snarled Robert. 'The petition got short shrift — the Commons had to rush to the day's most pressing business.'
'And what fine work was that?'
' 'Ordered, That the Committee of the Revenue do take care, and give Order, That the Seats in the House be repaired'.'
'Seats, Robert?' For a moment Gideon was flummoxed, then he sadly grinned. 'All you can expect from a Rump, I suppose.'
Of the civilian Levellers, William Walwyn was in some respects the most influential, yet the most discreet. Anne Jukes and Robert had a high opinion of him: a quiet, home-loving man who always said his favourite occupations were a good book and the conversation of friends. There was no evidence that Walwyn had contributed to the England's Chains pamphlets. His guiding principles were toleration and love. It was thought astonishing that he had been arrested, unlike Lilburne, who had spent so much time in the Tower of London that at least one of his children was born there and given the name Tower. 'The pathetic soul died,' said Anne Jukes. 'As you might expect!'
The critical pamphlets had been condemned in Parliament as scandalous and highly seditious, destructive to the present government, tending to division and mutiny in the army and to the raising of a new war. 'Somebody must have read them carefully,' scoffed Gideon.
The four Levellers were arrested by troops of horsemen, dragged from their beds in dawn raids. They were taken to Whitehall and charged with treason. During John Lilburne's examination by the Council of State, at one point he was sent into an adjoining room; he could hear Oliver Cromwell losing his temper and shouting at Lord Fairfax: 'I tell you, sir,' — thumping the table — 'you have no other way to deal with these men but to break them, or they will break you!'
The fear of army mutiny was justified: unhappiness homed in on impending service in Ireland. With England now settled, Cromwell was to make an expedition to end the long unrest there. Three hundred infantrymen in Colonel Hewson's regiment swore they would not leave for Ireland until the Levellers' programme had been introduced; they were cashiered without pay arrears. The next serious event, which caused Gideon a desperate crisis of conscience, happened in London. This involved Robert Lockyer, a young Particular Baptist from Bishopsgate; Anne Jukes, whose family also came from Bishopsgate, had grown up with some of his relatives. Lockyer served in Whalley's regiment, which had incorporated some of Cromwell's original Ironsides; although Whalley himself was more or less a Presbyterian, there were radicals among his men. This regiment was guarding the King at Hampton Court when Charles escaped to Carisbrooke. They subsequently fought at Colchester. Whalley himself supported Pride's Purge, was a member of the High Court of Justice and signed the King's death warrant. He believed his regiment was governed by 'Reason, not Passion' — but he was wrong.
With the King dead, soldier Levellers as well as civilians had realised the execution merely gave the army grandees uncontrolled power. They had installed a republic, yet would ignore the Levellers' constitutional programme. Paying arrears, providing for the wounded and their dependants, and protecting soldiers from enforced service abroad also still remained a low priority.
Eight troopers had petitioned Fairfax to restore the original Council of the Army, with its regimental Agitators. The response was to court-martial five and subject them to the painful punishment called 'riding the wooden horse'. The civilian Richard Overton, who for once was not in prison, greeted this with a celebrated pamphlet likening the soldiers to foxes cruelly hunted down by beagles. Alone among the Leveller leaders, Overton approved the trial and execution of the King; he called it the finest piece of justice that was ever had in England.
A month later, part of Lockyer's troop was stationed in Bishopsgate. Radicals among them were already fired up, as the planned expedition to Ireland gave them a focus. The Levellers believed that the native Irish Catholics had the same right to their own land and to self-determination as the English — an opinion in which they were virtually isolated. Their ideals forbade travelling across international boundaries. Soldiers saw themselves as volunteers who could only be sent abroad with their own consent. Cromwell's intended expedition was gunpoint imperialism. The Levellers believed that any man might refuse to obey commands that were incompatible with his ideas of reason and justice.
When they were ordered to leave their quarters, thirty of Whalley's men seized their colours and barricaded themselves into the Bull Inn in Bishopsgate Street. When their captain tried to carry off the flag, Lockyer and others hung onto it. Colonel Whalley arrived on the scene to be told that the mutineers only wanted their arrears, to pay for their quarter before they left London. Money was promised, therefore, though not enough. A large crowd of civilians gathered and threatened a riot, but were dispersed by loyal soldiers. Next morning Fairfax and Cromwell turned up. Lockyer and fourteen others were arrested. In their subsequent trial, six were condemned to death, of whom Fairfax pardoned five. Lockyer was picked out as the ringleader.
A group of women with radical sympathies had petitioned for the release of the four civilian Levellers. 'We were instructed', said Anne Jukes, by now a veteran of such demonstrations, 'to go home and wash dishes.' Gideon heard the anger in her voice and saw Lambert cringing. 'We answered back that because of the war, we have no dishes!'
Robert Lockyer was brought to St Paul's Churchyard to face a regimental firing squad. Gideon went there in sympathy, though he could hardly bear to watch. If he had stayed in the army, this could so easily have been him.
Lockyer was twenty-three. His brave departure was deeply moving. He declared he was not afraid to look death in the face and regretted that he was to die for so small a thing as a dispute over pay, after fighting eight long years for the freedom and liberties of his country. As the firing party lined up, heckled by Lockyer's supporters, the grandees were terrified that this mutiny might lead to a popular uprising in the City.
Disdaining a blindfold, Lockyer stared out the six musketeers. He reminded them they had all fought together for a common aim. He willed them to spare him, as his brothers in arms, saying that their obedience to superior orders would not acquit them of murder. They shuffled with unease. Gideon saw with miserable sympathy that the troubled men could well refuse their duties. He remembered how he had thought at Colchester that, if chosen, he would cheerfully have joined the firing squad that shot Lucas and Lisle. Here, he was in agony for the musketeers. He knew this was wrong. But he saw, too, that the grandees had no other course. There was no solution to the impasse. The Leveller movement was unravelling.
Then Colonel Okey, who was said to have already lost his temper at the court martial, angrily distributed Lockyer's coat, boots and belt amongst the squad. Being soldiers, booty won them over. In his shirt, Lockyer prayed his last prayers and gave the appointed signal by raising both arms. Immediately he crumpled beneath the bullets.
At Lockyer's funeral, which Gideon attended, three thousand people followed the hearse, walking in total silence from Smithfield, through the City, to the New Church at Moorfields. On the coffin lay a naked sword and bunches of bloodstained rosemary. Sea-green ribbons were worn by mourners. Six trumpets sounded a knell. Lockyer's horse, draped in mourning, was led behind the coffin — a privilege normally reserved to a commander-in- chief. As the Leveller news-sheet, the Moderate, pointed out, this was a remarkable tribute for a private trooper.
A month later more trouble flared. Twelve hundred men, who had been assembled for Ireland, mutinied. As they camped at Burford in Oxfordshire, Fairfax and Cromwell mounted a surprise night attack. Resistance was brief. Several mutineers were killed. Most either surrendered or fled without much bloodshed, the rest being imprisoned in Burford Church for four days. Three ringleaders were shot against the church wall. For his part at Burford, Colonel Okey received a curious reward: he was made a Master of Arts of Oxford University.
Parliamentary forces crushed a further uprising which William Thompson, a friend and protege of Lilburne, had inspired. Again the rebels were routed, with Cornet Thompson dying in a desperate action near Wellingborough. Military unrest then faded. By August Cromwell finally embarked for Ireland with the soldiers he needed. The civilian Levellers were still in jail, their enormous outpouring of pamphlets about to dribble to a close. Their supporters declined in disappointment.
Some took up more radical beliefs. As Lambert struggled to come to terms with life after the civil war, Anne sought refuge in a completely different community. She joined a group who were calling themselves True Levellers.
One day Gideon came home from the print shop and found his brother in a state of outraged hysteria. 'My wife has run off with some other man!'
'Calm yourself,' urged Gideon, relieved that he knew Robert Allibone had been working quietly at the shop all
