Introduction: the English Levellers, 1645–1649

Summary

I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another; for no man comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.

An old Leveller, Richard Rumbold, on the scaffold in 1685 for his part in Monmouth's rebellion

The Leveller movement came together in London in 1645–6. It was the product of the civil war breakdown of authority in the English church-state. In 1642 the two houses of parliament and their king, Charles I, had gone to war against each other. Each had claimed that the other was subverting the ancient legal rights and properties of the people and the ancient, legal balance of the English constitution of king, Lords and Commons. Each had also claimed that the other was bent on the destruction of the true Protestant religion – the king (with the aid of Irish rebels and the French court) by returning it to papacy, the parliament (courting the enemy Scots) threatening its unity by encouraging a babel of separating sects. Each side had produced and printed numerous ‘remonstrances, declarations, votes, orders, ordinances, proclamations, petitions, messages and answers’ to these effects, collected and printed for parliament in an Exact collection, soon to be much used by the Levellers in their propaganda (text 1). Charles had deserted Westminster to recruit an army in the north.