Attempts at Settlement and the Rise of Radicalism

Winning the war did not settle how England should be governed

The defeat of the Royalists in the First Civil War left Parliament with a difficult question: on what terms could Charles I return to government? Many MPs still wanted a settlement with the king, rather than the abolition of monarchy. However, they wanted safeguards against a return to the religious and political conflicts that had caused the war.

In 1646 Charles surrendered to Parliament’s Scottish allies, who held him at Newcastle. This complicated negotiations. Parliament and the Scots had fought on the same side, but did not agree on every aspect of a future settlement. Charles hoped these differences would give him room to bargain.

The Newcastle Propositions: peace with restrictions on the king

In July 1646, Parliament presented Charles with the Newcastle Propositions, a set of nineteen clauses intended as the basis of a peace treaty. Their central purpose was to restore government while preventing the king from recovering unrestricted power.

Religion was a major part of the proposed settlement. Charles was to sign the Covenant, which would also be imposed on his subjects. Episcopacy, or church government by bishops, was to be abolished. The churches in England and Ireland were to be reformed along Presbyterian lines, using elders and assemblies rather than bishops. Parliament and the Assembly of Divines, a gathering of religious advisers, would direct this reform.

Political and military safeguards accompanied these religious demands. Parliament would control the armed forces and militia for twenty years, after which control would return to the Crown. Parliament would also nominate leading officials and judges. These measures would limit Charles’s ability to appoint loyal supporters and use armed force against his opponents.

Other terms addressed the consequences of the war. Named Royalists would be excluded from pardon and punished. Parliament would direct the war in Ireland, and Charles’s truce there would be cancelled. Strict laws against Catholics would be enforced. Officials called Conservators of the Peace would help maintain peace between England and Scotland.

Why agreement remained out of reach in 1646–1647

Charles found the terms unacceptable. He particularly opposed the Presbyterian religious settlement, believing that it would weaken monarchy because Presbyterian teaching did not make obedience to the Crown an essential part of church authority.

Rather than accept the Propositions, Charles delayed his answer. He hoped relations between Parliament and the Scots would deteriorate, and he also pursued possible help from France and Ireland. Delay was therefore a political strategy, not simply indecision.

This strategy initially backfired. In February 1647, the Scots handed Charles over to the English Parliament. Nevertheless, Charles continued to seek a settlement that would improve his position. In May 1647, he offered to accept Presbyterianism for three years rather than permanently. This was a limited concession: his underlying aim was to secure Scottish military support and regain his authority.

Presbyterian MPs continued to regard the Newcastle Propositions as a basis for negotiation throughout 1647. The terms were gradually modified into the Four Bills, presented in December. Repeated negotiation showed that agreement with the king remained a serious possibility for some MPs. Its failure reflected both Charles’s resistance to lasting restrictions and his belief that he could exploit divisions among his opponents.

War opened up wider challenges to authority

The conflict did more than change the balance between king and Parliament. Attacks on royal authority and bishops encouraged people to question other established hierarchies. Political pamphlets, petitions and religious meetings offered ways for people outside the governing elite to express new ideas.

These groups did not all want the same changes. Some challenged who should govern; others questioned ownership of land or the authority of ministers. Nor did they all emerge at the same moment. The Diggers began their settlements in 1649, while the Quakers developed from Fox’s preaching in the late 1640s and grew considerably during the 1650s. Their later experiences show the continuing religious and political impact of the wars within the wider period ending in 1660.

The Levellers: who gave Parliament its authority?

The Levellers, associated with John Lilburne, Richard Overton and William Walwyn, argued that government should answer to the people. Their movement developed among civilians in London and southern England as the First Civil War drew to an end.

They wanted a wider franchise, equality before the law, religious toleration and protection for individual rights. Their proposed written constitution, the Agreement of the People, developed through several versions between 1647 and 1649. Their programme was not completely fixed, so it is more accurate to describe a demand for wider voting rights than to assume that every version proposed an identical electorate.

Their challenge reached beyond the king. In July 1646, Walwyn and Overton called for the existing House of Commons to be dissolved and the House of Lords abolished. If Parliament derived its authority from the electorate, they argued, Parliament itself had to be accountable. Victory over Charles did not give MPs unlimited power.

This helps explain the hostility they encountered. Parliament had already imprisoned Lilburne in 1645 after he criticised MPs who lived comfortably while ordinary soldiers fought and died. Pamphlets, petitions and, later, the newspaper The Moderate helped Leveller ideas spread despite opposition.

Suppression continued under the new government in 1649. Lilburne, Overton, Walwyn and others were imprisoned in March after publishing criticism of the government. Army commanders then suppressed Leveller mutinies in April and May. Without army support, the movement’s influence rapidly declined, and it had ceased to exist as an organised movement by the end of 1649.

The Diggers: freedom meant access to land

The Diggers, also called True Levellers, wanted a more fundamental change to landownership. Gerrard Winstanley argued that the earth should be a ‘common treasury’: land should sustain everyone rather than enrich a small group of owners. The hardship of war, bad harvests, unemployment and hunger made access to land an urgent issue.

In April 1649, Winstanley, William Everard and their companions began cultivating St George’s Hill in Surrey. They farmed together to demonstrate how communal ownership could work. Their immediate occupations were of common and waste land, not other people’s cultivated fields or enclosed land. They hoped the example of a successful community would persuade others to adopt their way of life.

Winstanley also appealed to Parliament. He argued that ordinary people had paid taxes and suffered to support the parliamentary cause, so victory should bring them the freedom to cultivate common land. For the Diggers, replacing royal government was not enough if the poor remained dependent on landowners.

The distinction from the Levellers mattered. Leveller opponents used their name to suggest that they wanted to abolish property rights and equalise wealth. Lilburne and his colleagues denied this and rejected association with the Diggers. Associating the two movements helped opponents portray political reform as a threat to property.

Reaction to the Diggers: central alarm and local suppression

The authorities feared that the Diggers’ example could spread. In April 1649, John Bradshaw, writing on behalf of the Council of State, alerted the army commander Lord Fairfax to the settlement. Although the Council regarded the Diggers’ declared purpose as ridiculous, it feared that their gathering could develop into something dangerous to public order. This was a response by the new government’s executive council, not a parliamentary Act banning the Diggers.

The most direct pressure came from local gentry, who opposed the challenge to established control of land. They used legal action, economic boycott and violence against the Surrey community. Local hostility forced the Diggers to leave St George’s Hill for Cobham Heath in August 1649.

In April 1650, their shelters were burned and their crops destroyed. Other settlements faced similar opposition, and the movement was effectively suppressed by the end of 1650. The sequence shows how central government’s concern about disorder and local landowners’ defence of property worked against the Diggers, although these were distinct reactions by different authorities.

The Quakers: religious equality challenged social authority

The Quakers, associated with George Fox, challenged religious and social hierarchy. Fox’s religious experiences in the mid-1640s convinced him that God guided individuals directly through an Inner Light. He gathered small groups of followers in the Midlands and northern England during the late 1640s, and the movement became established in the north during the early 1650s. The name ‘Quaker’ arose at Fox’s trial for blasphemy in 1650, when a judge mocked his call to tremble at God’s word.

Quakers rejected church hierarchy and religious ceremony. Their meetings did not depend on an appointed minister: participants could speak, and women were encouraged to preach. They refused to pay tithes, payments supporting the established clergy, and some disrupted church services. They also refused public oaths and would not remove their hats to people in authority. These actions put their religious convictions into everyday practice, but opponents interpreted them as challenges to both church authority and social order.

Conservatives regarded the movement as disruptive and dangerous, and Quaker preachers faced persecution. A specific parliamentary reaction came in December 1656, when the House of Commons convicted the Quaker preacher James Nayler of blasphemy and subjected him to severe physical punishment. This happened after the Civil War period, not during the Newcastle negotiations. It demonstrates the limits that Parliament placed on religious toleration in the continuing upheaval of the 1650s.

After Nayler’s punishment, Fox worked to distance the movement from radicals and subversives. Following arrests of Quakers as suspected subversives after the Restoration, he issued the Peace Testimony in 1660, committing the movement to non-violence. By 1660 there were about 35,000 Quakers, and the movement survived.

Together, these reactions reveal an important tension: Parliament’s challenge to the king did not mean that those in power welcomed unrestricted challenges to their own authority, established religion or the social order.

Settlement, 1646–1647

• July 1646: Newcastle Propositions presented to Charles, held by the Scots.
• Religion: impose the Covenant; abolish bishops; establish Presbyterian church government in England and Ireland.
• Power: Parliament to control armed forces and militia for twenty years and nominate leading officials and judges.
• Other terms: punish named Royalists, enforce laws against Catholics and place the Irish war under Parliament’s direction.
• Failure: Charles resisted restrictions and delayed, hoping to exploit divisions and obtain outside help.
• February 1647: Scots handed Charles to Parliament.
• May 1647: Charles offered Presbyterianism for three years, seeking Scottish support.
• December 1647: Four Bills continued the search for agreement.

Radical groups and reactions

• Levellers — Lilburne, Overton, Walwyn: wider franchise, legal equality, toleration, protected rights and accountable government. Agreement of the People, 1647–1649. They defended property rights.
• Reaction: Parliament imprisoned Lilburne in 1645; leaders were imprisoned under the new government in March 1649. Army commanders suppressed mutinies in April–May 1649.
• Diggers — Winstanley: communal landownership; cultivated common and waste land at St George’s Hill, April 1649.
• Reaction: Council of State warned Fairfax about possible disorder in April 1649. Local gentry used lawsuits, boycott and violence. Diggers moved to Cobham Heath, August 1649; shelters and crops were destroyed in April 1650. Movement suppressed by the end of 1650.
• Quakers — Fox: Inner Light, rejection of church hierarchy, women preaching and refusal of tithes, oaths and customary deference. Followers gathered in the late 1640s; movement established in the early 1650s.
• Parliamentary reaction: Commons convicted James Nayler of blasphemy in December 1656 and punished him severely. This was a later reaction, not an event of 1646–1647.
• Survival: Peace Testimony, 1660; about 35,000 Quakers by 1660.

Central tension: challenging royal power encouraged wider demands for change, but those governing resisted challenges to their own authority, property and religious order.