The Leveller Revolution by John Rees

Author:John Rees
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

Henry Marten’s ‘Leveller regiment’

As the counterrevolution flared into a Second Civil War, Henry Marten left London for his Berkshire estate and began to raise a military force. Its significance to the military conflict was small, in part because royalist forces in the West never came close enough to London for Berkshire to be contested as it had been in the First Civil War. But as an example of radical, popular military mobilisation, Marten’s regiment holds considerable interest. Marten’s aim was to raise a force that would fight ‘on behalf of the people of England for the recovery of their freedom and for common justice against tyranny and oppression whatsoever’.53 Indeed, the mysterious phrase, at least to the royalist newsbook that reported it, ‘For the People’s Freedom against all tyrants whatsoever’ embellished the colours of the regiment.54 William Eyre, the Leveller veteran of Ware, whom we last met at the meeting planning mutiny at Broadway in January, was organising the regiment with Marten. Eyre held lands in Pusey, Oxfordshire, which bordered Marten’s estates and so both men would have known the locality and its people.55

Marten had been active in raising forces in his county in the First Civil War and in early June 1648 he returned home with the same aim in mind. The County Committee first raised a regiment of foot in Reading but these were quickly sent to participate in the siege of Colchester and to garrison Wallingford and Windsor. Parliament regarrisoned Reading but instructed Marten to desist from further recruitment himself. Marten and Eyre ignored this command and proceeded to raise a regiment of horse. Another former Agitator, John Waldron, became a captain in the regiment.56 The regiment was horsed by the simple expedient of requisitioning from the stables of the local gentry. Landowners like Lord Craven of Hampstead Marshall, Charles Garrard of Lambourne and William Jones of Welford were raided. When Garrard asked Eyre on whose authority he acted, Eyre ‘laying his hand on his sword’ replied, ‘the same was his authority’, and he took horses ‘by the same authority that this informant and his father did take tithes of the parish’. Marten’s regiment swiftly became notorious. In early June one newsbook reported that ‘Henry Marten hath drawn to himself from the city into Berkshire and bids defiance to the House and all their messages’.57 This was certainly true. Marten and Eyre refused all attempts by Parliament even to get them to come and account for their actions, let alone disband the regiment. By August the regiment had become even more infamous in the royalist press. Mercurius Elenticus reported that ‘Henry Marten is resolved to level all of Berkshire … the greatest part of the Agitators of the Army and such others as stand for the doctrine of levelling are come unto him so that within 8 days he is wonderfully increased, being nigh 1,500 strong already’.58

Meanwhile Marten was practising the egalitarian ideology that he preached at this time. In his capacity as a Justice of the

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