LEVELLERS. — The L. constituted the extreme left wing of the English republicans during the Civil War of 1642–51. The term L. (“leveller” and, more properly, “subversive,” from *levelling”) had been adopted by the peasants of Leicestershire who rose in 1607 against the enclosure of the land; from 1647 onward it designated the participants in the ultra-demonstrative gathering at Putney and remained the name of the political group which, against the monarchy and Presbyterian intolerance at first, and the overweening power of the army and Cromwell’s dictatorship thereafter, sought to assert the principles of freedom of conscience, personal liberty, the impartial administration of justice, and self-government through frequent elections.
Led by such figures as John Lilburne, Richard Overton, and William Walwyn, the L., organized in neighborhood committees in the cities and local committees in the counties, constituted the first genuinely political party in the modern sense of the word, although they were still compelled to operate semi-clandestinely. Their publishing activity aimed at influencing public opinion was enormous (more than 20,000 publications). The main phases of their activity were, up to 1646, the struggle in defense of the House of Commons against the House of Lords; in 1647, the agreement with the “Independent” factions of the army and the subsequent “great petition” of March against the Presbyterian majority in Parliament. Once their alliance with the army was broken at the end of 1648, the L., opposed by the officers who had restored discipline and isolated from the national consciousness, which was still predominantly monarchist, lost all political influence, were reduced to impotence by Cromwell’s dictatorship, and denounced by their opponents as subverters of every social distinction and advocates of the community of goods. Later historiography (Hume, Guizot, etc.) and conservative writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries commonly used the term “levellers” to designate egalitarian democrats; in fact, the L., representatives of free merchants, artisans, shopkeepers, and small landowners, advocated juridical-political, not economic, egalitarianism.