:00:25. > :00:31.17th-century England gave birth to all different sects and movements.
:00:32. > :00:37.There were ranters and Quakers, and my guest today traces the influence
:00:38. > :00:43.of the levellers, who many see as a proto- socialist revolutionary party
:00:44. > :00:53.in the peoples that saw them going to war, then set up Oliver Cromwell
:00:54. > :00:57.as a dictator and... This was an era when politics was really bubbling,
:00:58. > :01:07.there was a huge amount going on, and all kinds of groups were
:01:08. > :01:15.agitating, but by the agitation -- why was it agitation? Because the
:01:16. > :01:20.monarchy of Charles the first was breaking down as an effective form
:01:21. > :01:25.of government. He had to disband and rule for the living years without a
:01:26. > :01:31.revolution. The only thing that got him to call one was that... And the
:01:32. > :01:36.kind of church he thought was appropriate in England, he tried to
:01:37. > :01:41.impose this on the Scots, so there was a war with the Scots, and he was
:01:42. > :01:47.forced to call Parliament. Parliament wanted control over how
:01:48. > :01:53.the money was spent. So there was a religious argument, and a financial
:01:54. > :01:56.crisis for the regime, and a crisis because views about how the
:01:57. > :02:01.government should develop and how it should be doing had been sharply
:02:02. > :02:06.polarised in the 16 30s. One of the things that gave this a real edge
:02:07. > :02:10.was a new technology that allowed people to express their opinions and
:02:11. > :02:17.disburse them more widely in terms of printing, and portable so people
:02:18. > :02:21.could set up a machine and start printing pamphlets, which kept the
:02:22. > :02:26.pot nicely boiling. Yes, it was less that the technology itself was new,
:02:27. > :02:34.the printing press had been around for 150 years. What was new was
:02:35. > :02:38.being able to print pamphlets without censorship. As soon as
:02:39. > :02:41.Parliament were called in 1640, state censorship and religious
:02:42. > :02:55.censorship broke down. The presses which had been printing some illegal
:02:56. > :02:59.material -- legal material, suddenly struggled to produce pamphlets and
:03:00. > :03:04.petitions and mobilise crowds to come to Westminster and drive the
:03:05. > :03:08.king from his capital in 1652. He left London after huge
:03:09. > :03:12.demonstrations and was afraid for himself and his family, and he never
:03:13. > :03:16.returned until he was executed in 1649. Right at the beginning of the
:03:17. > :03:21.period of the book, you describe an England where the bishops had the
:03:22. > :03:27.power of censorship, not even the government, the bishops as pillar of
:03:28. > :03:38.the state could suddenly decide that a pamphlet was heretical and arrest
:03:39. > :03:46.the water and bring the men. We need to think of the church in a
:03:47. > :03:50.different way than the role it plays in modern society. Bennett played
:03:51. > :03:57.the role of the church, civil service, education, the mass media,
:03:58. > :04:04.and it collected taxes on its own you were legally obliged to be in
:04:05. > :04:10.the Church of England, not just nationally, in your parish. If you
:04:11. > :04:17.did not go to parish church, you could be found, imprisoned, and what
:04:18. > :04:22.the leader of the levellers were doing, importing material, you could
:04:23. > :04:34.had his ears sliced off, and the had his ears sliced off, and the
:04:35. > :04:39.letters F L for siliceous libel printed. There were a lot of
:04:40. > :05:08.pamphlets and Annunciation anything from Bibles to religious
:05:09. > :05:15.almanacs to astrological work and revolutionary pamphlets, the leader
:05:16. > :05:20.collected as many as he could, I do not know what he did with them, but
:05:21. > :05:28.20,000 ended up in the British Library, and the other massive
:05:29. > :05:32.resource for anyone studying now. Is there any undiscovered material?
:05:33. > :05:35.Yes, there is. You find amazing things happening. For instance, the
:05:36. > :05:42.Putney debates which were at the centre of this whole explosion where
:05:43. > :05:49.the levellers confront the leaders, debate and you constitution, demand
:05:50. > :05:55.new rates, they were taken down in shorthand by a man called William
:05:56. > :05:57.Clark, who took it down in shorthand because the Puritans landed as they
:05:58. > :06:08.thought it was important to write down what the priest said and look
:06:09. > :06:15.at it later. He dumped all the notes which lay undiscovered from the 16
:06:16. > :06:27.60s through to the 1890s, when a historian discovered them. Some of
:06:28. > :06:34.them, the Putney ones, where -- were in shorthand, and codebreakers had
:06:35. > :06:45.to decipher them. Things like that are still coming up. Let us get into
:06:46. > :06:52.the personalities. We have this group, it focuses round John
:06:53. > :07:00.Milburn. It is a picture of him. Here's a disciple of the so-called
:07:01. > :07:14.puritan maters, importing legal tragic way religious material. He is
:07:15. > :07:24.put in Fleet prison, he defies the chamber, demands he should be tried
:07:25. > :07:42.by a jury, he -- and for this defiance he was tied to the back of
:07:43. > :07:43.size of penny loaves. At this moment every step of the way
:07:44. > :07:45.size of penny loaves. At this moment he is a hero for defying the
:07:46. > :07:48.government. He is at the heart of the demonstrations that drove the
:07:49. > :07:53.King from London. He sword fighting in Westminster Hall, as the King's
:07:54. > :08:00.supporters tried to drive protesters out of it. He fights at the first
:08:01. > :08:05.battle of the Civil War, at the battle of Marston Moor, he is
:08:06. > :08:12.embedded in the radical religious congregations, he has every word
:08:13. > :08:15.here is, one of his critics says, whatever he says tonight is in print
:08:16. > :08:21.and on the streets tomorrow morning, so he is closely allied with the
:08:22. > :08:24.illegal presses, and around him grows this movement that wants
:08:25. > :08:29.democratic change and outcome. This is one of the most interesting
:08:30. > :08:32.moments, that the revolution overthrows the king, he is a
:08:33. > :08:37.prisoner of Parliament. But it is not clear what anyone wants to do
:08:38. > :08:43.next, and there are quite different visions of how a country should be
:08:44. > :08:50.governed. Lots of people want to bring the king to heal and others
:08:51. > :09:07.want an aristocratic republic. The Levellers are... They make
:09:08. > :09:13.fabulously Gaelic TV and statements. Yes, and he says no man should put
:09:14. > :09:22.himself under a government that does not have a
:09:23. > :09:35.This was a vastly tended suffrage -- extended suffrage. The Levellers put
:09:36. > :09:41.forward their views in the Putney debates, and it is the first
:09:42. > :09:46.democratic constitution model that this country has seen. Those Putney
:09:47. > :09:52.debates is fascinating, in the middle of it all was not a debate
:09:53. > :09:56.involving parliamentarians, it was a debate with the new model Army that
:09:57. > :10:01.had been treated by Cromwell to fight Charles and his cavaliers,
:10:02. > :10:05.beat them eventually, and became on its own right political force, then
:10:06. > :10:09.had to decide what it wanted to do with the powdered inherited. One of
:10:10. > :10:13.the things it did was purge Parliament. Well, it was a
:10:14. > :10:19.fantastically democratic instrument by the time we get to the Putney
:10:20. > :10:23.debates. Because the conservative elements on the parliamentarian
:10:24. > :10:29.said, the people who wanted to bring the King back for the throne, had
:10:30. > :10:33.tried at the end of the first Civil War to disband the army or send it
:10:34. > :10:39.to Ireland because they realised it was a radical force. At this moment
:10:40. > :10:43.the revolution moves to the left because first the cavalry, then the
:10:44. > :10:47.infantry, regiment after Regiment do something now army had done before,
:10:48. > :10:52.they elect their own representatives, called agitators.
:10:53. > :10:59.Perhaps it is the advent of the modern... These were people of
:11:00. > :11:06.Putney. They were standing and facing down the leaders of the new
:11:07. > :11:11.model Army, Fairfax, Cromwell, and debating whether or not there should
:11:12. > :11:15.be democracy in England. William Clark who is taking it down is so
:11:16. > :11:17.stunned that some of these ordinarily soldiers are debating, he
:11:18. > :11:23.does not know their names, so he just writes down buff coat, which is
:11:24. > :11:30.the thick leather coat they were awaiting. We later learned years
:11:31. > :11:34.Robert Everard, one of the supporters in the revolution, so it
:11:35. > :11:42.is an incredible moment. How far were the Levellers I hate all this?
:11:43. > :11:51.It was the progression of a widespread mood in London among
:11:52. > :11:54.certain social layers among apprentices, among the rank and file
:11:55. > :11:58.in the new model Army certainly, but although it was more widespread than
:11:59. > :12:02.the levellers, the levellers were the people that gave it a
:12:03. > :12:06.crystallised programmatic forum and a form of organisation which could
:12:07. > :12:12.fight for the programme it decided on through petitioning and
:12:13. > :12:17.pamphlets. But what they got was a pseudo- monarchy, Oliver Cromwell
:12:18. > :12:24.put on the crown and became the monarch. And under him they got the
:12:25. > :12:32.King back, albeit a more intelligent version. They have succeeded in half
:12:33. > :12:34.failed. Without the Levellers, the king might have returned in the late
:12:35. > :12:40.16 40s and there would never have been a Republican this country.
:12:41. > :12:47.Cromwell was vacillating until the last moment. It was a huge campaign
:12:48. > :12:50.in London that pushed them finally to declare a Republican put the King
:12:51. > :12:55.on trial for treason. Saw the levellers were maintaining that
:12:56. > :13:00.transformation, but they wanted a democratic republic, and Cromwell
:13:01. > :13:07.was happy to have addict Oriel Republic -- a dictatorial republic.
:13:08. > :13:16.Cromwell suppressed the Levellers, putting them down in a series of
:13:17. > :13:19.mutinies. They did not get the revolution they wanted, but the
:13:20. > :13:27.revolution did happen and would not have happened without them. In the
:13:28. > :13:30.end the ideas that they were pushing for, the idea of a wider franchise,
:13:31. > :13:32.maybe not everyone having a right to vote, but more people having the
:13:33. > :13:34.right to vote for parliamentarians, those ideas resurface again in a
:13:35. > :13:47.couple of hundred years. They do pass over the Atlantic and
:13:48. > :13:55.inform the American Revolution. There are women in the backwoods of
:13:56. > :13:59.New England naming their children Oliver after Oliver Cromwell in the
:14:00. > :14:06.American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson was a distant descendant
:14:07. > :14:16.of John Lilburn and there was was a child in the Jefferson family whose
:14:17. > :14:20.name was Lilburn. One of the soldiers on the scaffold when
:14:21. > :14:27.Charles the first was executed was called Charles and he was later
:14:28. > :14:34.executed all so for a plot. He said no man comes into the world with a
:14:35. > :14:39.saddle on his back and no man booted and spurred to ride him. They are
:14:40. > :14:46.the last word in Thomas Jeppesen's diary. We see things from the
:14:47. > :14:52.American Revolution moving back TV English Civil War and the French
:14:53. > :15:02.Revolution. Robert Sadiq, before he becomes an- Tory, he writing a poem
:15:03. > :15:07.in phrase of Henry Martyn. You have this peculiar kind of disjointed but
:15:08. > :15:13.nevertheless descendant IDs spreading around the globe from the
:15:14. > :15:20.English Revolution. John Rees, complicated history. Thank you very
:15:21. > :15:24.much. Book talk will be back again soon. Thank you very much.
:15:25. > :15:58.Order! The Speaker of the House of Commons demands order as things get
:15:59. > :16:01.a little rowdy in the Chamber. The honourable gentleman will be heard
:16:02. > :16:03.and the Prime Minister will be