over the inward, and mediately over the outward; but man is only lord over the outward, and though immediate thereover, yet but by deputation or commission from him who is thus both over the one and the other. And God, who only knoweth the heart and searcheth the reins, hath reserved the gubernation thereof to himself as his own prerogative. And the only means which he useth in this kind of government, that by his ministers must be dispensed, is only by the Word, not by the sword. For the sword pierceth but the flesh; it toucheth but the outward man; it cannot touch the inward. Therefore where by the Word (to wit, by doctrine or argumentation, the proper means to work upon the intellectuals and affections) a conversion is not, nor cannot be, obtained, there no human compulsive power or force is to be used, either for plantation or extirpation.

And therefore it was that Christ refused the sword for the promulgation and settlement of his doctrine; for it was spiritual, and such were the weapons he used for that warfare of his. And therefore in imitation of his pattern, and [the] practice of the Apostles, we must rather suffer for matters of faith than be enforced or enforce thereunto. But it does not therefore follow that by defensive force we may not maintain our natural human being and subsistence upon earth; for the contrary doctrine would tend to the utter confusion of humanity, the depopulation of nations, kingdoms, and countries. Though for the spiritual warfare we are confined to spiritual weapons, yet for this human, natural warfare human and natural weapons may and are to be used, each according to its kind. So that neither the one nor the other in their distinctive propriety and administration is destructive or contradictory one to another, but both may properly meet and stand together in one individual without the least encroachment or prejudice to each other’s propriety. And if the magistrate should so far extend his compulsive force, under pretence of religion and conscience, to the destruction of our human subsistence or being, we may, upon the points of oura human subsistence, lawfully make our defensive resistance, for in itself it is defendable against all opposition or destruction, from whence or from whomsoever it shall be. And of this defensive resistance none in duty can be excused but in case of an utter deprivationb of power. . . .

Therefore, these premises . . . deliberately weighed, I appeal to all moderate and rational commoners to judge impartially about this matter, whether now without all check or scruple of conscience, in maintenance and pursuance of this defensive principle of resistance, we may not, every man of us, in duty to our own natures and to our native country in general, to the utmost of our lives and fortunes, be assistant and united to this faithful Army that now is, or to whomsoever shall rise up and appear in the defensive cause of this kingdom, for the recovery of our natural human rights and freedoms, that all orders, sorts, and societies of the natives of this land may freely and fully enjoy a joint and mutual neighbourhood, cohabitation, and human subsistence, one as well as another, doing unto all men as we would be done unto, it being against the radical law of nature and reason that any man should be deprived of a human subsistence, that is not an enemy thereto. He that is fit for neighbourhood, cohabitation, human society and fellowship, and will freely comply and submit thereunto, ought not to be abridged of the same in the least measure; he that shall deny, oppose and resist this, the same is an enemy to mankind and is guilty of the highest kind of treason that is. * * *

I shall therefore presume, most excellent General, honourable officers, faithful Agitators,a and gentleman soldiers, . . ., to make my humble address and appeal unto this Army as to the natural head of the body natural of the people at this present. * * *

Be therefore quick and active and be not demurred, protracted and delayed, by the old, beaten, subtle foxes of Westminster, into your own and our destruction. Can you imagine that they intend you any good? What have they done, I pray you, as hitherto, but fobbed, befooled, and deluded you . . ., that they might gather time and ground? * * *

Therefore, right worthy and faithful Agitators, be advised to preserve that power and trust, reposed in and conferred upon you by the body of the Army, entire and absolute. And trust no man, whether officer or soldier, how religious soever appearing, further than he acts apparently for the good of the Army and kingdom. Mark them which would and do bring you into delays and demurs; let their pretences be what they will be, their counsels are destructive. I am afraid that your officers areb too forward to interpose all delays. Therefore, as I dare not totally condemn them, but honour them so far as they have dealt honourably in your Engagement, I only advise you to be cautious and wary, and keep up your betrusted power and authority, and let nothing be acted . . . or concluded without your consent and privity. For by that means the cause in a clandestine, underhand manner may be given away. And what do you know but there is a design amongst you, to take the power of all agitation from the hand of the private soldier? * * * Sure I cannot judge that you will altogether be befooled of your power. If you do, I am sure we shall all be befooled with you. If that once be accomplished, then farewell our hopes in the Army. For I am confident that it must be the poor, the simple and mean things of this earth, that must confound the mighty and the strong. Therefore your officers that seek not themselves, and have no sinister ends nor designs in their breasts, will be contented that your betrusted power be preserved entire in your hands till the end of your work be accomplished, and rather than they will any ways seem to infringe it, [they will] be continued in their addition to your agitation only for advice and consultation, not for control and conclusion, not desiring a negative voice any more in your agitation than they and you would allow the King in the great council of Parliament; that so the sense and mind of the Army may not be prevented or denied. * * *

Certain Articles for the Good of the Commonwealth, Presented to the consideration of his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax, and to the Officers and Soldiers under his command.a * * *

1. That for the future the election and expulsion of Parliament-members may be so settled in the electors, that none may be hindered . . . from serving his country under any colour or pretence whatsoever, as for refusing the Covenant or otherwise, without order first, [and] assent or concurrence of their country.

2. That for the better security of the interest and power of the people, all titles by prerogative, privilege, patent, succession, peerage, birth, or otherwise, to sit and act in the assembly of Parliament, contrary to and without the free choice and election of the people, be utterly abrogated. . . .

3. That the authority of Parliament may be preserved and secured for the future from the obstructions and prejudice of a negative voice in any person or persons whatsoever.

4. That every county may have liberty to choose some certain number amongst themselves, to inquire and present to the Parliament what be the just laws, customs and privileges of each county. And that those county commissioners be bound to receive all . . . impeachments, by any person . . . of the respective counties, against any of their own respective knights or burgesses in Parliament, for falsifying and betraying . . . their country’s trust, or anywise endeavouring the introduction of an arbitrary power in this land. * * *

[5] That all courts which are not established by the just old law of the land, and all illegal offices and officers belonging to the same, and all other vexatious and unnecessary courts, be abolished by Act of Parliament. And that provision be made, that for time to come no courts or officers whatsoever may be obtruded upon the free commoners of England, eitner by royal grant, patent, Act of Parliament, or otherwise, contrary to the old law of the land.

[6] That according to the old law and custom of the land, long before and some time after the Conquest, there may be courts of judicature for the speedy trial and determination of all causes, whether criminal or civil, erected and established in every hundred, for the ease and benefit of the subject, to be holden according to the old custom once or twice every month, for the ending of all causes criminal and civil whatsoever, which shall happen in the respective hundreds. * * *

[7] That all such officers as, by the ancient and common laws of this nation, are eligible,b and to be chosen by the free Commons, as mayors, sheriffs, justices of peace, &c., may be left to the free election of the people in their respective places, and not otherwise to be chosen. * * *

[8] That the extortions and oppressive fees of gaolers may be redressed and eased, and that strict and severe provision be made against all gaolers and their deputies, to restrain them for the future from the like extortions and cruelties, now frequent in all gaols of the land. And that there may be a strict and severe inquisition after the blood of such prisoners as have been murdered and starved by the cruelties of gaolers, that so the persons guilty thereof may have justice executed upon them.

[9] That no prisoners be put in irons, or to other pain, before conviction and condemnation.

[10] That there may be cleanly and wholesome provision made in all the gaols of England, for the lodging of prisoners at the charge and cost of the state, and that no fees for chamber-rent, for entering or deliverance, or anything in lieu thereof, be exacted or demanded, under a severe penalty.

[11] That neither the High Court of Parliament nor any other inferior court or magistrate whatsoever may commit any freeman of England to prison upon any pretended contempts, as is frequent in these days, but only for transgression and breach of the known laws of the land. * * *

[14] That all laws of the land (locked up from common capacities in the Latin or French tongues) may be translated into the English tongue. And that all records, orders, processes, writs, and other proceedings whatsoever, may be all entered and issued forth in the English tongue, and that in the most plain and common character used in the land, . . . that so the meanest English commoner that can but read written hand in his own tongue, may fully understand his own proceedings in the law.

[15] That no free commoner of England be enforced,a either by the High Court of Parliament or by any subordinate court, . . . to make oath or to answer to any interrogatories concerning himself in any criminal case concerning his life, liberty, goods, or freehold. * * *

[17] That neither membership in Parliament, office nor function whatsoever in the magistracy of the land, may be any protection or demur in any wise against the due process or course of the ancient and common laws of this realm, but that in all cases of treason, murder, burglary, and felony, in all actions, suits, and civil proceedings whatsoever, the greatest man . . . in the realm may be made equally liable at all times and seasons . . . to the trial, sentence and execution of the law, with the meanest commoner.

[18] That all wicked persons that shall bear false witness against any freeman of England . . . be adjudged and condemned of their lives, liberties, and freeholds, according to that which they would have done unto their neighbours.

[19] That the cruel practice of imprisoning debtors may be provided against, and that due rights and properties may be recovered upon more merciful terms than by way of imprisonment.

[20] That according to the Law of God, and the old law of the land, matters of theft may not be punished with death, and that such malefactors may make satisfaction either by just restitution to the party wronged or by an answerable servitude, and that such offenders upon the second conviction (lawfully had) be brand-marked visibly in the most eminent part of their face, and confined to a singular habit. And upon the third lawful conviction, to be put to perpetual servitude for the benefit of the state, saving to the party wronged a competent deduction thereout for restitution according to the theft. And that upon all occasions of war, such bondmen may be taken for the military service, and the impressing of freemen on that behalf in some measure spared.

[21] That every English native who hath goods, wares, and merchandise, may have freedom to transport the same to any place beyond the seas, and there to convert them to his own profit, it being his true and proper inheritance [so] to do . . .; and therefore to thata end, [that] the old trade-engrossing Company of Merchants may be dissolved, and the like for the future prevented.

[22] That the grievous oppressions by tithes and forced maintenance for the ministry be removed, and that the more easy and evangelical practice of contribution be granted and confirmed, for the benefit of the subject, and his freedom therein, for prevention of the lordliness in, and the commotions, oppressions, and tyrannies that might happen by, the clergy.

[23] That all ancient donations for the maintenance and continuance of free schools, which are . . . converted to any private use, and all such free schools which are destroyed . . ., may be restored and erected again, and that all parts or counties, . . . destitute of free schools for the due nurture and education of children, may have a competent number of such schools founded, erected, and endowed at the public charges of those respective counties and places so destitute, that few or none of the freemen of England may for the future be ignorant of reading and writing.

[24] That all ancient charitable donations towards the constant relief of the poor . . . and all hospitals that are . . . vitiated from their primitive constitution and end, or . . . deprived of any of their franchise, profits or emoluments, may be restored . . . and safely preserved to the relief and maintenance of poor orphans, widows, aged and impotent persons, &c. And that there be a convenient number of hospitals . . . erected and constituted in all the counties of England and Wales, at the public charge of the respective counties, for the good education and nurture of poor fatherless or helpless children, maintenance and relief of poor widows, aged, sick, and lame persons. And to that end, that all the glebe-lands in the kingdom may be converted to the maintenance and use of those charitable houses.

[25] That all the grounds which anciently lay in common for the poor, and are now . . . enclosed . . . , may forthwith, in whose hands soever they are, be . . . laid open again to the free and common use and benefit of the poor.

[26] That strong provision be made that neither the Parliament nor any inferior court . . . may in any wise let . . . any person or persons from contriving, promoting, or presenting any petition . . . concerning their grievances [and] liberties, to the High Court of Parliament.

Parliament Once More

From the Levellers’ Petition to the House of Commons,1 11th September 1648.a

The truth is (and we see we must either now speak [or] for ever be silent), we have long expected things of another nature from you, and such as, we are confident, would have given satisfaction to all serious people of all parties:

1. That you would have made good the supreme [authority] of the people in this honourable House from all pretences of negative voices, either in King or Lords.

2. That you would have made laws for election of Representatives yearly and of course, without writ or summons.

3. That you would have set express times for their meeting, continuance, and dissolution: as not to exceed forty or fifty days at the most, and to have fixed an expressed time for the ending of this present Parliament.

4. That you would have exempted matters of religion and God from the compulsive and restrictive power of any authority upon earth, and reserved to the supreme authority an uncompulsive power only of appointing a way for the public worship,a whereby abundance of misery, persecution, and heart-burning would for ever be avoided.

5. That you would have disclaimed in yourselves, and all future Representatives, a power of pressing and forcing any sort of men to serve in wars, there being nothing more opposite to freedom, nor more unreasonable in an authority empowered for raising moneys. (In all [due] occasions for war,b and [with] a just cause, assistants need not be doubted; the other way serving rather to maintain injustice and corrupt parties.)

6. That you would have made both kings, queens, princes, dukes, earls, lords, and all persons, alike liable to every law of the land, made or to be made, that so all persons, even the highest, might fear and stand in awe [of them], and neither violate the public peace nor [the] private right of person or estate (as hath been frequent) without being liable to accompt as other men.

7. That you would have freed all commoners from the jurisdiction of the Lords in all cases; and to have taken care that all trials should be only of twelve sworn men, and no conviction but upon two or more sufficient, known witnesses.

8. That you would have freed all men from being examined against themselves, and from being questioned or punished for doing of that against which no law hath been provided.

9. That you would have abbreviated the proceedings in law, mitigated and made certain the charge thereof in all particulars.

10. That you would have freed all trade and merchandizing from all monopolizing and engrossing by companies or otherwise.

11. That you would have abolished excise, and all kinds of taxes except subsidies, the old and only just way of England.

12. That you would have laid open all late enclosures of fens, and other commons, or have enclosed them only or chiefly to the benefit of the poor.

13. That you would have considered the many thousands that are ruined by perpetual imprisonment for debt, and provided to their enlargement.

14. That you would have ordered some effectual course to keep people from begging and beggary in so fruitful a nation as, through God’s blessing, this is.

15. That you would have proportioned punishments more equal to offences, that so men’s lives and estates might not be forfeited upon trivial and slight occasions.

16. That you would have removed the tedious burden of tithes, satisfying all impropriators, and providing a more equal way of maintenance for the public ministers.

17. That you would have raised a stock of money out of those many confiscated estates you have had, for payment of those who contributed voluntarily above their abilities, before you had provided for those that disbursed out of their superfluities.

18. That you would have bound yourselves and all future Parliaments from abolishing propriety, levelling men’s estates, or making all things common.

19. That you would have declared what the duty or bussinessa of the kingly office is, and what not; and ascertained the revenue, past increase or diminution, that so there might never be more quarrels about the same.

20. That you would have rectified the election of public officers for the City of London, of every particular company therein, restoring the commonalty thereof to their just rights, most unjustly withheld from them to the producing and maintaining of corrupt interest[s], opposite to common freedom, and exceedingly prejudicial to the trade and manufactures of this nation.

21. That you would have made full and ample reparations to all persons that had been oppressed by sentences in High Commission, Starb Chamber, and Council-board, or by any kind of monopolizers or projectors, and that out of the estates of those that were authors, actors, or promoters of so intolerable mischiefs, and that without much attendance.

22. That you would have abolished all committees, and have conveyed all businesses into the true method of the usual trials of the commonwealth.

23. That you would not have followed the example of former tyrannous and superstitious Parliaments in making orders, ordinances or laws, or in appointing punishments, concerning opinions or things supernatural, styling some blasphemies, others heresies, whenas you know yourselves easily mistaken and that divine truths need no human helps to support them; such proceedings having been generally invented to divide the people amongst themselves, and to affright men from that liberty of discourse by which corruption and tyranny would be soon discovered.

24. That you would have declared what the business of the Lords [w]as, and ascertain[ed] their condition, not derogating from the liberties of other men, that so there might be an end of striving about the same.

25. That you would have done justice upon the capital authors and promoters of the former or late wars, many of them being under your power; considering that mercy to the wicked is cruelty to the innocent, and that all your lenity doth but make them the more insolent and presumptuous.

26. That you would have provided constant pay for the Army, now under the command of the Lord Gen[eral] Fairfax, and given rules to all judges, and all other public officers throughout the land, for their indemnity, and for the saving harmless all that have anyways assisted you, of that have said or done anything against the King, Queen, or any of his party since the beginning of this Parliament; without which any of his party are in a better condition than those who have served you, nothing being more frequent with them than their reviling of you and your friends; [and] the things and worthy acts which have been done and achieved by this Army and their adherents (however ungratefully suffered to be scandalized as sectaries and men of corrupt judgments) in defence of the just authority of this honourable House and of the common liberties of the nation, and in opposition to all kinds of tyranny and oppression, being so far from meriting an odious Act of Oblivion, that they rather deserve a most honourable Act of Perpetual Remembrance, to be as a pattern of public virtue, fidelity and resolution, to all posterity.

27. That you would have laid to heart all the abundance of innocent blood that hath been spilt, and the infinite spoil and havoc that hath been made of peaceable, harmless people, by express commissions from the King; and seriously to have considered whether the justice of God be likely to be satisfied, or his yet continuing wrath appeased, by an Act of Oblivion.

These, and the like, we have long time hoped you would have minded, and [would thereby] have made such an establishment for the general peace, and contentful satisfaction of all sorts of people, as should have been to the happiness of all future generations. And which we most earnestly desire you would set yourselves speedily to effect; whereby the almost dying honour of this most honourable House would be again revived, and the hearts of your petitioners, and all other well-affected people, be afresh renewed unto you, [and] the freedom of the nation (now in perpetual hazard) would be firmly established. For which you would once more be so strengthened with the love of the people, that you should not need to cast your eyes any other ways (under God) for your security. But if all this availeth nothing, God be our guide; for man showeth us not a way for our preservation. * * *

Agreements of the People the history of the second agreement1

From John Lilburne, Legal Fundamental Liberties (1649)a

And being come to London, myself and some other of my friends, by two messengers . . . , sent a message down2 to him [Cromwell] to Pontefract,b to be delivered to himself, and to debate it with him and bring his express answer back again speedily. The effect of which message was: that to our knowledge God had caused him to understand the principles of a just government under which the glory of God may shine forth by an equal distribution unto all men; that the obtaining of this was the sole intended end of the war; and that the war cannot be justified upon any other account than the defence of the people’s right unto that just government and their freedom under it.

His answer to which message, by Mr. Hunt, was principally directed to the Independents. Some of whom appointed a meeting at the Nag’s Head Tavern by Blackwell Hall . . . , and invited Mr. Wildman and myself, &c. thither. Whither we went accordingly, and . . . met with Colonel Tichborne,c Col. John White, Dr. Parker, Mr. Taylor, John Price, and divers others. Where we had a large debate of things, and where the just ends of the war were as exactly laid open by Mr. Wildman as ever I heard in my life. But towards the conclusion they plainly told us the chief things first to be done by the Army was first to cut off the King’s head, &c., and force and thoroughly purge, if not dissolve, the Parliament. All of which we were all against, and pressed to know the bottom of their centre and in what they would absolutely rest for a future settlement. And I plainly told them in these words or to this effect: It’s true, I look upon the King as an evil man in his actions, and divers of his party as bad, but the Army had cozened us the last year and fallen from all their promises and declarations, and therefore could not rationally any more be trusted by us, without good cautions and security. In which regard, although we should judge the King as arrant a tyrant as they supposed him, or could imagine him to be, and the Parliament as bad as they could make them; yet, there being no other balancing power in the kingdom against the Army but the King and Parliament, it was our interest to keep up one tyrant to balance another, till we certainly knew what that tyrant that pretended fairest would give us as our freedoms; that so we might have something to rest upon and not suffer the Army (so much as in us lay) to devolve all the government of the kingdom into their wills and swords (which were two things we, nor no rational man, could like), and leave no persons nor power to be a counter-balance against them. And if we should do this, our slavery for [the] future (I told them) might probably be greater than ever it was in the King’s time, and so our last error would be greater than our first. And therefore I pressed very hard for an Agreement amongst the people first, utterly disclaiming the thoughts of the other till this was done. And this (I told them) was not only my opinion, but I believe[d] it to be the unanimous opinion of all my friends with whom I most constantly conversed.

At which the gentlemen Independents were some of them most desperately choleric. But, my opinion being backed with the speeches of some others of my friends, we came calmly to choose out four and four of a side to debate and conclude of some heads towards the accomplishment of an Agreement of the People, and (as I remember) their four were Colonel Tichborne, Col. White, Dr. Parker, and Jo[hn] Price; and our four were Mr. William Walwyn, Lieut.-Col. Wetton, Mr. John Wildman, and myself. But John Price sent some of the company to tell us (after we were parted and some of us drinking a cup of wine below), he would not make one if Mr. Walwyn was one, for he had a prejudice against him. Unto which I replied, Mr. Walwyn had more honesty and integrity in his little finger than John Price had in all his body, and therefore no meeting for me, seeing John Price was so base, unless Mr. Walwyn was one though we had but two of a side! But the business being much debated and expostulated, Mr. Walwyn and John Price both (for peace’ sake) were at present laid aside; and according to appointment (as I remember) all the other six met the fifteenth of November 1648, being Wednesday, at the aforementioned Nag’s Head, and there after some debate unanimously agreed in these words, viz.: That in our conceptions the only way of settlement is:

1. That some persons be chosen by the Army to represent the whole body and that the well-affected in every county (if it may be) choose some persons to represent them, and those to meet at the headquarters.

2. That those persons ought not to exercise any legislative power, but only to draw up the foundations of a just government, and to propound them to the well-affected people in every county, to be agreed to. Which agreement ought to be above law, and therefore the bounds, limits, and extent of the people’s legislative deputies in parliament, contained in the Agreement, [ought] to be drawn up into a formal contract to be mutually signed by the well-affected people and their said deputies upon the days of their election respectively.

3. To prevent present confusion, the Parliament (if it be possible) may not be by force immediately dissolved, but that the day of its dissolution be inserted in that Agreement, by virtue whereof it shall be dissolved.

4. That this way of settlement (if it may be) should be mentioned in the Army’s first Remonstrance.

5. That the matter of the Petition of September 111 be the matter to be settled.

Which Agreement of ours (as I remember) was immediately sent away to the headquarters at St. Albans by Mr. Highlanda of Southwark, where (as it was afterwards told us) it was very well accepted and approved of by the great ones there. Whose high and mighty declaration2 (drawn by Ireton at Windsor when he pretended to lay down his commission) against the King, coming to our view, we made divers objections against many passages in it, but especially at divers lashes that tacitly at the beginning of it hinted at us, which, we told some of their friends, could not be put in with a spirit of peace towards us or intention of good to the nation in those good things we desired and propounded for it. But it was with many fair expressions salved up by them. Upon which we judged it requisite for some of us to go to Windsor to speak with Mr. Ireton, the steersman himself, and accordingly (as I remember) Lieut.-Col. Wetton, Mr. Petty, Mr. Wildman, and myself met there, and, having drawn up our thoughts in writing, we communicated them to Col. Tichborne, Col. White, Mr. Moyer, and divers others of the Independent Party. Who went with us to the Governor’s house; where we met with Mr. Peters, the grand journey- or hackney-man of the Army, and after we had acquainted him with our minds, we delivered him a copy of our paper containing distinctly the heads of what we desired, and entreated him to deliver them to Commissary Ireton, with whom we desired to discourse about them. Who sent us word, at such an hour he would come to our inn at the Garter, to speak with us about them. And accordingly he did, accompanied with a whole train of officers. And a large and sharp discourse we had, our principal difference lying ina his desire in the too strict restraining liberty of conscience and in keeping a power in the Parliament to punish where no visible law is transgressed, the unreasonableness of which was much spoken against by divers of the principal officers with him, but especially by Col. Harrison, who was then extreme fair and gilded. And so little satisfaction had we at that meeting from Ireton (the Army’s Alpha and Omega) that we despaired of any good from them and were in a manner resolved to come away in haste to London and acquaint our friends with our conceptions, and so improve our interests, forcibly, as much as we could, to oppose their intended designs. But Colonel Harrison coming to us again at ten o’clock according to our desire, we had a private and large discourse with him, and fully and effectually acquainted him with the most desperate mischievousness of their attempting to do these things without giving some good security to the nation for the future settlement of their liberties and freedoms, especially in frequent, free, and successive Representatives, according to their many promises, oaths, covenants and declarations—or else as soon as they had performed their intentions to destroy the King, which we fully understood they were absolutely resolved to do (yea, as they told us, though they did it by martial law), and also totally to root up the Parliament and invite so many members to come to them as would join with them to manage businesses till a new and equal Representative could by an agreement be settled, which, the chiefest of them protested before God, was the ultimate and chiefest of their designs and desires: I say, we pressed hard for security before they attempted these things in the least, lest when they were done we should be solely left to their wills and swords, by which, we told them, they might rule over us arbitrarily without declared laws as a conquered people and so deal with us as the poor slavish peasants in France are dealt with, who enjoy nothing that they can call their own. And besides we plainly told him: we would not trust their bare words in general only, for they had broke their promise once already both with us and the kingdom, and he that would break once would make no conscience of breaking twice if it served for his ends, and therefore they must come to some absolute particular compact with us, or else, some of us told him, we would post away to London and stir up our interest against them—yea, and spend our bloods to oppose them. To which he replied to this effect: it was true,a what we said, for he must ingenuously confess they had once broken with us and the kingdom, and therefore acknowledged it was dangerous trusting them upon generals again. But, saith he, we cannot stay so long from going to London with the Army as to perfect an Agreement, and without our speedy going we are all unavoidably destroyed. For (saith he) we fully understand that the treaty betwixt the King and Parliament is almost concluded upon, at the conclusion of which we shall be commanded by King and Parliament to disband. The which if we do, we are unavoidably destroyed for what we have done already, and if we do not disband they will by Act of Parliament proclaim us traitors and declare us to be the only hinderers of settling peace in the nation. And then (saith he) we shall never be able to fight with both the interest of King and Parliament, so that you will be destroyed as well as we. For we certainly understand that Major-General Browne, &c., are underhand preparing an army against us. And therefore I profess—I confess I know not well what to say to your reasons, they are so strong, but—our necessities are so great that we must speedily go or perish; and to go without giving you some content, is hazardable too.

Well, sir, said we, we have as much cause to distrust the Parliament-men as we have to distrust you; for we know what and how many large promises they have made to the kingdom and how little they have performed. And we also know what a temptation honour, power, and profit are even to those spirits that were pretty ingenuous and honest before. And when you have done your work and got, as you pretend, forty or fifty of the honestest members of the House to you, alas (said we), it will be a mock-power. Yet they may find such sweetness and delight in their pretended power that they may fly to your swords for their protection and bid us go shake our ears for our Agreement and go look [for] it where we can catch it. And therefore we will trust generals no more to your forty or fifty members of Parliament than to you. For it’s possible, if we leave the Agreement to their framing, they may frame us such a one as will do us no good, but rather make us slaves by our own consents if signed by us. And therefore we pressed him that we might agree upon a final and absolute judge of the matter and method of the Agreement, that so we might not spend months and years in dispute about it.

And therefore we would propound this unto him: that if their honest friends in the Parliament, as they called them, would choose four from amongst themselves, and the Army four from amongst themselves, and the Independents four from amongst themselves, we that were nicknamed Levellers would choose four from among ourselves; and these sixteen should draw up the Agreement finally without any more appeal to any other. And we for our parts, so far as all our interest in England extended, would be willing to acquiesce in, and submit to, the determinations of them, [the] sixteen, or the major part of them. And we would be willing the Presbyterian Party should be invited and desired to choose four more to be of equal authority with the other sixteen, provided they did it by the first day we should appoint to meet upon. Which proposition he approved of extraordinary well, and said, it was as just, as rational, and as equitable, as possibly could be, and said he doubted not but all interests would centre in it, and engaged to acquaint them with it. And so we parted very glad that we were likely to come to some fixed agreement for the future enjoyment of our dear-bought and hard-purchased freedoms.

And the next morning we went to the gentlemen Independents . . ., and we acquainted them with it, who liked it very well; and with whom we fixed a night for several distinct meetings in London, to choose our respective trustees for this work, and also appointed a day to meet at Windsor again about it. * * * So we went . . . to Commissary-General Ireton’s chamber to have his concurrence, which of all sides was taken for the concurrence of the whole Army—or at least for the powerful and governing part of it, he being in a manner both their eyes and ears. So . . . he . . . sent us out word by Colonel Harrison (as he averred to us) that he did absolutely and heartily agree to the foresaid proposition, which to avoid mistakes was again repeated. So we seemed joyful men of all sides, and appointed a day speedily to meet at Windsor about it, Master Holland again and again engaging for four Parliament-men, and Colonel Harrison, with Commissary Ireton, for four of the Army, as we Londoners had done for each of our tribe. And so to horse we went, and I overtook upon the road the whole gang of Independents, with whom I discoursed again, and acquainted them all fully with the absoluteness of our agreement. Which they acquainted their friends with in London; who chose Colonel Tichborne, Colonel John White, Master Daniel Taylor, and Master Price the scrivener. And for our party there was, by unanimous consent of the agents from our friends in and about London, at a verya large meeting, chosen Master William Walwyn, Master Maximilian Petty, Master John Wildman, and myself. And for the honest men of the Parliament, as they were called, they had several meetings at the Bell in Kings Street, and at Somerset House, where (as I was informed) they chose Colonel Henry Marten,a Colonel Alexander Rigby, Master Thomas Chaloner,b and Master Scot, with one or two more to supply the places of those of them that should be absent at any time about their occasions. So when we came to Windsor, the Army men had chosen Commissary-General Ireton, Sir William Constable, and (as I remember) Colonel Tomlinson, Colonel Baxter, Lieutenant-Colonel Kelsey, and Captain Parker, some two of the which last four should always make up the number. So we had a meeting in their Council Chamber at the Castle; where we were all of all sides present but only the Parliament-men, for whom only Colonel Marten appeared. And after a large discourse about the foundations of our Agreement we departed to our lodging. Where Colonel Marten and we four nicknamed Levellers locked ourselves up and went in good earnest to the consideration of our Agreement. But much was not done in it there because of their haste to London, to force and break up the Parliament—which journey at all was very much opposed by Mr. Walwyn and many reasons he gave against their march to London at all—the absolute dissolution of which their friends in the House would no ways admit of, although Ireton, Harrison, &c., commonly styled it then a parliament that had forfeited its trust, a mock-parliament, and [said] that if they did not totally dissolve it, but purge it, it would be but a mock-parliament and a mock-power however. For where have we, say they, either law, warrant or commission to purge it? Or can anything justify us in the doing it but the height of necessity to save the kingdom from a new war that they, with the conjunction with the King, will presently vote and declare for; and to procure a new and free Representative, and so successive and frequent free Representatives, which this present Parliament will never suffer, and without which the freedoms of the nation are lost and gone? And the doing of which can only justify before God and man our present and former extraordinary actings with and against legal authority, and so [escape rendering] all our fighting fruitless. And this was their open and common discourse, with more of the like nature, and [especially] to those that objected against their total dissolving or breaking the House and the illegality of their intended and declared trying of the King—which also was opposed by us till a new and unquestionable Representative was sitting. * * *

But to return to our acting to complete the Agreement. All parties chosen of all sides constantly met at Whitehall after the Army came to town, saving the Parliament-men failed—only Master Marten was most commonly there. And a long and tedious tug we had with Commissary-General Ireton only, yea sometimes whole nights together, principally about liberty of conscience and the Parliament’s punishing where no law provides. And very angry and lordly in his debates many times he was. But to some kind of an expedient in the first for peace’ sake we condescendeda to please him, and so came amongst the major part of the sixteen commissioners, according to our original agreement, to an absolute and final conclusion, and thinking all had been done as to any more debate upon it, and that it should without any more ado be promoted for subscriptions, first at the Council of War, and so in the regiments, and so all over the nation. But alas, poor fools! we were merely cheated and cozened (it being the principal unhappiness of some of us, as to the flesh, to have our eyes wide open to see things long before most honest men come to have their eyes open, and this is that which turns to our smart and reproach), and that which we commissioners feared at the first, viz., that no tie, promises, nor engagements were strong enough to [bind] the grand jugglers and leaders of the Army, was now made clearly manifest. For when it came to the Council1 there came the General, Cromwell, and the whole gang of creature-colonels and other officers, and spent many days in taking it all in pieces, and there Ireton himself showed himself an absolute king, if not an emperor, against whose will no man must dispute. And then shuttlecock Roe, their scout, Okey, and Major Barton (where Sir Hardress Waller sat president) begun in their open council to quarrel with us by giving some of us base and unworthy language; which procured them from me a sharp retortment of their own baseness and unworthiness into their teeth, and a challenge from myself into the field besides, seeing they were like to fight with us in the room in their own garrison. Which, when Sir Hardress in my ear reproved me for it, I justified it, and gave it him again for suffering us to be so affronted.2 And within a little time after, I took my leave of them for a pack of dissembling, juggling knaves amongst whom in consultation ever thereafter I should scorn to come (as I told some of them), for there was neither faith, truth, nor common honesty amongst them. And so away I went to those that chose and trusted me and gave publicly and effectually (at a set meeting appointed on purpose) to divers of them an exact account how they had dealt with us and cozened and deceived us, and so absolutely discharged myself for meddling or making any more with so perfidious a generation of men as the great ones of the Army were, but especially the cunningest of Machiavelians, Commissary Henry Ireton. And having an exact copy of what the greatest part of the foresaid sixteen had agreed upon, I only mended a clause in the first reserve about religion to the sense of us all but Ireton, and put an epistle to it of the 151 of December 1648, and printed it of my own accord,2 and the next day it came abroad. About which Mr. Price the scrivener and myself had a good sharp bout at Colonel Tichborne’s house within two or three days after. Where I avowed the publishing of it, and also putting my epistle to it of my own head and accord. And after that I came no more amongst them, but with other of my friends prepared a complaint against their dealing with us and a kind of protest against their proceedings; which with my own hand I presented to the General’s own hands at the Mews, the 28 of December 1648; . . . and which was immediately printed by Ja. and Jo. Moxon, for William Larner3 . . . . Within two or three days of the delivery of which I went towards my journey to Newcastle. . . .

And yet in . . . a Declaration . . . appointed by His Excellency and his Council of War to be . . . published, May 22, 1649, . . . and first printed at Oxford, and then reprinted at London, May 23, 1649, I find these very words, viz.:

‘The grounds and manner of the proceedings of these men that have so much pretended for the liberty of the people, have been as followeth.

‘There was a paper styled the Agreement of the People framed by certain select persons and debated at a general council of officers of the Army, to be tendered to the Parliament, and to be by them commended over to the people of the nation, it being hoped that such an expedient, if assented unto at least by the honest part of the people that had appeared for this common cause to which God hath so witnessed, it would have tended much to settlement and the composing of our differences—at least have fixed honest men to such grounds of certainty as might have kept them firm and entire in opposing the common enemy, and [in] stand[ing] united to public interest.

‘The General Council of the Army, and the other sorts of men going then under the name of Levellers (so baptized by yourselves at Putney), who by their last actings have made good the same which we then judged but an imputation, had, as now it appears, different ends and aims both in the matter and manner of their proceedings. That which was intended by those men was to have somewhat tendered as a test and coercion upon the people and all sorts of men and authorities in the land. That which these, to wit, the Council of the Army, aimed at was to make an humble representation of such things as were then likely to give satisfaction and unite, and might be remitted to men’s judgments to be owned or disowned as men were satisfied in their consciences, and as it should please God to let men see reason for their so doing; that so it might not be only called an Agreement, but through the freedom of it be one indeed, and receive its stamp of approbation from the Parliament, to whom it was humbly submitted.

‘Hereupon those other men took so much dissatisfaction that they forthwith printed and spread abroad their paper, which was different from that of the Army, using all possible means to make the same to pass—but with how little effect is very well known. And finding by the Army’s application to the Parliament that they were likely, according to their duty, to stand by and own them as the supreme authority of the nation, they have by all means essayed to vilipend that authority, presenting them to the people, in printed libels and otherwise, as worse tyrants than any who were before them.’

In which passage of the General’s and his Council I shall desire to observe these things . . .:

First, that they give a false and untrue narrative of the original occasion of that Agreement, to which by our importunate importunity they were necessitated, and drawn unto that little they did in it as a bear to the stake, as is truly by me before declared; and which, as the sequel shows, they undertook merely to quiet and please us (like children with rattles) till they had done their main work (viz., either in annihilating or purging the House, to make it fit for their purpose, and in destroying the King, unto both which they never had our consents in the least), that so they might have no opposition from us, but that we might be lulled asleep in a fool’s paradise with thoughts of their honest intentions till all was over, and then totally lay it aside, as they have done, as being then able to do what they pleased whether we would or no. For if they ever had intended an Agreement, why do they let their own lie dormant in the pretended Parliament ever since they presented it, seeing it is obvious to every knowing English eye that from the day they presented it, to this hour, they have had as much power over their own Parliament now sitting as any schoolmaster in England ever had over his boys? But to them it was presented (who scarce ought to meddle with it) on purpose that there, without any more stir about it, it might be lodged for ever. For, alas, an Agreement of the People is not proper to come from the Parliament, because it comes from thence rather with a command than anything else; for that it’s we, and not they, that really and in good earnest say it ought not to do, but to be voluntary. Besides, that which is done by one parliament, as a parliament, may be undone by the next parliament, but an Agreement of the People, begun and ended amongst the people, can never come justly within the Parliament’s cognizance to destroy; which the General (and the chief of his Council) knew well enough; and I dare safely say it upon my conscience, that an Agreement of the People upon foundations of just freedom gone through with, is a thing the General (and the chiefest of his Council) as much hates as they do honesty, justice and righteousness (which they long since abandoned), [and] against which in their own spirits they are absolutely resolved, I do verily believe, to spend their heart’s blood, and not to leave a man breathing in English air, if possibly they can, that thoroughly and resolutely prosecutes it; a new and just Parliament being more dreadful to them than the great Day of Judgment spoken so much of in the scripture. And although they have beheaded the King, yet I am confidently persuaded their enmity is such at the people’s liberties that they would sooner run the hazard of letting the Prince in, to reign in his father’s stead, than further really a just agreement, or endure the sight of a new Parliament rightly constituted. * * *

[As his next two points, Lilburne denies that his Foundations of Freedom post-dated the presentation of the Agreement to the Parliament and that this presentation was the ground of the Levellers’ dissatisfaction, and proceeds]:

Fourthly, they say we used all possible means to make ours pass, but with how little success, they say, is very well known. If they mean we used all possible means to make ours pass with them, it’s true; but the reason it had no better effect was because they had no mind to it; it was too honest for them. And I am sure, in the very epistle to it, it is declared that the principal reason of the printing of it is that the people might have an opportunity to consider the equity of it, and offer their reasons against anything therein contained. And this was all the means, after the printing of it, we used to make it pass. * * *

Fifthly, they say, we were troubled at their doing their duty in submitting to authority and owning the Parliament as the supreme authority of the nation; whenas, alas, it is as visible as the sun when it shines in its glory and splendour, that Korah, Dathan and Abiram of old were never such rebels against authority as the General and his Council are, nor the Anabaptists at Munster with John of Leyden and Knipperdollinga were never more contemners of authority; nor Jack Straw, nor Wat Tyler, nor all those famous men mentioned with a black pen in our histories and called rebels and traitors can never be put in any scale of equal balance, for all manner of rebellions and treasons against all sorts and kinds of magistracy, with the General and his Council. * * * For did any or all of them forementioned ever rebel against their advancers, promoters, and creators, as these have done two several times? Did ever any or all of them chop off (without all shadow of law) a king’s and nobles’ heads, ravish and force a parliament twice, nay raze the foundation of a parliament to the ground, and under the notion of performing a trust, break all oaths, covenants, protestations, and declarations, and make evidently void all the declared ends of the war? * * *

And as for their styling this their own junto, the supreme authority: I know the time not long since when that style to be given to the House of Commons single was accounted an abominable wickedness in the eye of the chiefest of them. Yea, I also know the time . . . that they were absolutely resolved and determined to pull up this their own Parliament by the roots, and not so much as to leave a shadow of it (frequently then calling it a mock-power, and a mock-parliament), yea, and had done it if we, and some in the House of our then friends, had not been the principal instruments to hinder them, we judging it then of two evils the least to choose rather to be governed by the shadow of a parliament till we could get a real and true one (which with the greatest protestations in the world they then promised and engaged with all their might speedily to effect) than simply, solely, and only by the wills of swordsmen, whom we had already found to be men of no very tender consciences. But to me it is no wonder that they own this for the supreme power, seeing they have totally in law, reason and justice broke the Parliament, and absolutely, by the hands of Tho[mas] Pride, set up indeed a mock-power and a mock-parliament, by purging out all those that they were any way jealous of, [and that] would not vote as they would have them, and suffering and permitting none to sit but, for the major part of them, a company of absolute schoolboys, that will, like good boys, say their lessons after them, their lords and masters, and vote as they would have them, and so be a screen . . . betwixt them and the people, with the name of parliament and the shadow and imperfect image of legal and just authority—to pick their pockets for them by assessments and taxations, and by their arbitrary and tyrannical courts and committees (the best of which is now become a perfect Star Chamber, High Commission and Council-board) make them their perfect slaves and vassals by their constant and continual breaking and abasing of their spirits. * * *

The Cavaliers . . . were most desperate mad at me in particular about the beheading of the late King, although I were as far as Newcastle when it was done, and refused to give my consent to be one of his judges (although I was solicited so to be before I went out of London); yea, although I avowedly declared myself at Windsor against the manner and time of their intended dealing with him, arguing there very stiffly that upon their own principles, which led them to look upon all legal authority in England as now broken, they could be no better than murderers in taking away the King’s life though never so guilty of the crimes they charged upon him. For as justice ought to be done, especially for blood, which they then principally charged upon him (so said I, and still say), it ought to be done justly. For in case another man murder me, and a day, a week, or a year after, my brother or friend, that is no legal magistrate, executes him therefor, yet this is murder in the eye of the law because it was done by a hand had no authority to do it. And therefore I pressed again and again, seeing themselves confessed all legal authority in England was broke, that they would stay his trial till a new and equal free Representative upon the Agreement of the well-affected people (that had not fought against their liberties, rights and freedoms) could be chosen and sit; and then either try him thereby or else by their judges sitting in the court called King’s Bench. But they at Windsor asked me how by law I could have him tried. I told them: the law of England expressly saith, ‘Whosoever murders or kills another shall die’; it doth not say, excepting the King . . .; and therefore where none is excepted, there all men are included in law. But the King is a man: ergo, he is included as well as I. Unto which it was objected, that it would hardly be proved that the King with his own hands killed a man. To which I answered: By the law of England, he that counsels or commissionates others to kill a man or men is as guilty of the fact as he or they that do it. And besides, the advantage of trying of the King by the rules of the law would be sufficient to declare that no man is born (or justly can be made) lawless, but that even magistrates, as well as people, are subject to the penal part of the law, as well as the directive part. And besides, to try him in an extraordinary way that hath no real footsteps nor paths in our law would be a thing of extraordinary ill precedent; for why not twenty upon pretended extraordinary cases as well as one? And why not a thousand as well as twenty? And extraordinary cases are easily made and pretended by those that are uppermost, though never so unjust in themselves. And besides, to try him in an extraordinary way when the law hath provided all the essentials of justice in an ordinary way . . . will nourish and increase in men that erroneous conceit, that magistrates, by the law of God, nature, and reason, are not—no, nor ought not to be—subject to the penal part of the laws of men, as well as the directive part of it; which is the bane, ruin, and destruction of all the commonwealths in the world. * * *

THE SECOND AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE (1648)

From John Lilburne, Foundations of Freedoma

(with variants introduced by the Council of Officers, in notes)

The Publisher to the Judicious Reader

Dear Countryman,

This Agreement having had its conception for a common good as being that which contains those foundations of freedom and rules of government, adjudged necessary to be established in this nation for the future, by which all sorts of men are to be bound, I adjudged it a just and reasonable thing to publish it to the view of the nation, to the end that all men might have an opportunity to consider the equity thereof, and offer their reasons against anything therein contained, before it be concluded. That being agreeable to that principle which we profess, viz., to do unto you as we would all men should do unto us, not doubting but that the justice of it will be maintained maugre the opposition of the stoutest calumniator, especially in those clear points in the reserve so much already controverted, viz., touching the magistrate’s power to compel or restrain in matters of religion, and the exercise of an arbitrary power in the Representative to punish men for state offences against which no law hath provided; which two things especially are so clear to my understanding that I dare with confidence aver that no man can demand the exercise of such a power but he that intends to be a tyrant, nor no man part with them but he that resolves to be a slave. * * *1

An2Agreement of the People of England, and the places therewith incorporated, for a firm and present peace upon grounds of common right and freedom.3

Having by our late labours and hazards made it appear to the world at how high a rate we value our just freedom, and God having so far owned our cause as to deliver the enemies thereof into our hands, we do now hold ourselves bound, in mutual duty to each other, to take the best care we can for the future, to avoid both the danger of returning into a slavish condition and the chargeable remedy of another war. For as it cannot be imagined that so many of our countrymen would have opposed us in this quarrel if they had understood their own good, so may we safely promise to ourselves, that when our common rights and liberties shall be cleared, their endeavours will be disappointed, that seek to make themselves our masters. Since therefore our former oppressions, and not-yet-ended troubles, have been occasioned either by want of frequent national meetings in council, or by the undue or unequal constitution thereof, or by rendering those meetings ineffectual, we are fully agreed and resolved4 to provide that hereafter our Representatives be neither left for uncertainty for time, nor be unequally constituted, nor made useless to the ends for which they are intended. In order whereunto we declare and agree:

I. That to prevent the many inconveniences apparently arising from the long continuance of the same persons in5 authority, this present Parliament be dissolved upon or before the last day of April, in the year of our Lord 1649.

II. That the people of England being at this day very unequally distributed by counties, cities, or boroughs, for the election of their representatives, be more indifferently proportioned, and to this end, that the Representative of the whole nation shall consist of 300 persons;7 and in each county and the places thereto subjoined there shall be chosen to make up the said Representative at all times, the several numbers hereunder mentioned. * * *

[Here follows the distribution of seats for the counties, the cities, the parliamentary boroughs, and the two universities.]8

III. The Manner of Elections:

1. That the electors in every division shall be natives or denizens of England,9 such as have subscribed this Agreement,10 not persons receiving alms, but such as are assessed ordinarily towards the relief of the poor; not servants to, or receiving wages from, any particular person. And in all elections (except for the Universities) they shall be men of one-and-twenty years old or upwards, and housekeepers, dwelling within the division for which the election is. Provided that until the end of seven years next ensuing the time herein limited for the end of this present Parliament, no person shall be admitted to, or have any hand or voice in, such elections, who have adhered to, or assisted the King against the Parliament in any of these wars or insurrections; or who shall make or join in, or abet any forcible opposition against this Agreement;11 and that such as shall not subscribe it before the time limited for the end of this Parliament, shall not have vote in the next election; neither if they subscribe afterwards, shall they have any voice in the election next succeeding their subscription, unless their subscription were six months before the same.12

2. That13 until the end of fourteen years14 such persons, and such only, may be elected for any division, who by the rule aforesaid are to have voice in elections in one place or other; provided that of those, none shall be eligible for the first or second Representatives who have not voluntarily assisted the Parliament against the King, either in person before the fourteenth of June, 1645, or else in money, plate, horse, or arms, lent upon the propositions, before the end of May, 1643, or who have joined in, or abetted the treasonable engagement in London in the year 1647, or who declared or engaged themselves for a cessation of arms with the Scots who invaded the nation the last summer, or for compliance with the actors in any the insurrections of the same summer, or with the Prince of Wales or his accomplices in the revolted fleet.15

3. That whoever, being by the rules in the two next preceding articles incapable of election, or to be elected, shall assume to vote in, or be present at, such elections for the first or second Representative, or being elected, shall presume to sit or vote in either of the said Representatives, shall incur the pain of confiscation of the moiety of his estate to the use of the public, in case he have any estate visible, to the value of fifty pounds. And if he have not such an estate, then he shall incur the pain of imprisonment for three months. And if any person shall forcibly oppose, molest, or hinder the people (capable of electing as aforesaid) in their quiet and free election of their representatives;16 then each person so offending shall incur the pain of confiscation of his whole estate, both real and personal; and if he have not an estate to the value of fifty pounds, shall suffer imprisonment during one whole year without bail or mainprize; provided that the offender in each such case be convicted within three months next after the committing of his offence.17

4. That for the more convenient election of representatives, each county, with the several places thereto conjoined, wherein more than three representatives are to be chosen, shall be divided by a due proportion into so many parts, as each part may elect two, and no part above three, representatives. And for the making of these divisions,18 two persons be chosen in every hundred, lathe, or wapentake, by the people therein (capable of electing as aforesaid), which people shall on the last Tuesday in February next between eleven and three of the clock, be assembled together for that end at the chief town or usual meeting place in the same hundred, lathe, or wapentake. And that the persons in every hundred, lathe, or wapentake, so chosen, or the major part of them, shall on the fourteenth day after their election meet at the common hall of the county-town, and divide the county into parts as aforesaid, and also appoint a certain place in each respective part of the division, wherein the people shall always meet for the choice of their representatives, and shall make returns of the said divisions, and certain places of meeting therein, into the Parliament records in writing under the hands and seals of the major part of them present; and also cause the same to be published in every parish in the county before the end of March now next ensuing. And for the more equal division of the City of London for the choice of its representatives, there shall one person be chosen by the people in every parish in the said City (capable of election as aforesaid) upon the last Tuesday in February aforesaid; on which day they shall assemble in each parish for the same purpose between two and four of the clock. And that the persons so chosen, or the major part of them, shall upon the fourteenth day after their election meet in the Guild Hall of the said City, and divide the same City into eight equal parts or divisions, and appoint a certain place in every division respectively, wherein the people of that division shall always meet for the choice of their representatives, and shall make return thereof, and cause the same to be published in the manner prescribed to the several counties, as in this article.

5. That for the better provision for true and certain returns of persons elected, the chief public officer in every division aforesaid, who shall be present at the beginning of the election, and in the absence of every such officer, then any person eligible as aforesaid, whom the people at that time assembled shall choose for that end, shall regulate the elections, and by poll or otherwise clearly distinguish and judge thereof,19 and make true return thereof in writing indented under the hands and seals of himself, and of six or more of the electors, into the Parliament’s records, within one-and-twenty days after the election, and for default thereof, or for making any false return, shall forfeit £100 to the public use.20

IV. That one hundred and fifty members at least be always present in each sitting of the Representatives at the passing of any law, or doing of any act whereby the people are to be bound.21

V. That every Representative shall within twenty days after their first meeting, appoint a Council of State for the managing of public affairs until the first22 day of the next Representative, and the same council to act and proceed therein, according to such instructions and limitations as the Representatives shall give, and not otherwise.

VI. That to the end all officers of state may be certainly accomptable, and no factions made to maintain corrupt interests, no member of a Council of State, nor any officer of any salary forces in army or garrison, nor any treasurer or receiver of public moneys, shall (while such) be elected to be a representative; and in case any such election shall be, the same to be void; and in case any lawyer shall be chosen of any Representative or Council of State, then he shall be incapable of practice as a lawyer during that trust.

VII.23 That the power of the People’s Representatives extend (without the consent or concurrence of any other person or persons) to the enacting, altering, repealing, and declaring of laws; to the erecting and abolishing officers of courts of justice,24 and to whatsoever is not in this Agreement excepted or reserved from them.

As particularly:25

1.26 We do not empower our Representatives to continue in force, or make, any laws, oaths, covenants, whereby to compel by penalties or otherwise any person to anything in or about matters of faith, religion, or God’s worship, or to restrain any person27 from the professing his faith, or exercise of religion according to his conscience in any house or place (except such as are, or shall be, set apart for the public worship); nevertheless the instruction or directing of the nation in a public way for the matters of faith, worship, or discipline (so it be not compulsive or express popery) is referred to their discretion.

2. We do not empower them to impress or constrain any person to serve in28 war either by sea or land,29 every man’s conscience being to be satisfied in the justness of that cause wherein he hazards his life.30

3. That after the31 dissolution of this present Parliament,32 none of the people be at any time questioned for anything said or done in reference to the late wars or public differences, otherwise than in execution or pursuance of the determination of the present House of Commons against such as have adhered to the King or his interest against the people; and saving that accomptants for public moneys received, shall remain accomptable for the same.33

4. That in any laws hereafter to be made, no person by virtue of any tenure, grant, charter, patent, degree or birth, shall be privileged from subjection thereto, or [from] being bound thereby as well as others.

5.34 That all privileges or exemptions of any persons from the laws, or from the ordinary course of legal proceedings, by virtue of any tenure, grant, charter, patent, degree or birth, or of any place of residence or refuge, shall be henceforth void and null, and the like not to be made nor revived again.35

6. That the Representatives intermeddle not with the execution of laws, or give judgment upon any man’s person or estate, where no law hath been before provided, save only in calling to an accompt, and punishing public officers for abusing or failing their trust.

7. That no member of any future Representative be made either receiver, treasurer or other officer during that employment, saving to be a member of the Council of State.

8. That no Representative shall in any wise render up, or give, or take away any the foundations of common right, liberty or safety contained in this Agreement, nor shall level men’s estates, destroy propriety, or make all things common.36

VIII. That the Council of State, in case of imminent danger or extreme necessity, may in each interval summon a Representative to be forthwith chosen and to meet, so as the sessions thereof continue not above forty37 days, and so it dissolve two months38 before the appointed time for the meeting of the next Representative.

IX.39 That all securities given by the public faith of the nation shall be made good by the next and all future Representatives,40 save that the next Representative may continue or make null, in part or in whole, all gifts of moneys41 made by the present House of Commons to their own members, or to any of the Lords, or to any of the attendants of either of them.

X.42 That every officer or leader of any forces in any present or future army or garrison, that shall resist the orders of the next or any future Representative (except such Representative shall expressly violate this Agreement), shall forthwith after his or their resistance, by virtue of this Agreement, lose the benefit and protection of all the laws of the land, and die without mercy.

These things we declare to be essential to our just freedoms, and to a thorough composure of our long and woeful distractions. And therefore we are agreed and resolved to maintain these certain rules of government and all that join therein, with our utmost possibilities, against all opposition whatsoever.43

These following particulars were offered to be inserted in the Agreement, but adjudged fit, as the most eminent grievances, to be redressed by the next Representative:

1. It shall not be in their power to punish or cause to be punished any person or persons for refusing to answer to questions against themselves in criminal cases.

2. That it shall not be in their power to continue or constitute any proceedings in law, that shall be longer than three or four months in finally determining of any cause past all appeal, or to continue the laws (or proceedings therein) in any other language than in the English tongue.

3. It shall not be in their power to continue or make any laws to abridge any person from trading unto any parts beyond the seas, unto which any are allowed to trade, or to restrain trade at home.

4. It shall not be in their power to continue excise longer than twenty days after the beginning of the next Representative, nor to raise moneys by any other way except by an equal rate, proportionably to men’s real or personal estates; wherein all persons not worth above thirty pound shall be exempted from bearing any part of public charge, except to the poor and other accustomary charge of the place where they dwell.

5. It shall not be in their power to make or continue any law whereby men’s estates, or any part thereof, shall be exempted from payment of their debts; or to continue or make any law to imprison any man’s person for debts of that nature.

6. It shall not be in their power to make or continue any law for taking away any man’s life except for murder, or for endeavouring by force to destroy this Agreement; but [they] shall use their uttermost endeavour to propound punishments equal to offences, that so men’s lives, limbs, liberties and estates may not as hitherto be liable to be taken away upon trivial or slight occasion; and shall have special care to keep all sorts of people from misery and beggary.

7. They shall not continue or make a law to deprive any person in case or trial from the benefit of witnesses, as well for as against him.

8. They shall not continue the grievance and oppression of tithes longer than to the end of the first Representative; in which time they shall provide for and satisfy all impropriators. Neither shall they force any person to pay toward the maintenance of the public ministers, who out of conscience cannot submit thereunto, but shall provide for them in some other unoppressive way.

9. They shall not continue or make a law for any other ways of judgment or conviction of life, liberty, or estate, but only by twelve sworn men of the neighbourhood.

10. They shall not continue or make a law to allow any person to take above six pound per cent. for loan of money for a year.

11. They shall not disable any person from bearing any office in the commonwealth for any opinion or practice in religion, though contrary to the public way.44

Unto these I shall add:

1. That the next Representative be most earnestly pressed for the ridding of this kingdom of those vermin and caterpillars, the lawyers, the chief bane of this poor nation; to erect a court of justice in every hundred in the nation, for the ending of all differences arising in that hundred, by twelve men of the same hundred annually chosen by freemen of that hundred, with express and plain rules in English made by the Representative, or supreme authority of the nation, for them to guide their judgments by.

2. That for the preventing of fraud, thefts, and deceits, there be forthwith in every county or shire in England, and the Dominion of Wales, erected a county record for the perfect registering of all conveyances, bills, and bonds, &c., upon a severe and strict penalty.

3. That in case there be any need, after the erection of hundred courts, of mayors, sheriffs, justices of the peace, deputy lieutenants, &c.; that the people capable of election of Parliament-men in the foregoing Agreement, be restored by the Representative unto their native, just, and undoubted right by common consent, from amongst themselves annually to choose all the foresaid officers in such manner as shall be plainly and clearly described and laid down by the supreme authority of the nation; and that when any subsidies or public taxes be laid upon the nation, the freemen of every division or hundred capable of election as aforesaid, choose out persons by common consent from amongst themselves, for the equal division of their assessments.

4. That the next Representative be earnestly desired to abolish all base tenures.

The Female of the Species

From a Petition of Women, Affecters and Approvers of the Petition of Sept. 11, 16481 (5th May 1649)a

Sheweth, that since we are assured of our creation in the image of God, and of an interest in Christ equal unto men, as also of a proportionable share in the freedoms of this commonwealth, we cannot but wonder and grieve that we should appear so despicable in your eyes as to be thought unworthy to petition or represent our grievances to this honourable House. Have we not an equal interest with the men of this nation in those liberties and securities contained in the Petition of Right, and other the good laws of the land? Are any of our lives, limbs, liberties, or goods to be taken from us more than from men, but by due process of law and conviction of twelve sworn men of the neighbourhood? And can you imagine us to be so sottish or stupid as not to perceive, or not to be sensible when daily those strong defences of our peace and welfare are broken down and trod underfoot by force and arbitrary power?

Would you have us keep at home in our houses, when men of such faithfulness and integrity as the four prisoners, our friends, in the Tower,1 are fetched out of their beds and forced from their houses by soldiers, to the affrighting and undoing of themselves, their wives, children, and families? Are not our husbands, o[u]r selves, our children and families, by the same rule as liable to the like unjust cruelties as they?

Shall such men as Capt. Bray be made close prisoners, and such as Mr. Sawyer snatched up and carried away, beaten and buffeted at the pleasure of some officers of the Army; and such as Mr. Blanka kept close prisoner, and after most barbarous usage be forced to run the gauntlet,b and be most slave-like and cruelly whipped? And must we keep at home in our houses, as if our lives and liberties and all were not concerned?

Nay, shall such valiant, religious men as Mr. Robert Lockyer2 be liable to law martial, and to be judged by his adversaries, and most inhumanly shot to death? Shall the blood of war be shed in time of peace? Doth not the word of God expressly condemn it? Doth not the Petition of Right declare that no person ought to be judged by law martial (except in time of war) and that all commissions given to execute martial law in time of peace are contrary to the laws and statutes of the land? Doth not Sir Ed. Coke,c in his chapter of murder in the third part of his Institutes, hold it for good law (and since owned and published by this Parliament) that for a general or other officers of an army in time of peace to put any man (although a soldier) to death by colour of martial law, it is absolute murder in that general? And hath it not by this House in the case of the late Earl of Strafford been adjudged high treason? And are we Christians, and shall we sit still and keep at home, while such men as have borne continual testimony against the injustice of all times and unrighteousness of men, be picked out and be delivered up to the slaughter? And yet must we show no sense of their sufferings, no tenderness of affections, no bowels of compassion, nor bear any testimony against so abominable cruelty and injustice?

Have such men as these continually hazarded their lives, spent their estates and time, lost their liberties, and thought nothing too precious for defence of us, our lives and liberties, been as a guard by day and as a watch by night; and when for this they are in trouble and greatest danger, persecuted and hated even to the death,d should we be so basely ungrateful as to neglect them in the day of their affliction? No, far be it from us. Let it be accounted folly, presumption, madness, or whatsoever in us, whilst we have life and breath we will never leave them nor forsake them, nor ever cease to importune you, having yet so much hopes of you as of the unjust judge (mentioned, Luke 18), to obtain justice, if not for justice’ sake, yet for importunity, or to use any other means for the enlargement and reparation of those of them that live, and for justice against such as have been the cause of Mr. Lockyer’s death. * * *

And therefore again we entreat you to review our last petition in behalf of our friends above mentioned, and not to slight the things therein contained because they are presented unto you by the weak hand of women, it being a usual thing with God, by weak means to work mighty effects. For we are no whit satisfied with the answer you gave unto our husbands and friends, but do equally with them remain liable to those snares laid in your Declaration, which maketh the abetters of the book laid to our friends’ charge, no less than traitors, when hardly any discourse can be touching the affairs of the present times but falls within the compass of that book; so that all liberty of discourse is thereby utterly taken away, than which there can be no greater slavery. * * *

Democracy in the City

From London’s Liberties or a Learned Argument of Law and Reason1 (Dec. 1650)a

[Wildman’s Speech in Rebuttal]

May it please your Lordship and this honourable Court to give me leave to make some answers to what the learned gentlemen on the other side have pleased to object. . . . I shall not, my Lord, endeavour (as that gentleman did) captare benevolentiam, to take the affections of the people before I begin to debate the matter in question. I shall not tell them that I will not insinuate into their minds anything but what will stand upon the foundation of truth, but offer my thoughts and freely submit to your judgment. Yet I hope to answer particularly Mr. Maynard’s exceptions.

He was pleased, first, to take exception at that general principle that I averred, from whence, I said, might be deduced the right of all the Wards to choose the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs by their representatives—though the gentleman might have pleased to remember I did say I would waive those principles of common right, lest he should say we intended to bring all things to an uncertainty by unravelling the bottom of government to its first principle, and therefore I insisted upon nothing but what we claim as our written right. However, he might have pleased to spare quarrelling with that principle, that a just subjection ought to be founded upon an assent of the people to their governors’ power; especially in this parliamentary time, wherein the Parliament hath pleased to declare that the original of all just power (under God) is from the people. And how governors shall derive a just power from the people but by an assent of the people, I understand not. Neither do I know how we can otherwise be a free people, as the Parliament hath declared we are. If he had quarrelled with this in the time of the King, it had been for his interest to have said that we ought to be subject to the son and heir of a conqueror because such. I hope better things now.

The second thing the gentleman was pleased to except against, was that which he only imagined in his own brain—misreciting my words—like a man created by his fancy to try his skill upon. For he supposed I did say that if we had the records that are now lost, we doubted not but that they would prove the assertion we maintain. Whereas I said: If we had the records of those times, that are lost, they would show us what the rights of the people then were. And that I conceive to be without exception.

The next thing he takes exception against is what I said concerning Magna Charta, and would make this Court believe that I had thought all that great charter was unalterable. I confess, if I had thought so I would never have drawn sword against the King. But the gentleman was pleased to assert that the King was by the common law; and if he agrees with Sir Edw. Coke’sa law, he saith that the common law is but recta ratio, right reason; and I am sure the King stood not by right reason. If he had, the Parliament could not have justly declared his office burdensome and unnecessary. But the truth is, I did only say that Magna Charta, the great charter of England, was unalterable according to the principles of the gentlemen of the long robe; I only spoke it upon their bottom. I said, if I should believe Sir Edw. Coke in what he said upon the statute of 42 Edw. 3, I must then say that an Act of Parliament made contrary to that part of the Great Charter that was declarative of the common law, was null of itself; for he said that part of it was unalterable. Thus I gave them only their own authority, and made it no assertion of mine absolutely. Though, under his favour, I think a man may assert that what is founded upon the true common law of England, as Sir Edw. Coke saith, which is right reason, no authority whatsoever ought to alter (I speak not of circumstances); for if we should aver that, we should aver contradictions in the very terms, and say that right reason of right may be altered from right reason.

I shall let pass what the gentleman was pleased to say of the laws being edge-tools, and of men cutting themselves with them. I believe he met with an argument for the people’s right that was an edge-tool in his way, and he was loath to break his shins over it, and therefore he passed over the argument with a grave caution of the sharpness of the law, that he might divert your thoughts from it. But the gentleman, coming a little nearer to the matter, lays down his maxim, which is this: that ever since the 15 of Edward the Fourth, these Liveries have had the choice. And then he argues thus. Saith he, The case would be very hard to have your titles of land, after one hundred and ninety years’ possession, to be questioned. And is it not as hard that the right of the Liveries to elections should now be questioned? Under the gentleman’s favour, the case is very different. I suppose no man pleads for the like title to a power or authority over the people that men have to their lands, nor upon the same grounds. If the titles were alike, it were just to buy and sell authority, or places of trust and government, as we buy and sell lands, or horses in Smithfield; and this our common law abhors. If we speak of people that are arrant mere vassals, like the slaves in Algiers,b authority over them is indeed bought and sold—but I hope we are not to be so esteemed—and yet the justice of those bargains is not clear. But certainly men’s titles to land and to a power of government are, or ought to be, of a different nature. And I shall make bold to assert that ’tis no hard case that the right of any number of men claiming a power in or about government by succession only, should after a hundred and ninety years’ possession be questioned. Suppose Mr. Maynard could have made good the Liverymen’s claims to the election of the chief officers of the City by custom—but then he must have more than doubled the time of the usage he spake of—yet I humbly conceive that the exercise of any power about government is not made just by continuance of time, unless it were just in the original. If long usurpation of a power in or about government could give a right to that power, all the foundations of just government were overturned, and by consequence it were not right or just to take away an usurped power if the usurpers be grown old.

Next, the gentleman is pleased, before he comes to his material arguments, to insinuate strange, huge, dreadful, monstrous consequences that would ensue in case any man shall deny his assertions. He is pleased to say, What strange consequences would ensue if we should say for a hundred and ninety years all the Lord Mayors or Sheriffs of the City of London have been unlawfully chosen! Truly, I could only answer that we might have said before the Parliament executed justice upon the King and cast off his family, What strange consequences would ensue if we should say that almost for five hundred years the people of England have been governed by them that came in unlawfully, and claimed their power successively to make the people their vassals by the sword of William the Conqueror! But the Parliament was not affrighted by such bugbear arguments to do justice upon him, and take away the power that his family claimed by conquest over us; and, I believe, Mr. Maynard will not say they did unjustly. But suppose that which he suggests, that the Mayors have been chosen unlawfully so long, ’tis time then to provide for a lawful choice. And the continuance of the unlawful will breed more of Mr. Maynard’s monstrous consequences. And if it be unlawful, ’tis not forbearing to say so that will amend the consequences.

But now the gentleman comes to his position, and saith that this government that is now is lawful. The gentleman might have pleased to have spared that—I did not yet assert that the government that is now is unlawful—yet he may take some answers to his arguments, or rather authorities, for the legality of it.

The first ground he builds upon for the lawfulness of this government is the opinion of the judges, which makes a huge cry. But by the way, the question is not now concerning the government, but only concerning the choosers or electors of the governors. The government may be the same still, though the manner and way of electing these governors may be altered from what it is at present. Yet to that opinion of the judges which makes the great noise in the Court. Oh, saith he, ’tis the opinion of all the learned judges; and then he paraphrases upon the goodness, honesty, learning, and fame of the judges that were named in the book produced. It may be those gentlemen of the long-robe were black swans; yet the argument from authority is none of the strongest. ’Tis not a very good consequence, that the thing is just because good men thought so.

Yet, under favour, the opinion of the judges I take to be not the most certain or unalterable amongst men, nor the most unbiased by their own interest. I believe, if a man should go to the twelve judges he shall scarce find four or three of the twelve of the same opinion in a dubious case. Yet if there were more that agreed, the late opinion of the judges in the case of ship-money may inform us how free the judges’ opinions are from the bias of private interest in such cases, and how fit ’tis for us to depend upon them. They could, many of them, agree to destroy property at once in favour of the King. But, however, the opinion of the judges produced by Mr. Maynard, I crave leave to affirm to be against him in this case—at least not for him. I desire it may be read.

The Case of Corporations, touching the election of Governors in the fourth of the Lord Coke’s Reports, fol. 77, 78. * * *

After Mr. Maynard had produced the authority of the judges as he supposed for his clients’ case, he argues from consequences. Saith he, If this present way of electing by the Liveries were not lawful, mark the consequences. Your Charter, saith he, is forfeited. This, I confess, is a big-bellied word, but how will this assertion agree with what Mr. Maynard, Mr. Hale,a and Mr. Wilde all affirmed: that the Charters of the City did not originally give the City those liberties that are mentioned in the Charter, but that the Charters were only declarative of the City’s rights, showing what their rights were before the Charters. Now if the Charters give not the City their rights, certainly you cannot forfeit your Charters unless the learned gentlemen shall please to say, you shall forfeit the declaration of your rights (for the Charters are no more, by their own confession). And if your forfeiture be no more, you may enjoy your liberties still, notwithstanding such a forfeiture as they pretend. But suppose a man should say what I did not yet say, that the present way of electing the Mayor is unlawful, is it any more than this, that the citizens have suffered their right to be taken from them for many years, and others to enjoy it unlawfully? And how will this consequence be deduced from thence, that the City hath forfeited their rights? I confess I understand not, by the law, that a body politic or corporation as such is under harder laws in our nation than the members of the commonwealth severally. Now, no man in England can forfeit his rights without a legal conviction of some crime for which the law censures him to forfeit his rights. And I know no reason why the City should have such hard measure, that in case the freemen have suffered the Companies to usurp their right, that therefore all the City’s rights should be forfeited. But without question this argument might have frighted you in the King’s time. Then some needy projecting courtier might have frighted you with the forfeiture of your Charter to the King, and eased you of some of your bags upon pretence of soliciting the King to renew your Charter for an easy fine. But now, if you be satisfied you have erred from the rule, I believe you may return to do right and enjoy your liberties without paying a fine.

Mr. Maynard’s next argument for the Liveries’ elections was this. That ’tis founded upon a constant usage time out of mind, so that (saith he) the City now prescribes unto this way of electing. And yet the gentleman was pleased afterwards to confess that to make a title by prescription there must be a constant usage since Rich[ard] the First’s time, and they only produce an act of a Common Council for the Liveries’ electing about a hundred and seventy-four years since, and will suppose that that act of Common Council was in confirmation of what was the custom before—whereas they produce no one footstep of a record before that time to prove that it was the usage to choose by Liverymen, but (on the contrary) it hath appeared that the election hath been four hundred years since by a select number out of the several Wards, which cannot be anyway supposed to be meant of Liverymen, they not coming as men from several Wards but as men from several Companies.

The next thing the gentleman said was this: that he hoped we would grant that we did both depart from the Charter itself. For, saith he, if we found the way of electing upon the Charter, the Charter running to the citizens indefinitely, it must be understood of all the citizens and barons. And, saith he, you grant it is impossible they should all together make the election; so we both depart from it. Under his favour I must be bold to deny it. We depart not from the Charter. For we say that, the Charter giving a right of choice to all the citizens, they may proceed in their elections either by themselves personally or their deputies; and they, finding it inconvenient to meet personally, may depute others to make their elections, and an election so made is truly said to be made by the citizens. So that in case that way of electing were admitted which the petitioners propose, it were directly agreeable to the Charter; for then indeed the citizens should choose because they choose every one of them by their deputies, as all the people of England make laws in Parliament because every man’s deputy is, or ought to be, there in Parliament.

Next, Mr. Maynard answers an objection. If, saith he, it be objected that in the way of election that is by the Liverymen, all are not represented, (saith he) it is true if you take it in some sense. But (saith he) if you take it in the sense of the law, therein they are represented, and it is the City makes these elections: . . . the Law saith so, as (saith he) in case a man’s hand moves, it is the man that moves, or his eye sees a colour, it is the man that sees. I hope the gentleman will please to confess a vast difference between a body natural and a body politic. Because he may truly say, if a man’s hand moves all the man moves, therefore will he say that what a few, or one member of the City doth is the City’s action? If so, if one in the City commit treason all the City are traitors. I believe, gentlemen, you would be loath to admit of such a law!

But to confirm this assertion the gentleman produced something out of that which he called Articuli super Chartas, where he saith, the King granted to the people to choose Sheriffs, and yet the people did not choose them all in general, it was the freeholders chose them. Mr. Maynard, if he pleaseth, could have told when the people in general were restrained from electing Parliament-men, and other the Sheriffs also, and upon what pretence it was put upon freeholders only, and how it served the King’s ends to procure that Statute of Restriction. If I forget not the time it was in the 8 of Henry 6, chap. 7. But, however, Mr. Maynard should have proved this to be just, before he can prove the other to be just by this. * * *

His next argument against this petition is this. Saith Mr. Maynard, It will tend to popularity if this should be admitted, that the Wards should choose. And I leave it, saith he, to the Court to judge what the consequent of that would be. All men’s educations, saith he, are not such as make them fit for government, or fit to choose governors. Truly, if it please the honourable Court but to consider who they are that are now the electors, this arrow of the gentleman’s returns upon himself. I could say more of it if I should not be thought to reflect—because I have a reverent respect to all kind of trades. But if I should speak of all the several Companies, the Bricklayers, Bowyers, Fletchers, Turners, Coopers, Tallow-chandlers, &c., if I should speak of the education of most of the Liverymen of forty Companies of the City, and compute their number, and tell you upon what terms most are admitted to be of the Liveries, that is, for a small sum of money; I conceive the Court would quickly judge which way of election tends most to popularity, as he calls it, and who proposeth most men that are unfit for government, to choose the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs. Will any man suppose that the educations of all the handicraft-men of the Liveries render them so able and discreet that they are fit for government? I submit it to the Court.

As for the great word Mr. Maynard was pleased to add about the ill consequents of this change that would be to other corporations, saying that this is an earthquake comes under them: I shall conceive his oratory in this to be of the earthquake’s nature, a swelling vapour, unless he will be pleased to show me how the liberty of the City, or any one citizen, is undermined by what is proposed. Only I must observe to the Court that where arguments are wanting their room is commonly supplied with words and pretences of huge strange consequences that will ensue if their desires be crossed. But the arguments from a consequence, I believe they well know their strength is not of the first degree. But, however, to suppose an ill consequence may ensue upon a city or company of persons exercising their right, and thence to conclude they must not enjoy it, is a way of arguing that I understand not.

I confess Mr. Hale is pleased to deal very ingenuously in laying down those principles wherein we agreed, which was: that the liberties of the City were by prescription, and that the Charters were but declarations of what our liberties were, and that the Common Councilmen ought to have a vote in their elections. But I said not they ought, but that they might have their votes if they were chosen to that purpose. But he was pleased to say that the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council were a kind of a Representative of the City, and therefore he would thence aver that there is no inconvenience to the City, seeing they have such a Representative. I shall answer Mr. Hale thus: If a man should say the Parliament represent the commonwealth, and seeing we have a Representative, what matter if that two hundred or three hundred men more went into the Parliament and voted with them, the people of England surely would not think themselves well dealt withal, nor think those Acts so passed to be valid. Mr. Hale is pleased also to pursue Mr. Maynard’s mode of imagining strange kind of consequences that may ensue upon this. And, saith he, how if the people will say when you brought it to the representatives, We will not be bound to representatives, but we will come and choose personally? What then (saith he) would be the consequence of this? Truly, if Mr. Hale will suppose that the people will not be bound by any government, nor by Acts of Parliament, he may fill his fancy with bad consequences. And why may it not be supposed as well, that all the people in England should say, We will go and make laws ourselves in Parliament, as well as that the people should not be willing to be bound in their Wards to choose the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs by their representatives? I shall let pass also what Mr. Hale was pleased to urge concerning that principle of a just subjection of people to governors to be founded upon an assent, because he was pleased to confess very ingenuously that I waived those arguments that might reduce government to an uncertainty, or to the first principles of general common right. But, saith Mr. Hale, if that principle be allowed amongst a free people, that subjection to their governors ought to be by mere assent, . . . we must consider there is a personal and a virtual assent, and it shall be conceived to be a virtual consent where there hath been an usage time out of mind for the people to be subject to any form of government. Of which nature he endeavoured to prove the way of electing the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs by the Liverymen of the several mysteries; whereas, if Mr. Hale please to remember, they do all aver the usage of this way of electing but to have been for one hundred and seventy-four years that they can prove. As for any suppositions that it was before, I think there is enough answered to that, there being no ancienter records that mention the choice to have been by the Liverymen, who come not as sent from Wards. And though Mr. Hale is pleased to balance the records produced on one hand and on the other, and saith thus, that they produce for one hundred [and] seventy-four years to show that this hath been the way of electing which now is; but (saith he) those records produced to prove another way of electing is but a short time. If he please to remember, there is no footstep of mention made of any Liverymen, or of any of the mysteries, having a power to elect, until that 15 of Edw. 4, and we find from Edward the First, about two hundred years before, that there were twelve men in the Wards, that were electors, which we may well think to be the representers of those Wards, and chosen by them for that purpose; and no footsteps of the discontinuance of it from the time produced. But we may well say that all the records that mention the commonalty’s choice are to be interpreted by the former record, until that record comes wherein mention is made of Liverymen, there being no mention made of them formerly (under that or any other name) as such. * * *

As to the arguments from the consequences. If this government were not right, then (saith Mr. Hale) all the purchases you have made since that time you altered the way of elections, is null. I must humbly crave leave not to submit to his judgment in that till he give me better reasons; for I suppose it is grounded upon that of forfeiting a Charter, which was answered before; for though the body corporate have not had their officers rightly elected, yet the body is not thereby dissolved, and therefore their purchase may be good and without fear of forfeiture. * * *

And as for Mr. Wilde’s arguments concerning the danger that would ensue upon the multitude coming to elections, upon the same ground he may say the Wards must not choose their Aldermen nor Common Councilmen—if the citizens should be deprived of their right upon that ground that it is popularity—or they may be divided and fall to blows. Upon the same grounds they may take away the liberty of choosing Common Councilmen and Aldermen, and all their common freedoms. And if these fears shall affright men from the claim of their right, they may be told next that the sky may fall, and therefore they must not go abroad.

As for the last objection of Mr. Wilde’s, that in this way of popularity ’tis possible a choice may be made of unfit men, I shall only offer this to the consideration of the Court: whether it is more probable that a whole Ward meeting together to choose a small number of men that should represent them in the electing their superior officers, should choose more unfit men for that election than a Company, it may be, of Coopers, Tallow-chandlers, or other manual occupations should admit to the Livery (who admit all that will give so much money to be of the Livery). Who are the likeliest men to send fittest men for the choice, I humbly refer to the honourable Court—though it is strange to me to hear that the fear of popularity, or of giving way so much to the liberty of the people, is so much insisted on. Now we are come into the way of a commonwealth, it is a little dissonant to the present constitution. * * *

[1] Selections from Putney Projects; The Case of the Army Truly Stated; the first Agreement of the People; A Call to all the Soldiers of the Army; various letters from the Agitators, and Lilburne’s Plea for Common Right and Freedom, which also illustrate Leveller principles, are printed in the Appendix.

[1] I follow Professor Pease (Leveller Movement, p. 158 n.) in accepting a pamphlet acquired by Thomason on 19th September 1648 [E. 464 (19)] as presenting the text of this petition. See also Tracts, ed. Haller (3. 397-405), where the whole pamphlet is reproduced.

[1] Here follows an account (pp. 7-10) of Overton’s arrest, on 11th August 1646, by order of the Lords, on a charge of breach of privilege; his appeal to the House of Commons; its reference of the case, with Lilburne’s, to Henry Marten’s committee on the Commons’ liberties, which pronounced both imprisonments illegal; Overton’s refusal to appear again before the Lords; his imprisonment, as a result, in Newgate, from 3rd November 1646 till the time of writing (8th July 1647); and finally the arrest of his wife and brother. From the Lords his attack turns (pp. 10-13) to the eleven members of the Commons charged with treason by the Army, and concludes with a repudiation of the authority of that House, which by its acts has forfeited the character of a true Representative.

[1] Omitted passage cites the condemnation of the soldiers’ petition by the dominant Presbyterian party in the House of Commons, and the effort to gain complete control of the City militia.

[1] This appears to be the Petition of 11th September, referred to in the Remonstrance of the Army (Appendix, p. 464) and in the Whitehall Debates (pp. 141-2). But the Large Petition of March 1647 (pp. 318-23) seems also to have been revived at this time, and to have been printed more than once. It is possible that the references to the Petition of 11th September are intended to cover both documents.

[1] For the first Agreement see Appendix, pp. 443-5.

[2] Early in November 1648.

[1] See above pp. 338-42.

[2] The Remonstrance of the Army (see Appendix, pp. 456-65).

[1] See Whitehall Debates, above pp. 125-69. For the Levellers’ protest at the time, see Appendix, pp. 472-4.

[2] Clarke MSS. contain no record of this incident.

[1] Epistle is dated the tenth (see below, p. 356). Another edition (McAlpin Collection, New York) is dated the fifteenth.

[2]Foundations of Freedom (see below, pp. 355-67).

[3]A Plea for Common Right and Freedom (see below, pp. 472-4).

[1] Dated Friday, 10th December 1648.

[2] Notes (except where specified) record the significant changes introduced by the Council of Officers (as a result of the Whitehall Debates), before presenting the Agreement to Parliament, on 20th January 1649.a

[3] + and safety.

[4] + God willing.

[5] + supreme.

[7] 400 persons, or not more. (Clarke MS. copy reads: three or four hundred.)

[8] + Provided that the first or second Representative may . . . assign the remainder of the 400 representers . . . unto such counties as shall appear in this present distribution to have less than their due proportion. Provided also that where any city or borough . . . shall be found in a due proportion not competent . . . to elect . . . the number of representers assigned thereto, it is left to future Representatives to assign such a number of parishes or villages near adjoining . . ., to be joined therewith in elections, or [they] may make the same proportionable. . . . That the people do, of course, choose themselves a Representative once in two years and shall meet for that purpose upon the first Thursday in every second May . . .; and the Representatives so chosen, to meet upon the second Thursday in the June following . . . and to continue their sessions . . . until the second Thursday in December following, unless they shall adjourn or dissolve themselves sooner; but not to continue longer. The election of the first Representative to be on the first Thursday in May 1649; and that and all future elections to be according to the rules prescribed in this Agreement.

[9] Omits.

[10] Omits.

[11] Omits.

[12] Omits.

[13] Transposes provision respecting representatives to ¹⁵ before +.

[14] Transposes provision respecting representatives to ¹⁵ before +.

[15] + And we desire and recommend it to all men, that in all times the persons to be chosen for this great trust may be men of courage, fearing God and hating covetousness; and that our Representatives would make the best provisions for that end.

[16] + for the first Representative.

[17] + And the first Representative is to make further provision for the avoiding of these evils in future elections. + VI below.

[18] Substitutes: so as to make the elections less subject to confusion or mistake, in order to the next Representative, Thomas Lord Grey of Groby [two knights, one gentleman, five citizens of London, also named] or any five or more of them are intrusted to nominate . . . three or more fit persons in each county, and in each city and borough . . ., to be as commissioners for the ends aforesaid. . . . Which commissioners . . . shall . . . appoint two fit and faithful persons or more in each hundred, lathe, or wapentake . . . and in each ward within the City of London, to take care for the orderly taking of all voluntary subscriptions to this Agreement. . . . And the same commissioners . . . for the several counties, cities, and boroughs respectively shall, where more than three representers are to be chosen, divide such counties, as also the City of London, into . . . such parts as are aforementioned and shall set forth the bounds of such divisions; and shall . . . appoint one place certain wherein the people shall meet for the choice of the representers, and some one fit person or more . . . to be present at the time and place of election, in the nature of sheriffs to regulate the elections . . .; and shall in every . . . parish likewise nominate . . . one trusty person or more . . ., to make a true list of all the persons . . . who, according to the rules aforegoing, are to have voice in the elections, and expressing who amongst them are, by the same rules, capable of being elected, and such list . . . to bring in and return . . unto the person appointed in the nature of sheriff. . . . Which person . . . being present . . ., or in case of his absence by one hour after the time limited for the people’s meeting, then any person present that is eligible, . . . whom the people, then and there assembled, shall choose for that end, shall receive . . . the said lists and admit the persons therein contained . . . unto a vote in the said election, and, having first caused this Agreement to be publicly read . . ., shall proceed unto, and regulate, and keep peace and order in the elections, and by poll or otherwise openly distinguish and judge of the same. . . .

[19] Substitutes: so as to make the elections less subject to confusion or mistake, in order to the next Representative, Thomas Lord Grey of Groby [two knights, one gentleman, five citizens of London, also named] or any five or more of them are intrusted to nominate . . . three or more fit persons in each county, and in each city and borough . . ., to be as commissioners for the ends aforesaid. . . . Which commissioners . . . shall . . . appoint two fit and faithful persons or more in each hundred, lathe, or wapentake . . . and in each ward within the City of London, to take care for the orderly taking of all voluntary subscriptions to this Agreement. . . . And the same commissioners . . . for the several counties, cities, and boroughs respectively shall, where more than three representers are to be chosen, divide such counties, as also the City of London, into . . . such parts as are aforementioned and shall set forth the bounds of such divisions; and shall . . . appoint one place certain wherein the people shall meet for the choice of the representers, and some one fit person or more . . . to be present at the time and place of election, in the nature of sheriffs to regulate the elections . . .; and shall in every . . . parish likewise nominate . . . one trusty person or more . . ., to make a true list of all the persons . . . who, according to the rules aforegoing, are to have voice in the elections, and expressing who amongst them are, by the same rules, capable of being elected, and such list . . . to bring in and return . . unto the person appointed in the nature of sheriff. . . . Which person . . . being present . . ., or in case of his absence by one hour after the time limited for the people’s meeting, then any person present that is eligible, . . . whom the people, then and there assembled, shall choose for that end, shall receive . . . the said lists and admit the persons therein contained . . . unto a vote in the said election, and, having first caused this Agreement to be publicly read . . ., shall proceed unto, and regulate, and keep peace and order in the elections, and by poll or otherwise openly distinguish and judge of the same. . . .

[20] + and [he] shall also cause indentures to be made . . . betwixt himself and six or more of the said electors, on the one part, and . . . each person elected . . ., on the other part, expressing their election of him as a representer of them according to this Agreement, and his acceptance of that trust, and his promise to perform the same with faithfulness, to the best of his understanding and ability, for the glory of God and [the] good of the people. This course is to hold for the first Representative, which is to provide for the ascertaining of these circumstances in order to future Representatives.

[21] + saving that the number of sixty may make a house for debates or resolutions that are preparatory thereunto.

[22] tenth . . . unless that next Representative think fit to put an end to that trust sooner.

[23] + That the Representatives have, and shall be understood to have, the supreme trust in order to the preservation and government of the whole.

[24] Omits.

[25] + and the highest and final judgment concerning all natural or civil things, but not concerning things spiritual or evangelical. Provided that, even in things natural and civil, these six particulars . . . are . . . understood to be excepted and reserved from our Representatives.

[26] (Lilburne admits here ‘mending a clause . . . to the sense of all of us but Ireton’; above p. 350.) Reserve in religion becomes Article IX of final Agreement:

Concerning religion, we agree as followeth: (1) It is intended that the Christian religion be held forth and recommended as the public profession in this nation, which we desire may, by the grace of God, be reformed to the greatest purity in doctrine, worship, and discipline, according to the word of God; the instructing the people thereunto in a public way, so it be not compulsive, as also the maintaining of able teachers for that end, and for the confutation or discovery of heresy, error, and whatsoever is contrary to sound doctrine, is allowed to be provided for by our Representatives; the maintenance of which teachers may be out of a public treasury, and we desire, not by tithes; provided that popery or prelacy be not held forth as the public way or profession in this nation. (2) That to the public profession so held forth, none be compelled by penalties or otherwise; but only may be endeavoured to be won by sound doctrine, and the example of a good conversation. (3) That such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, however differing in judgment from the doctrine, worship, or discipline publicly held forth as aforesaid, shall not be restrained from, but shall be protected in, the profession of their faith and exercise of religion according to their consciences, in any place except such as shall be set apart for the public worship (where we provide not for them unless they have leave), so as they abuse not this liberty to the civil injury of others, or to actual disturbance of the public peace on their parts. Nevertheless, it is not intended to be hereby provided that this liberty shall necessarily extend to popery or prelacy. (4) That all laws, ordinances, statutes, and clauses in any law, statute, or ordinance to the contrary of the liberty herein provided for in the two particulars next preceding, concerning religion, be, and are hereby, repealed and made void.

[27] (Clarke MS. + professing Christianity).

[28] + any foreign.

[29] + nor for any military service within the kingdom, save that they may take order for the forming, training and exercising of the people in a military way, to be in readiness for resisting of foreign invasions, suppressing of sudden insurrections, or for assisting in execution of the laws, and may take order for the employing and conducting of them for those ends; provided that, even in such cases, none be compelled to go out of the county he lives in, if he procure another to serve in his room.

[30] Omits.

[31] time herein limited for the commencement of the first Representative.

[32] time herein limited for the commencement of the first Representative.

[33] + IX below.

[34] Omits.

[35] Omits.

[36] + and that, in all matters of such fundamental concernment, there shall be a liberty to particular members of the said Representatives to enter their dissents from the major vote.

[37] eighty.

[38] fifty days.

[39] That no securities given . . . shall be made void or invalid . . . except to such creditors as have . . . justly forfeited the same.

[40] That no securities given . . . shall be made void or invalid . . . except to such creditors as have . . . justly forfeited the same.

[41] + lands, . . . offices, or otherwise.

[42] Substitutes:

It is agreed that whosoever shall by force of arms resist the orders of the next or any future Representative (except in case where such Representative shall evidently render up, or give, or take away the foundations of common right, liberty and safety contained in this Agreement), he shall forthwith, after . . . such resistance, lose the benefit and protection of the laws, and shall be punishable with death as an enemy and traitor to the nation. Of the things expressed in this Agreement: the certain ending of this Parliament, as in the first Article; the equal or proportionable distribution of the number of the representaters to be elected, as in the second; the certainty of the people’s meeting to elect for Representatives biennial, and their freedom in elections; with the certainty of meeting, sitting and ending of Representatives so elected, which are provided for in the third Article; as also the qualifications of persons to elect or be elected, as in the first and second particulars under the third Article; also the certainty of a number for passing a law or preparatory debates, provided for in the fourth Article; the matter of the fifth Article, concerning the Council of State, and of the sixth, concerning the calling, sitting and ending of the Representatives extraordinary; also the power of Representatives to be, as in the eighth Article, and limited, as in the six reserves next following the same; likewise the second and third particulars under the ninth Article, concerning religion, and the whole matter of the tenth Article; all these we do account and declare to be fundamental to our common right, liberty, and safety; and therefore do both agree thereunto, and resolve to maintain the same as God shall enable us. The rest of the matters in this Agreement we account to be useful and good for the public; and the particular circumstances of numbers, times, and places expressed in the several Articles, we account not fundamental; but we find them necessary to be here determined for the making the Agreement certain and practicable, and do hold these most convenient that are here set down; and therefore do positively agree thereunto.

[43] Substitutes:

It is agreed that whosoever shall by force of arms resist the orders of the next or any future Representative (except in case where such Representative shall evidently render up, or give, or take away the foundations of common right, liberty and safety contained in this Agreement), he shall forthwith, after . . . such resistance, lose the benefit and protection of the laws, and shall be punishable with death as an enemy and traitor to the nation. Of the things expressed in this Agreement: the certain ending of this Parliament, as in the first Article; the equal or proportionable distribution of the number of the representaters to be elected, as in the second; the certainty of the people’s meeting to elect for Representatives biennial, and their freedom in elections; with the certainty of meeting, sitting and ending of Representatives so elected, which are provided for in the third Article; as also the qualifications of persons to elect or be elected, as in the first and second particulars under the third Article; also the certainty of a number for passing a law or preparatory debates, provided for in the fourth Article; the matter of the fifth Article, concerning the Council of State, and of the sixth, concerning the calling, sitting and ending of the Representatives extraordinary; also the power of Representatives to be, as in the eighth Article, and limited, as in the six reserves next following the same; likewise the second and third particulars under the ninth Article, concerning religion, and the whole matter of the tenth Article; all these we do account and declare to be fundamental to our common right, liberty, and safety; and therefore do both agree thereunto, and resolve to maintain the same as God shall enable us. The rest of the matters in this Agreement we account to be useful and good for the public; and the particular circumstances of numbers, times, and places expressed in the several Articles, we account not fundamental; but we find them necessary to be here determined for the making the Agreement certain and practicable, and do hold these most convenient that are here set down; and therefore do positively agree thereunto.

[44] These particulars (together with 3 below, the election of municipal officers) are added in the Levellers’ third Agreement of the Free People of England, issued by John Lilburne, William Walwyn, Thomas Prince, and Richard Overton, on 1st May 1649; which also contains some further provision, e.g.:

IV.a That no member of the present Parliament shall be capable of being elected of the next Representative, nor any member of any Representative shall be capable of being chosen for the Representative immediately ensuing. * * *

VIII. And for the preservation of the supreme authority, in all times, entirely in the hands of such persons only as shall be chosen thereunto, we agree and declare: That the next and all future Representatives shall continue in full power for the space of one whole year; and that the people shall of course choose a Parliament once every year. . . . Also (for the same reason) that the next or any future Representative, being met, shall continue their session, day by day, without intermission for four months, and after that shall be at liberty to adjourn from two months to two months, as they shall see cause, until their year be expired; but shall sit no longer than a year upon pain of treason to every member that shall exceed that time. And in times of adjournment [they] shall not erect a Council of State, but refer the managing of affairs in the intervals to a committee of their own members, giving such instructions (and publish[ing] them) as shall in no measure contradict this Agreement. * * *

XXIV. That it shall not be in their power to impose ministers upon any the respective parishes, but [they] shall give free liberty to the parishioners . . . to choose such as themselves shall approve, and upon such terms, and for such reward, as themselves shall be willing to contribute or shall contract for. Provided none be choosers but such as are capable of electing Representatives. * * *

And forasmuch as nothing threateneth greater danger to the commonwealth than that the military power should by any means come to be superior to the civil authority: XXIX. We declare and agree that no forces shall be raised, but by the Representative for the time being; and in raising thereof that they exactly observe these rules, namely: that they allot to each particular county, city, town, and borough, the raising, furnishing, agreeing, and paying of a due proportion, according to the whole number to be levied; and shall to the electors of Representatives in each respective place give free liberty to nominate and appoint all officers appertaining to regiments, troops, and companies, and to remove them as they shall see cause, reserving to the Representative the nominating and appointing only of the general and all general officers, and the ordering, regulating, and commanding of them all upon what service shall seem to them necessary for the safety, peace, and freedom of the commonwealth.

[1] It is improbable that this petition was actually composed by the women. Its principles are none the less interesting.

[1] Lilburne, Overton, Walwyn, and Prince.

[2] Executed on 27th April 1649.

[1] The prefatory material presents the essential facts. In the course of an investigation of the City’s accounts ‘it was found that the chief officers had been very faulty; and thereupon it was considered how they were elected, and there arose the question about the right of electing the chief officers of the City. And it came into debate whether the Liverymen ought to be the electors, as now they are. Thereupon the Companies of London petitioned the Court that they might continue their elective power; and divers freemen of the City petitioned for the abolishing that power of the Liveries or Companies. * * * These were referred to a committee, and counsel for the Companies there heard, and Mr. Price in the behalf of the freemen. From thence it was referred to be fully debated before the Lord Mayor, Court of Aldermen, and Common Council. And on Saturday the 14th of December, the Court being sat at Guild Hall, the Companies brought for their counsel Mr. Maynard, Mr. Hale, and Mr. Wilde, gentlemen most famous in the profession of the law; and the freemen (besides Mr. John Price) had prevailed, by much entreaty, with Mr. John Wildman, as I am informed, without hopes of fees or rewards, to plead their cause.’ The arguments were taken down in shorthand. Though Wildman is here found in association with the Independent John Price (see above, p. 343), his speech is coloured by Leveller principles. The whole debate offers an interesting parallel in the municipal field to that in national politics carried on at Putney three years earlier.

[317. (a)]The Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated. Or a true relation of the cause and manner of lieut. col. Iohn Lilburns present imprisonment in Newgate. * * * [No title-page (McAlpin Collection)];

[(b)] + and who.

[318. (a)] + but.

[318. (b)]To the Right Honourable and Supreme Authority of this Nation, the Commons in Parliament Assembled. The humble petition of many thousands, earnestly desiring the glory of god, the freedome of the common-wealth, and the peace of all men [Sept. 19, 1648].

[319. (a)] + as;

[(b)] + most.

[323. (a)]An Appeale from the Degenerate Representative Body the Commons of England assembled at Westminster: To the Body Represented. The free people in general of the several counties, cities, townes, burroughs, and places within this Kingdome of England, and Dominion of Wales. And in especiall, To his Excellency, Sir Thomas Fairfax (Captaine Generall) and to all the officers and souldiers under his command. By Richard Overton, prisoner in the infamous goale of Newgate, for the liberties and freedomes of England. [Quotes 2 Cor. 10, 16; 11, 4; and applies them to the contemporary situation of Parliament, City, and people.] London, Printed in the yeare, 1647 [July 17]. Marginal gloss omitted.

[324. (a)] + though;

[(b)] + not;

[(c)] + or else.

[325. (a)]award.

[326. (a)]to;

[(b)]centure.

[328. (a)]Tuliday;

[(b)] + to.

[331. (a)] + as;

[(b)]Stapylton.

[333. (a)]your;

[(b)]depravation.

[334. (a)]adjutators (so below; also adjutation);

[(b)] + not.

[335. (a)] Appended to the Appeal;

[(b)]illegible.

[336. (a)] + to put.

[337. (a)]the.

[338. (a)]To the Right Honorable, the Commons of England In Parliament Assembled. The humble petition of divers wel-affected persons inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamblets, and places adjacent [Sept. 15, 1648] (McAlpin Collection).

[339. (a)] tr Religion and God;

[(b)]which.

[340. (a)]dusines;

[(b)]state.

[342. (a)]The Legall Fundamentall Liberties of the People of England Revived, Asserted, and Vindicated. Or, an epistle written the eighth day of june 1649, by Lieut. Colonel John Lilburn. * * * London, Printed in the grand yeer of hypocriticall and abominable dissimulation. 1649;

[(b)]Pomfret;

[(c)]Tichburn (later Tychburn, Titchburn).

[344. (a)]Hiland.

[345. (a)]at.

[346. (a)] +in.

[347. (a)]every.

[348. (a)]Martyn (later Martin);

[(b)]Challiner.

[349. (a)] + in.

[353. (a)]Neperdullion.

[355. (a)]Foundations of Freedom or an Agreement of the People: Proposed as a rule for future government in the establishment of a firm and lasting peace. Drawn up by several well-affected persons, and tendered to the consideration of the General Councel of the Army; and now offered to the consideration of all persons who are at liberty, by printing or otherwise, to give their reasons for, or against it. Unto which is annexed several grievances, by some persons offered to be inserted in the said Agreement, but adjudged only necessary to be insisted on, as fit to be removed by the next representatives. Published for the satisfaction of all honest interests. 1648 [Preface dated 10th Dec. 1648; Thomason’s date, 15th Dec.]. Compared with another edition in McAlpine Collection (with same preface dated 15th Dec., and with the imprint: London, Printed for R. Smithurst, 1648).

[356. (a)] Text of these passages is supplied by A Petition from . . . Fairfax and the General Council of Officers . . . to . . . the Commons of England in Parliament assembled, concerning the Draught of an Agreement of the People. . . . Together with the said Agreement presented Jan. 20. . . . Tendred to the consideration of the people. * * * London Printed for John Partridge, R. Harford, G. Calvert, and G. Whittington MDCXLIX [Jan. 22]. Compared with text in Rushworth’s Collections.

[365. (a)] Text supplied by An Agreement of the Free People of England. Tendered as a peace-offering to this distressed nation. By Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburne, Master William Walwyn, Master Thomas Prince, and Master Richard Overton . . . May the 1. 1649. [No title-page; colophon: London, Printed for Gyles Calvert (McAlpin Collection).]

[367. (a)]To the Svpreme Avthority of England the Commons assembled in Parliament. The humble petition of divers well-affected women of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamblets and parts adjacent. Affecters and approvers of the Petition of Sept. 11. 1648 [May 5, 1649].

[368. (a)]Blanck;

[(b)]gantlop;

[(c)]Cook;

[(d)] + and.

[369. (a)]London’s Liberties; or a Learned Argument of Law & Reason, upon Saturday, December 14. 1650. Before the Lord Major, Court of Aldermen, and Common Councell at Guild Hall, London. Between Mr Maynard, Mr Hales & Mr Wilde Of Councellfor the Companies of London. And Major John Wildman and Mr John Price Of Councell for the Freemen of London. * * * This discourse was exactly taken in short-hand by severall that were present at the argument. . . . London, Printed by Ja. Cottrel for Gyles Calvert . . . 1651 [Dec. 19, 1650].

[371. (a)]Cook (thus throughout);

[(b)]Argier.

[373. (a)]Hales (thus throughout).