II

Among the victors in the First Civil War (with their history of conflicting principles and interests temporarily controlled by the necessity of defeating the enemy) only one point was held in common: the restored King must be so bound that he could never again exercise the arbitrary rule, civil and ecclesiastical, for whose overthrow the war had been fought. Beyond this general principle, disagreements at once emerged: first, as to the means of achieving the desired end, and what constituted satisfactory guarantees of its endurance; secondly, and more fundamentally, as to the disposition of the effectual sovereignty, taken from the King. Had that sovereignty been civil alone the problem would have presented enormous difficulties, but it was also ecclesiastical. In the Puritan revolution the religious problem may not have been—was not, in fact—more important than the civil, but in itself it was certainly the more difficult of solution, and it so combined with the civil problem as to render it, too, well-nigh insoluble.

Among the victors four main groups may be roughly distinguished. Each has a particular set of principles to advance, and a particular set of interests to guard, in the proposed religious settlement; and each is not only influenced in its whole policy by the interests, but, in varying degrees, takes the colour of its political thinking from the principles. Three of the groups fall under the general designation of Puritan; the fourth stands apart, for its guiding principle is secular, not religious, and its interest in the ecclesiastical settlement, while lively, is negative. This Edition: current; Page: [[15]] fourth group, known in the Long Parliament as the Erastians, is ineffectual in so far as it lacks the party organization which the two main Puritan groups possess, but influential through its power to combine with either of them and because it fully expresses the secular and anti-electrical spirit of the nation, the spirit which will accept passively any settlement in the church so long as that settlement is powerless to tyrannize or to endanger the peace.

The first of the three religious groups, the Presbyterian, had led the attack on absolutism and dominated the earlier phases of the struggle with Charles. Though it had lost the military ascendancy it once possessed, it could still generally command a majority in Parliament, and it hoped (with or without Scottish aid) to effect a settlement of the kingdom in its own interests. It stood for adherence to the Covenant, the establishment of Presbyterianism on the general lines laid down by the Westminster Assembly, and the suppression of every other doctrine and order. It was opposed to toleration, and was in general less interested in liberty than in reform. Its alliance with the Scots was its potential military strength and its actual political weakness, for in moments when national feeling ran high its majority in Parliament became a minority. But English Presbyterianism is not to be confounded with Scottish. Few indeed wished to see the Scottish church duplicated in England. Not only did the Presbyterian Party in Parliament rely on the Erastians to make its majority effective; its own adherents (as Baillie and his fellow Commissioners had lamented) were tainted with Erastianism. They would have a national Presbyterian church, and would suppress its rivals, but the church should be controlled by the state. In civil matters the Party was the most conservative of the revolutionaries (agreeing well enough with the Erastians herein); it was the Party of the Right in the Puritan coalition, finding its chief support among the aristocrats who had adhered to the Parliamentary cause, and the wealthy merchants of London, and fearing and hating the Parties of the Left for their civil, quite as much as their religious principles. The Presbyterians wished to limit the objectives of the revolution: to assert the effectual sovereignty not of the people but of Parliament, and to preserve at all costs the sanctity of property, whether real, personal, or political (the historic rights of the Crown and the material possessions of the Church alone excepted). The monarchy, shorn of its power, they would cherish in the interests of a lasting settlement—an assurance that the revolution had not been so very revolutionary after Edition: current; Page: [[16]] all, and a guarantee that it should go no further. (Had not God given the Israelites kings, and whenever they could do so with impunity, had not that model people knocked them about?) The King was indeed essential to their scheme, and the time was to come when they would sacrifice almost anything but the church settlement to gain him. He refused their terms and ruined himself and them. The Party of the Right is unrepresented in the Army Debates except in so far as the Independent officers agree with its civil policy or regard its opinion as something to be opposed only with caution.

To the spirit of this civil policy, the Independents, or the Party of the Centre, as we may call them, did not at first demur. But they were alarmed at its conjunction with an ecclesiastical ideal at variance with their own. The Independents were the heirs of the Presbyterians’ former military ascendancy, and between winning victories and opposing the hated Scots, they were sometimes able to gain a majority in Parliament. A common distrust of Presbyterian clericalism also enabled them to rely up to a point on the support of the Erastians. But even more than the Presbyterians’, their majority, when achieved, was highly precarious. Being astute politicians they knew that Parliament (or at all events this Parliament) would never settle the religion of the nation on their plan. Accordingly they were (or pretended to be) satisfied with a state-controlled Presbyterian establishment, so long as a toleration, of the general kind demanded by the Dissenting Brethren in the Assembly, were assured; and even for this they seemed content to wait, evidently sharing to some extent Cromwell’s comfortable assurance that heaven was on their side and would presently afford them an opportunity of taking what they wanted. Thus, partly through force of circumstances, but partly through a logical development of their own basic doctrines, the Independents became the party of toleration. This fact gave them an immense advantage outside Parliament; for it enabled Edition: current; Page: [[17]] them to draw support from the Parties of the Left, almost unrepresented in the House of Commons, but strong in the Army, on which in the last analysis the Independents relied. As time went on an increasing rift between Independents and Presbyterians became apparent in the matter of the civil settlement. Like the Presbyterians (and Erastians), the leaders retained their respect for property, real, personal, and political. This is the burden of Ireton’s impassioned argument at Putney: ‘All the main thing that I speak for, is because I would have an eye to property’ (p. 57). But they grew progressively less attached to the notion of the effectual sovereignty of Parliament, progressively more sensible of its tyranny; and, while loath to break with the existing Parliament, they sought a settlement which should put a definite limit to its life, and provide securely not only against the power of the restored King but also against the self-perpetuating tyranny of Parliaments in future. They discovered that if new presbyter was but old priest writ large, new Parliament also bore a striking resemblance to old King. To the monarchy itself they were certainly prepared to be not less generous than the Presbyterians, provided the King could be brought to their policy of discountenancing ecclesiastical tyranny, of ending the present Parliament, and of accepting the principle of biennial Parliaments—from whose power (as also from the King’s) certain fundamental matters should be reserved, and whose institution should be preceded by certain electoral reforms. These are some of the provisions of the Independents’ scheme of settlement, the Heads of the Proposals (pp. 422-6). But their attachment to monarchy was, like their attachment to Parliament, less deeply grounded than the Presbyterians’; it was more a matter of policy than of principle. The Independents could divest themselves of it when the moment came—when heaven (to adopt their own language) held forth the opportunity of other things; the Presbyterians could not. Independency is inherently the more radical creed. This does not mean that it is necessarily more democratic. In drawing support from the Parties of the Left, Independency allied itself with the one genuinely democratic party thrown up by the Puritan revolution, the Levellers, and temporarily even adopted some of their principles. But its immediate purpose served, the alliance dissolved, leaving the Levellers sadder and (as regards the Independents at least) wiser men. To gauge the cleavage between the Independents and their allies one has only to read the Putney Debates.

The Parties of the Left, the sectaries, religious and political, Edition: current; Page: [[18]] were a heterogeneous company among whom the winds of doctrine assumed the proportions of a tempest. They were descended from the Separatists and Anabaptists, as the Independents were from the more sedate Congregationalists, and were, so to speak, the Independents’ poor relations. Among themselves they agreed in little save the belief in a total separation of church and state and the demand for liberty of conscience, both which tenets are logical developments of parts of the Independents’ own creed, and the latter of them a main ground of the alliance between the sects and the Independent Party. Two significant types of opinion emerge among the sectaries. The one is recognizable as predominantly democratic in tendency, and ultimately secular in aim, though it maintains its emphasis on liberty of conscience and at times adopts the language of religious enthusiasm. This is the opinion of the Levellers (already mentioned), the political doctrinaires, led by Lilburne, Overton, Wildman, and others. It appealed more or less definitely to many of the rank-and-file in the New Model, to the Agitators (old and new), and even to some of the higher officers such as Colonel Rainborough. The second type of opinion is at bottom neither democratic in tendency nor secular in aim. It emphasizes not the rights of the people, but the privileges of the Saints, and it looks forward to the millennium (which always seems to be just around the corner) when the Saints shall inherit the earth and rule it with, or on behalf of, Christ (pp. 232-47, 390-6). This is the type of opinion held by the Fifth Monarchy Men, the religious doctrinaires (if the title may be awarded to one group when there are so many highly qualified claimants). Much less effectively organized in 1647-9 than the Levellers, this party had an advantage in the experience of victorious warfare through which the Army had passed, and in the Army’s susceptibility to religious enthusiasm. One cannot gauge the precise extent of its influence in the lower ranks. Probably that influence was very considerable, for up to a point it could Edition: current; Page: [[19]] coalesce with democratic opinion. Among the higher officers Colonel Harrison and Lieutenant-Colonel Goffe are definite adherents, and others, including Cromwell himself, are not untouched by its spell.

Such, in brief, are the main groups into which the Puritans fall. As political forces these parties operate in three corporate but not homogeneous bodies, the Parliament, the City, and the Army; and membership in each of these bodies partially, though only partially, cuts across party alignments and loyalties. (1) The Presbyterians’ majority in Parliament (even after they were relieved of the odium of a Scottish army on English soil) was always insecure. Yet in a less overt way the Presbyterian Party dominated Parliament up to the very moment of Pride’s purge; for they, with the Erastians, were in a special sense the Parliamentary party, insistent on the sovereignty of Parliament, determined that the regal powers and functions should be transferred to it, and that there should be no dissolution of the existing Parliament till all was settled and the kingdom safe—if ever. In these views the Parliament as a whole acquiesced, and even the Independent Party in Parliament (as distinct from the Independents of the Army and their allies) were influenced by the ‘interest’ of Parliament and of themselves as members of that august body: they could be induced to submit to Pride’s purge, but nothing could persuade the resulting Independent House of Commons to dissolve. Equally instructive to contemplate is the long struggle in Cromwell between the leader of the Army and the member of the House of Commons. (2) In the oligarchy which ruled the City the power of the Presbyterians was far more secure than in the House of Commons, and it was therefore a special object of the Army’s distrust. It generally acted in collusion with the Presbyterian leaders in Parliament. But the City, like the Parliament, was jealous of its independence and had its own special interests, material and political, to guard, and on occasion these interests Edition: current; Page: [[20]] conflicted with the needs of the Parliamentary party and the Presbyterian cause. (3) The Army was a corporate body in a sense somewhat different from Parliament and City, but no less real. Its ethos was as pronounced as theirs. All that it lacked was appropriate organs of expression, and these, with a remarkable initiative, it proceeded to create. The Army became, indeed, at once a sort of fourth estate in the realm, and a body not less representative than the (not very representative) Parliament at Westminster. It contained men of every shade of Puritan opinion, and no doubt a substantial number quite indifferent to the special ideals of the various Puritan parties and intent only on the soldiers’ material needs and grievances. But the political activities of the Army were dominated by two groups working in uneasy co-operation, the Independents, including many of the higher officers, and the Parties of the Left, finding their chief strength in the lower officers and the common troopers. These, and especially the leading Independents (Cromwell and Ireton, with a group of loyal colonels) shaped for the Army a policy which was in general harmony, but certainly not identical, with the policy of the Independent Party in Parliament. The Army had its own sense of corporate being and its own special needs and interests, in which officers and men of no close party affiliations could share. At the head of the Army, a symbol of its existence as a separate entity, stood Fairfax, of whom Gardiner remarks: ‘Most likely no one in England—probably not Fairfax himself—knew whether he was a Presbyterian or an Independent.’

A Parliament insecurely, but until Pride’s purge fairly constantly, dominated by the Presbyterians; an Army increasingly dominated by the Independents; the City where the Presbyterian interest prevailed; at a distance the Scots, and at home a vast but relatively unorganized mass of Royalist and Anglican discontent, and a smaller but more articulate body of popular and radical discontent; and finally, the endless and futile machinations of Charles—this (with a brief interruption, of the Second Civil War) is the general scene presented by the two years between February 1647 and January 1649. With this general scene in mind, our attention must turn more definitely to the activities of the New Model.

The plan of Parliament to rid itself of the New Model was highly alarming to the leading Independent officers, to the sectaries in the ranks, indeed to the whole Army. It was proposed to disband the force piecemeal, with, as an alternative, enlistment for service in Ireland under different commanders; and the plan Edition: current; Page: [[21]] did not include any adequate guarantees for long arrears of pay, for an Act of Indemnity covering deeds in the past war, or against being pressed for service outside England. On these defects, and the Parliament’s angry and threatening rejection of the soldiers’ protests, the whole scheme broke down; for the manifest injustice and ingratitude welded the Army into a unity of resentment, placed its disbanding completely beyond the Parliament’s power to effect, prepared it to become the political force which the Presbyterians dreaded, and fostered revolutionary propaganda in its ranks to the embarrassment of its commanders as well as to the danger of Parliament and nation. The soldiers looked to their officers for guidance, and towards the end of March these drew up a petition to Parliament, which confined itself to demanding guarantees for the soldiers’ material welfare and scrupulously avoided all reference to larger issues, political and ecclesiastical. But the men were also ready to organize in their own behalf. ‘Though the Army differ in religion,’ wrote an observer of Ireton’s regiment, ‘they all agree in their discontented speeches of the Parliament. . . . As for the petition, they now speak it openly that they will send it up with two out of every troop.’ Here is the first hint we have of the plan of appointing Agitators.

By the end of the month it had been carried into effect by eight regiments of horse, to be followed by the remaining horse and by the foot. Thus the rank-and-file created their own leaders, and opened a channel of communication with the high command, the Edition: current; Page: [[22]] Parliament, and public opinion in the country. It is a more striking achievement of democratic organization than the forming of the General Council of the Army early in June. For the latter was prompted by the higher officers and would never have been adopted had not the regiments elected their Agitators first; and the Agitators remained in fact a more potent force outside the Council than they ever became in it. Some of them were men of undoubted energy and ability. Sexby, Allen, and Lockyer figure in the debates at Reading and Putney. Allen describes them as young in statecraft (p. 421), but they show a natural aptitude for politics. Questioned at the Commons’ bar, on 30th April, for their first official act, the presentation of the soldiers’ grievances, Sexby, Allen, and Shepherd answer with all the astuteness of Lilburne himself. The scope of the Agitators’ plans is best realized from ‘Advertisements for managing the counsels of the Army,’ dated from Saffron Walden, 4th May (p. 398). They aim at the penetration and effective guidance of the whole Army. They know the power of the press and propose to utilize it in their meditated struggle for public favour. They grasp the need of circumspection and an orderly procedure: in their pleas for liberty and reform they will invoke ‘the declarations of Parliament put forth to engage us in blood,’ and when they ‘call for public justice . . . upon all offenders’ (or in other words the Presbyterian leaders in Parliament), it shall be ‘according to the Covenant’! The immediate needs of the soldiers (arrears and indemnity) are still emphasized, but the minds of the Agitators run on to the settlement of the kingdom upon principles of justice and common right.

Next to arrears and indemnity, the question most likely to move numbers in the Army was liberty of conscience. Here, too, the Presbyterian Party seemed determined to alarm and exasperate the soldiers by attacks on heterodoxy and threats of suppression. The extension of the soldiers’ demands to include, above all, liberty of conscience, but also other reforms, is evident in the grievances forwarded from various regiments to be presented to the Parliamentary Commissioners at Saffron Walden, on 13th-14th May (p. 399). Thus the principles of the Levellers (who stood, among other things, for complete religious toleration) made progress in the ranks. No doubt the Agitators were in their debt for doctrine and method, and advanced their cause; but it is also probable that the first movement to elect Agitators was itself a Edition: current; Page: [[23]] result of the infiltration of Leveller principles. We hear of their presence in April: ‘Some of the soldiers do not stick to call the Parliament-men tyrants; Lilburne’s books are quoted by them as statute laws’; and again (with patent exaggeration), the whole Army ‘is one Lilburne throughout, and more likely to give than to receive laws.’

Be this as it may, the hotter spirits were preparing to take the law into their own hands. By the middle of May an elaborate organization (compiete with theatrical properties—secret agents and code numbers) had been developed by the Agitators and their friends (p. 400). It was soon to be put to the test; and if we cannot restrain a smile at the evident enjoyment of No. 102 (‘Now, my lads, if we work like men we shall do well. . . . Yours till death, 102’), we must admit that in one instance it achieved a coup which left a mark on all future happenings. In the first days of June Cornet Joyce, acting in close collusion with the Agitators, and under (though perhaps also beyond) the secret orders of Cromwell and Ireton, seized the person of the King. This is not the place to tell again the familiar though problematical story, but we recall the significance of the hard-pressed cornet’s answer to Charles’ demand for a sight of his commission: ‘Here is my commission’ (pointing to his five hundred troopers). The Army had assumed the direction of events; its duel with a hostile majority in Parliament had entered on a new phase which was to culminate in Pride’s purge; and beyond that a dozen years of military rule were heralded in Joyce’s reply. But so far the soldiers’ action was unofficial, agreeable in this instance to the real commanders of the Army, Cromwell and Ireton, but not satisfactorily subject to their control. And a pressing problem faced them: to devise some means of preserving discipline and unity of action in face of the dubious (though at present friendly and potentially useful) forces emerging from the ranks. The solution of the problem—or more strictly the first step in its solution—was taken with the drawing up of the Solemn Engagement of the Army, and the organization of the General Council which it created.

The Solemn Engagement of the Army (pp. 401-3), accepted at a general rendezvous at Newmarket on 5th June, was a sort of military covenant made among the soldiers and with the kingdom. Edition: current; Page: [[24]] It set forth the soldiers’ grievances and the conditions on which they would disband, or enlist for service in Ireland, binding them to do neither until a council (called into existence for that purpose) should declare the conditions to have been fulfilled. It also demanded the exclusion from power of the Presbyterian leaders (the eleven members soon to be impeached in the name of the Army) who had sought to destroy the New Model and Kindle the flames of a fresh war. The Engagement disavowed all intention of serving the ends of any particular persons or party, of attempting to set up Independency in the place of Presbyterianism, of introducing ‘a general licentiousness under pretence of liberty of conscience,’ or of seeking to undermine the principle of magistracy; it glanced at the settlement, the securing of the liberties of citizen as well as soldier, the ‘establishment of common and equal right, freedom, and safety’ for all ‘that do not by denying the same to others render themselves incapable thereof’; and it invoked God’s blessing on the Army’s covenant and effort. The General Council, which the Engagement called into being, accepted the election of Agitators as an accomplished fact, balanced them with two commissioned officers from each regiment, and tipped the scale in favour of authority by associating them with the General, with the other general officers, and (though the document does not mention this) with the commanders of regiments. Thus was secured that precarious unity of the Army, which Cromwell was determined at all costs to preserve. Thus too was established what we may perhaps describe as the Putney Debating Society.

The Solemn Engagement, according to its promise, was followed, on 14th June, by a more detailed statement of the Army’s principles and its desires for the settlement of the kingdom. A Representation from Sir Thomas Fairfax and the Army under his command (pp. 403-9) is an able document, probably, like the Engagement, the work of Ireton. After setting forth once more the soldiers’ grievances and demands, it justifies the Army’s concern in larger issues and its right to resist, if need be, the orders of the Parliament, ‘considering that we were not a mere mercenary army hired to serve an arbitrary power, but called forth and conjured by the several declarations of Parliament to the defence of our own and the people’s just rights and liberties, and so we took up arms in judgment and conscience to those ends.’ Edition: current; Page: [[25]] This appeal to the declarations of Parliament is reinforced by one to ‘the law of nature and nations’ as manifested in Scottish and foreign precedent, and to the final and highest test: ‘Nor is that supreme end, the glory of God, wanting . . . to set a price upon all such proceedings of righteousness and justice, it being one witness of God in the world to carry on a testimony against the injustice and unrighteousness of men and against the miscarriages of governments when corrupted or declining from their primitive and original glory.’ And so, on to the settlement of the kingdom: the termination of the present House of Commons, biennial Parliaments, and more equal representation (later to be elaborated in the Heads of the Proposals); the right of free petition, the right of speedy trial, toleration for those unable to accept the religious settlement imposed by the Parliament (here the influence of the Parties of the Left); these things guaranteed, a willingness ‘freely and cheerfully [to] commit our stock or share of interest in this kingdom into this common bottom of Parliaments,’ and finally the promise to restore the King to his rights ‘so far as may consist with the right and freedom of the subject and with the security of the same for the future.’ The Representation of the Army, and especially this last-named clause, is one of the prior engagements so earnestly debated at Putney four months later.

Documents like the Representation were very well, but the more radical elements in the Army, while passionately addicted to declarations, were also eager for a march on London as the swiftest way of bringing Parliament and the City to their senses. On 24th-25th June the commanders, already at St. Albans, tried the experiment of advancing to Uxbridge (where they could easily cut off the City’s supplies) with a view to securing effective measures against the eleven members, and the cessation of the attempts to break down the Engagement by bribing desertion with the payment of arrears, and to provide forces that could, if necessary, be used to oppose the New Model. The voluntary withdrawal of the eleven members, and the submissive attitude of the City, satisfied the commanders, and the Army retired to Reading. Thus was demonstrated the power of the New Model to coerce Parliament and City. But the retirement was perhaps premature. While commissioners were engaged on a treaty between Parliament and Army, and Ireton was busy on the Heads of the Proposals, the Presbyterians continued their machinations. The purging of Independents from the London militia (contemplated by an ordinance passed in May) was effected. In the process a mystified lieutenant-colonel was ordered ‘to take notice he must fight Edition: current; Page: [[26]] against all malignants, sects, and sectaries, and all godly persons that shall come to oppose the City. To which the lieutenant-colonel replied: “Gentlemen, I had thought you all of you professed godliness. For my part I do, and therefore I shall not engage against any godly man. Whereupon Mr. Alderman Gibbs . . . answered that their meaning was . . .: if any, out of pretence of godliness, should come to oppose them, that he should fight against such. . . .” ’ Nothing could better reveal the state of parties, or the notorious religiosity of the Army. News of these doings reached Reading. To the Agitators it appeared that Parliament and City had relapsed into their old wicked ways and were preparing for a fresh appeal to arms. They drew up new demands, and urged an immediate march on London. The policy of the Army’s commanders, to avoid an open break with the Parliament and the sacrifice of its commission (the Army’s only legal ground of existence), was being assailed on two sides, by the recalcitrance of the Presbyterian Party and by the impatience of the soldiers. On 16th July the Agitators’ proposal was the subject of a great debate in the Council of the Army, the first to be reported in the Clarke MSS. Much less interesting in subject than the later debates, it is still highly significant of tempers and policies, and an excellent example of the sort of discussion that must frequently have arisen in the Council. Accordingly, I have prepared for the Appendix a summary of the arguments, with all the more striking passages quoted in full (pp. 409-20). In the debate Cromwell and Ireton, careful of appearances, as the extremists never were, insisted that the occasion offered for a show of force was insufficient. Heaven would provide a better opportunity. It did, before the month was out. With the Army at a distance, renewed pressure from the London mob forced the Speakers of both Houses, and the leading Independent members, to flee. To restore them to their places, and Parliament to its liberty, the Army entered London on 6th August. But so short-lived was the effect of this demonstration that by 14th August the Agitators were petitioning Fairfax for a purging of the House of Commons, and a new march on London for that purpose. The question was debated, and this time Cromwell was on the side of the Agitators. The calculated procrastination of Fairfax prevented the desired march; but Cromwell, not to be Edition: current; Page: [[27]] thwarted, made a show of force with his cavalry, and the leading Presbyterians retreated, leaving the Independents for the time masters of a small majority in the House.

Soon, however, a new danger threatened, a widening rift between the Independent leaders and their allies of the Left. The leaders hoped for a speedy settlement of the kingdom on the basis of the Heads of the Proposals. The method they advocated was a series of bills securing the liberties of the subject, the privileges of Parliament, and the settlement of the militia, to be followed, when these had received the royal assent, by others securing the rights of the King. On 16th September, the Council of the Army met at Putney after a sermon by Hugh Peter, and Cromwell was able to get this plan accepted, but in the teeth of a vigorous opposition led by Rainborough. The theoretic republicans found their opportunity in the growing impatience with the disingenuousness of Charles, and exploited it to the full. In Parliament too the rift appeared. On 22nd September, Marten moved for no further addresses to the King. He was easily defeated by aid of the Presbyterian vote, but it is significant that the Centre Party had to call upon the Right in order to correct the exuberance of its allies. Discontent in the ranks of the Army could think of no better expedient than to elect new Agitators. There were dark hints that those formerly appointed ‘did [now] more consult their own advancement than the public interest’; and they were supplemented in five regiments of horse (later in four more of horse and seven of foot) by new Agents. Whether or not this action was inspired by Levellers outside the Army, Ireton credits Wildman with composing the manifesto of the new Agitators, The Case of the Army Truly Stated (pp. 92, 95, 429-36), and the Proposals submitted by them are for an Agreement of the People (pp. 443-5). This, then, is the immediate background of the Putney Debates, with the documents that furnished their point of departure.

The debates reported took place on 28th and 29th October, and 1st November. It is unnecessary to summarize them since I print the text in full (pp. 1-124). Here for the first time the Levellers are represented, and the Agitators supported, by civilians whose presence has been invited. At the first debate Cromwell urged ‘that they should not meet as two contrary parties, but as some desirous to satisfy or convince each other.’ The wish was not fulfilled. The relative harmony of 5th June, or even of Edition: current; Page: [[28]] 16th July, was gone beyond recall, destroyed by the increasing rift between the Independent leaders and the Parties of the Left.

Though greatly superior in general interest to the discussion of 16th July, these debates are much less impressive as an example of truth and agreement reached through free discussion. They open with a personal attack on Cromwell and Ireton, and a frank commentary on their blasted reputations, which reflects the distrust of them coming to be entertained by Lilburne and his friends, and also suggests that as a means of preserving unity and discipline in the Army the Council has not been an unqualified success. Their defence leads into a discussion of the Army’s engagements. And here a new difference emerges: Cromwell and Ireton hold that, though the situation may have altered, the principles set forth in the declarations of the Army are binding; the radicals, that nothing is binding if it conflicts with reason, justice, and the safety of the people. ‘Rationalizations’ the arguments of both parties may be—what arguments are not?—but they are rationalizations which employ the deepest convictions, the most characteristic ideas, of those who adopt them. What the Independents are contending for on the practical level is, first, the settlement of the nation by treaty with the King; secondly, the preservation of unity and discipline in the Army: both alike forbid the acceptance of an Agreement of the People. In one respect, Cromwell and Ireton’s insistence on engagements is an example of what we may call the lower tactics of debate. Part of their object (Cromwell’s rather ingenuous disclaimers notwithstanding) is to kill time and prevent an irrevocable decision; they have discovered that the Council of the Army, however defective it may be as an organ of truth and agreement, is a thoroughly reliable instrument of delay, and in a select committee truth and agreement may have a better chance (pp. 13, 17). Even the seizing on Lieutenant-Colonel Goffe’s motion for a prayer-meeting is not quite free from suspicion, and, the prayer-meeting over, Cromwell and Ireton return to ‘engagements,’ to relinquish the subject only when it is patently exhausted and they must pass on to a new one, the provisions of the Agreement of the People. Here the same problem of interpretation arises: to distinguish clearly between profound convictions and the lower tactics of debate. Indeed the whole thing parallels closely the previous discussion of engagements, with the Levellers cutting through all obstacles to reason, justice, and natural right, and the Independents insisting on the claims of precedent and established interests. In two ways the Putney Edition: current; Page: [[29]] Debates mark the gulf that is widening between the Independents and their allies of the Left: first, in the frank irreconcilability of the principles advanced; secondly, in the atmosphere of tension, and in the necessity for the tactics which Cromwell and Ireton use. Yet the spirit of a lost unity reasserts itself at moments. Cromwell may reprobate the policy and arguments of the Left, but he is not wholly unsympathetic to their aspirations and ideals; and up to a point they share his conviction that to divide is to perish, and are frightened by his threat (skilfully concealed as an offer) to withdraw and leave them to their own devices. The last fully reported debate closes on a curious blend of acquiescence and irony. ‘It will be thought boldness in me not to agree with you,’ says Wildman to Ireton, and goes on to wish that provision might be made for the safety of the people and their champions when the King is restored. ‘But if not, I am but a single man; I shall venture myself and my share in the common bottom.’ The words are adapted from Ireton’s own Representation of the Army. The ‘common bottom’ had sprung a good many leaks since they were written.

But this was not the end. In the meetings of the Council on 4th and 5th November, and of its committee on 4th November (none of them, unfortunately, reported by Clarke), the Levellers would seem from the brief account available (pp. 452-4) to have defeated the Independent leaders, and carried a resolution in favour of manhood suffrage, a letter to the House of Commons virtually disclaiming any desire for further addresses to the King, and a demand for a general rendezvous (at which they intended to appeal from the officers to the Army and from Parliament to the people). But Cromwell had not played his last card. By 8th November he decided that the Council of the Army must be made to undo its recent work and then be placed beyond the possibility of further mischief (pp. 454-5). Somehow he managed to obtain from the Council a second letter to the Parliament explaining away that of the fifth, the dismissal of the representatives (Agitators and officers) to their regiments on the pretext of preparing for the forthcoming rendezvous, and a fresh committee of officers to examine the engagements of the Army and the Agreement of the People, whose findings were to be reported to ‘the several regiments at their respective rendezvous’ (ominous phrase). Simultaneously Fairfax sought from Parliament a further provision for the troops, ‘that so your care of the Army may appear, and myself and my officers be thereby enabled to let the soldiers see we take such consideration of them as Edition: current; Page: [[30]] becomes us and [as we] have engaged ourselves unto.’ Three separate rendezvous were substituted for the general rendezvous demanded by the Council of the Army. At that of the first brigade, on 15th November, Rainborough presented a petition in favour of the Agreement of the People, and some copies of the Agreement were distributed among the soldiers, with incitements to stand by it and defy their commanders. Only two regiments gave any trouble (and that easily quelled by the prompt action of Cromwell), Colonel Harrison’s, which had assembled against orders, wearing papers inscribed ‘England’s Freedom; Soldiers’ Rights,’ and Colonel Robert Lilburne’s, which had mutinied against its higher officers and driven them away. The rest readily accepted a new engagement to unite for the prosecution of specified aims and to yield obedience to the orders of the General (sent forth with the advice of the Council of the Army as regarded these aims, but of the Council of War as regarded all other matters). Thus discipline (which had been threatened by the very device created to sustain it) was once again restored, but at the price of the Independents’ alliance with the Parties of the Left. That this was possible offers a strong indication that while the Army as a whole was insistent on ‘soldiers’ rights,’ only a minority cared for ‘England’s freedom’ as the Levellers interpreted that phrase. The Levellers’ discontent with Cromwell and Ireton is voiced in Wildman’s Putney Projects and other pamphlets. Soon, however, the breach was partially healed by the Independents’ decision to terminate negotiations with the King.

Between 25th November and 8th January the Council of the Army met at Windsor to arrange with Parliamentary Commissioners the final settlement of the Army’s demands for arrears, indemnity, and a present and future provision. This business concluded, ‘the agreement was sweet and comfortable, the whole matter of the kingdom being left with the Parliament.’ On one practical issue the Centre Party was moving rapidly towards the Left. Charles’s rejection of the Four Bills confirmed the fear of a renewed intrigue for restoration by means of a Scottish invasion, and at last convinced the Independent leaders in Parliament and Army of the probable necessity of settling the kingdom without him, a conviction which was embodied in the Commons’ vote of Edition: current; Page: [[31]] no addresses on 3rd January. In the Council of the Army there were ‘many exhortations to unity and affinity, and motions made for passing by offences that had, through weakness, come from brethren’: the Leveller mutineers were tried, but, on submission, immediately restored to their places. The recaptured unity was signalized by a fast and a feast: Cromwell, Ireton, and others ‘prayed very fervently and pathetically,’ and Fairfax entertained the Council at dinner on the eve of its dispersal. At its final meeting the Council declared its unanimous approval of the vote of no addresses and its determination to support the Parliament in its effort to settle the kingdom without, and if need be, against the King. This unanimous declaration was possible because on one issue the Independents had come into line with the Parties of the Left. But it represents the triumph not of their principles but of Cromwell’s policy: the achievement of at least a sufficient unity in the Army and the restoration of discipline; the adoption, furthermore, of a plan for settling the kingdom in harmony with the Independents’ wishes, and through the forms of Parliamentary action, not by the intervention of the Army (as the extremists had been always too ready to urge) or on the basis of an Agreement of the People (as one group of them had hoped). The triumph was temporary. Before all was done the Independents of the Army, under stress of circumstances, had to move much further to the Left in practical policy if not in principle.

When the work of settling the kingdom was resumed after the Second Civil War, it was without the Council of the Army, a Council of Officers having taken its place. But Ireton and other Independent leaders had moved sensibly nearer to the policy of the Left. They lost thereby the wholehearted support of part of the Independent following in both the Council of Officers and the Parliament, but were able to outweigh the loss, and capture the control of events, by a new alliance with the Left. Their policy was set forth in the Remonstrance of the Army (pp. 456-65). This was submitted to the Council of Officers at St. Albans on 10th November 1648, and finally accepted for forwarding to Parliament on 18th November; but Parliament evidently determined to postpone its discussion—if possible until the kingdom had been settled without it. Once more the Parliament was ranged against the Army, and once more membership in either body cut in some degree across party loyalties. Once more an alliance with the Parties of the Left became essential to the Independent leaders in Edition: current; Page: [[32]] the Army if they were to impose their will on Parliament. While the Council of Officers was hesitating to accept the Remonstrance, Ireton, already working in somewhat uneasy alliance with Harrison and his Millenarian group, entered into conference with the Levellers. The first result was the influence of Lilburne in the final revision of the Remonstrance; the second, Ireton’s reluctant acceptance of the Levellers’ most cherished principle, settlement by means of an Agreement of the People, in return for the Levellers’ reluctant acceptance of the immediate steps proposed by Ireton and Harrison. These steps were, to put an end to the existing Parliament and bridge the interval till the new constitution could be framed, and the new Parliament elected, by creating their supporters in the House of Commons a committee to administer the kingdom. Meanwhile a committee of sixteen (four from each of the Army, the Parliament, the Levellers, and the, Independents unconnected with any of these bodies) was to draw up the proposed Agreement of the People (see pp. 342-9). The new alliance, however insecure, gave Ireton and his supporters effective control of the Army, which, in addition to the radicalism in its ranks, had an incentive to intervention in the withholding by Parliament and City of its promised pay. On 30th November, the Council of Officers issued a declaration calling upon the Parliament voluntarily to dissolve, and, in case the majority remained obdurate, upon the honest party to dissociate themselves from the rest, when the Army would support them in an effort to establish a just and lasting settlement by means of a constitution guaranteeing a succession of free Parliaments and ratified by an agreement and subscription of the people. To further that end, the Army was marching towards the capital, ‘there to follow Providence as God shall clear our way’ (p. 467). On 2nd December, it entered London, only to encounter opposition from the Independent Party in the House, which would consent to a purge, but not to a dissolution. The result was Pride’s purge on 6th December.

Four days later the work of Lilburne’s committee was finished and the Agreement ready for presentation to the Council of Officers. This body had no intention of adopting it without due consideration. On its civil provisions there seems to have been little disagreement. Not so on the reserve in matters of religion. Edition: current; Page: [[33]] When that question was debated, on 14th December (for the full text see pp. 125-69), all the differences among the Independents and their allies came to light. Clerical advice was not wanting. Philip Nye supported the Independent belief in the Christian magistrates’ carefully delimited powers in matters of religion; John Goodwin supported the claim of the Parties of the Left that the magistrates’ functions and responsibilities were purely secular; Sprigge and others declared for the privileges of the Saints, and, as essential to their realization, for the withholding from magistrates of all power to tyrannize. The religious (we have said) may not have been the most important problem in the Puritan revolution, but it was certainly the problem most difficult of solution. The fact is important for understanding the Puritan mind, and it is amply confirmed and illustrated by this long and heated argument. No final decision could be reached. The question was referred to a committee, and the officers turned to less controversial matters. But discontent with the suggested compromise flared up in the final discussion of the Agreement (pp. 175-8). There was nothing that the Parties of the Left held with more tenacity than liberty of conscience.

Their dissatisfaction with the Agreement as modified by the Independent officers, is plain to read. It was no great matter: the radicals had served their turn. From the final debates Lilburne was certainly, and the other Levellers presumably, absent. They could not approve either of the officers’ interference or of their leaving the final settlement in the hands of the now quite unrepresentative Parliament. They had always desired a direct appeal to the people. For such an appeal Lilburne had in some degree provided by publishing the original text of the Agreement in his Foundations of Freedom (pp. 356-64). The Millenarians and their sympathizers brought forward different grounds of complaint: (1) What was needed was not a new constitution and a new Parliament, but a dozen or two conscientious and able men who would set about the reform of existing abuses; (2) the Agreement, professing to set men free, in reality imposed new restrictions upon them by extending, and grounding more firmly, the magistrates’ powers; (3) God had providentially put the settlement into the hands of the Army for the nation’s good and they had no right to surrender their power and abandon the task. Nothing is more remarkable than Ireton’s answer to the second objection—unless it be Harrison’s to the third. Ireton declares that magistracy will continue to exist until God, by the breaking forth of his power among men, shall render all government Edition: current; Page: [[34]] needless, that meanwhile the chief object should be to restrain the magistrates’ power within fixed limits, and that this end the Agreement (so far from extending the scope of magistracy) clearly serves. Harrison has ceased to expect much good from the Agreement. It must be presented to Parliament and people because the Army stands pledged to that course. It will establish some measure of liberty for the people of God, but not enough effectively to safeguard them. God intends its failure: for it is not the final Agreement which shall establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. That will come from God, and in God’s good time. One may suspect a touch of disingenuousness in both officers. But their arguments prevailed.

The Whitehall debate on the reserve in religion has its own special background in the divergent views of the Puritans regarding the power and duty of the magistrate, and in the history of toleration; and these, in turn, clarify the division into Right, Centre, and Left. The Presbyterians (unrepresented in the debate save in so far as Ireton and Nye agree with their view of the magistrate’s power and duty or wish to leave a door open for compromise with them) expect a reform of the whole ecclesiastical polity, by the magistrate and in accordance with the scriptural model as they interpret it. On the other hand, the sectaries, however much they differ among themselves, agree in demanding the total separation of church and state (in the interests of the former) and the establishment of liberty of conscience—though the Millenarians of course intend the ultimate rule of the state itself by the Saints. The Centre Party occupied the whole interval between these opposed positions. It does so in virtue partly of its own composite character, partly of the historical situation in which it is placed. The party embraces both non-separating Congregationalists (who differ from the Presbyterians on but two points, though these are fundamental: the character of the scriptural model, and the question of a limited toleration) and separating Congregationalists, who are, indeed, sectaries of a kind, and approximate fairly closely to the Parties of the Left. The former group is represented in the debate by Ireton and Nye; the latter, by John Goodwin. At least a limited toleration had been rendered necessary for the Independent Party, first by the imminence of a Presbyterian settlement, secondly as a means of contenting its own left wing and of drawing in the Parties of the Left. In the Whitehall debate one must neither exaggerate nor minimize the divergence of opinion. Ireton and Nye say no word in defence of toleration, but in the Apologetical Narration (1644) Nye had Edition: current; Page: [[35]] pleaded for a limited toleration, and in Ireton’s manifestos of the Army the demand had been put forward in no uncertain terms. Now they are faced to meet the arguments not of the Right, but of the Left, and, without inconsistency, they speak for the right wing of the Centre Party. The divergence between that right wing and the exponents of the separation of church and state and of a thorough-going liberty of conscience, is nevertheless emphatic. The ground that is fought over had been mapped out in 1644, when Roger Williams repudiated the Apologetical Narration because it allowed the magistrate’s interference in religion and demanded at most a strictly limited toleration. But the considerable advance towards liberty of conscience which could be made from the fundamental position of Ireton and Nye is attested by the anonymous Ancient Bounds a year later (pp. 247-265), and by the practice of Cromwell’s state church. Less thorough-going, and above all less logical, than the great Separatist and Baptist pleas for liberty of conscience—those of Milton, The Bloody Tenent (pp. 266-92), Robinson’s Liberty of Conscience, John the Baptist, The Compassionate Samaritan, A Paraenetic for not loose but Christian Liberty, The Arraignment of Persecution, and Richardson’s Necessity of Toleration—they still ensure a large measure of practical freedom.