The funeral of Thomas Rainsborough was a calculated, political demonstration of the Leveller movement. It was an ‘unofficial, revolutionary pageant’ designed as ‘a gesture of defiance against the established powers’.36 The funeral took place at a politically critical juncture; many radicals feared that Parliament was about to conclude a treaty with the king that would mean an unacceptable restoration of the monarchy. Rainsborough’s funeral was a symbolic moment of resistance to this course of action. The day before the funeral a single-side sheet, ‘An Elegie Upon the Honourable Colonel Thomas Rainsborough’, explicitly argued that Rainsborough’s death should be understood as a providential warning against a treaty with the king:
What if Heaven purpos’d Rainsborough’s fall to be
A prop for Englands dying Libertie?
And did in Love thus suffer one to fall
That Charles by Treaty might not ruine all?
For who’l expect that Treaty should doe good
Whose longer date commenc’t in Rainsborough’s blood?’37
The verse went on to tell ‘noble Fairfax’ and ‘bold Cromwel’ that if they were to ‘Conclude a peace with Charles’ they would end up riding in ‘robes of Scarlet’ dyed in ‘your own dearest blood’, because ‘instead of Gold’ Charles would ‘pay you all with steel’.
It was in this atmosphere that the date and time of Rainsborough’s funeral were announced in the Leveller press. The Moderate, the Leveller news-sheet, gave an account of Rainsborough’s death, ending it with this call to arms: ‘Can the soldiery of this Kingdom be silent, and not revenge the barbarous murder of their incomparable Commander . . . The Lord stir up your hearts to be avenged of these bloody enemies.’ And the Moderate made a public appeal to all the ‘well-affected’ (a term having much the same meaning as ‘citizen’ in the French Revolution) to join the funeral procession:
The Corps of the never to be forgotten, English Champion, is to be brought to London on Tuesday next, the 14 instant, to be there interred. Major Rainsborow his brother, with other of his kindred goes to Tatnam-High Cross to meet them; All the well-affected in London and parts adjacent are desired to accompany them; the hour of ten in the morning is desired to be the longest for their being in Tatnam.38
The scale of the procession must have exceeded the Levellers’ expectations, although the most detailed accounts of the funeral itself come from sources hostile to the Levellers. The Royalist newsbook Mercurius Elencticus described Rainsborough’s funeral as the event that ‘crowned the day’:
[Rainsborough’s] sacred corps conveyed from Doncaster, came this day to London, being met and attended on by a great number of the well affected of all Professions, Will the Weaver, Tom the Tapster, Kit the Cobler, Dick the Doore Sweeper, and many more Apron youths of the City, who trudg’d very devoutly both before and behind this glorious Saint, with about 100 she-votresses crowded up in Coaches, and some 500 more of the better sort of Brethren mounted on Hackney beasts . . .39
Apart from conveying the scale of the procession, this account is immediately striking in two ways. Firstly, an unmistakable note of snobbery pervades the piece, giving us a glimpse of the force of class feeling engendered by the revolution but not so clearly visible on other occasions. Secondly, the particular reference to ‘she-votresses’ exhibits hostility both to the participation of women in politics and to democracy more generally. The account in Mercurius Elencticus does however give us a detailed account of the route of the funeral procession:
The Body came in by way of Islington, and so through Smithfield, (where they should have burnt it) thence along Old Baily (in defiance of Newgate and the Sessions house) and under Ludgate, not through Pauls [for there the Organs stood, but on the backside of the church and so along Cheapside. Sure they were aware of the Ground whereon the crosse was founded] and through Cornwall, in great pompe, and with a variety of sad postures; at length they arrived at Wapping chappell, where they bestowed this precious peece of Mortality, as nigh as might be to the tombe of the Honourable and expert Skuller his father, where the Godly Party (with their hands in their pockets) lamented his untimely Grave.40
As a mark of official respect, the cannon at the Tower were fired as the funeral took place.41 For the Levellers’ supporters, the size of the procession was not the only remarkable element of the day. The inscription on Rainsborough’s tombstone at the family church in Wapping tells its own story:
He that made King, Lords, Commons, Judges shake,
Cities, and Committees quake:
He that fought nought but his dear Countreys good,
And seal’d their right with his last blood.
Rainsborow the just, the valiant, and the true,
Here bids the noble Levellers adue.42
Another moment of symbolism from the day of funeral also became identified with the movement: the adoption of the sea-green colour as an identification of the Leveller movement. ‘Azure and black’ were Rainsborough’s colours and as Ian Gentles records, ‘from the time of his funeral his personal colours, green and black, were adopted as the badge of the Leveller movement.’43 Certainly attacks on the Levellers that associated them with sea-green followed the funeral.
A satirical attack on the Levellers in the single sheet ‘The Gallant Rights, Priviledges, Solemn Institutions of the Sea-Green Order’ tells readers that the Levellers have chosen ‘deep Sea Green . . . our Flag and Colours, and do hereby ordain and authorize it to be worn as the lively badge of Constancy, Sufferance and Valour in grain, the cognizance of Justice, and the mark of Freedom and Deliverance’; it calls on all who ‘groan under the present Extortions, unequal taxes, unjust Levies, inevitable Monopolies, new Charters, plunders and avarice of Committees . . . to take up our Colours . . . and in so doing Sea green shall be their badge of warrant and protection’.44 In what seems likely to be a direct reference to the practice at Rainsborough’s funeral, this sheet continues: ‘That every one so wearing our Colours in hatband, cuff, garment, bridle, mayn, or sail . . . shall hence forth, according to our Noble Order, be intitled the Free born Assistant of Justice . . .’ The sheet was then reprinted, with minor alterations, as an eight-page pamphlet under the title The Levellers Institutions for a Good People and Good Parliament.45
The practice of wearing sea green to denote association with the Leveller cause seems to have become widespread. As we shall see, it was worn again at the funeral of Leveller Robert Lockyer in April 1649. In May Mercurius Militaris was describing ‘the brave Blades of the sea-green order honest Johns Lifeguard’, and the ‘bonny Besses, In the Sea-green dresses’ who strike fear into ‘Nol and his asses’.46 And in July Leveller leader Richard Overton was himself writing to ‘my Brethren of the Sea green Order’.47 One might say that the adoption of the sea-green ribbon by the Levellers marks the invention of the party badge.
The show of force at Rainsborough’s funeral was part of the great Leveller push in the second half of 1648 to stop the moderates coming to a treaty with the king. In order to achieve this end the alliance with the Independents, Cromwell and Ireton – broken at Putney and Ware – had to be re-established. It was this Independent–Leveller alliance that generated sufficient momentum to prevent a treaty, mount Pride’s Purge to drive the moderates from Parliament, execute the king, and declare a republic.
Charles was executed on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall in January 1649. But at the moment of victory the differences between the Levellers and the Independents reasserted themselves. The Levellers saw Cromwell’s regime as illegitimate, because it was not based on any expression of popular will. Having found the Levellers indispensable in the battle against