Putney Debates (1647): Levellers, Soldiers and the Right to Vote

The Putney Debates were a series of discussions held by the General Council of the New Model Army at Putney, then a village on the Thames near London, from 28 October to 11 November 1647. Army commanders, elected soldiers’ representatives and civilian Levellers argued about how England should be governed after the English Civil War. Their debate over who should have the vote is remembered as one of the earliest public arguments for democracy in English history.

Background

By 1647 Parliament had won the First Civil War, but there was no agreement on a peace settlement. Charles I, held captive, negotiated with Parliament, the Scots and the army while trying to divide them. Parliament’s Presbyterian majority wanted to disband most of the New Model Army without paying its arrears.

The army refused. Its regiments elected representatives called agitators, seized the king in June 1647 and marched into London in August. It set up a General Council made up of officers and elected agitators. Meanwhile the Levellers, a London-based movement led by John Lilburne, Richard Overton and William Walwyn, pressed for religious toleration, legal reform and a government accountable to the people.

In October 1647 new agitators from five cavalry regiments, influenced by the Levellers, published “The Case of the Army Truly Stated”. It was followed by a short written constitution, “An Agreement of the People”, which was brought before the General Council at Putney.

The debates

The council first met on 28 October 1647 in St Mary’s Church, Putney, with Oliver Cromwell in the chair. Later sessions were held in nearby lodgings. The main speakers included Cromwell; his son-in-law Henry Ireton, the army’s chief political thinker; Colonel Thomas Rainsborough; the agitator Edward Sexby; and the civilian Levellers John Wildman and Maximilian Petty.

The Agreement of the People proposed that Parliament be dissolved, that a new parliament be elected every two years, that seats be shared out according to population, and that certain “native rights”, including freedom of religion and equality before the law, be placed beyond the power of any parliament.

The sharpest dispute came on 29 October over the franchise, the right to vote. Rainsborough argued that every man who lived under a government ought to consent to it, declaring: “For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he.” Sexby asked what the soldiers had fought for if they were to have no birthright in the kingdom.

Ireton replied that the vote should belong only to those with “a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom”, meaning owners of land or freemen of trading corporations. He warned that if men without property could vote, they might use that power to take property away. Cromwell sought compromise and unity, and at one point the meeting held a prayer session. Petty suggested that servants and those receiving alms be excluded, since they depended on others, and a broad extension of the franchise along these lines was provisionally agreed.

The record

The debates are known in detail because the army’s secretary, William Clarke, took notes in shorthand. His manuscripts were preserved at Worcester College, Oxford, and were published by the historian C. H. Firth from 1891. The record is incomplete and sometimes hard to read, but it preserves the voices of soldiers and civilians arguing about political rights more than 140 years before the French Revolution.

The end of the debates

The meetings broke up in early November as divisions deepened. On 11 November 1647 Charles I escaped from Hampton Court and fled to the Isle of Wight, raising fears of renewed war. The army leaders replaced a single general rendezvous with three separate meetings to keep control.

At the first, at Corkbush Field near Ware in Hertfordshire on 15 November, some soldiers appeared wearing copies of the Agreement in their hats. The officers quickly restored order. Several ringleaders were arrested and one, Private Richard Arnold, was shot.

Legacy

The Levellers produced further versions of the Agreement of the People in 1648 and 1649, but the movement was crushed after the army mutiny at Burford in May 1649. Rainsborough was killed at Doncaster in October 1648. The army did, however, move against the king, leading to the execution of Charles I in January 1649.

The Clarke manuscripts made the debates famous in the 20th century, when they were widely read as an early expression of democratic ideas. Britain did not adopt near-universal male suffrage until the Representation of the People Act of 1918. Today St Mary’s Church holds a permanent exhibition on the debates, and Rainsborough’s words are inscribed in the church.

Timeline

• 1647, 4 June: Cornet George Joyce seizes Charles I for the army.
• 1647, mid-October: “The Case of the Army Truly Stated” is presented to Fairfax (18 October).
• 1647, 28 October: The General Council meets at St Mary’s Church, Putney.
• 1647, 29 October: Debate on the franchise between Rainsborough, Sexby and Ireton.
• 1647, 11 November: Charles I escapes from Hampton Court.
• 1647, 15 November: Mutiny at Corkbush Field, near Ware, is suppressed.

Why it matters

The Putney Debates were a rare moment when ordinary soldiers argued as equals with their generals about the foundations of government. Their arguments about consent, rights and representation anticipated debates that would shape democracy in Britain, America and beyond.