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THE POLITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN: and balances. Most unique is their emphasis upon a subscribed written constitution as supreme law and devised to perpetually limit the representative. The foundational assumptions of these political principles appear sourced in pre-1647 tracts, which include responses to their critics. This following section is intended to reveal the nature of this constitutional architecture, and the short title of each Agreement is given to reveal the essence of Leveller objectives. The next section attempts to tease out their core scriptural political assumptions. An agreement of the people for a firme and present peace, upon grounds of common-right and freedome (October 28, 1647): Putney Debates Formal debates over the constitutional future of England took place at St. Mary’s Church at Putney from October 28 through November 9, 1647, which incorporated intense discussions relative to the constitutional principles of the first Agreement. In attendance were leading officers of the New Model Army, including Cromwell and his son-in-law Commissary Ireton, interested soldiers, and civilian allies, all keen on offering input into England’s constitutional settlement. Many of the participants were sympathetic to, or persuaded by, Leveller political ideas. Before the Putney Debates formally commenced, initial proceedings on a constitutional settlement which engaged the General Council of the Army were underway. Soldiers selected ‘Agitators’ or ‘New Agents’ from regiments to represent their views, who were recognised by the Army’s senior commanders called ‘Grandees,’ and who also sat on the General Council. The Grandees, which included Cromwell and Ireton, were predisposed to negotiate a settlement with Charles 1 which maintained the elements of the ancient constitution of King, Lords, and Commons. They presented The heads of the proposals in mid-July to Sir Thomas Fairfax, commander-in-chief of all England’s forces, whose military headquarters was located in Reading. Commissary Ireton took the lead in drafting The heads, and most likely with significant input from Parliament’s Independent element. The heads countered Parliament’s earlier proposal known as The newcastle propositions (July 13, 1646), which the king rejected. The General Council debated and amended The heads at Reading, and forwarded it to Parliament on July 20, 1647 who then dispatched it to the king. In the midst of Charles 1’s rejection, an attempt to force his reinstatement by radical mob action was underway in early August which the New Model Army peacefully disbanded. A negotiated settlement between king, Parliament, and Army relative to The heads had not been totally extinguished despite these events. Fairfax moved his headquarters from Reading to Putney in September, and scheduled weekly meetings of the General Council at St. Mary’s with The heads acting as the centrepiece of the settlement debate. With Lilburne imprisoned in the Tower, the Levellers began to escalate the political rhetoric of the proceedings by objecting to any royal restoration recommended by The heads, and one prominent Leveller officer, Major Francis White, was expelled for just such an outspoken opinion. The Levellers were now preparing to present their own political manifesto to be advanced though other adherents within the Council, one of whom was Major William Rainborough, all the while soliciting the support of the Army’s discontented lower ranks by subverting their faith in their chosen Agitators. This lead to the creation of another ancillary group of representatives with strong Leveller sympathies designated ‘the agents of the five regiments.’ Coincidentally, they signed and submitted The case of the army truly stated to Fairfax on October 18, another proposal, which was most likely penned by Lilburne’s Leveller friend John Wildman. The case served to further divide the army rank and file from the officers, and question the settlement offered in The heads. It demanded the dissolution of Parliament, proposed a new representative scheme which included radical conditions of suffrage, and appealed for liberty of conscience. This new proposal, already published, and devoid of any negotiated settlement with the king, was presented before the Council on October 21. Though largely rejected, it contained some of the elements soon to be presented in the first Agreement. 275 An agreement of the people, the first formal Leveller constitution, was advanced before the Council on October 28 at Putney, which Cromwell, not Fairfax, now administered. Its contents were radical and revolutionary in contrast with The heads and other proposals. An agreement recommended no attempt to resurrect the ancient constitution, or referee the king’s return; rather, it outlined four clear and succinct constitutional proposals aimed at preserving “just freedome,” preventing “the danger of returning into a slavish condition,” and ensuring an effective body of “Representatives.” The sundry propositions arrayed within four articles are prefaced by “we declare,” and 275 The foregoing context for the first Agreement is summarised in large part from Woolrych’s Britain in Revolution, 361-385. 52
ROYALISTS, REPUBLICANS, FIFTH MONARCHISTS AND LEVELLERS conclude with “These things we declare to be our native Rights.” 276 Parliamentary seats would be redistributed in proportion to the number of “Inhabitants” as opposed to their current unequal distribution by “Counties, Cities & Burroughs.” Parliament was to be dissolved by September 30, 1648, with new Parliaments to be elected biennially. The fourth proposal contained a clear emphasis upon the sovereignty of the people by way of consent, delegation, and reservation of power. The “power of . . . Representatives” was “inferiour only to theirs who chuse them, and doth extend, without consent or concurrence of any other person or persons” and a clear negative on the voice and presence of King and Lords. The province of their power related to “enacting, altering, and repealing of Lawes,” as well as the creating and dissolving of “Offices and Courts,” the “appointing, removing, and calling to account Magistrates, and Officers of all degrees,” the power of “making War and Peace,” and conducting relations with “forraign States.” 277 The fourth article ends with a reserved power clause: the peoples’ representatives have general power over matters “not expressly, or implydedly reserved by the represented to themselves,” and followed by five such reserved powers. 278 Here, An agreement implies that certain rights are inherent within the people which necessarily limit the authority of any future Representative. If such rights are indeed inherent as the Levellers argued, then all Englishmen bear a birthright of liberty. The first reserved power, that of liberty of conscience in “matters of Religion, and the wayes of Gods Worship,” is provided with a divine explanation. Such matters are grounded in the “Consciences” of the people as they perceive “the mind of God” to be, which no “humane power” has the authority to dictate. A provision though is inserted for the public instruction in such matters as long as it is not “compulsive” in nature. 279 The next four prohibit conscription to preserve “freedome,” prevent unauthorised harassment and reprisal “for any thing said or done” relative “to the late publicke differences,” demand equality under the law regardless of “Tenure, Estate, Charter, Degree, Birth, or place,” and appeal to the need for just laws to preserve “the safety and well being of the people.” The provision for legal equality ensured that the representatives would concentrate their focus upon the peoples’ “common 276 An agreement of the people for a firme and present peace, upon grounds of common-right and freedome (London, November 3, 1647), 1-5. 277 Ibid., 2-4. 278 Ibid., 4-5. 279 Ibid., 4. good” by guaranteeing that all laws would “bind all alike, without privilege or exemption”; legislators would even be subject to their own laws. Each of these propositions and “rules of Government” is claimed to be part of the peoples’ “native Rights,” yet to be secured through “the settlement of Our Peace and Freedome, upon him that intended our bondage, and brought a cruell Warre upon us.” 280 An agreement was not in the form of a petition, but a constitution to be enacted by way of the peoples’ direct consent via the written document itself as an instrument to bind future Parliaments. In this regard, it was to serve as supreme law, unalterable by Acts of Parliament. 281 The General Council of the Army debated the various articles of An agreement, beginning at Putney on October 28, 1647, and the first article proved to be the most controversial since it entailed a universal male suffrage devoid of property qualifications. Ireton played a leading role in disputing it, unable to reconcile such an equality of choice with the preservation of property throughout the kingdom. Neither did the Council ever arrive at a consensus given its terms and instead, framed a proposal which combined some of its contents with The heads. published. 282 This document was never formally 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 (December 15, 1648): Whitehall Debates The second An agreement of the people, also known as Foundations of freedom, was not entirely of Leveller extraction, but created by a committee of sixteen men representing four elements of interest: the Army, civilian Independents, certain Independent members of the House of Commons, and the Levellers. This first draft was submitted to the General Council of Officers on December 11, 1648 at Whitehall, though Lilburne never intended the Council to debate it. Nevertheless, that section which occupied much of their debate dealt 280 Ibid., 4-6. 281 Ibid., 9. 282 You can read the proceedings at Putney in The Clarke Papers, Selections from the Papers of William Clarke, Secretary of the Army, 1647-1649, and to General Monck and the Commanders of the Army in Scotland, 1651-1660, ed. C. H. Firth, vol. 1 (London, Printed for the Camden Society, 1891), 226-363. The more accessible edition is Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, Being the Army Debates (1647-9) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents, noted above. The Army’s proposal which combined, in some respects, An Agreement with The Heads, is found on 363- 367 of The Clarke Papers. 53
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