Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 07.djvu/47

1649] side of things, a matter of very different complexion, requiring to be instantly dealt with in the interim. The matter of the class called Levellers; concerning which we must now say a few words.

In 1647, as we saw, there were Army Adjutators; and among some of them wild notions afloat, as to the swift attainability of Perfect Freedom civil and religious, and a practical Millennium on this Earth; notions which required, in the Rendezvous at Corkbush-field, 'Rendezvous of Ware' as they oftenest call it, to be very resolutely trodden out. Eleven chief mutineers were ordered from the ranks in that Rendezvous; were condemned by swift Court-Martial to die; and Trooper Arnald, one of them, was accordingly shot there and then; which extinguished the mutiny for that time. War since, and Justice on Delinquents, England made a Free Commonwealth, and suchlike, have kept the Army busy: but a deep republican leaven, working all along among these men, breaks now again into very formidable development. As the following brief glimpses and excerpts may satisfy an attentive reader who will spread them out, to the due expansion, in his mind. Take first this glimpse into the civil province; and discern, with amazement, a whole submarine world of Calvinistic Sansculottism, Five-point Charter and the Rights of Man, threatening to emerge almost two centuries before its time!

'The Council of State,' says Whitlocke, just while Mr. Barton is boggling about the Hursley Marriage-settlements, 'has intelligence of certain Levellers appearing at St. Margaret's Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, and at St. George's Hill,' in the same quarter: 'that they were digging the ground, and sowing it with roots and beans. One Everard, once of the Army, who terms himself a Prophet, is the chief of them': one Winstanley is another chief. 'They were Thirty men, and said that they should be shortly Four-thousand. They invited all to come in and help them; and promised them meat, drink, and clothes. They threaten to pull down park