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Preserving Property: History, Genealogy, and Inheritance in “Upon Appleton House”*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
“I hope that they may live to see the power of the King and the Lords thrown down, that yet may live to see property preserved.”
— Colonel Petty at Putney, 28 October 1647 (Woodhouse, 61)The famous army debates held at Putney in 1647 provide us with some remarkable insights into the misgivings of the men who were soon to bring about the trial and execution of their king. Their very practical need to placate the then powerful “Leveller” faction within the army drew the “Grandees” into talks which clearly reveal the limits of their revolutionary aspirations. The principal objection of both Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton to the proposals of the Levellers is also the most telling: both men saw in the proposed Leveller constitution, The Agreement of the People, a threat to the current economic order, an order based upon the ownership of property by a relatively small number of men.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1996
Footnotes
I would like to thank Elizabeth Harvey and Paul Werstine for the typically insightful suggestions they offered in response to earlier drafts of this essay.
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