In a series of debates with Oliver Cromwell in Civil War England of 1647, the Levellers argued for democracy for the first time in British history. Evolving from Oliver Cromwell's New Model army in Parliament's struggle against King Charles I, the Levellers pushed for the removal of corruption in parliament, universal voting rights and religious toleration. This came to a head with the famous debates between the Levellers and Cromwell at St Mary's church in Putney, London. Renowned human-rights lawyer and author Geoffrey Robertson argues for the relevance of the Levellers' stand today, showing how they were the first Western radical democrats.

In the autumn of 1647, soldiers and officers of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army held discussions near London on the constitution and future of England. Would there be a king and lords, or not? Would suffrage be limited to property holders? Would democratic changes lead to anarchy? Three generations of scholars examine the debates in their multiple contexts: the debates themselves, the nature and history of the text that has come down to us, the army's immediate concerns, the role of Leveller and other democratic ideas, the wider ramifications for politics and gender, and the place of the debates and the Levellers in later historical consciousness. The debates receive here their most sustained and varied scrutiny, resulting in a much richer appreciation of the very words reported to have been spoken by Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, Thomas Rainborough, and the others, during those three tense and exhilarating days.

'A compelling and wry narrative of one of the most intellectually thrilling eras of British history' Guardian. ***************** SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020 England, 1651. Oliver Cromwell has defeated his royalist opponents in two civil wars, executed the Stuart king Charles I, laid waste to Ireland, and crushed the late king's son and his Scottish allies. He is master of Britain and Ireland. But Parliament, divided between moderates, republicans and Puritans of uncompromisingly millenarian hue, is faction-ridden and disputatious. By the end of 1653, Cromwell has become 'Lord Protector'. Seeking dragons for an elect Protestant nation to slay, he launches an ambitious 'Western Design' against Spain's empire in the New World. When an amphibious assault on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1655 proves a disaster, a shaken Cromwell is convinced that God is punishing England for its sinfulness. But the imposition of the rule of the Major-Generals – bureaucrats with a penchant for closing alehouses – backfires spectacularly. Sectarianism and fundamentalism run riot. Radicals and royalists join together in conspiracy. The only way out seems to be a return to a Parliament presided over by a king. But will Cromwell accept the crown? Paul Lay narrates in entertaining but always rigorous fashion the story of England's first and only experiment with republican government: he brings the febrile world of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate to life, providing vivid portraits of the extraordinary individuals who inhabited it and capturing its dissonant cacophony of political and religious voices. ***************** Reviews: 'Briskly paced and elegantly written, Providence Lost provides us with a first-class ticket to this Cromwellian world of achievement, paradox and contradiction. Few guides take us so directly, or so sympathetically, into the imaginative worlds of that tumultuous decade' John Adamson, The Times. 'Providence Lost is a learned, lucid, wry and compelling narrative of the 1650s as well as a sensitive portrayal of a man unravelled by providence' Jessie Childs, Guardian.

The gripping story of the Levellers, the radical movement at the heart of the English Revolution The Levellers, formed out of the explosive tumult of the 1640s and the battlefields of the Civil War, are central figures in the history of democracy. In this thrilling narrative, John Rees brings to life the men—including John Lilburne, Richard Overton and Thomas Rainsborough—and women who ensured victory and became an inspiration to republicans of many nations. From the raucous streets of London and the clattering printers’ workshops that stoked the uprising, to the rank and file of the New Model Army and the furious Putney debates where the Levellers argued with Oliver Cromwell for the future of English democracy, this story reasserts the revolutionary nature of the 1642–51 wars and the role of ordinary people in this pivotal moment in history. In particular Rees places the Levellers at the centre of the debates of 1647 when the nation was gripped by the question of what to do with the defeated Charles I. Without the Levellers and Agitators’ fortitude and well-organised opposition history may have avoided the regicide and missed its revolutionary moment. The legacy of the Levellers can be seen in the modern struggles for freedom and democracy across the world.

The Levellers were a crucial component of a radically democratic movement during the civil wars in seventeenth-century England. This was to be democratic at a time when the very idea of democracy conjured up nothing good; with its suggestion of anarchy and the 'levelling' of distinctions in rank and of property, even the holding of women in common. This collection of thirteen fully annotated Leveller writings, including their famous Agreements of the People, is important as a contribution not only to the understanding of the English civil wars, but also of democratic theory. The editor's introduction sets the Leveller ideas in their context and, together with a chronology, short biographies of the leading figures and a guide to further reading, will be of interest to students of the English civil wars, the history of political thought and the history of democratic ideas.

This book explores the content of The Moderate, a radical newspaper of the British Civil Wars published in the pivotal years 1648-9. This newsbook, as newspapers were then known, is commonly associated with the Leveller movement, a radical political group that promoted a democratic form of government. While valuable studies have been published on the history of seventeenth-century English periodicals, as well as on the interaction between these newspapers and print culture at large, very little has been written on individual newspapers. This book fills a void: it provides an in-depth investigation of the news printed in The Moderate, with reference to other newspapers and to the larger historical context, and captures the essence of this periodical, seen both as a political publication and a commercial product. This book will be of interest to early-modern historians and literary scholars.

The Leveller movement of the 1640s campaigned for religious toleration and a radical remaking of politics in post-civil war England. This book, the first full-length study of the Levellers for fifty years, offers a fresh analysis of the originality and character of Leveller thought. Challenging received ideas about the Levellers as social contract theorists and Leveller thought as a mere radicalisation of parliamentarian thought, Foxley shows that the Levellers’ originality lay in their subtle and unexpected combination of different strands within parliamentarianism. The book takes full account of recent scholarship, and contributes to historical debates on the development of radical and republican politics in the civil war period, the nature of tolerationist thought, the significance of the Leveller movement and the extent of the Levellers’ influence in the ranks of the New Model Army.

Winner of the International Labor History Award Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world. When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization in the early seventeenth century launched the first global economy, a vast, diverse, and landless workforce was born. These workers crossed national, ethnic, and racial boundaries, as they circulated around the Atlantic world on trade ships and slave ships, from England to Virginia, from Africa to Barbados, and from the Americas back to Europe. Marshaling an impressive range of original research from archives in the Americas and Europe, the authors show how ordinary working people led dozens of rebellions on both sides of the North Atlantic. The rulers of the day called the multiethnic rebels a 'hydra' and brutally suppressed their risings, yet some of their ideas fueled the age of revolution. Others, hidden from history and recovered here, have much to teach us about our common humanity.