LAUD, THE LEVELLERS, AND THE VIRTUOSI 



this smaller portion, the Levellers, varied considerably; at one time 

 they were sufficiently strong to take the field against Cromwell's 

 own forces in a short campaign which receives little or no mention 

 in orthodox history books,^ while towards the end of the Common- 

 wealth they were mostly in exile, reduced to plotting in company 

 with exiled royalists. 



As the extreme left wing of the puritan and parliamentary move- 

 ment, they were, of course, implacably opposed to everything that 

 the Anglican divines stood for. However devoted the Anglican 

 divines might be to ideals of social justice, their positions made 

 them, in the eyes of the revolutionary puritans, pillars of oppression 

 and symbols of the old regime. The moderate puritans were well 

 aware of the situation. In 1641 the poet Edmund Waller, a Presby- 

 terian, said in the House of Commons that though it might be well 

 to restrict episcopacy, it were better not to abolish it altogether. "I 

 look upon episcopacy," he said, "as a counterscarp or outwork; 

 which, if it be taken by this assault of the people, and withal, this 

 mystery once revealed, that we must deny them nothing when they 

 ask it thus in troops, we may, in the next place, have as hard a task 

 to defend our property as we have lately had to recover it from the 

 royal prerogative. If, by multiplying hands and petitions, they prevail 

 for an equality in things ecclesiastical, the next demand perhaps may 

 be the like equality in things temporal." This was the authentic 

 voice of the rising middle class, determined to do away with feudal 

 absolutism, but equally determined to keep the property privilege for 

 itself. Waller went on to say, "I am confident that, whenever an equal 

 division of lands and goods shall be desired, there will be as many 

 places in Scripture found out which seem to favour that, as there are 

 now alleged against the prelacy or preferment of the Church. And 

 as for abuses, when you are now told what this and that poor man 

 hath suffered by the bishops, you may be presented with a thousand 

 instances of poor men that have received hard measure from their 

 landlords." Waller was a keen-sighted man. The preaching troopers 

 who began by finding no warrant in scripture for prelates, ended by 

 finding none there either for the class-domination of temporal rulers. 



The Levellers first appear about the year 1647, at which time the 

 victorious army was dividing into the two sections above-mentioned, 

 the "gentlemen-independents" or "Grandees" being opposed to the 



^ Contrast the excellent History of Feudalism by A. Gukovsky & O. Trachtenberg 

 (Moscow, 1934). 



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