Leveller Successors and the Climacteric of 1659–1660

Abstract

The re-establishment of the Commonwealth and the Rump Parliament in May 1659 occurred in the midst of a climacteric of unsettlement that provoked an extensive national conversation about constitutional and religious issues. A body of Leveller-influenced pamphlets and petitions addressed the problem of settlement in summer 1659, adapting the Leveller heritage to new republican circumstances. However, leading generals and officers interrupted settlement discussions in October, when they dispersed the Rump, intending to introduce settlement on their own terms. Leveller successors divided in response to this unexpected turn of events. Most of them eventually coalesced against the military regime in favour of another recall of the Rump, only to be disappointed when a royalist political reaction swamped the republican cause and produced the Stuart Restoration.