Abstract
This chapter will explore how far the Agreements of the People influenced the constitutional developments of the interregnum, and in particular the ways in which they shaped the two paper constitutions of the protectorate, the Instrument of Government (1653) and the Humble Petition and Advice (1657).1 More specifically, I will suggest that the New Model Army officers’ Agreement of January 1649 exercised a greater influence than the other versions of the Agreement published between November 1647 and May 1649. This influence was most clearly apparent in the Instrument of Government, drafted primarily by Major-General John Lambert, which enshrined a number of the ideas that the army grandees, influenced by Leveller thinking, had developed since 1647, including parliamentary accountability and religious toleration. By contrast, the Humble Petition and Advice reflected a more conservative, civilian outlook that defended parliamentary powers and privileges against the council and the lord protector, and asserted the importance of a national state church with strong safeguards against heresies and blasphemies. The Humble Petition marked a significant departure from both the Agreements and the Instrument, and a step back toward constitutional forms more reminiscent of those that had existed under the monarchy. The broad pattern of the Agreements’ influence during the 1650s was thus an arc that peaked in 1653 and declined steadily thereafter.
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Notes
CJ, VI. 122; Barbara Taft, ‘The Council of Officers’ Agreement of the People, 1648/9’, HJ, 28 (1985), pp. 169–85, at p. 169.
J.P. Kenyon (ed.), The Stuart Constitution: Documents and Commentary (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1986), p. 253.
For the Rump’s record in these areas, see especially Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament, 1648–53 (Cambridge, 1974), chapters 6–8.
Worden, Rump Parliament, pp. 142–6. See also Vernon F. Snow, ‘Parliamentary Reapportionment Proposals in the Puritan Revolution’, EHR, 74 (1959), pp. 409–42;
and Keith Thomas, ‘The Levellers and the Franchise’, in G.E. Aylmer (ed.), The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement, 1646–60 (1972), pp. 57–78.
Wolfe, Leveller Manifestoes, pp. 402–3; Thomas, ‘Levellers and the Franchise’, p. 68. The degree to which these proposals would have extended the franchise in practice — and indeed whether Foundations of Freedom or the May 1649 Agreement extended it more widely — is difficult to determine with any precision and depends in part on how the word ‘servants’ is construed: see David Wootton, ‘Leveller Democracy and the Puritan Revolution’, in J.H. Burns with Mark Goldie (eds.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 430–4.
Ibid., pp. 105–18; G. B. Nourse, ‘Law Reform Under the Commonwealth and Protectorate’, The Law Quarterly Review, 75 (1959), pp. 512–29, especially pp. 515–18.
Mary Cotterell, ‘Interregnum Law Reform: The Hale Commission of 1652’, EHR, 83 (1968), pp. 689–704;
Alan Cromartie, Sir Matthew Hale, 1609–76: Law, Religion and Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 70–3; Nourse, ‘Law Reform’, pp. 518–22;
Donald Veall, The Popular Movement for Law Reform, 1640–60 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 79–84, 153–60, 180–90.
S.R. Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649–56 (4 vols., 1903; reprinted 1989), I. 255.
Austin Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate (Oxford, 1982), p. 23. For Cromwell’s use of the term ‘fundamentals’, see especially
S.C. Lomas (ed.), The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, with Elucidations by Thomas Carlyle (3 vols., 1904), II. 381–5 (Cromwell to the first Protectorate Parliament, 12 September 1654).
For Lambert’s role in drafting the Instrument, see David Farr, John Lambert,Parliamentary Soldier and Cromwellian Major-General, 1619–84 (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 124–34.
For a fuller discussion of this point, see Patrick Little and David L. Smith, Parliaments and Politics in the Cromwellian Protectorate (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 51–4.
Barry Coward, Oliver Cromwell (Harlow, 1991), p. 104.
J.T. Rutt (ed.), Diary of Thomas Burton, Esq. (4 vols., 1828), I. xxi–xxxii; CJ, VII. 365–7.
Lomas (ed.), Letters and Speeches of Cromwell, II. 381–5 (Cromwell to the first Protectorate Parliament, 12 September 1654).
Lomas (ed.), Letters and Speeches of Cromwell, II. 381–2 (Cromwell to the first Protectorate Parliament, 12 September 1654); Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, pp. 370–1.
Cf. [John Wildman], A Declaration of the Free-Born People of England, now in Armes Against the Tyrannie and Oppression of Oliver Cromwell Esq. (n.p., 1655) (669.f.19/70), which denounced the ‘Paper of Government’ as a cloak for Cromwell’s ‘pride and ambition’. I am grateful to Elliot Vernon for this reference.
Ruth Spalding (ed.), The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605–75 (British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History, new series, 13, Oxford, 1990), p. 400 (3 February 1655).
Ibid., p. 443. For fuller discussions, see David L. Smith, ‘Oliver Cromwell, the First Protectorate Parliament and Religious Reform’, reprinted in idem (ed.), Cromwell and the Interregnum (Oxford, 2003), pp. 167–81, especially pp. 172–4; and Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, pp. 197–205.
The full text of the Humble Petition and Advice is found in Gardiner, ConstitutionalDocuments, pp. 447–59; the Additional Petition and Advice is at ibid., pp. 459–64. For the political context of both the Humble and Additional Petitions, see especially C.H. Firth, ‘Cromwell and the Crown’, EHR, 17 (1902), pp. 429–42, and 18 (1903), pp. 52–80;
C.H. Firth, The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656–58 (2 vols., 1909), I. 128–200;
and Patrick Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 145–60.
Rutt (ed.), Diary of Burton, III. 113–14. On Beake, see Carol S. Egloff, ‘Robert Beake: A Letter Concerning the Humble Petition and Advice, 28 March 1657’, Historical Research, 68 (1995), pp. 233–9.
[John Wildman], The Leveller: Or, the Principles and Maxims Concerning Government and Religion (16 February 1659), p. 16 (E.968/3), my emphasis.
[John Rogers], The Plain Case of the Common-Weal (3 March 1659), pp. 11 and 13 (E.972/5). The quotation from the officers’ Agreement may be found in Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, pp. 368–9.
Samuel Duncon, Several Proposals (6 July 1659), p. 3 (E.989/9).
James D. Ogilvie (ed.), The Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, Volume III, 1655–60 (Scottish History Society, 3rd series, 34, 1940), pp. 150–1. The officers’ Agreement was, of course, dated to 1648 under old-style dating.
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Smith, D.L. (2012). The Agreements of the People and the Constitutions of the Interregnum Governments. In: Baker, P., Vernon, E. (eds) The Agreements of the People, the Levellers and the Constitutional Crisis of the English Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137291707_11
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