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WHAT WAS THE FIRST AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2010

ELLIOT VERNON  and
PHILIP BAKER
ELLIOT VERNON*
Affiliation:
London
PHILIP BAKER*
Affiliation:
Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London
*
2 King's Bench Walk, Temple, London EC4Y 7DE[email protected]
Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU[email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the origins of the first Agreement of the people: a draft written constitution presented to the general council of the New Model Army on 28 October 1647. It argues that the Agreement was a document that emerged from concerns amongst some of the soldiery and their civilian allies that the terms of a projected settlement with Charles I, The heads of the proposals, would betray the political programme advanced in the army's earlier public statements, especially its Declaration, or, representation of 14 June 1647. As such, this article moves away from the traditional narrative of seeing the Agreement as a Leveller manifesto that was authored in a deliberate attempt to infiltrate the army, and thereby asks fresh questions about the political networks and the programme behind the document. What emerges is a picture of the post-first Civil War political scene that integrates parliamentary manoeuvrings with City of London politics and the public and private affairs of a politicized army. As a result, the article sheds new light on aspects of the constitutional crisis of the later 1640s.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 39 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

We would like to thank seminar audiences in London and Cambridge, and Jason Peacey, David Como, Rachel Foxley, and the referees for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

References

1 A. S. P. Woodhouse, ed., Puritanism and liberty (P&L) (3rd edn, London, 1986), p. 1; The case of the armie truly stated (1647). All pre-1800 works were published in London unless otherwise stated.

2 Woodhouse, ed., P&L, p. 7, where Cromwell's words clearly indicate this was the first time he had seen the Agreement; cf. A. Woolrych, Soldiers and statesmen (S&S) (Oxford, 1987), pp. 214–15.

3 An agreement of the people (n.p., 1647), quotations at pp. 2, 3. The Agreement was seemingly not printed until early Nov.; the London bookseller, George Thomason, collected his copy on 3 Nov.: British Library, Thomason Tracts, E.412/21.

4 This occurred in tandem with a renewed interest in the Levellers: see B. Worden, ‘The Levellers in history and memory, c. 1660–1960’, in M. Mendle, ed., The Putney debates of 1647 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 276–7.

5 D. M. Wolfe, ed., Leveller manifestoes of the Puritan revolution (New York, NY, 1967), p. 223; R. Ashton, The English Civil War (2nd edn, London, 1989), p. 312; A. Sharp, ed., The English Levellers (Cambridge, 1998), p. xvi.

6 For example, see D. Wootton, ‘Leveller democracy and the Puritan revolution’, in J. H. Burns with M. Goldie, eds., The Cambridge history of political thought, 1450–1700, iii (Cambridge, 1991), p. 412.

7 For example, see Wolfe, ed., Leveller manifestoes, pp. 22–62; H. N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution, ed. C. Hill (2nd edn, Nottingham, 1983), pp. 173–287.

8 M. A. Kishlansky, The rise of the New Model Army (Cambridge, 1979); idem, ‘The army and the Levellers: the roads to Putney’, Historical Journal, 22 (1979), pp. 795–824; idem, ‘Consensus politics and the structure of debate at Putney’, Journal of British Studies, 20 (1981), pp. 50–69; J. Morrill, ‘The army revolt of 1647’, in idem, The nature of the English Revolution (Harlow, 1993), pp. 307–31. For a later account emphasizing the religious motivations for army politicization, see Norris, M. A., ‘Edward Sexby, John Reynolds, and Edmund Chillenden: agitators, ‘sectarian grandees’, and the relations of the New Model Army with London in the spring of 1647', Historical Research, 76 (2003), pp. 30–53Google Scholar.

9 J. Morrill and P. Baker, ‘The case of the armie truly re-stated’, in Mendle, ed., Putney debates, pp. 103–24.

10 I. Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1645–1653 (Oxford, 1994), chs. 6–7; idem, ‘The politics of Fairfax's army, 1645–1649’, in J. Adamson, ed., The English Civil War (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 186–94; B. Taft, ‘Journey to Putney: the quiet Leveller’, in G. J. Schochet, P. E. Tatspaugh, and C. Brobeck, eds., Religion, resistance, and Civil War (Washington, DC, 1990), pp. 63–81; Woolrych, S&S, passim; idem, Britain in revolution, 1625–1660 (Oxford, 2002), ch. 12.

11 For example, see Wootton, ‘Leveller democracy’, pp. 412–13; Morrill and Baker, ‘Case of the armie’, pp. 114–15, 121–2; Woolrych, S&S, p. 215.

12 Peacey, J. T., ‘John Lilburne and the Long Parliament’, Historical Journal, 43, (2000), pp. 625–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 For the most recent statement of this position, see Gentles, ‘Politics of Fairfax's army’, pp. 188–91.

14 The remainder of this paragraph draws on, and extends, a number of points in Morrill and Baker, ‘Case of the armie’, pp. 108–9, 119.

15 For Glover's speculative attempt to link Lilburne and Wildman through the authorship of a number of anonymous pamphlets, see his ‘The Putney debates: popular versus elite republicanism’, Past and Present, 164 (1999), pp. 47–80. See also Woolrych, S&S, chs. 8–9.

16 ‘The Tower of London letter-book of Sir Lewis Dyve, 1646–1647’, ed. H. G. Tibbutt (Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, vol. 38, Streatley, 1958), pp. 49–96, at pp. 90–2; Woodhouse, ed., P&L, p. 103. Norris's recent challenge to the view that Sexby was pivotal to the agitator organization and the army's links with London in the spring of 1647 does not, as he admits, question Sexby's significance to army–civilian relations by the following autumn: Norris, ‘Sexby, Reynolds, and Chillenden’, pp. 32 n. 9, 52 and n. 107.

17 ‘Letter-book’, ed. Tibbutt, p. 92.

18 Two letters from the agents of the five regiments of horse (n.p., 1647).

19 R. Huntington, Sundry reasons inducing Major Robert Huntington to lay down his commission (1648), pp. 10–11.

20 B. Taft, ‘Walwyn, William’, Oxford dictionary of national biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford, 2004).

21 Worden, ‘Levellers in history and memory’, pp. 280–2; Morrill and Baker, ‘Case of the armie’, p. 119; E. Vernon, ‘“A firme and present peace; upon grounds of common right and freedome”: the debate on the Agreements of the people and the crisis of the constitution, 1647–1659’, in P. Baker and E. Vernon, eds., Foundations of freedom (Basingstoke, forthcoming).

22 For a recent account of this group, see Como, D. R., ‘An unattributed pamphlet by William Walwyn: new light on the prehistory of the Leveller movement’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 69 (2006), pp. 353–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Gentles, ‘Politics of Fairfax's army’, pp. 187–8; Como, ‘Unattributed pamphlet’, p. 371.

24 Kishlansky, ‘Army and the Levellers’, pp. 796–7, 802–5.

25 K. Lindley, Popular politics and religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 311–19.

26 W. Walwyn, Walwyn's just defence (1649), p. 1.

27 P. Gregg, Free-born John (London, 2000), pp. 119–20. For the wider political context of this incident, see Peacey, ‘Lilburne and the Long Parliament’, pp. 630–1.

28 Como, ‘Unattributed pamphlet’, passim.

29 For an account of the long-term relationship between these individuals, see P. Baker, ‘“A despicable contemptible generation of men”?: Cromwell and the Levellers’, in P. Little, ed., Oliver Cromwell (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 90–115.

30 Como, ‘Unattributed pamphlet’, passim.

31 G. E. Aylmer, ed., The Levellers in the English Revolution (London, 1975), pp. 22, 75; Lindley, Popular politics, pp. 392–3.

32 Worcester College, Oxford, Clarke MS 41, fos. 167r–v.

33 The ‘Sharp petition’, which also called for the reinstatement of the Independent militia committee, was the last of a series of petitions the Independent alliance addressed to the Commons between March and June 1647, and the paper Wildman delivered noted that the issue of the militia was ‘a request in our last petition to the House of Commons’: ibid., fo. 167. See also Walwyn, Just defence, pp. 4–6; [W. Walwyn], Gold tried in the fire (n.p., 1647), sig. A1–A2, and pp. 11–12 for the ‘Sharp petition’.

34 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Loder-Symonds MSS, 13th report, appendix, part 4 (London, 1892), pp. 401–2. The earliest date for the cipher key can be established from the reference to the regiment of Colonel Deane, who took command of Rainborough's regiment on 27 Sept. 1647, while the reference to Rainborough puts the latest date as 29 Oct. 1648, the date of the latter's death. Yet given that Rainborough was at sea between Jan. and May 1648, that Wildman and Lilburne were imprisoned from Jan. to Aug. 1648, and that Wildman was intimately connected with Lilburne from early 1648, the absence of Lilburne's name suggests a date of late 1647.

35 Peacey, ‘Lilburne and the Long Parliament’, pp. 637–42.

36 Kishlansky, ‘Army and the Levellers’, p. 805.

37 Gregg, Free-born John, pp. 159, 172.

38 Walwyn, Just defence, p. 6; Woodhouse, ed., P&L, p. 92.

39 Norris, ‘Sexby, Reynolds, and Chillenden’, passim.

40 Woodhouse, ed., P&L, p. 398.

41 Woolrych, S&S, p. 154.

42 E. Kitson and E. Kitson Clark, eds., ‘Some civil war accounts, 1647–1650’ (Publications of the Thoresby Society, vol. 11, Leeds, 1902), pp. 137–235, at p. 142.

43 Walwyn, Just defence, pp. 1, 5–6; Worcester College, Oxford, Clarke MS 66, fo. 6.

44 The National Archives, SP 28/301, fo. 478. Our thanks to Jason Peacey for this reference.

45 A declaration of the engagements, remonstrances, representations, proposals, desires, and resolutions from His Excellency Sir Tho: Fairfax, and the generall councell of the army (1647) (hereafter, ABD).

46 A declaration, or representation from His Excellency, Sir Thomas Fairfax and of the army under his command (1647); all references are to the version in ABD, pp. 36–46 (corrected pagination).

47 For example, see Gentles, New Model Army, pp. 178–9. The Declaration was printed in both London and Cambridge. The Cambridge edition – entitled A representation from His Excellencie S. Thomas Fairfax (Cambridge, 1647) – contained an additional clause demanding a more equal distribution of parliamentary seats, but is otherwise essentially the same as the London editions published by George Whittington. While the view persists that the Cambridge edition was not authentic and presumably the work of radicals (see M. Kishlansky, ‘Ideology and politics in the parliamentary armies, 1645–1649’, in J. Morrill, ed., Reactions to the English Civil War, 1642–1649 (London and Basingstoke, 1982), p. 168 n. 11), the wording (if not the precise order) of its additional clause is strikingly similar to the demand for electoral reform in The heads of the proposals: see A representation, pp. 11–12, and ABD, p. 113.

48 ABD, p. 37.

49 For a discussion of which, see J. Scott, England's troubles (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 283–9.

50 ABD, pp. 39–41, quotations at p. 39.

51 Ibid., p. 41.

52 Ibid., p. 43.

53 Ibid., p. 44.

54 S. Barber, A revolutionary rogue (Stroud, 2000), p. 16.

55 G. Masterson, The triumph stain'd (1648), pp. 11–12; D. Underdown, ed., ‘The parliamentary diary of John Boys, 1647–1648’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 39 (1966), pp. 141–64, at pp. 157–8. Marten denied the rumour was true and informed the Commons it should not ‘approve of or stick to any government because its that we found, unless it be good, and for the safety of the people’: ibid., p. 158. At Putney, Cromwell explained his behaviour in the Commons in terms of sometimes speaking as the member for Huntingdon and sometimes as a spokesman for the army: Woodhouse, ed., P&L, p. 3.

56 Idiosyncrasies in the print set used for the Two letters and at least one edition of The case can be matched to the press which the army had purchased by August 1647: see p. 8 and n. 42 above and p. 19 below.

57 The case, pp. 2, 4–6, 8, 14; Two letters, p. 2.

58 The case, p. 17.

59 Ibid., p. 6.

60 A cal to all the souldiers of the armie (n.p., 1647), p. 6 and second pagination pp. 6, 1. For the attribution of the tract to Wildman, see M. Ashley, John Wildman (London, 1947), p. 39.

61 Woodhouse, ed., P&L, pp. 89, 61.

62 A cal, second pagination pp. 2, 3.

63 The case, pp. 1–2.

64 Two letters, p. 2.

65 Ibid., p. 7.

66 ABD, p. 44.

67 For example, see The case, pp. 6, 12.

68 ABD, pp. 118–20.

69 The case, pp. 10–12; Morrill and Baker, ‘Case of the armie’, pp. 112–13.

70 Morrill and Baker, ‘Case of the armie’, pp. 111, 115–19.

71 Woodhouse, ed., P&L, pp. 2, 4.

72 A cal, second pagination pp. 4–5.

73 For the historical background to associations and covenants, see E. Vallance, Revolutionary England and the national covenant (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 133–49.

74 The case, p. 15.

75 J. S. A. Adamson, ‘The English nobility and the projected settlement of 1647’, Historical Journal, 30 (1987), pp. 567–602, at pp. 597–8.

76 Baker, ‘Despicable contemptible generation of men’, pp. 102–3.

77 R. Overton, An appeale from the degenerate representative body the Commons of England (1647), pp. 4–6, 10–11.

78 Ibid., p. 22, corrected pagination.

79 Ibid., pp. 32–8; A remonstrance of many thousand citizens (n.p., 1646); [Walwyn], Gold tried, pp. 1–6 for the ‘Large petition’.

80 R. Foxley, ‘Freedom of conscience and the Agreements of the people’, in Baker and Vernon, eds., Foundations of freedom.

81 For recent discussions of the relationship between the issue of indemnity and the Agreement, see M. Mendle, ‘Putney's pronouns: identity and indemnity in the great debate’, in idem, ed., Putney debates, pp. 141–2; J. C. Davis, ‘Afterword: reassessing radicalism in a traditional society: two questions’, in G. Burgess and M. Festenstein, eds., English radicalism, 1550–1850 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 357–8.

82 An agreement, p. 9.

83 Ibid., p. 11.

84 For discussions of this theory, see J. Scott, Commonwealth principles (Cambridge 2004), chs. 5–10; Q. Skinner, ‘Rethinking political liberty’, History Workshop Journal, 61 (2006), pp. 156–70.

85 Cf. Glover, ‘Putney debates’, passim.

86 W. Prynne, The soveraign power of parliaments and kingdomes (4 pts, 1643).

87 D. Wootton, ‘From rebellion to revolution: the crisis of the winter of 1642–1643 and the origins of civil war radicalism’, in R. Cust and A. Hughes, eds., The English Civil War (London and New York, NY, 1997), pp. 340–56.

88 An agreement, p. 13.

89 For Lilburne, see A. Sharp, ‘John Lilburne and the Long Parliament's Book of declarations: a radical's exploitation of the words of authorities’, History of Political Thought, 9 (1988), pp. 19–44; idem, ‘John Lilburne's discourse of law’, Political Science, 40 (1988), pp. 18–33.

90 For the contemporary interest in this model of government, see Scott, Commonwealth principles, pp. 135–9.

91 An agreement, pp. 3–4; see also The case, p. 15 For the marks of sovereignty, see J. Bodin, The six bookes of a common-weale (1606), bk i, ch. x.

92 For example, see Wolfe, ed., Leveller manifestoes, p. 223; D. Wootton, Divine right and democracy (Harmondsworth, 1986), pp. 273–4.

93 For examples of seventeenth-century legal drafting, see The compleat clark, and scriveners guide (1655).

94 ABD, p. 39.

95 Ibid., pp. 43, 40.

96 An agreement, p. 8; cf. ABD, p. 42.

97 An agreement, p. 14.

98 Woodhouse, ed., P&L, p. 25.

99 Ibid., pp. 35, 19.

100 Ibid., pp. 11–12. Such a positive response was likely from the probable author of the Declaration of 14 June. What Ireton famously could not accept, however, was that the Agreement's demand for greater electoral equality was founded not on the basis of taxation, as it was in The heads of the proposals and the Cambridge edition of the Declaration, but on that of population.

101 Ibid., pp. 449–52; Baker, ‘Despicable contemptible generation of men’, p. 104. ‘Agent Walley’ was possibly Mathew Wealey, a signatory to most new agent pamphlets.

102 Woodhouse, ed., P&L, pp. 10, 24–5, 27.

103 Ibid., p. 10.

104 A cal, p. 5.

105 ‘J. Lawmind’ (=J. Wildman), Putney proiects (1647), pp. 4, sig. f3v.

106 Ibid., p. 32.

107 For Wildman's use of classical quotations drawn from Prynne's work, see Glover, ‘Putney debates’, pp. 61–3.

108 Woodhouse, ed., P&L, p. 108.

109 Ibid., pp. 1, 53.

110 Barber, Revolutionary rogue, pp. 14–16, 30.

111 Peacey, ‘Lilburne and the Long Parliament’, p. 642.

112 R. Overton, Overton's defyance of the Act of Pardon (1649), p. 7.

113 The second part of England's new-chaines discovered (1649), p. 6. The same argument had earlier appeared in a civilian broadside of 23 Nov. 1647, which noted that ‘it pleased God to raise up the spirits of some Agents [in the army], to consider of an agreement of the people … & to offer it to the Generall Councell of the army for their concurrence’: To the supream authority of England, the Commons in parliament assembled (1647).

114 See Gregg, Free-born John, chs. 17, 27.

115 Woolrych, S&S, p. 211; A cal, second pagination p. 6; ‘Letter-book’, ed. Tibbutt, p. 92.

116 It is notable that Lilburne made no mention of the Agreement, or of its novel ideas, in any of his printed works in the period between Sept. and Nov. 1647.

117 Woodhouse, ed., P&L, p. 89.

118 Kitson and Kitson Clark, eds., ‘Civil war accounts’, p. 142. The Coes and Clowes seem to have retained the use of the press for non-army printing. It is our intention to explore further the new agent organization in a separate article.

119 ‘Letter-book’, ed. Tibbutt, pp. 90–1.

120 A copy of a letter from the com. gen. regiment, to the convention of agents residing at London (n.p., 1647).

121 Two petitions from the agents to ten regiments (n.p., 1647), sig. A1.

122 Peacey, ‘Lilburne and the Long Parliament’, pp. 642–3.

123 ‘Letter-book’, ed. Tibbutt, pp. 95–6. In a letter of 28 Oct. 1647, Dyve wrote that ‘Crumwell … hath latly employed severall agents to deale with Mr. Lilbourne to perswade to imploy his interest in the army … makeing large and faire promises to him’: ibid., p. 94.

124 Mercurius Pragmaticus, 9 (9–16 Nov. 1647), pp. 69–70; two different versions of this newspaper were published in that week, the cited version being British Library, Thomason Tracts, E.414/16.

125 See N. Carlin, ‘Leveller organisation in London’, Historical Journal, 27 (1984), pp. 955–60.