A Virginian's view of the Levellers

 

A Virginian's view of the Levellers

To John Winthrop
"..... The Adiutators (2 chosen out of every company to assist in consultation at the head quarters) are baptizd levellers: proiecting to bringe allmost a parity upon all persons in the kingdome, none to excede 400 lbs. per annum: noe freman, to be without 10 lbs. yearly rents, etc. This designe (if it be not a chimaera, formd & forgd only in malignant braines, whose well knowne fruitfullnes in furnishing the world with such Minervas, makes me still suspect, though I see it mentioned & called the Levellers doctrine by the Kinge himselfe, in his letter left upon the table when he escaped from the army, & since published to the kingdome) this proiect I say found many, even innumerable approvers & abettors, I mean all those who had little or nothing to loose or liue on, none but such exempt from painefull & pannicke fears. Bookes entitled Appeales to the people are put forth by Lilburne & others, informing them that now as well the Parliament, (as formerly the Kinge), haue lost all their authority by male administration, turning all the arguments upon the 2 Houses, whereby they themselues haue battered & scourged the Royall usurpations & errours, perswading the people, that all power & soveraignty is devolud & come back to its first subiect, viz. themselues, & instructing them for a new mint & modell of government. The authors of these bookes were notably favoured & protected, & some of them forcibly freed out of Newgate; the Adiutators printing an accusation against Cromwell, intended to remoue both him & their Generall, & to take Lilburne into his roome; I mean for their Generall; (those are all said to be Anabaptists or Seekers, or I know not what); to prevent this the head quarters were broken up at Putney, & all the Adiutators scattered by the Generall & his seconds, immediately before the last ships coming away; part of this newes (such as it is) I had from the mouth of an old Jesuite, who wanted neither information to know the truth, nor malice to misreport & misrepresent it. ......
Thom: Harrison"
"Mr. Harrison from Nanseman [in Virginia]. 10 (2)48: pr.Jos:Grafton"

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