Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution PDF
Preview Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution
L eveller M anifestoes of the Puritan Revolution Edited, with introduction and commentaries b\ ■’ DON M.'WOLFE New fork University Foreword, by CHARLES A. BEARD THOMAS NELSON AND SONS NEW YORK • LONDON * EDINBURGH TORONTO • MELBOURNE 1944 Copvwr.HT, 1944 BY Thomas Nflson and Sons MINTID IK TNI UKITID STATIS OF AM1KICA •V }. J. blTTLI a ivsa coxrAsr, kbw you TO ILLIS H. WILCOX in grateful memory of an intellectual awakening e. 7 S W S‘c l ^ FOREWORD This volume deserves a permanent place as a fundamental exhibit in the history of constitutional government and liberty in England, the United States, indeed the whole English-speaking world. It is a collection of primary manifestoes issued by the popular group or party, generally known as Levellers, who played an active and influential role in the English revolution of 1648*49 that marked the end of royal tyranny. Within the covers of a single book Mr. Wolfe has brought together rare pamphlets and tracts that are seldom available even in many of the largest libraries in England and America. By orderly arrangement and informed comment he has smoothed the way for a study of the relations among them and of the evolution in the ideas and interests they expressed. Thus his work constitutes a well-rounded unity of thought and plan which forms an indispensable part of the whole record representing the struggle for constitutional government from Magna Carta to our own age. As a contribution to critical scholarship, Mr. Wolfe’s book serves many useful purposes. It makes easily available to inquirers everywhere numerous documents requisite to the study of a stormy and creative period in English history. No library that pretends to provide essential materials for English history can fail to have the volume on its shelves. No course of instruction in English history that rises above the most elementary level can foil to require an examination of the remonstrances, declarations, and appeals contained in this collection. For these reasons alone students will be grateful to Mr. Wolfe for sparing them laborious days prosecuting searches which they would otherwise have to make and for furnishing them guidance in interpretations. Now that the history of ideas is beginning to receive in the United States some of the thoughtful attention it deserves, Mr. vii viii FOREWORD Wolfe's work possesses what may be called “current interest" in the strict sense of the words. In the materials he reprints and in the supplementary comments from his own pen are to be found early origins and formulations of ideas that have bulked large in the history of the Western world for more than two centuries. No person seriously concerned with the rise and development of these ideas can afford to neglect a line by line scrutiny of the pages Mr. Wolfe has prepared. For the history of the United States, Mr. Wolfe’s work has a special significance. Important colonies were rising to power on the shores of America when the Puritan revolt broke into full storm in 1642*49. To these colonies fled many participants in that struggle, before, during, and after it exploded in revolution. In all parts of the colonies reverberations of the conflict were heard. It was to the traditions of this contest that leaders in the American Revolution, such as John Adams, James Otis, Alex* ander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson appealed in justification of their cause. In the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States were incorporated ideas, maxims, and prin ciples which are cherished as distinguishing features of American life and institutions. But these doctrines were not all newly de signed and formulated by the founders of our Republic and pro claimed to the world as original discoveries. No one knew better than Thomas Jefferson that the axioms of the Declaration were already well known and tenaciously held among masses of the American people. Even boys and girls in American high schools are now aware that Jefferson drew heavily on John Locke for many essentials deemed “self-evident" in the immortal document of 1776. What is not generally known is that nearly all the fundamentals of government and liberty had been set forth or foreshadowed in the declarations of English Levellers long before John Locke published his celebrated treatises on government. In support of this contention a few citations from Mr. Wolfe's pages may be made: FOREWORD IX “Originally men and women ‘were by nature all equal! and alike in power, digny [sic], authority, and majesty,’ no one possess ing any rlgfn of dominance except by mutual consent." (p. 81 ~ "£o ought the whole nation to be free therein ^ and change the publique forme, as maybest stand with the safety and freedome of the people." (p. 7) “By naturali birth, all men are equally and alike borne to like propriety, liberty, an<T freedom.” (p. 11) “We are resolu’ed upon our Natural Rights and Freedoms.” (R.lii. “The only and sole legislative Law-making power is originally inherent in the people, and derivatively in their Commissions chosen by themselves by common consent and no other.” (p. 14) On such statements no comment is neeaed. By comparing them with the opening passages of the Declaration of Indepen dence anyone can see that levelling ideas of 1646-49 were in fact self-evident truths of 1776. In “Foundations of Freedom or an Agreement of the People Proposed as a Rule for Future Government” (pp. 293 ff.) are laid down many essentials of constitutional government long recog nized in the United States as basic to liberty under law, if often violated in practice. These include apportionment of representa tives on the basis of population, a broad though not Ulllveisal suffrage, a safeguarded system ot popular elections, exclusion of salaried officials from legislatures, limited government, and a bill of rights. In other words here are the doctrines that government must rest upon a popular basis, that it is limited and not sovereign in powers, and that, in the interest of human liberty, certain rights of persons and property must be protected against govern mental encroachments. Nor were the Levellers indifferent to the condition of the people. They opposed monopolies and special privileges. They called for reforms in the laws which anticipated achievements commonly ascribed to the enlightenment of the nineteenth cen tury. That a civilized government must resort to social legisla^ FOREWORD tion and safeguard the people against the hazards of misfortune. "Levellers were firmly convinced, despite the fact that they stood to the right of their more radical contemporaries, "the Diggers/* To this conviction "The humble Petition of many thousands," among other documents, bore eloquent witness (pp. 135 £f.). It is, therefore, to the history of civilization, as well as govern ment and liberty, that Mr. Wolfe makes an enduring contribu tion. Charles A. Beard. New Milford, Conn., Spring, 1944. PREFACE Like most searchers in seventeenth-century intellectual history, I have long felt a need for a volume of documents containing the three great constitutional sallies of the Levellers,1 the Agreements of 1647, *648, and 1649. Once engaged in the project, however, I found that to trace the genesis and maturation of Agreement ideas required a more elaborate plan, one that would incorporate the chief petitions and pamphlet proclamations of the three-year period. Hence the final scope of the project: to exemplify the basic ideological patterns of the Leveller movement. Of the nineteen complete documents reprinted here, sixteen are undeniably Leveller tracts and proclamations, and the remain ing three were written under Leveller influence. One, the officers' Agreement of 1649, is of Independent authorship; one, No Papist nor Presbyterian, is of doubtful origin, though asserting its loyalty to Agreement tenets; the third, Several Proposals, was written by Lieut. Col. John Jubbes as a compromise Agreement. Two of the documents have appeared in a recent collection;3 several others have been reprinted in the past three centuries. Except in the words and phrases noted (see Appendix 3), the text of each docu ment has been reprinted in its original spelling, punctuation, upper and lower case, variation of roman with italic type. The marginal notes of the original manuscripts have been arranged in footnote form. The title pages are imitations, not exact reproduc tions, of the original typography. Without the diligent assistance of libraries in supplying photo stat copies of rare pamphlets, this project could not have gone forward. I am indebted to the National Library of Wales, Aber ystwyth, present custodians of the Thomason Collection, for 1 Though I have used the word Leveller throughout to designate the party of Lilbume and Overton, the term did not actually appear until November, 1647. It came into use as a nickname. Gardiner, Civil War, III, 380. */f Remonstrance Of Many Thousands and the Petition of March, 1647, ap peared in Professor W. H. Haller’s Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, 1934. xii PREFACE photostats of dozens of tracts not elsewhere available; to the Henry E. Huntington Library, the New York Public Library, and the Princeton Theological Seminary Library, for similar service. To the Union Theological Seminary Library I am espe cially indebted, and to the workers there who have given me unwearied assistance for the past four years; to Mrs. Charlotte Knight, Mrs. Hugh M. Foster, Mrs. Marcia Feibush, Dr. Lucia W. Markley, Mr. Robert Schroeder, and Mrs. H. N. Bigelow. Dr. Theodore Jones of New York University Library, University Heights, gave important aid in securing microfilm reproductions. In the difficult work of reading proof and preparing the index, I have had the generous aid of Dr. Florence Maly, Miss Nellie Schlatter, and Dr. Ruth A. Firor of Hunter College. To Dr. S. Marion Tucker, of Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, I am indebted for suggestive counselling and unfailing encour agement, drawn from the rich lore of his profound culture; to Professors Leo E. A. Saidla and Thomas L. Donahue for schol arly comradeship and many zestful hours of discussions; to Dr. Albert S. Borgman, of New York University, for valuable sugges tions on notes and textual arrangement; to Professor Paul Haines, New York University, for much provocative, timely analysis of ideas; to Dr. Putnam F. Jones, University of Pittsburgh, for his steady interest and exact, rich criticism; to Dr. Charles Beard, for the warmth of his encouragement and the inspiration of his intellectual zeal. D. M. W. New York, March 31, 1944
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