Rainsborough’s words are now carved into the stone balcony at Putney Church. But when they were uttered they were as much an urgent call for the revolution to continue as they were a timeless statement of constitutional rights. We should remember that, while they talked, Robert Lilburne’s regiment (Robert was brother of John, then in the Tower) was refusing to march north as ordered by New Model commander Lord Fairfax. Agents from cavalry regiments addressed them, reading out a letter which urged them to stand up for ‘England’s freedom and soldiers’ rights’. The debates were interrupted by messengers coming for instructions on how they should seek to quell the unrest.
Indeed, the conclusion of the Putney debates was that there should be a rendezvous of the army to consider the issues. The Independents manoeuvred to ensure that this was three separate meetings, not the single assembly the Levellers had imagined was decided. ‘England’s freedom, soldiers’ rights’ was the very slogan that Robert Lilburne’s regiment brought, defying their generals, to the army rendezvous at Ware. The rebellious soldiers were forcibly suppressed by the New Model’s senior officers, and one of their number was shot. The crushing of the Ware mutiny settled, for the time being, the questions that were raised at Putney. But Leveller organization in and around London continued to grow.
On 17 January 1648 John Lilburne and John Wildman addressed a Leveller meeting in Wapping, home of the Rainsborough family. Lilburne had been invited to the meeting ‘by some friends’ in order to answer the scruples and objections that ‘some honest people, in or about Wappin’ had concerning the Large Petition for which the Levellers were canvassing.24 George Masterson, a Presbyterian minister from Shoreditch parish, attended the meeting to spy and the following day he denounced the meeting as a traitorous conspiracy to both the Lords and Commons.
On 19 January, Masterson, Lilburne and Wildman all gave evidence at the bar of the House of Commons. Lilburne was immediately committed once more to the Tower, and Wildman to the Fleet prison. Both were charged with treason. The next day Masterson gave evidence again, to the Committee of Both Houses sitting at Derby House. He published his evidence as a pamphlet on 10 February, and the same material was published by the government at about the same time.25
Lilburne and Wildman hotly contested Masterson’s charge of treason, but, as Norah Carlin has shown, the picture that emerges from Masterson’s account of the Wapping meeting and Lilburne and Wildman’s responses gives us our most detailed picture of how the Levellers and their supporters organized.26 The purpose of the Wapping meeting was to promote the current Leveller petition and, once enough signatories had been gained, to organize a demonstration in its support. At the meeting Lilburne and Wildman fielded questions about the petition and explained the methods by which it was to be promoted. Masterson recorded part of Lilburne’s speech as saying that the Levellers were appointing Commissioners to promote the petition in every town in the Kingdom if they could.27 These Commissioners met in the Whalebone Inn and in Southwark, Wapping and towns in Kent.28
The Whalebone Inn was one of the regular meeting places of the Levellers, located in Lothbury near the Royal Exchange in the City. Lilburne’s speech also revealed ‘that 30,000 of the petitions were to come from the printing presses the following day’. To fund this work, Lilburne told the meeting, money needed to be raised and treasurers had been appointed for the purpose.29 It is some indication of the scale on which the Levellers were operating at this time that 30,000 petitions were being printed: this would be a substantial number for a contemporary political campaign, designed to reach the modern population of the country. Lilburne, Wildman, John Davies and Richard Woodward also sent a letter to the ‘well affected’ of Kent encouraging them to support the petition.30
The picture of the Levellers that emerges from this episode is one of sustained, methodical, widespread political organization. No doubt the same methods that Lilburne describes the Levellers using in January were used in July to gain the 10,000 names for the petition to free Lilburne from the Tower, and, in August and September, to gain 40,000 signatories for the Large Petition and the turnout on the demonstration at Westminster which accompanied its presentation.31
LONDON AND THE SECOND CIVIL WAR
London was a city on edge when hostilities broke out once more in 1648. The Second Civil War was composed of a series of local engagements against Royalist risings, plus the struggle against the invading Scottish army allied to the king. Cromwell was in command of the Parliamentary forces sent to crush the rebellion in Wales and then to oppose the Scots. Sir Thomas Fairfax was in command of the forces that dealt with the Royalist rising in Kent.
The Kent rebellion was led by the earl of Norwich who aimed at a rendezvous at Blackheath, thereby threatening London. Fairfax drove away the 1,000 who gathered at Blackheath on 30 May 1648, and decisively defeated the rest of the Royalists at Maidstone on 1 June. Norwich attempted to gain Blackheath again with his remaining 3,000-strong force, but was seen off by the City militia under the able command of Philip Skippon. Norwich crossed the Thames at Greenwich, the foot in boats and the horse swimming alongside. In Essex his numbers rose again as he was joined by Royalists from London, including Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle. The Royalists were pursued by Parliamentary forces under Colonel Whalley. They reached Chelmsford and then, on 10 June, they decided to enter Colchester, Lucas’s home town. By 12 June Fairfax was two miles from Colchester, having brought his troops across the Thames at Gravesend. Norwich’s Royalists had to make a stand.
The siege of Colchester, lasting for eleven weeks, was the most bloody and dramatic face-off in the Second Civil War.32 But it is not the grisly course of the siege that is of interest here, but the events that attended its conclusion. The eventual surrender of the Royalists, after dismissing three offers of quarter from Fairfax, was a controversial affair. Rainsborough acted as one of the Commissioners who agreed the Articles of Surrender, and Fairfax’s victorious troops entered Colchester on 28 August. Fairfax’s Council of War, which included Commissary General Henry Ireton, Colonel Whalley and Rainsborough, decided that Lucas and Lisle should be executed. This was part of a harsher political climate in the Second Civil War, ‘for during the Second Civil War the New Model’s leaders’ ascription of the term “Man of Blood” to Charles I, as guilty of a deliberate and almost sacrilegious action which, after acceptance of clemency, had cost the lives of others, was sometimes taken to apply to his commanders also.’33
Whalley, Ireton and Rainsborough were charged with ensuring that the verdict of the Council of War be carried out, although it was Ireton who seems to have been most closely associated with the actual execution, involving himself in a lengthy argument with Lucas about the judicial basis of the sentence.34 The Royalists instantly claimed Lucas and Lisle as martyrs, while Fairfax and Rainsborough were demonized for their part in the killings. Only a month after the execution the first attempt on the life of Rainsborough took place. At this time the New Model Army headquarters had moved to St Albans. Shortly before he went north with orders to take over the siege of Pontefract, Rainsborough was riding between London and St Albans, accompanied only by a captain, when he was attacked by Royalists. The report of the event given to the Commons records:
Colonel Rainsborough, it was also informed, was likewise set upon by three of the King’s Party between London and St. Albans, he having a Captain in his Company; the Cavaliers seeing their Gallantry and Resolution, put Spurs to their Horses and rode for it, and being extraordinary well mounted over rid them.35
On this occasion Rainsborough’s bravery prevailed. Other Parliamentarians had also recently survived assassination attempts. On that same day the Commons heard that ‘A Member of the House . . . and another Gentleman, coming yesterday out of the City, were affronted by three Gentlemen, who very well knew the said Member, calling him by his Name: Two of them drew their Swords, and sell [sic] on him, the Third had a Dagger to stab him, but by great Providence and Courage, he gave them a Repulse.’ Others had not been so lucky, for the House was told that ‘A Captain of the Army was likewise killed in London, and a Major the last week’. The final months of the Second Civil War were a dangerous time in London when the animosities generated by years of conflict