Rachel Foxley's book takes a fresh and challenging look at the Leveller movement, which campaigned for religious toleration and a radical remaking of government in post–Civil War England. The first full-length study of the Levellers for fifty years, Foxley's book follows the work of revisionist historians who have “diminished” (3) the Leveller movement's role in the events leading up to the trial and execution of Charles I. Aiming to bring the Levellers “back from the margins of revisionist historiography” (3), Foxley analyzes their political thought through the writings of John Lilburne and other Levellers, and then goes on to examine the Levellers' relationship with the New Model Army and their influence on the republican thought of the Commonwealth and Protectorate periods. The result is a book that will leave readers with a new appreciation of the Leveller movement and its political thought.

Chapters 1 and 2 examine the political thought of the Long Parliament. This was source material for the Levellers' political thought, crucially in that they embraced two basic principles of the parliamentarians: “that legitimate political authority was only originally established by the consent of its subjects; and that in that process of consent, restrictions might be placed on the exercise of power” (22). Parliamentarian thought was not monolithic, however, and so it is a main contribution of Foxley's book to show how the Levellers made use of divergent streams of thought to arrive at their vision of government. Chapter 1 explains how the Levellers developed the thinking of parliamentary “Independents” to argue that only a popularly elected “representative,” modeled on the House of Commons, could justly govern England; the king and House of Lords should have no meaningful role in government. Chapter 2 shows how the Levellers developed the thinking of parliamentary “Presbyterians” to argue that a governing body might at any time be called to an account by the people it represented. Chapters 1 and 2 challenge the view long held by historians that the Levellers had been trying to establish an entirely new polity for England. Foxley finds the Levellers' thinking to have been that even within an established polity, “individuals retained and could exercise their individual, natural rights and powers” (30). For Foxley, what was so powerful about the Levellers' vision of government was “the extent to which the people retained the sovereign power which was theirs by birth, even when they were living under government” (82).

In chapter 3, Foxley focuses attention on John Lilburne and his distinctive contribution to the Leveller movement, which was to use the English common law to confer a near modern form of citizenship to all native-born Englishmen. From the traditions that Englishmen were born free under the law, and that the law was the shared inheritance of every English subject, Lilburne conceived the concept of the “free-born Englishman.” This man was not a subject but a citizen of England, and he was entitled by birth and free status not only to the protection of the law but also to a set of citizenship rights, or “birthrights,” one of which was the right to a say in the choosing of England's governors. Most remarkable here is that “Englishmen, as Englishmen, had political status” (113). The same concept required Englishmen to be politically active and vigilant against attempts to deprive them of their birthrights. In chapter 4, Foxley considers how the Levellers' early and consistent demand for religious toleration meshed with their political thought. The Levellers, she argues, regarded liberty of conscience in matters of religion as a natural and inalienable right, and so they would give the government no power over people in matters of religion. Foxley believes the two realms of Leveller thought, the religious and the political, intertwined through conscience and a sense of God's purpose. For the Levellers, in religion as in politics, decisions had to be made according to conscience, in apprehension of God's will.

Chapter 5 examines the Levellers' relationship with the New Model Army. Revisionist historiography has challenged the relationship between Leveller political thought and the army radicalism that produced Pride's Purge and the campaign that resulted in the trial and execution of Charles I. But arguing against the trend of revisionism, Foxley shows that “there was significant interplay between army radicalism and Leveller thought” (4) and that “the political demands developed by the Levellers resonated with the army and can be seen reflected in the army's demands” (12). Foxley shows, for instance, that Leveller demands for Parliament to break off negotiations with the king and for a trial of the king were well received in the army in the weeks leading up to Pride's Purge. In chapter 6, Foxley looks for connections between the Levellers' political thought and the republican thought of the Commonwealth and Protectorate periods. Some recent work in history has stressed continuities between the Leveller movement and 1650s republicanism, but Foxley finds more evidence of discontinuity. Most tellingly, English republicans wrote in a political language distinctly different from what the Levellers had used, and they feared the populism that had been “the hallmark of Leveller thought” (207). Leveller influence was largely restricted to figures who wrote in opposition to the Commonwealth and Protectorate regimes.

If a criticism of this important book can be ventured, it would be that some readers may find the discussion of the divergent streams of parliamentarian political thought and the process by which the Levellers fashioned their political thought out of parliamentarianism a little difficult to follow at times. But this will only help readers appreciate how the Levellers worked out their political thought “effortfully,” often encountering “loose ends” and “blind alleys” (13). Before revisionist historians began their work, the most plausible case for the Levellers' impact on events used to rest on their supposed connection, through the New Model Army, to the regicide. Foxley's book has strongly restated that case, showing that “the men of the New Model Army, along with the Levellers, were instrumental in the campaign which led to the death of Charles I” (232). The Levellers' writings “helped to develop the language and arguments which enabled a king to be tried for high treason” (4).