Following the Levellers, Volume Two by Gary S. De Krey

Author:Gary S. De Krey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

The Republic Against Itself: Leveller Successor Responses to the Committee of Safety

The broad national conversation about settlement in which Leveller successors participated so vigorously ended in October 1659, when the army expelled the Rump for the second time. This unexpected action followed September disputes between those advocating different structures for settlement. In the wake of Booth’s rising , as a parliamentary committee worked overtime to complete a set of constitutional proposals, ‘godly republicans,’ Fifth Monarchists , and Col. Lambert and his officer friends coalesced into one faction. They were convinced by the royalist disturbances both of the need for an immediate settlement and for a settlement dominated by those truly committed to the Commonwealth . They favoured a senate or a nominated assembly like that of 1653 and the exclusion of royalists and ‘neuters’ from active participation in politics. A ‘party’ of parliamentary republicans , led by Sir Arthur Hesilrige , who were committed to more inclusive republican ideas, like those of Harrington and Neville , stood against them. Parliamentary republicans mostly preferred a political settlement on the basis of some of the principles they shared with Leveller successors: namely, that ultimate authority resided with the people, that the authority of parliament was a delegated trust , and that ‘some fundamental, not to be dispensed with or subjected unto alteration’ must restrain future MPs. 39 Moreover, these and other MPs poorly appreciated Lambert’s success against the August royalist rising: they feared that the colonel aspired to restore a facsimile of the Cromwellian polity with himself as protector. The question of toleration also provoked renewed disagreement. The Rump’s committee on settlement voted twice regarding a ‘fundamental of toleration’ intended as a constitutional anchor which future MPs could not alter, but precisely what the committee decided upon became the subject of rumours and confusion. 40

The emergence of these divisions did not make the expulsion of parliament inevitable; instead, a cascade of missteps and overreactions by those with different priorities brought it about. This rapid sequence of events began with a petition to the Rump drafted by about fifty of Lambert’s officers at Derby on 16 September 1659. Showing understandable anxiety about the complicity of many local office-holders in the rebellion, they pushed for immediate adoption of the chief stipulations of the officers’ May 1659 Humble Petition and Address as ‘the best and only expedient yet offered … to a happy and durable settlement.’ Unnamed but clearly implied among those provisions was the call for a ‘select senate .’ At about the same time, a notable Essay toward Settlement suggested that ‘men qualified and limited according to [God’s] word’ ought to be ‘set apart’ for the ‘rule and government’ in a manner similar to the Nominated Parliament of 1653. The Essay’s twenty signatories included prominent Fifth Monarchists , several of whom who also had Leveller associations: William Allen , Henry Danvers , and Col. Robert Overton, as well as Hugh Courtney and John Poortmans , both of whom had been arrested in 1658 for opposition to Oliver Cromwell.

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