An unattributed pamphlet by William Walwyn: New light on the prehistory of the leveller movement

Huntington Library Quarterly

Volumn 69, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 353-382

  Como, David R ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 36649012667     PISSN: 00187895     EISSN: 1544399X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/hlq.2006.69.3.353     Document Type: Review

References (30)

1. For the culmination of these efforts, and a discussion of the process, see J. McMichael and B. Taft, The Writings of William Walwyn (Athens, Ga., 1989).
2. For George Thomason's copy, see To the Right Honourable the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament (1645), British Library shelfmark 669f10 [37].
3. On the Presbyterian campaigns, see M. Mahony, "Presbyterianism in the City of London, 1645-1647, " Historical Journal 22 (1979): 93-114;
4. K. Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, U.K., 1997), 356-403.
5. See, for instance, D. R. Adams, "Religion and Reason in the Thought of Richard Overton, the Leveller" (D.Phil, thesis, Cambridge University, 2003).
6. See W. Walwyn, Walwyns Just Defence (1649), 31, a signed pamphlet in which he admits that he wrote the anonymous pamphlet A Helpe to the right understanding.
7. A Helpe to the right understanding (1645), 4. The phrase "fully persuaded in his own mind" is derived from Rom. 14:5; the rest of the phrase is improvised.
8. [W. Walwyn], A Parable, or Consultation of Physitians upon Master Edwards (1646), 4.
9. [W. Walwyn], The Compassionate Samaritane Unbinding The Conscience (2d ed., 1645), 4;
10. For Walwyn's admitted antinomianism, see Just Defence, 8.
11. A Helpe, 7;
12. W. Walwyn, The Fountain of Slaunder Discovered (1649), 3.
13. A Word More, 4-5;
14. A Prediction, 18;
15. Soft Voice, 8, 9, 16.
16. D. Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England (Stanford, Calif, 2004), 297-300, 360-61, 377-80, 385-87.
17. Lieut: Generali Cromwells Letter to The House of Commons (1645);
18. Commons' Journals 4:277.
19. The omission is not recorded in the Commons' Journals, but was noted by Thomason on his copy of the unauthorized version of 21 September. For the fall of Bristol, and an early discussion of the excision, see S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War (New York, 1965), 2:313-20.
20. See also J. Adamson, "Oliver Cromwell and the Long Parliament, " in J. Morrill, ed., Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London, 1990), 67-68;
21. Moreover, the broadside "Discovery of the Arch-Whore" was in fact an abridgment of a longer treatise that appeared a week later, on which Paine and Simmons did print their names. See [Anon.], A Discovery of the Great Fantasie, or, Phantasticall Conceitednesse (London: T. P. and M. S. in Goldsmiths Alley, [29 October] 1642).
22. The traditional ascription to Lilburne is not certain, although many passages suggest his hand; indeed, the first seven pages of the tract were drawn verbatim from a broadside he published from prison in August 1645 ("In the 150 page of the book called, An exact collection of the Parliaments remonstrances" [1645]). But in 1647, recalling this broadside, Lilburne wrote, "I presented it in print to the world, " further explaining, "And which by the Author of Englands birthright is reprinted at the beginning of that notable book, " conveying the impression that he was not the author of the body of the tract; see The Just Mans Justification (2d ed., 1647), 25.
23. See also J. Lilburne, The Innocent Man's second-Proffer (1649), in which he provided a detailed list of his own publications (including at least one that had been printed anonymously);
24. H. Plomer, "Secret Printing during the Civil War, " The Library, 2d ser., 5 (1904): 374-403;
25. for more on Overton's involvement in secret printing, see D. Como, "Secret Printing, the Crisis of 1640, and the Origins of Civil-War Radicalism, " Past and Present (forthcoming).
26. Englands Lamentable Slaverie (1645), 5, 3-4. Although Walwyn himself did not here use the language of "rights" to make his case, in the months that followed other Leveller tracts would appropriate his argument and reframe it using a rhetoric of "natural rights." Walwyn's phrasing was: "And for any man to be imprisoned without cause declared, and witnessed (by more than one appearing face to face) is not only unjust, because expreslie against Magna Charta (both of Heaven and Earth) but also against all reason, sense, and the common Law of equite and justice."
27. See P. Blayney, "The Publication of Playbooks, " in J. Cox and D. Kastan, eds., A New History of Early English Drama (New York, 1997), 391.
28. Englands Lamentable Slaverie, 8.
29. J. Peacey, "John Lilburne and the Long Parliament, " Historical Journal 43 (2000): 625-45.
30. The Last Warning to all the Inhabitants of London (1646), 1-2.