The Democratic Protest — Lilburne
In all these changes the great mass of the people had neither part nor lot; and the famous leaders of the Parliamentary Party, resolute to curtail the absolutism of the Crown, were no more concerned with the welfare of the labouring people than the barons were in the time of John. The labouring people—generally—were equally indifferent to the fortunes of Roundheads and Cavaliers, though the townsmen in many places held strong enough opinions on the matters of religion that were in dispute.56
That the common misery of the people was not in any way lightened by Cromwell’s rule we have abundant evidence, and it cannot be supposed that the substitution of the Presbyterian discipline for episcopacy in the Church, and the displacement of Presbyterians by Independents, was likely to alleviate this misery.
Taxation was heavier than it had ever been before, and in Lancashire, Westmorland, and Cumberland the distress was appalling.
Whitelocke, writing in 1649,57 notes “that many families in Lancashire were starved.” “That many in Cumberland and Westmorland died in the highways for want of bread, and divers left their habitations, travelling with their wives and children to other parts to get relief, but could find none. That the committees and Justices of the Peace of Cumberland signed a certificate, that there were 30,000 families that had neither seed nor bread-corn, nor money to buy either, and they desired a collection for them, which was made, but much too little to relieve so great a multitude.”
Cromwell, occupied with high affairs of State, had neither time nor inclination to attend to social reform. Democracy had its witnesses; Lilburne and the Levellers made their protest against military rule, and were overpowered; Winstanley and his Diggers endeavoured to persuade the country that the common land should be occupied by dispossessed peasants, and were quickly suppressed.
Lilburne was concerned with the establishment of a political democracy, Winstanley with a social democracy, and in both cases the propaganda was offensive to the Protector.
Had Cromwell listened to Lilburne, and made concessions towards democracy, the reaction against Puritanism and the Commonwealth might have been averted.58
John Lilburne had been a brave soldier in the army of the Parliament in the early years of the Civil War, and he left the army in 1645 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel (and with £880 arrears of pay due to him) rather than take the covenant and subscribe to the requirements of the “new model.”
The monarchy having fallen, Lilburne saw the possibilities of tyranny in the Parliamentary government, and at once spoke out. With considerable legal knowledge, a passion for liberty, clear views on democracy, an enormous capacity for work, and great skill as a pamphleteer, Lilburne was not to be ignored. The Government might have had him for a supporter; it unwisely decided to treat him as an enemy, and for ten years he was an unsparing critic, his popularity increasing with every fresh pamphlet he issued—and at every fresh imprisonment.
Lilburne urged a radical reform of Parliament and a general manhood suffrage in 1647, and the “Case for the Army,” published by the Levellers in the same year, on the proposal of the Presbyterian majority in Parliament that the army should be disbanded, demanded the abolition of monopolies, freedom of trade and religion, restoration of enclosed common lands, and abolition of sinecures.
Both Cromwell and Ireton were strongly opposed to manhood suffrage, and Cromwell—to whom the immediate danger was a royalist reaction—had no patience for men who would embark on democratic experiments at such a season.
Lilburne and the Levellers were equally distrustful of Cromwell’s new Council of State. “We were ruled before by King, Lords, and Commons, now by a General, Court-martial, and Commons; and, we pray you, what is the difference?” So they put the question in 1648.
To Cromwell the one safety for the Commonwealth was in the loyalty of the army to the Government. To Lilburne the one guarantee for good government was in the supremacy of a Parliament elected by manhood suffrage. He saw plainly that unless steps were taken to establish democratic institutions there was no future for the Commonwealth; and he took no part in the trial of Charles I., saying openly that he doubted the wisdom of abolishing monarchy before a new constitution had been drawn up.
But Lilburne overestimated the strength of the Leveller movement in the army, and the corporals who revolted were shot by sentence of courts-martial.59
In vain the democratic troopers argued, “the old king’s person and the old lords are but removed, and a new king and new lords with the commons are in one House, and so we are under a more absolute arbitrary monarchy than before.” The Government answered by clapping Lilburne in the Tower, where, in spite of a petition signed by 80,000 for his release, he remained for three months without being brought to trial. Released on bail, Lilburne, who from prison had issued an “Agreement of the Free People,” calling for annual parliaments elected by manhood suffrage and the free election of unendowed church ministers in every parish, now published an “Impeachment for High Treason against Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law, James Ireton,” and declared that monarchy was preferable to a military despotism. At last, brought to trial on the charge of “treason,” Lilburne was acquitted with “a loud and unanimous shout” of popular approval.60 “In a revolution where others argued about the respective rights of King and Parliament, he spoke always of the rights of the people. His dauntless courage and his power of speech made him the idol of the mob.”61
Lilburne was again brought to trial, in 1653, and again acquitted, with undiminished enthusiasm. But “for the peace of the nation,” Cromwell refused to allow the irrepressible agitator to be at large, and for two years Lilburne, “Free-born John,” was kept in prison. During those years all power in the House of Commons was broken by the rule of the Army of the Commonwealth, and Parliament stood in abject submission before the Lord Protector. Only when his health was shattered, and he had embraced Quaker principles, was Lilburne released, and granted a pension of 40s. a week. The following year, at the age of 40, Lilburne died of consumption—brought on by the close confinement he had suffered. A year later, 1658, and Cromwell, by whose side Lilburne had fought at Marston Moor, and against whose rule he had contended for so many a year, was dead, and the Commonwealth Government was doomed.