2E - Political and religious radicalism: the politicisation of the New Model Army | AQA A-Level History

Victory raised a question that fighting had postponed: who could decide the future of England? Follow the New Model Army's move from military grievances to political demands, then distinguish the Levellers' programme from the religious and social radicalism that developed around and after the king's execution.

The army becomes a political force

The New Model Army had defeated the king, but victory did not guarantee security for its soldiers. In 1647 Parliament proposed disbanding much of the army and sending troops to Ireland. Soldiers feared losing unpaid wages, facing prosecution for actions committed during the war and being sent to another dangerous campaign without satisfactory terms. Indemnity meant legal protection for wartime acts; it mattered because conduct authorised during a civil war might later be prosecuted as an ordinary crime.

Many Presbyterian MPs wanted to reduce the army's power and establish a national Presbyterian Church. Soldiers who worshipped in independent congregations feared that religious uniformity would erase freedoms they believed victory should protect. Pay, law and conscience therefore connected. A soldier could conclude that receiving arrears would be insufficient if the Parliament paying him could subsequently impose religious penalties or punish his service.

Regiments elected representatives, usually called agitators or agents. Alongside officers, they helped form the General Council of the Army. The army's Solemn Engagement of June 1647 committed soldiers to remain together until their grievances were addressed. Cornet George Joyce's seizure of Charles from Holdenby House that month gave the army a bargaining asset as well as a collective voice. Marching towards London and intervening in parliamentary politics transformed an employer–employee dispute into a struggle over the settlement.

The army was never uniformly radical. Senior officers such as Cromwell and Ireton wanted order, secure property and a workable government; many ordinary soldiers wanted protection rather than a social revolution. The army's organisation nevertheless gave arguments from outside the landed political elite an unusually powerful audience. The National Archives' account of Putney traces the interaction between civilian radicals and soldiers.

Lilburne and the Levellers

John Lilburne's campaigns turned resistance to arbitrary power into demands for protected individual rights. Imprisoned under both royal and parliamentary authority, he argued that victory over Charles did not entitle MPs to imprison critics without proper legal safeguards. Richard Overton and William Walwyn also helped develop the movement associated with the Levellers. Pamphlets, petitions, London networks and contacts with soldiers enabled people outside Parliament to influence constitutional debate.

Levellers

A political movement demanding a government accountable to the people, wider political participation, equality before the law and protected liberties. The name did not mean that its leaders wanted all property divided equally.

The Agreement of the People, first presented to the Army Council in October 1647, proposed regular Parliaments, fairer distribution of representation and limits on what representatives could do. Religious conscience and freedom from compulsory military service were among the matters reserved from ordinary governmental interference. The programme challenged arbitrary parliamentary authority as well as kingship. Its versions changed, so avoid treating every later provision as part of one unchanging manifesto. The 1647 document in Gardiner's public-domain edition supplies its actual proposals.

At the Putney Debates in October–November 1647, the franchise exposed differences within the army. Thomas Rainsborough argued for the political voice of ordinary men, while Ireton tied participation to a lasting stake in the kingdom, especially property. Ireton feared that men without property could vote to overturn the rights of those who owned it. Radical proposals extended the vote much further than existing practice, but they were not identical to modern universal adult suffrage: women were excluded, and the treatment of servants and people receiving alms varied in the proposals and debates.

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2E - Political and religious radicalism: the politicisation of the New Model Army

The army becomes a political force

Lilburne and the Levellers

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