In Our Time - The Putney Debates

Episode Date: April 18, 2013

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Putney Debates. For several weeks in late 1647, after the defeat of King Charles I in the first hostilities of the Civil War, representatives of the New Model Army and the radical Levellers met in a church in Putney to debate the future of England. There was much to discuss: who should be allowed to vote, civil liberties and religious freedom. The debates were inconclusive, but the ideas aired in Putney had a considerable influence on centuries of political thought.With:Justin Champion Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of LondonAnn Hughes Professor of Early Modern History at Keele UniversityKate Peters Fellow in History at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.Producer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, the Church of St Mary's Putney stands on the south bank of the Thames about six miles upriver from central London. On the north wall of its nave, a slate plaque commemorates a seismic event

which took place here during the English Civil War, which went on to influence politics here and abroad for centuries. The possibility of modern democracy could be said to have emerged here. On October 28, 1647, Oliver Cromwell and other members of the new model army met in St. Mary's Church, as it turned out to discuss a new constitution for England. Charles I had been defeated and imprisoned, and it seemed a new future beckoned. There were still religious and political differences to be overcome, and over many days of discussions that participants tried to resolve,

them. But within a month, the King had escaped and the talks ended without agreement. Nevertheless, the Putney debates are commonly regarded as a major advance in our idea of what democracy is and how it can be realised. With me to discuss, the Putney debates are Justin Champion, Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London, Anne Hughes, Professor of Early Modern History at Keel University, and Kate Peters, Fellow in History at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. Justine Champion, the Putney Debates took place five years after the beginning of the English Civil War. Would you give us a summary of what that war was about?

Pottered history, a little audit. King versus Parliament, by 1640, Charles I had really overextended his demands for prerogative and had alienated most of local elites who were represented in Parliament. So we had in 1640 the need for a king to call a Parliament to gain money to fight the Scots. The arguments were over principles, principles of religion and principles of politics. This king believed he was appointed by God and could pretty much do what he wanted.

He didn't need the Council of Parliamentarians. Most of the political nation believed they had some role in governing the kingdom, even if only to give counsel for the king. So by 1640, these two political factions were fighting in Westminster. by 1642, because of an atmosphere of conspiracy, where Charles I was regarded as ultimately being in league with the Antichrist, sort of compromising true religion, parliamentarians thought it was necessary to fight a war.

And the war that they fought turned out to be in English terms, the bloodiest conflict that there's ever been for English people, that more casualties in proportion of the population than in World's War I and two combined. I think if we did an audit of that war, both the first civil war and the second civil war into the 1650s, it's bizarre how this has been lost from our public memory. This was a brutal and bloody war, not just great set pieces, but murderous sort of assassinations, conflicts in local villages.

One in four people perhaps experienced death. And one needs to think of the revolutionary force, if we're moving from a, a process where you want to negotiate with a king, to a process where you can't negotiate with him because so much blood has been spilled. So I think this is a war that dramatically sees the sword and God's providence deciding who's right. And that's one of the powerful sort of backgrounds

to the debates at Putney. In the eyes of his opponent, he sort of changed from being king, and it must be said at the beginning, a lot of people in Parliament did not want to fight against him. A lot of people did not want this to happen, but he was intransigent. He turned from being a king to a man of God, blood. This new model army before we go and Justin, how did it come about that we had all of a sudden

an army as a political force in this country which we had never had before? Turning from soldiers into statesmen is really part of the process, both of the battlefield itself, but also the very complicated political situation. As you've rightly said, nobody in 1642, nobody in 1645 or even in 1648 wanted to kill the king. And one of the huge problems was How do we negotiate a peace settlement with somebody who's clearly behaving badly, may be corrupted by the Antichrist, but is still appointed by God. And one of the problems is Parliament doesn't quite know what to do. Presbyterians in Parliament want to negotiate a peace.

Those soldiers who fought and seen their comrades die realised that really Parliament isn't driving them forward. But how did this new model army emerge? Because at the beginning, it was an old-fashioned war, Irish-Sacreds raised people from their estate. sailed into battle, the King's side was much more powerful and popular at the start, and then Parliament decided to raise a new model army. Where did they get them? How did it come about?

Essentially, it's a group within the House of Parliament that say we need to have a new model army that will fight anywhere in the country. Most of those other armies, the Eastern Association and the Western Association, are very locally focused, and very often soldiers would refuse to fight outside of their area. there's also an anxiety that parliamentarian soldiers are not driving forward strongly enough against a king. They want the king to get away with it. So they decide in January 1645 to create a new model army of some 20,000 men. They pass a self-denying ordinance that says if you're an MP or involved with parliamentary politics,

you can't be a soldier because they want the army itself to have some independence. Anne Hughes, what was the political situation in 1646 just still trying to fill? in the background. And how did the parliamentarians try to proceed? Well, as Justin said, after a very, very bruising civil war, very costly in terms of life, very costly in terms of... Blood and treasure. Yes, many precious lives,

lost, much treasure expended. The English parliamentarians, with the help of a Scottish army, had decisively defeated the king. So Parliament is victorious in England, but none of the issues, that just in outlined have been settled. There's still no real conception,

except amongst a very small minority, that you can do without a king. How the balance between the king and parliament should be established in a settled peace is not clear. What control the king should have over appointments or the army. So everyone wants an end to the war. Well, the war is finished. They want to settle.

The first civil war is finished. And the new model army has had a series of stunning victories. You know, God has shown his providence in their support. But there's no clear way to a settled peace. And I think what there is really is two main sort of thrusts after all this anguish and trouble. For some people they think we want to go back to the old ways. fighting the war has meant riding roughshod over legal procedures,

it's meant really heavy taxation, it's meant that people in power of low social status, running the war effort for Parliament. So probably the majority view is we need a settlement with the King, we want to go back to peacetime sort of administration, we want to get rid of the army, which is a big presence in local communities, taking money, taking free quarter.

And so let's go back to the old ways. On the other hand, as Justin said, there's this very, very powerful thing that you see at Putney of. We have fought for God's cause. We've fought for the people's cause. We're not an army that's just been paid. Many people are volunteers. We want things to change.

There must be some recompense for all the suffering that there has been. Now religion has to be woven into this. It's integral to any situation up to there and beyond there. It's part of politics in one way. And sometimes it's an excuse for war and sometimes it's a cause of war. So we're on difficult territory, but we have to move a little bit quickly. What part did religion, sorry, play in the first war? Religion is crucial to the war.

I think there's very powerful instincts towards obedience and hierarchy in early modern societies. but if as significant groups of people felt in England the king is not on the side of true religion he's too close to Catholicism he's going back on central tenets of English Protestantism then the notion that you're fighting for true religion for God's cause is absolutely central the trouble was for parliamentarians

and I think it's perhaps the crucial issue that divides them is that by 1646-7 there's absolutely no agreement on the actual content of the true religion that you're fighting for. And on the one hand, you have the Presbyterians who are really fighting for a reformed national, comprehensive, compulsory church. They want to complete an English reformation, get rid of bishops, get rid of ceremony, etc. But in the course of the war, and very significantly in the army,

there's come to emerge a belief in religious liberty for Protestants, a belief that it's not about the national church that everyone belongs to, that it's about religion as a voluntary gathering together of the godly. So Parliament isn't a block. I mean, the King isn't block, but the Parliament is Parliament and it's a new model army, which also becomes political, and it's the agitators, the elected man by the army, then it's increasingly people who came known as the levellers.

so you have fissures on that side. Can you just tell us, when you said they thought it was God's cause, is there any sense in which they felt that it was God's cause solely or that God was not so much an excuse, but almost a camouflage for what they really wanted, which is a democratic society? I don't think, I think that's a very modern way to think that religion is a camouflage for other issues.

I think it comes together, I mean, probably other people go, but the army does this very move, declaration which we're going to come up, but they said we're not a mercenary army. We're called forth to fight for the people's liberties and for God's cause. And I think they saw that as just mesh together in a way that in a second, most of them. And I think it's often the experience of making a choice over religion that fed into and inspired the notion that you had autonomy. you could make individual choice over politics as well. Kate Peters, in early 1647, the army started petitioning Parliament.

Can you tell us what their grievances were? What were the grounds of these petitions? Well, at the outset, the army's grievances appear to be standard military grievances. One of the things that Parliament needs to do after peace has broken out is actually disband the army, and they need to do that because the army is cripplingly expensive and comes at unseen taxation levels. So the monthly assessment is very, very high.

It's not very popular. And just having a large army stationed in England is also a source of unpopularity. So free quarter for troops, commandeering of horses, all of these things are not popular. So Parliament needs to do something about the new model army and there's no longer an argument to keep it going. It's also true that,

certainly the Presbyterians in Parliament don't like the New Model Army. There's been a very impressive smear campaign going on in the press in 1646 about how dangerous the army how it is the harbinger of radical religious ideas and so on. So Parliament needs to disband

the Army, the New Model Army, and it starts discussing this in February. One of the problems of disbanding the army is that they're in very strong arrears of pay. So they're about £3 million in arrears at this point so Parliament actually can't disband the army without dealing with the arrears. What happens then is that the soldiers start petitioning about their military grievances.

We do not want to be disbanded until our arrears of pay have been paid. We want proper arrangements to be made for our indemnity, for the acts of war that we have committed as soldiers. And they think that Parliament is not really taking care of that. And Parliament comes up with a plan to disband the new model army without sufficiently paying the arrears and if the soldiers don't like that they will be redeployed to Ireland

which is even less popular. So the soldiers begin to petition in their regiments in February, March, 16, 57 addressing those military grievances and it's quite clear that their officers are actually quite receptive to those as military grievances and it's worth saying this is a professional army.

It's very proud of itself as a professional army and it takes its military honour quite seriously. one of the things that happen Now the other thing that's interesting about petitioning, of course, is that petitioning has become a recognised political activity in the course of the Civil War, that it's a way in which people announce their political allegiances, express their political grievances.

So the process of this military petitioning becomes politicised. One of the ways they do that is that they have a single petition, that they unite all of the regiments together into one single petition, and they're petitioning actually not Parliament, they're petitioning Sir Thomas Fairfax, who's the head of the army. Now, when Parliament discovers this, they're not impressed,

because again, it is the army actually asserting political authority that it may not have, and I think this is one of the constitutional issues that is kind of waiting in the wings of how do you organise political power within a state? If a state is to have political muscle, it has to have organised coercive power. It's one of the things that Charles I fell down over, actually.

So they've got an army, but they need to work out who's actually going to control it. So Parliament says to the army that it must stop the petitioning. It orders Fairfax to stop the petitioning, which Fairfax does, but the petitioning doesn't cease. Now out of that comes a very famous declaration of dislike by an MP called Denzel Hollis, who attacks the army, attacks their petitioning, calls them enemies of the state, and disturbers of the public peace by, by Congress. continuing their petitioning work. And so again, the process of this kind of opens up a fissia,

a very clear fissia, between the interests of Parliament and the interests of the army. So the army is growing at what, becoming much more a political, that was brilliant, much more a political body now, and the army petitioning its officers rather than parliament, i.e., to take political action. And what you've said earlier, we wouldn't have a lot of time.

This is perhaps could be called the first modern communications war. Pamphlets are flying out almost daily, hundreds and hundreds of them. People are massively informed about what's going on all over the place, again, for the first time. So there's all that as well.

Just to one more thing, Kate, about how the army was organised. It's curious to see that the army is a source of very radical ideas here, isn't it? We're not talking about... They want to their pay, of course, they want to be indemnified because so much blood has been...

and anybody can turn around and say that was not legal, that was not, so they necessarily want that. Who are the leaders of the army at this stage? Well, who are the leaders of the army? I mean, the leader of the army is Thomas Fairfax at this point. But who was leading the petitioning, as it were? Well, this is what is interesting. I mean, you've mentioned the agitators already and the agitators become much more formally

part of the army actually as the process of this early petitioning takes place. place. So after the Declaration of Dislike, you see regiments, initially it's the regiments in the east of England, in East Anglia, and it's often it's cavalry regiments who start electing their own agitators. And an agitator is simply an agent, somebody who represents the grievances of the soldiers of the regiment to the army to try and get redress for the grievances. So you get cavalry regiments coming up with agitators. And as I said, cavalry regiments are associated with slightly better educated, slightly more politically conscious soldiers,

perhaps in the infantry regiments. But the idea of agitators spreads to infantry regiments as well. So they've got them on the... They're in the mix. Now, Justin Champion, in June 1647, the junior army officer,

Cornet Joyce, took King Charles into his custody. How did he did it? Who spurred him on and what consequences did it have? I think the sort of episode of Cornet Joyce George Joyce is one of the most sort of emblematic of the whole process because here we have a very junior cavalry officer

who's leading 500 men, 500 troops. This is a moment in June 1647 when Parliament is very worried about the new model army regiments coming very close to London. They're fearful that the new model army is going to come and sort Parliament out physically. So they're camping out at New Market, they're gradually getting closer and closer to London. We don't really know why Joyce took this decision.

There's some evidence that Cromwell may have known. There's certainly evidence that Iyerton, another sort of powerful... Cornwall son-in-law and another very powerful figure in the New Model Army, may have given some sort of permission. There's also the suggestion from his own writings. He publishes a little pamphlet afterwards to clarify exactly what happened, that it was men, agents of the army who encouraged him. essentially what he does is turn up on the 2nd of June at Holmby House where Charles I'm playing balls

and his mission is to protect Charles from a plot he doesn't quite precisely talk about the plot it may be Scottish it may be Presbyterian and in essence the exchange between Joyce a very lowly cavalry officer and Charles the first who reminds him I am your king I'm appointed by God what are you doing here? There's this very delicate exchange. First, he won't be introduced to the king, the commissioners keep him apart. Eventually he does talk to him.

And just as Charles does in his trial in 1649, Charles keeps saying, what are you doing here? What commission have you got? And the... You're asking me to break my coronation oath? You're asking me to break my coronation oath. You might be about to kill me.

You have a sword. He says, I see you have a sword and you may kill me. Joyce is very respectful, No bad intentions to you at all. But when Charles is encouraged to leave with Joyce the following morning, he again asks him for his commission. And Joyce simply looks over his shoulder where there are 500 troops and says, this is my commission.

And I think that's a moment really where the sword of the army becomes an incredibly powerful political force. It doesn't convince Charles I, of course, because he agrees to everything and has his fingers crossed all the time and he's clearly still plotting to escape. But he's been captured. But he's been captured and he's taken to New Market and he's now in the hoard of the army.

Anne Hughes, I mentioned the levellers. They're emerging at this time. They're not called the levellers yet, but we can call them the levellers because they became the leveller. So can we make do with that? Fair enough. What were they up to?

Well, the levellers are an emerging, radical democratic movement, based mostly in London, that emerge from the radical religious, religious congregations and come to develop through 45-46-7 a criticism of Parliament as having let them down. The argument, I think, is very similar that Parliament is the representative of the people. Parliament has called the people out to fight against the King and as one very famous level of pamphlet by one of their most important leaders, Richard Overton said,

What happens in the end is a change of bondage is the uttermost intended us. So they become through pamphleteering, through use of the press, they get into trouble with Parliament. Two of the most important level of leaders, John Lilburn and Richard Overton, are imprisoned by the House of Lords for illegal pamphleteering. And they're very adept at making their own individual sort of suffering, emblematic of a general cause. And so their arguments are for,

Parliament should be responsible to the people. It should be in trust for the people and if it's not in trust for the people, then Parliament should be got rid of and some sort of new arrangements should be developed. So we're moving into all the ideas that came through the Plutney debates now, Kate Peters, and the armies, and people are fighting by pamphlets now.

and a series of pamphlets from the army is taking their permission. We have the heads of proposals, and the debates are first in the church at Putney, which is wonderful church still there, and then it moves into another place in Putney, if somebody's Big House, something like that. It's in Putney. Right. Now, what about these heads of proposals? Right, well, the heads of proposals actually are before Putney,

they're at Reading, but they're interesting in that one of the things that comes out of, as we're talking about the agitators earlier, one of the things that comes out of the politicisation of the army is actually a formal political structure of the army. So in June 1647, a general counsel of the army is formed, whereby the agitators are formally included into the army structure, and things will be discussed. And coming out of the – there's a declaration of the army that says,

we must – we will not disband. They stand up to Parliament and say we will not disband until our grievances have actually been redressed. So what they have an agenda now of sort of, out the redress of their grievances. So they have got their own kind of political statement, if you like, a part of which, as Anne said, is that we are not a mere mercenary army. We are not hired to serve any arbitrary state power. So they've got to say, if you like, on what the state power should be. The heads of proposals is actually discussed at the first formal

meeting of the General Council of the Army, and that's held at Reading in July 1647. And Heads of proposals are put forward, probably put together by Henry Ierton that we've discussed already, who's famous, you know, everybody talks about him as Oliver Cromwell's son-in-law. He's also the Commissioner of the General of the Army. He's also a lawyer, he's well-educated, he knows his stuff. So he appears to have gotten together in the course of July, the heads of proposals, and he's working probably with another army man, John Lambert, and probably he's working with, members of the House of Lords who are sympathetic,

so Lord Water and Lord Stey and Seal. Together they come up with a set of proposals for a settlement, for peace with the King. And these are actually genius. These are a very, very plausible set of proposals which could have led to a settlement in a way that what Parliament has been offering to the King has been going nowhere for the last year or so.

So they're coming up with not quite a constitutional proposal, but certainly an outline of what they want. So they're suggesting that you need biennial parliaments. We need to get rid of the parliament that we've got and we need to start again. We need a redistribution of seats within Parliament. They suggest that Parliament should have quite a lot of state control over the army. For about 10 years, they suggest that Parliament should have control over the King's choice of key ministers of state. So they are finding ways to limit the King's power, but I think we should stress that this is much more lenient than what Parliament had been offering previously.

Can I just say the key thing that they suggest with the heads of proposals is for a religious toleration. So they say you can have the Book of Common Prayer, you can keep the bishops, but you mustn't make us worship with you. So it's a very, very tolerant, lenient proposal that they come up with to the king. And these fed in eventually to a few quite soon afterwards into the party debates,

as did, the two radical documents issued by the level as Justin Champon, the case of the army and the agreement of the people Now we haven't time to summarise them. But what's the thrust of that? Because ideas are now erupting, as Kate has pointed out. The situation isn't as told or anything, but at least it's pausing. And we have the reading thing, but they're moving towards Putney.

What about what are the levels bringing to that table? So these two documents, the case of the army truly stated, which is quite lengthy, and the agreement of the people, which is first sort of articulated on October the 28th, but sort of verbalised. it's only printed a few days later, is a much shorter document.

It's only six pages long. And what these things do is crystallise very, very powerful constitutional demands. They make a case that the sovereignty of the people, the consent of the people, is the source of legitimate government. They make a case that everyone over 21 ought to have the vote. They make a case that there ought to be a redistribution of MPs

according, in the little phrase, according to the number of inhabitants. They also have this whole series of arguments around religious toleration, getting rid of tides. So it's both an attempt to address the specific grievances, but this is the first sort of imaginative proposal of a written constitution in England. So we've moved very far in a very short time from we want our pay and we want indemnified to a major statement about the state, what the future of the state should be, who should control the state.

We've gone very far, very fast, haven't we, Anne Hughes? And so the debate opens in that atmosphere on October the 28th. Yes, I think also the case of the army and the agreeing to the people are signs that the rank and file or the radicals in the army are uneasy about how far the leadership have negotiated with the king. So it's about the people's rights being considered before any settlement with the king. that what happens for ordinary people and some sort of democratic settlement is crucial

before any agreement is made with the king. On the first day they seemed to have discussed what they should discuss, but on the second day they got down to discuss the question about who should have the vote. Justin, can you bring us into that? I think this is one of the things that has intrigued historians ever since they've discovered the documents in the early 20th century. The agreement of the people makes it very clear,

although it's a sort of slightly hostage to fortune, that they're demanding some sort of consensual basis to legitimate politics and that there should be a redistribution of voting. Now, this doesn't sound extreme to us at all, although it's quite narrow. It's only men and it's only men over 21. Of course, Henry Iyerton, as a lawyer,

and as a man of property, says straight away, this is madness. This is the route to absolute anarchy a word he uses. Confusion. This is too new. They want property rights. You can't vote unless you have a fixed permanent interest, his phrase in the kingdom. And this appalls, and going back and reading the documents again,

the sort of power of argument is really remarkable. Rainsborough and Sexby say, my God, if I'm going to consent to legitimacy, I need to be able to vote. I've spilt my blood, so I need a voice. They say, I mean, Reinsborough is the one who says this very moving phrase that echoes down the age, you know, the poorest he that is in England has a right to live as the greatest he. And there's also this burning sense of betrayal where Sexby says, you know,

if we had not a right to the kingdom, we were a mayor-mercernary army. We're fighting for other people, not for our own rights. And I think that's really important that phrase, the greatest he and the poorest. From Iotan's point of view, this is about status. But from the levellers and Reinsborough's point of view, this is about equality. Everybody has a voice. Everybody has the right to consent. Kate Peters, who are the leading participants here?

And how did they tackle religion, which had been... Well, he's there still. Sorry, it's a big one, but... Here you go. That's what this programme is turning out to be. Big ones long... Okay. So the agreement to the people is quite an interesting document

because it starts out with this statement that says that the power... Sorry to be rude, but could you tell us who the leading participants were? I beg your hope. Who's got a little bit of a grip on it? There's a sort of a division, isn't there, between what we call the grandees of the army. This is Oliver Cromwell.

This is Henry Iotton, principally, who are speaking on behalf of the grandees of the army, and they make it very clear at the outset that they're not here to discuss getting rid of the king or getting rid of Parliament. And in fact, they think that they're having a meeting to discuss the case of the army truly stated, which actually sounds a bit more like military grievances

than does the agreement to the people, which is a very clear constitution. So to a certain extent, Cromwell and Ierton are slightly wrong-footed by being given this constitution that they're not sure whether they should be discussing it or not. The other, if you like, the other side, the agitators are represented by this.

There's a man Edward Sexby who's already been mentioned who has been an agitator since the spring. These are people who are representing their regiments, representing the views of the soldiers. We've also got civilian levelers. I want to get down to religion, please. Yeah, can we just get to that? Absolutely. Right.

So religion is very important, implicitly and explicitly, very important because to get a settlement, they're going to have to get a settlement on religion. The way the agreement to the people is structured is very interesting because it starts out with this premise that the power, political power, rests in the people and the parliament, therefore, will derive its power from the people. And then there are, and it says, you know, what Parliament can do in terms of making laws, there are then these very famous set of reserves, ways in which power cannot be simply delegated. And powers that cannot be delegated from the people's parliament include things like the rights of conscription,

but crucially, religion as well. And I think one of the things that's really interesting. So what are they saying there? Well, they're saying two different things, and that's what, there's a fundamental distinction between what the levelers and the agitators are trying to argue about religion. and what Iyton and Cromwell are trying to argue. So for the levellers, I think they would argue that the significance of conscience becomes individual conscience is a very, very important principle for them.

They're arguing for liberty of conscience, which simply means that they want, and we focus on the liberty because that's the bit we recognise, but actually the word conscience is very, very crucial. Conscience is the thing that you get from God. So you must follow your conscience, what is. They want his liberty to be able to follow their conscience. And essentially what they're saying is that although the people can give political power to the Parliament, they cannot give religious power to the Parliament because religious power comes from God, not from man.

So they make it very, very clear that the magistrate has no religious power at all, and therefore the magistrate, Parliament must have no say at all over any religious policy. Now that's opposite to what people like Henry Iyton and Oliver Cromwell want, which is much more to do with political order, with an inclusive church where everybody can belong but be tolerated. And Hughes, we're in this meldstrom of it now. It's a very short period of time these debates and ideas are being thrown up which would rock the nation.

Which would sort of rock the nation. What other main constitutional matters are on the table by this stage, two or three weeks in? Well, I think main constitutional matters are how you get to a settlement. And I think the agreement of the people is an imaginative... That's a name of a pamphlet. Yeah, it's a name of a pamphlet, but it's also the name of a process. It's intended to be a refounding of a political order based on popular male consent.

And it seems to be envisaged that almost practically people will sign up to it as a way of founding a new political order. So it's utterly alien to what Iyton is arguing about, which is in the context of the whole 17th century, very radical in itself. But he's the conservative wing at Putney. He's saying, let's have a legal settlement that limits the power of the king. But he's working within the accepted constitutional frameworks of king and parliament of the law. They're saying something completely, if let's start afresh. and from first principles,

establishing a sovereign parliament, limiting what it can do, and thinking about the individual rights of people to help his erect that regime, that new regime. Justin, we're coming to the end of the debates, though, in November. Can you take up what... And I think one of the very powerful fissures is between this very conservative account

of what a constitution would look like and this language of the freeborn Englishmen, the native rights, the natural rights of what you have as a human being. And that language is one that extends the political nation. Suddenly it's not just the elite who can vote. It's every male. And that as a vision goes all the way back to Magna Carta and they explicitly talk about the Liba Homo,

the right of somebody who is not a slave. And I think, as Anne says, the sort of negotiation, we know what's going on in those discussions. but behind the scenes, the agreement of the people is being taken around and discussed and they want to vote on it. This is what one historian is called a subscription or community. People are exchanging and debating. It isn't just a piece of paper.

It represents consent in its real form. Kate Petersley, any debates were brought to an unexpected and abrupt conclusion by Charles escaping from Hamilton Court and setting up an army, his own army, again to take us into the Second Civil War. Can you tell us the effect of that on those who have been debating at Putney? It's hard to say what the effect is on those who were debating because the record of the debate was not,

the debate is not publicly discussed in news books. We don't know very much about it. The records were taken by the Clark, William Clark. So it is not part of the kind of the public pamphlet-hearing sphere that we know about. I think one of the impacts of the fissures between Cromwell and Iyton and the agitators is a deep distrust that grows between the agitators and the grandees of the army. So although in many ways I think Iyton and Cromwell concede an awful lot towards the agreement of the people by the end, they simply kick it into the long grass and send the soldiers back to their regiments actually to, keep the peace because there is so much dissension and debate going on.

I think also though in a way, when they've got an enemy to focus on, there's another current at Putney which is about army unity and army agreement. So that when you've got the king whom God has witnessed against time and time again fleeing and trying to raise another war, then people like Cromwell and Art and they're very harsh and there's a sort of on the dissident agitators, but they're also very much driven to think that Charles is a man of blood who you cannot do business with. And the idea of what he is, a man of blood or God's representative

in the next civil war becomes crucial to it and then we go to the end of that particular second war, which is the execution of Charles I. But we're dealing with the Putney debates here, Justin. and the, excuse me, as Kate's pointed out, fuller knowledge only came quite comparatively recently the notes of this man, Clark, or was the clerk, and so on. They were hidden away, not hidden away, they were lost.

They discovered in Worcester College, Oxford, and there they are, and they're all a bit muddled, but they give you plenty of stuff to go on. And what do you think the effect of those proposals was, as things rippled through the next two civil wars and the rest of the century? I think we can see there's a radical road that's not taken, sort of almost immediately after Charles has escaped because some of the very radical figures in the army actually attempt a mutiny at Corpush Field

where they, with the agreement of the people in their hats and with green leveller ribbons. So just for the rest of the section of the army is rebelling against the army. In essence, Reinsborough, I think it is, says at the end of the Putney debates, this is no good, you're compromising. What we'll do is we'll have a rendezvous of all of the regiments and we'll vote for the agreement of the people

and we'll sort it out. Cromwell, as Anne has said, and Fairfax want to control military discipline and are very particular about who can go where. Rainsborough and other troops turn up uninvited and try and agitate amongst the soldiers. And the outcome is that at least one person is shot. Richard Arnold, a lowly foot soldier,

is sacrificed to that cause. And that's really the end of that very radical tradition. They try again in May 1649. The tradition of the freeborn liberties, although most of the people after the civil wars don't know about the Putney debates, that tradition does, I think, survive into a radical Whig tradition into the later 17th and into the 18th century. And certainly Lilburn becomes the sort of poster boy for radical descent. Can I tell you, the last round, nearly, sorry, the last round. What influence have the Putney debates had in this country since that time?

Well, I think you can read them in a number of ways, actually. So for some historians, I think the failure of the level of agenda in the course of 1647 to 49 is seen as the kind of the missed opportunity. This is the failure of revolution. There was a revolutionary moment, and it was not taken forward. I think other more liberal historians would see this as the start of a statement of human rights, of civil rights, a statement of the importance of democracy. of democracy and representation. So length concepts that are absolutely fundamental to our own

democratic paradigms, if you like, we can trace them back to Putney. So it's possible to trace both a very radical tradition and actually a very liberal tradition coming from the Putney debates. Do you want to add to that on use? I think they're very important. As Justin said, they weren't known, the eloquence of the detail was not known until the 20th century. And I think they have been very, very important in sort of radical inspiration and radical thinking in the 20th century, perhaps particularly around the Second World War and the sort of notion of an army that has fought for a cause

and an army that has developed a sort of educational, political... You've seen going through to that? Yes, I think... Was it written about in those terms of... Yes, I think radical historians in the 1940s and people who'd been in the... And again, a sort of citizen army, an army that's expecting things to change

because of the sacrifices. you've made in a good course. I think that is very important. And Justin, what would you add to that? I would urge everybody to go and read the Putney debates because the language and the power of ordinary buff-coated soldiers, poor men debating

and imagining about what their rights and their duties and responsibilities might be is really still very very powerful. And the sort of debates around why consent makes government legitimate still have huge purchase for us today, especially

the arguments around poverty. So it is not social class that gives you citizenship for the levellers and for these ordinary men at Putney. It's who you are as a human being. Well, that was great. Sorry to Russia, and we can't say it here for the rest of the day, unfortunately. Thank you very much to Kate Peters, Anne Hughes and Justin Champion. Next week we'll be talking about the Immortal Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne.

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