In Our Time

by Melvyn Bragg

  ANN HUGHES: Here’s this very, very powerful thing that you see at Putney: ‘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.’

  Religion, Melvyn observed, was woven into this history, sometimes as an excuse for war and sometimes a cause. Religion was crucial to this war, Ann Hughes agreed, as were very powerful instincts towards obedience and hierarchy.

  ANN HUGHES: 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 for parliamentarians was that, by 1646–7, there’s absolutely no agreement on the actual content of the true religion that you’re fighting for.

  The Presbyterians were fighting for a reformed, national, comprehensive, compulsory Church, to complete an English reformation. In the course of the war, though, and, very significantly, in the New Model Army, there emerged a belief in religious liberty for Protestants. Often the experience of making choices about religion inspired individuals to think they could have choices over politics as well.

  The New Model Army started petitioning parliament with grievances in 1647. Initially, Kate Peters said, they were standard military grievances. Parliament wanted to disband the army now that peace had broken out, as it was so expensive and the cost in taxation was unpopular. Also, the Presbyterians in parliament did not like the New Model Army.

  KATE PETERS: There’s been a very impressive smear campaign going on in the press in 1646 about how dangerous the army is, how it is the harbinger of radical religious ideas. Parliament needs to disband the New Model Army and it starts discussing this in February. One of the problems with disbanding the army is that there are very strong arrears of pay, about £3 million.

  The soldiers did not want to be disbanded until their arrears of pay had been settled, and they wanted indemnity against any acts of war they had committed. Parliament’s plan was to disband them without paying the arrears in full and, if the soldiers did not like that idea, they would be redeployed to Ireland.

  These petitions became a way of gathering political power as more and more people put their names to them. Parliament, wanting to control the army, ordered its leader, Thomas Fairfax, to stop the petitioning, and he tried to obey but was powerless. Still the petitioning continued.

  KATE PETERS: Out of that comes a very famous declaration of dislike by an MP called Denzil Holles, who attacks the army, attacks their petitioning, calls them ‘enemies of the state’ and ‘disturbers of the public peace’ by continuing their petitioning work. And this opens up a clear fissure between the interests of parliament and the interests of the army.

  Into this fissure stepped a junior cavalry officer, Cornet Joyce. In June 1647, when parliament was very worried about the New Model Army regiments coming close to London, the troops were camped out at Newmarket, gradually getting closer to the capital. Then, on 2 June, Cornet Joyce turned up with 500 men at nearby Holdenby House, where the captive Charles I was playing bowls.

  JUSTIN CHAMPION: His mission is to protect Charles from a plot. He doesn’t precisely talk about the plot, it may be Scottish, it may be Presbyterian. And, in essence, the exchange is between Joyce, a very lowly cavalry officer, and Charles I, who reminds him, ‘I am your king, I’m appointed by God, what are you doing here?’ There’s this very delicate exchange, first the commissioners keep him apart, eventually he does talk to him.

  Charles I noticed that Joyce was armed, saying, ‘I see you have a sword and you may kill me.’ Joyce was very respectful, stating he had no bad intentions to Charles at all.

  JUSTIN CHAMPION: 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.’ That’s a moment 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 is clearly still plotting to escape.

  Charles was taken from Holdenby House to Newmarket, where he was under the power of the New Model Army.

  Another voice being raised was that of the Levellers, a radical democratic movement based mostly in London, which emerged from the radical religious congregations. Ann Hughes explained that, from 1645 to 1647, the Levellers had developed the criticism that parliament had let them down; parliament was the representative of the people, it had called the people out to fight against the king, and yet the condition of the people had not changed. Accordingly, if parliament was not acting in trust for the people, it should be disbanded and replaced with another assembly.

  ANN HUGHES: As one very famous Leveller pamphlet by one of their very important leaders, Richard Overton, said, what happens in the end is ‘a change of our bondage is the uttermost is intended us.’ Through pamphleteering, they get into trouble with parliament. Two of the most important Leveller leaders, John Lilburn and Richard Overton, are imprisoned by the House of Lords for illegal pamphleteering. They’re very adept at making their individual suffering emblematic of a general cause.

  The New Model Army had developed a formal political structure in 1647 – a general council. Out of that came a declaration, Kate Peters told us, that the army would not disband until its grievances had been addressed. At Reading, they came up with the Heads of Proposals, probably put together by Henry Ireton, who was Oliver Cromwell’s son-in-law and commissioner-general of the army, and also a lawyer, working with John Lambert, who was another army man, and with Lord Wharton and Lord Saye-and-Sele, who were sympathetic members of the House of Lords. They came up with proposals for a settlement for peace with the king, which Ireton put forward for debate at Putney.

  KATE PETERS: These are genius, these are a very, very plausible set of proposals that could have led to a settlement; what parliament has been offering to the king has been going nowhere. They’re suggesting biannual parliaments, to get rid of the parliament that we’ve got and start again, a redistribution of seats within parliament, that parliament should have a lot of control over the army for about ten years, that parliament should have control over the king’s choice of key ministers of state.

  They were looking for ways to limit the king’s power but, Kate Peters stressed, these proposals were much more lenient than those parliament had been offering previously. The most important proposal was for religious toleration. They said the Book of Common Prayer and the bishops could stay, but that people should be free not to worship with them.

  At Putney, the headquarters of the New Model Army, the different proposals were put forward for debate. To these, the Levellers added ‘The Case of the Army Truly Stated’ and the briefer ‘Agreement of the People’, which was first articulated on 28 October, Justin Champion said, and printed a few days later. Argued by Leveller officers Rainsborough and Sexby, these pamphlets made a case for the sovereignty of the people, where the consent of the people was the source of legitimate government and where every male over twenty-one should have the vote.

  JUSTIN CHAMPION: Of course, Henry Ireton, as a lawyer and as a man of property, says straightaway [of the Levellers’ proposals], ‘This is madness, this is the route to absolute anarchy, confusion, this is too new.’ [In reply,] 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.’

  ANN HUGHES: Rainsborough’s the one who says this very moving phrase that echoes down the ages: ‘The poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he.’ And there’s also this burning sense of betrayal where Sexby says, ‘If we had not a right to the kingdom, we were a mere mercenary army.’ We�
�re fighting for other people not for our own rights.

  Religion, Kate Peters said, was again very important implicitly and explicitly because, if they were to get a settlement, they were going to have to get a settlement on religion. There was a fundamental distinction between what the Levellers and the agitators were trying to argue about religion and what Ireton and Cromwell were trying to argue. For the Levellers, individual conscience was a very important principle.

  KATE PETERS: Conscience is the thing that you get from God, so you must follow your conscience. Essentially, what they’re saying is that, although the people can give political power to parliament, they cannot give religious power to parliament because religious power comes from God not from man. Parliament must have no say at all over any religious policy.

  The New Model Army at the Battle of Naseby, 1645.

  That was the opposite of what people like Henry Ireton and Oliver Cromwell wanted, which was much more linked to political order, with an inclusive Church where everybody could belong and their differences tolerated.

  These constitutional matters were discussed in Putney over two weeks, initially at St Mary’s Church and then nearby. They were brought to an unexpected and abrupt conclusion, Melvyn noted, by Charles I escaping from Hampton Court and setting up his own army, so to begin the second civil war.

  KATE PETERS: One of the impacts of the fissures between Cromwell and Ireton and the agitators is a deep distrust that grows between the agitators and the grandees of the army. Although in many ways Ireton and Cromwell concede an awful lot towards the Agreement of the People, by the end they kick it into the long grass and send the soldiers back to their regiments to keep the peace.

  With the Putney Debates interrupted, there was a radical road that was not taken, Justin Champion added. The key moment was after Charles had escaped and some radical figures in the army tried to mutiny at Corkbush Field in Hertfordshire on 15 November, with the ‘Agreement of the People’ pamphlet in their hats and with green Leveller ribbons. Rainsborough, at the end of the Putney Debates, was unhappy with the compromising and wanted a rendezvous of all the regiments to vote for the ‘Agreement of the People’. Against that, Cromwell and Fairfax wanted military discipline.

  JUSTIN CHAMPION: Rainsborough and other troops turn up uninvited and try to agitate among the soldiers. At least one person is shot; Richard Arnold, a lowly foot soldier, is sacrificed to their cause. 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) does survive into a radical Whig tradition in the later seventeenth century and into the eighteenth.

  Some historians see the failure of the Leveller agenda as a missed opportunity, a failure of revolution, Kate Peters said. More liberal historians would see it as the start of a statement of human rights, of civil rights, a statement of the importance of democracy and representation. It is possible to trace both a very radical tradition and a very liberal tradition from the Putney Debates.

  Awareness of the debates only really re-emerged in the twentieth century after the records had been rediscovered in 1890 in the library of Worcester College and published. Ann Hughes pointed to their role in radical thought and inspiration, particularly around the Second World War, with the notion that the army had fought for a cause and was expecting things to change because of the sacrifices made in that cause.

  Justin Champion, meanwhile, urged everybody to read the Putney Debates. It was not social class that was the basis of citizenship for the Levellers and for these ordinary men at Putney, it was who you were as a human being.

  JUSTIN CHAMPION: The language and the power of ordinary buff-coated soldiers, poor men, debating about and imagining what their rights and their duties and responsibilities might be is still very, very powerful. And the debates around why consent makes government legitimate still have huge purchase for us today, especially the arguments around poverty.

  MARGERY KEMPE AND ENGLISH MYSTICISM

  The English mystic Margery Kempe led a remarkable life at a turbulent time, from 1373 to 1438. After the birth of the first of her fourteen children, and again from her forties and for the rest of her life, she had visions of Jesus Christ that were so intense she wept profusely to the amazement of many and annoyance of some. She felt the pain of the crucifixion and she imagined herself married to Christ, living as man and wife. This was a time when England was on high alert for heretics and Margery Kempe was threatened with burning at the stake, interrogated as she travelled from her home in Norfolk across the country, by land and sea, to Jerusalem, Rome, Norway, Poland, Germany and Santiago de Compostela. We only know of her now because she dictated her story to scribes towards the end of her life. That book disappeared until the 1930s, when it tumbled from a cupboard at a country house, as guests were looking for a spare ping-pong ball.

  With Melvyn to discuss Margery Kempe and English mysticism were: Miri Rubin, professor of medieval and early modern history at Queen Mary University of London; Katherine Lewis, senior lecturer in history at the University of Huddersfield; and Anthony Bale, executive dean of arts and professor of medieval studies at Birkbeck, University of London.

  Miri Rubin started out with Margery Kempe’s early life. She was probably born around 1373, to a distinguished family in what was then Bishop’s Lynn, now King’s Lynn, an important port in Norfolk, trading with the Hanseatic ports of the Baltic. Her father was five times mayor of Lynn.

  A fourteenth-century carving from King’s Lynn Minster depicting a woman who would have been a contemporary of Margery Kempe.

  MIRI RUBIN: Around twenty, she married John Kempe, a merchant family not as distinguished as her own but also part of the elite. She gets pregnant soon after and, in that first pregnancy, clearly she suffered a lot, both physically and personal, spiritual, mental anguish. In the course of that, she has the first of her visions of Christ.

  Her vision was of a physical Christ who comforted and encouraged her when she feared that her pain was a punishment for sin. She had been scarring herself with constant scratching.

  MIRI RUBIN: Terrible scratching of herself that leaves scars for a lifetime, as she says. And really the description in the book of the anguish is extremely moving. But she still goes on and she has fourteen children. We don’t know if these are fourteen births or fourteen children. If fourteen live children, it may well have been more births, given the child mortality at the time.

  She would have had some numeracy and literacy, some religious education, access to the sacraments including confession, and the chance to hear preachers and monks and friars around Lynn, but she could have no official place in the hierarchy of the Church.

  Church authorities were on the lookout for heretics at this time and Margery was to be accused of heresy at stages of her life. There were Wycliffite, pre-Protestant heresies, Anthony Bale explained, based on the thoughts of the Oxford theologian and cleric, John Wycliffe, whose position became known as Lollardy.

  ANTHONY BALE: The distillation of what we might think of as Lollard thought arrives in 1395 in the twelve Lollard Conclusions, which are presented to parliament and pinned on the doors of St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. These include statements such as that worship of the bread and wine of the sacrament is a kind of idolatry, that confession to priests is illegitimate because only God has the right to absolve human beings of sin, that clerical celibacy leads to sodomy, that pilgrimage and devotion to relics is a kind of idolatry.

  These Wycliffite heretics called for the Bible to be in English and for a move towards a congregational religion as opposed to a clerical one, and they were extremely hostile towards the established church and the clergy.

  ANTHONY BALE: Heresy is essentially a thought crime, it’s a crime that exists in people’s minds, in people’s devotional selves. Identifying it, finding it, actually involves a degree of surveillance and drilling down to what normal people ar
e doing. In the early fifteenth century, you get this incredible culture of surveillance and censorship.

  Margery Kempe’s first visions came around the time of her pregnancy, about six months after she gave birth, Katherine Lewis said, which had been a very difficult experience for her with physical illness, as well as mental anguish over an unconfessed and unspecified sin, which may have been some kind of sexual sin.

  KATHERINE LEWIS: She’s absolutely preoccupied with sexuality and with the fact that she lost her virginity, and, many times in the book, she tells us she wished she’d never married and never had sex. She goes to her confessor; she wants to confess this sin because she thinks she’s going to die. And the confessor is very sharp with her, and she can’t get the sin out. Then she goes into this frenzy, and the first visions that she has are terrifying visions of demons breathing fire and attacking her and pulling her about.

  This was when she started to self-harm, because the demons were supposedly encouraging her to try to kill herself so that she would go to hell and be damned. Then, in the middle of all of this, just when it seemed as though she really had lost her mind, Christ appeared to her.

  KATHERINE LEWIS: It’s a wonderful vision. He appears, he’s a very handsome man, he’s clad in purple and he just sits on the side of her bed and he says, ‘Daughter, why have you forsaken me when I never forsook you?’ And then he disappears, elegantly (as Anthony says in his translation) off up into heaven again. And that’s it. But it restores her senses, it brings her back to herself.