Constituting the Levellers : a study of a political movement

Abstract

This thesis examines the way in which the Levellers were capable, as a group of individual thinkers with differing philosophical backgrounds, to unite as a movement around a set of political proposals.  Central to the examinations of this convergence will be an analysis not only of the political ideas of the Levellers (both individually and collectively), but the types of political media that the Levellers used in order to convey their political agenda.  It will be shown that the Levellers were capable of uniting individuals around a political movement by their novel use of petitions and Agreements that provided a political, rather than philosophical convergence.  This then will show how they were able to constitute themselves as a movement via the use of specific political devices.

The thesis will begin by looking at the three main Leveller leaders, William Walwyn, John Lilburne and Richard Overton, and the philosophical context in which they lived and wrote.  It will be shown that whereas they diverged on their philosophical positions, the political conclusions that were drawn from them formed an overlapping consensus.  It is this consensus that made a political movement possible.  Then we will go onto see how, via the use of petitions and their invention of the Agreements, the Levellers were able to: (a) unite people from differing philosophical viewpoints around a set of policy proposals; and (b) bring more people into the movement and the political process.  This discussion will involve examining the purposes of both petitions and Agreements as political texts.

Once we have an understanding of what constitutes a ‘Leveller line’, we will then progress to: (a) look at the defence of the ‘Leveller line’ against it critics; and (b) compare and contrast the ‘Leveller line’ to other contemporary thought.  The main outline of the defence of the Leveller position against its critics will occur when we discuss the content of the Putney debates, where we see the Army Grandees attempting to portray the Levellers as a threat to property, and in so doing increase the opposition to the movement.  This will be followed by a chapter comparing the Leveller position to that of the growing republican movement, which has been at the centre of much scholarly interest recently.  It will be asserted that the Levellers and the republicans shared similar ideological goals, however differed in the means of obtaining them.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record

ASCII CitationAtomBibTeXData Cite XMLDublin CoreDublin CoreEP3 XMLEndNoteHTML CitationHTML CitationHTML ListJSONMETSMODSMPEG-21 DIDLOpenURL ContextObjectOpenURL ContextObject in SpanRDF+N-TriplesRDF+N3RDF+XMLRIOXX2 XMLReferReference ManagerSimple Metadata