For the observant visitor to Burford Church in rural Oxfordshire there is a mysterious plaque “To the memory of three Levellers: Cornet Thompson, Corporal Perkins, Private Church. Executed and buried in this churchyard 17th May 1649.” Who were the Levellers and why were these three men executed in Burford? To answer this question we have to explore the explosion of radical political and social ideas that occurred during the English Civil War.
The Levellers were a radical group which included Londoners and members of the Parliamentary army inspired, largely, by the ideas of John Lilburne, or ‘free-born John’ as he became known. Lilburne was a believer in the rule of parliament and the rights of freeborn men and he had fought for the Parliamentary army against King Charles I between 1642 and 1646.
In 1645 Lilburne had clashed with the Presbyterian majority in parliament and as a result was imprisoned for two months. To defend himself, he quoted Magna Carta. He went on to write a pamphlet entitled England’s Birthright Justified which set out his beliefs regarding freedom of speech and religious toleration. Lilburne met with other radical thinkers, most notably Richard Overton and William Walwyn, who went on to create the group known as the Levellers. It was Overton and Walwyn who wrote the Leveller’s manifesto, A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens in 1646, which was a defence of Lilburne and outlined the Levellers’ key beliefs.
Lilburne was imprisoned in the Tower of London between 1646 and 1648, which meant that he could not take part in the Putney Debates, a series of debates between different factions of Cromwell’s New Model Army over what form a new constitution for Britain should take. The army entered London in August 1647 and the Putney debates took place in October and November of the same year. Members of each regiment were appointed to speak for their men.
Although the first English Civil War was over, with Charles I captured and Oliver Cromwell in charge of the parliamentary army, the Levellers and Cromwell did not see eye-to-eye. Cromwell and his generals, Fairfax and Ireton, were all wealthy landowners whose ideas strongly conflicted with those of the Levellers. Ordinary soldiers complained that they had fought for the rights of parliament, but now had no say in electing that parliament.
There was some sympathy amongst the parliamentary army leaders towards the grievances of ordinary soldiers. For example, John Wildman, who was a wealthy Berkshire landowner and member of the Parliamentary army, helped to draft The Case of the Armie Truly Stated and An Agreement of the People for a Firm and Present Peace upon the Grounds of Common Right in the Putney debates of 1647. He was the only civilian appointed by the army council to a committee which discussed The Case of the Armie. Colonel Thomas Rainsborough was also sympathetic. He argued fiercely with Cromwell at the Putney Debates for the vote to be given to all men. At Corkbush Field he tried to present a copy of An Agreement of the People to General Fairfax, but was brushed aside.
By 1649 tensions had reached a climax amongst ordinary soldiers in the Parliamentary army. In April 1649 there was a mutiny in Colonel Whalley’s regiment in London over arrears of pay and the fear of being sent to Ireland or discharged without any pay at all. They demanded that the Levellers’ ideas be put into action. Cromwell and Fairfax defeated the mutineers and the ringleader Richard Lockier was shot outside St Paul’s Cathedral. His funeral was marked by a demonstration with thousands of Levellers wearing green ribbons or sprigs of rosemary.
Three regiments of the Parliamentary army mutinied and met at Burford in Oxfordshire but were defeated by Cromwell, Fairfax and their army. Whilst some fled, 340 soldiers were captured and locked in the church. Here the ringleaders, Cornet James Thompson, Corporal Perkins and Private John Church, were condemned to death and shot.
James Thompson was the younger brother of self-styled Captain William Thompson, and possibly singled out because his brother was a Leveller sympathiser. He had written a pamphlet entitled England’s Standard Advanced and led a mutiny at Banbury where he was killed by soldiers loyal to Cromwell.
The Burford mutiny was the last attempt to get the army leaders to listen to The Levellers’ demands. On 25th May 1649 Cromwell reported to Parliament that the Levellers’ mutinies had all been suppressed.
Along with the plaque on the church wall to commemorate the three men, a Levellers’ Day celebrates them each May in Burford. The local Workers’ Educational Association invited Labour politician Tony Benn to speak there in 1976. He said “the elimination of The Levellers as an organised political movement could not obliterate the ideas which they had propagated. From that day the principles of religious and political freedom and equality have reappeared again and again in the history of the labour movement and throughout the world”.
Written by Ann Smith, a U3A Shared Learning Project researcher for the Citizens Project.
