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17th-century England gave birth to all different sects and movements. | :00:25. | :00:31. | |
There were ranters and Quakers, and my guest today traces the influence | :00:32. | :00:37. | |
of the levellers, who many see as a proto- socialist revolutionary party | :00:38. | :00:43. | |
in the peoples that saw them going to war, then set up Oliver Cromwell | :00:44. | :00:53. | |
as a dictator and... This was an era when politics was really bubbling, | :00:54. | :00:57. | |
there was a huge amount going on, and all kinds of groups were | :00:58. | :01:07. | |
agitating, but by the agitation -- why was it agitation? Because the | :01:08. | :01:15. | |
monarchy of Charles the first was breaking down as an effective form | :01:16. | :01:20. | |
of government. He had to disband and rule for the living years without a | :01:21. | :01:25. | |
revolution. The only thing that got him to call one was that... And the | :01:26. | :01:31. | |
kind of church he thought was appropriate in England, he tried to | :01:32. | :01:36. | |
impose this on the Scots, so there was a war with the Scots, and he was | :01:37. | :01:41. | |
forced to call Parliament. Parliament wanted control over how | :01:42. | :01:47. | |
the money was spent. So there was a religious argument, and a financial | :01:48. | :01:53. | |
crisis for the regime, and a crisis because views about how the | :01:54. | :01:56. | |
government should develop and how it should be doing had been sharply | :01:57. | :02:01. | |
polarised in the 16 30s. One of the things that gave this a real edge | :02:02. | :02:06. | |
was a new technology that allowed people to express their opinions and | :02:07. | :02:10. | |
disburse them more widely in terms of printing, and portable so people | :02:11. | :02:17. | |
could set up a machine and start printing pamphlets, which kept the | :02:18. | :02:21. | |
pot nicely boiling. Yes, it was less that the technology itself was new, | :02:22. | :02:26. | |
the printing press had been around for 150 years. What was new was | :02:27. | :02:34. | |
being able to print pamphlets without censorship. As soon as | :02:35. | :02:38. | |
Parliament were called in 1640, state censorship and religious | :02:39. | :02:41. | |
censorship broke down. The presses which had been printing some illegal | :02:42. | :02:55. | |
material -- legal material, suddenly struggled to produce pamphlets and | :02:56. | :02:59. | |
petitions and mobilise crowds to come to Westminster and drive the | :03:00. | :03:04. | |
king from his capital in 1652. He left London after huge | :03:05. | :03:08. | |
demonstrations and was afraid for himself and his family, and he never | :03:09. | :03:12. | |
returned until he was executed in 1649. Right at the beginning of the | :03:13. | :03:16. | |
period of the book, you describe an England where the bishops had the | :03:17. | :03:21. | |
power of censorship, not even the government, the bishops as pillar of | :03:22. | :03:27. | |
the state could suddenly decide that a pamphlet was heretical and arrest | :03:28. | :03:38. | |
the water and bring the men. We need to think of the church in a | :03:39. | :03:46. | |
different way than the role it plays in modern society. Bennett played | :03:47. | :03:50. | |
the role of the church, civil service, education, the mass media, | :03:51. | :03:57. | |
and it collected taxes on its own you were legally obliged to be in | :03:58. | :04:04. | |
the Church of England, not just nationally, in your parish. If you | :04:05. | :04:10. | |
did not go to parish church, you could be found, imprisoned, and what | :04:11. | :04:17. | |
the leader of the levellers were doing, importing material, you could | :04:18. | :04:22. | |
had his ears sliced off, and the had his ears sliced off, and the | :04:23. | :04:34. | |
letters F L for siliceous libel printed. There were a lot of | :04:35. | :04:39. | |
pamphlets and Annunciation anything from Bibles to religious | :04:40. | :05:08. | |
almanacs to astrological work and revolutionary pamphlets, the leader | :05:09. | :05:15. | |
collected as many as he could, I do not know what he did with them, but | :05:16. | :05:20. | |
20,000 ended up in the British Library, and the other massive | :05:21. | :05:28. | |
resource for anyone studying now. Is there any undiscovered material? | :05:29. | :05:32. | |
Yes, there is. You find amazing things happening. For instance, the | :05:33. | :05:35. | |
Putney debates which were at the centre of this whole explosion where | :05:36. | :05:42. | |
the levellers confront the leaders, debate and you constitution, demand | :05:43. | :05:49. | |
new rates, they were taken down in shorthand by a man called William | :05:50. | :05:55. | |
Clark, who took it down in shorthand because the Puritans landed as they | :05:56. | :05:57. | |
thought it was important to write down what the priest said and look | :05:58. | :06:08. | |
at it later. He dumped all the notes which lay undiscovered from the 16 | :06:09. | :06:15. | |
60s through to the 1890s, when a historian discovered them. Some of | :06:16. | :06:27. | |
them, the Putney ones, where -- were in shorthand, and codebreakers had | :06:28. | :06:34. | |
to decipher them. Things like that are still coming up. Let us get into | :06:35. | :06:45. | |
the personalities. We have this group, it focuses round John | :06:46. | :06:52. | |
Milburn. It is a picture of him. Here's a disciple of the so-called | :06:53. | :07:00. | |
puritan maters, importing legal tragic way religious material. He is | :07:01. | :07:14. | |
put in Fleet prison, he defies the chamber, demands he should be tried | :07:15. | :07:24. | |
by a jury, he -- and for this defiance he was tied to the back of | :07:25. | :07:42. | |
size of penny loaves. At this moment every step of the way | :07:43. | :07:43. | |
size of penny loaves. At this moment he is a hero for defying the | :07:44. | :07:45. | |
government. He is at the heart of the demonstrations that drove the | :07:46. | :07:48. | |
King from London. He sword fighting in Westminster Hall, as the King's | :07:49. | :07:53. | |
supporters tried to drive protesters out of it. He fights at the first | :07:54. | :08:00. | |
battle of the Civil War, at the battle of Marston Moor, he is | :08:01. | :08:05. | |
embedded in the radical religious congregations, he has every word | :08:06. | :08:12. | |
here is, one of his critics says, whatever he says tonight is in print | :08:13. | :08:15. | |
and on the streets tomorrow morning, so he is closely allied with the | :08:16. | :08:21. | |
illegal presses, and around him grows this movement that wants | :08:22. | :08:24. | |
democratic change and outcome. This is one of the most interesting | :08:25. | :08:29. | |
moments, that the revolution overthrows the king, he is a | :08:30. | :08:32. | |
prisoner of Parliament. But it is not clear what anyone wants to do | :08:33. | :08:37. | |
next, and there are quite different visions of how a country should be | :08:38. | :08:43. | |
governed. Lots of people want to bring the king to heal and others | :08:44. | :08:50. | |
want an aristocratic republic. The Levellers are... They make | :08:51. | :09:07. | |
fabulously Gaelic TV and statements. Yes, and he says no man should put | :09:08. | :09:13. | |
himself under a government that does not have a | :09:14. | :09:22. | |
This was a vastly tended suffrage -- extended suffrage. The Levellers put | :09:23. | :09:35. | |
forward their views in the Putney debates, and it is the first | :09:36. | :09:41. | |
democratic constitution model that this country has seen. Those Putney | :09:42. | :09:46. | |
debates is fascinating, in the middle of it all was not a debate | :09:47. | :09:52. | |
involving parliamentarians, it was a debate with the new model Army that | :09:53. | :09:56. | |
had been treated by Cromwell to fight Charles and his cavaliers, | :09:57. | :10:01. | |
beat them eventually, and became on its own right political force, then | :10:02. | :10:05. | |
had to decide what it wanted to do with the powdered inherited. One of | :10:06. | :10:09. | |
the things it did was purge Parliament. Well, it was a | :10:10. | :10:13. | |
fantastically democratic instrument by the time we get to the Putney | :10:14. | :10:19. | |
debates. Because the conservative elements on the parliamentarian | :10:20. | :10:23. | |
said, the people who wanted to bring the King back for the throne, had | :10:24. | :10:29. | |
tried at the end of the first Civil War to disband the army or send it | :10:30. | :10:33. | |
to Ireland because they realised it was a radical force. At this moment | :10:34. | :10:39. | |
the revolution moves to the left because first the cavalry, then the | :10:40. | :10:43. | |
infantry, regiment after Regiment do something now army had done before, | :10:44. | :10:47. | |
they elect their own representatives, called agitators. | :10:48. | :10:52. | |
Perhaps it is the advent of the modern... These were people of | :10:53. | :10:59. | |
Putney. They were standing and facing down the leaders of the new | :11:00. | :11:06. | |
model Army, Fairfax, Cromwell, and debating whether or not there should | :11:07. | :11:11. | |
be democracy in England. William Clark who is taking it down is so | :11:12. | :11:15. | |
stunned that some of these ordinarily soldiers are debating, he | :11:16. | :11:17. | |
does not know their names, so he just writes down buff coat, which is | :11:18. | :11:23. | |
the thick leather coat they were awaiting. We later learned years | :11:24. | :11:30. | |
Robert Everard, one of the supporters in the revolution, so it | :11:31. | :11:34. | |
is an incredible moment. How far were the Levellers I hate all this? | :11:35. | :11:42. | |
It was the progression of a widespread mood in London among | :11:43. | :11:51. | |
certain social layers among apprentices, among the rank and file | :11:52. | :11:54. | |
in the new model Army certainly, but although it was more widespread than | :11:55. | :11:58. | |
the levellers, the levellers were the people that gave it a | :11:59. | :12:02. | |
crystallised programmatic forum and a form of organisation which could | :12:03. | :12:06. | |
fight for the programme it decided on through petitioning and | :12:07. | :12:12. | |
pamphlets. But what they got was a pseudo- monarchy, Oliver Cromwell | :12:13. | :12:17. | |
put on the crown and became the monarch. And under him they got the | :12:18. | :12:24. | |
King back, albeit a more intelligent version. They have succeeded in half | :12:25. | :12:32. | |
failed. Without the Levellers, the king might have returned in the late | :12:33. | :12:34. | |
16 40s and there would never have been a Republican this country. | :12:35. | :12:40. | |
Cromwell was vacillating until the last moment. It was a huge campaign | :12:41. | :12:47. | |
in London that pushed them finally to declare a Republican put the King | :12:48. | :12:50. | |
on trial for treason. Saw the levellers were maintaining that | :12:51. | :12:55. | |
transformation, but they wanted a democratic republic, and Cromwell | :12:56. | :13:00. | |
was happy to have addict Oriel Republic -- a dictatorial republic. | :13:01. | :13:07. | |
Cromwell suppressed the Levellers, putting them down in a series of | :13:08. | :13:16. | |
mutinies. They did not get the revolution they wanted, but the | :13:17. | :13:19. | |
revolution did happen and would not have happened without them. In the | :13:20. | :13:27. | |
end the ideas that they were pushing for, the idea of a wider franchise, | :13:28. | :13:30. | |
maybe not everyone having a right to vote, but more people having the | :13:31. | :13:32. | |
right to vote for parliamentarians, those ideas resurface again in a | :13:33. | :13:34. | |
couple of hundred years. They do pass over the Atlantic and | :13:35. | :13:47. | |
inform the American Revolution. There are women in the backwoods of | :13:48. | :13:55. | |
New England naming their children Oliver after Oliver Cromwell in the | :13:56. | :13:59. | |
American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson was a distant descendant | :14:00. | :14:06. | |
of John Lilburn and there was was a child in the Jefferson family whose | :14:07. | :14:16. | |
name was Lilburn. One of the soldiers on the scaffold when | :14:17. | :14:20. | |
Charles the first was executed was called Charles and he was later | :14:21. | :14:27. | |
executed all so for a plot. He said no man comes into the world with a | :14:28. | :14:34. | |
saddle on his back and no man booted and spurred to ride him. They are | :14:35. | :14:39. | |
the last word in Thomas Jeppesen's diary. We see things from the | :14:40. | :14:46. | |
American Revolution moving back TV English Civil War and the French | :14:47. | :14:52. | |
Revolution. Robert Sadiq, before he becomes an- Tory, he writing a poem | :14:53. | :15:02. | |
in phrase of Henry Martyn. You have this peculiar kind of disjointed but | :15:03. | :15:07. | |
nevertheless descendant IDs spreading around the globe from the | :15:08. | :15:13. | |
English Revolution. John Rees, complicated history. Thank you very | :15:14. | :15:20. | |
much. Book talk will be back again soon. Thank you very much. | :15:21. | :15:24. | |
Order! The Speaker of the House of Commons demands order as things get | :15:25. | :15:58. | |
a little rowdy in the Chamber. The honourable gentleman will be heard | :15:59. | :16:01. | |
and the Prime Minister will be | :16:02. | :16:03. |