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By Root 1374 0

White responded by publishing an open letter to Fairfax, prompting speculation in the royalist press that the agitators were contesting Fairfax’s right of veto. But Fairfax won – the next meeting considered more directly the Heads of Proposals and, through to the middle of October, discussion followed this less radical line. The redress of grievances was to be pursued alongside settlement framed on the assumption of monarchical rule – the question before the General Council was not whether Charles should be reinstated but on what terms. White, in December, made his submission to the General Council and was readmitted.10

What precipitated the famous debates of late October, however, was not so much the failure of the Heads of Proposals as the production of The Case of the Armie Truly Stated signed by the new agents. It seems to have been a composite and the product of more than one hand, but most experts agree that John Wildman and Edward Sexby were involved in the drafting.11 Wildman was a civilian, a London radical, unlike Sexby, who was an army agitator. Disagreement about the extent of their influence therefore follows a contemporary question about the extent to which the army was acting independently, and pursuing its own grievances, and how far it was being successfully infiltrated and manipulated by City radicals. What is clear, and perhaps most significant about this, is that the General Council, no less than any other public institution during the 1640s, was the focus for mobilization – its proceedings were not hermetically sealed, and its agenda was not entirely its own. Networks of personal and religious connection, reinforced by the resort to print to appeal to wider publics, exerted a pressure on the army’s definition of its cause and purposes. The call for new agents, for example, had been made by Lilburne from the Tower, at a time of tense relations with Cromwell, and it is not even clear how many of them were actually present at the debates at Putney.12 But the agenda was not set by the officers, whatever the woodcut at the front of the army’s official publication seemed to suggest.

The Case of the Armie was drawn up at Guildford on 9 October and presented to Fairfax nine days later. It is a sprawling document but the main thrust is plain: it opened with a complaint at the failure to do anything ‘effectually, either for the Army or the poor oppressed people of this nation’. The fault, it argued, lay not only in Parliament but in the attitude of the officers, who had put obstacles in the way of the agitators. Throughout, it made careful reference to public declarations and engagements, holding the officers to account for failing to live up to the stated aspirations of the army. It also called for the dissolution of Parliament within nine or ten months to allow for settlement and then free elections. Here the argument reached fundamentals: ‘all power is originally and essentially in the whole body of the people of this Nation, and… their free choice or consent by their representatives is the only original or foundation of all just government’. The Commons is the supreme authority, and the will of the people is the guarantee of freedom and the only proper restraint on tyranny. At the moment the army was the safeguard of these rights: ‘In case the union of the Army should be broken (which the enemy wait for) ruin and destruction will break in upon us like a roaring sea’. It was an exhortation to the army to take up this task: ‘we expect that the same impulsion of judgement and conscience that we have all professed, did command us forth at first for the people’s freedom, will be again so effectual, that all will unanimously concur with us, so that a demand of the people’s and Army’s rights shall be made by the whole Army as one man’. Appended was a letter to Fairfax from Hemel Hempstead, written on 15 October, justifying both their argument and their action on the basis of the interest of the people: ‘the safety of the people is above all forms, customs, & c., and the equity of popular safety is the thing which