Levellers, Diggers and radical religion
Why Did Radical Groups Emerge After 1645?
Military victory created new political problems. By 1646 Parliament had defeated the King, but the army that had won the war now demanded a say in the peace. The New Model Army was an unusual institution: its soldiers and junior officers debated theology, read pamphlets and believed God had given them victory for a purpose. This religious ferment, combined with practical grievances over pay and potential disbandment, made the army a political as well as military force.
The most significant radical group to emerge was the Levellers. The name — applied by their opponents, not themselves — implied they wanted to level social distinctions, which they denied. Their core demands were more limited but genuinely radical for the time: a widened franchise, equality before the law, religious toleration, and an end to imprisonment for debt.
The Levellers demanded: a widened male franchise (though not universal), equality before the law, freedom of conscience in religion, and an end to arbitrary imprisonment. They gathered most support among the rank and file of the New Model Army.
Key Figures: Lilburne and Rainsborough
John Lilburne was the Levellers’ most prolific pamphleteer. Imprisoned multiple times by both the King and Parliament, he argued that every freeborn Englishman had natural rights that no government could take away. Thomas Rainsborough gave the Levellers’ most memorable statement of principle at the Putney Debates: “The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he.” This is a documented quotation from the Clarke Papers, the written record of the debates. Rainsborough argued every man deserved a vote because every man was subject to the government.
The Putney Debates 1647
In October and November 1647, representatives of the army’s rank and file (called “agitators”) met senior officers including Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton in the Putney Debates. The Levellers presented their Agreement of the People, a draft written constitution. The central dispute was over the franchise: should all men vote, or only property owners?
Ireton argued that the vote should be restricted to those with “a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom” — that is, property owners. He feared that if all men voted, they would use their majority to abolish property rights. Rainsborough and the Levellers countered that a man without property still had an interest in his government because he was subject to its laws. The debate ended without resolution. Cromwell then used his authority to suppress the Leveller mutinies that followed, executing the ringleaders at Burford in 1649.
Even more radical than the Levellers were the Diggers. In April 1649 a small group led by Gerrard Winstanley began digging and planting on St George’s Hill in Surrey, claiming that the earth was a “common treasury” belonging to all people, not private landowners. The Diggers were never a mass movement — at their peak perhaps a few dozen people — but they represented the most thoroughgoing social radicalism of the period. Local landowners and the Council of State suppressed their communities within a year.
The Quakers and Religious Radicalism
Religious radicalism also flourished in the 1640s and 1650s. The Quakers, founded by George Fox around 1650, rejected all outward forms of worship, professional clergy and set prayers. They spoke of an “Inner Light” within every person. Quakers refused to doff their hats to social superiors and addressed everyone — including judges and magistrates — with the familiar “thee” and “thou” rather than formal titles. This made them extremely provocative to established authority. Other groups included the Ranters (who denied sin and conventional morality), the Fifth Monarchists (who believed Christ’s Second Coming was imminent), and the Muggletonians.
Thomas Rainsborough argued at the Putney Debates: “The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he.” This quotation is recorded in the Clarke Papers, the army secretary’s written record of the 1647 debates.
Parliament and the army leadership were deeply ambivalent about the radical groups. Religious toleration appealed to many Independents (who opposed a compulsory state church) but went too far for Presbyterians who wanted a new enforced orthodoxy. Political radicalism threatened property and social order in ways that alarmed both Parliament and army grandees. Cromwell suppressed the Leveller mutinies militarily. The Blasphemy Act of 1650 targeted the Ranters. The Diggers were dispersed by landlord pressure. The Quakers were imprisoned in large numbers under the Protectorate. Radical groups achieved very little immediate change but their ideas — especially the Leveller demand for wider suffrage — remained influential in later centuries.