The English Levellers (review)

277 fonts used in the edition are attractive and the proof-reading flawless throughout. Graham Tulloch, as editor, David Hewitt, as editor-in-chief, Edinburgh University Press, as publishers, and the others in their team can only be congratulated on this splendid outcome of their efforts. Russell Poole School ofEnglish and Media Studies Massey University Sharp, Andrew, ed., The English Levellers (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998; paper; pp. xxxv, 223; 1 table; R.R.P. AUS$31.95. This substantial and well edited book belongs to that small group of anomalous collections in the excellent Cambridge series of texts of political thought. Andrew Sharp presents in a very accessible form to students not the thought of an individual but of a group that is n o w identified by a name coined by their contemporary opponents and which they vehemently rejected. However, leaving aside for the m o m e n t the question whether the Levellers, like the 'Ranters' or the 'Puritans', are a reined concept, the virtues of this edition need to be emphasised. Thirteen important texts by John Lilburne, William Walwyn, Richard Overton, and by two or more of these writing together, dating from the crucial period between August 1645 and August 1649, are carefully but lightly edited, together with crucial extracts from the Putney debates. Sharp also includes a useful chronological table giving parallel attention to major political events and the experiences of leading Levellers, and a brief but serviceable bibliography divided into intelligent sections for further reading (although on p. xxxii 'C. J. Davis' needs to be J. C. Davis). H e also provides useful brief biographies of the major Levellers, the lesser lights (a distinction which is itself an interesting c o m m e n t on the individualism that thwarted their aims) and their chief opponents. Sharp's succinct introduction situates the Levellers in the political and religious turmoil of the 1640s. The various interests jockeying for power, security and the achievements of their ends in an uncertain situation—the King and his advisers, the Parliament, the officers of the N e w Model Army, 278 Reviews its rank andfile,the Levellers and other similar groups—entered into opportunistic alliances and espoused or abandoned political platforms as circumstances required. In these conditions the fact that individuals within these groups displayed major differences in personality, approach and programme should not surprise us. Sharp tellingly contrasts the Levellers' arguments with the explicit subordination inculcated by contemporary social and political relationships and the claims that this subordination demonstrated obedience to the divine will. However, at this point he might have made more of the real threat posed by Leveller doctrines by emphasising the equally firm religious base of their arguments, which undoubtedly explains whatever popular appeal they had. Starting from the premise that God required social equality, the Levellers frightened their opponents by their demand for a social revolution. The specific political, economic and religious reforms they advocated might have resembled those of the more radical amongst the officers, but only the Levellers saw them as necessary steps towards fundamentally restructuring society. The details of those policies were less important than the end towards which they tended, which m a y explain Leveller opportunism in adapting those policies to contingent political circumstances. Sharp's discussion of the historiographical traditions through which the Levellers have been variously labelled, and in which he concludes that they were 'liberal democrats', might have been more convincing i f he had given due weight to the sense of religious duty which enlivened their democratic arguments, for that would also have helped to explain w h y these zealots for equality did not dream of extending the same arguments to women. N o modern democratic arguments, even, or especially, those of liberal democrats, depend upon religious sanction, which is w h y they can be easily extended to feminine emancipation. This fundamental belief in the divine commandment of social equality becomes more important as a distinguishing mark of the group when w e reflect that Sharp's biographies, like his discussion of Leveller opportunism, tend to emphasise the individual differences within the group...