L’Engagement des Niveleuses et la presse anglaise contemporaine (1649)

Abstract

This essay explores the Leveller women’s activism as expressed in the two petitions they presented to the Rump Parliament in the spring of 1649 after the regicide and the establishment of the Commonwealth. The Levellers had been arrested and committed to the Tower of London for publishing a pamphlet that was considered seditious. Their wives called for their release while making demands that challenged the patriarchal order. This contribution also looks into the way the contemporary press reported on the Leveller women’s fight; the newspapers studied here include middle-of-the-road parliamentarian weeklies, royalist “mercuries” as well as radical newsbooks. This essay shows that some of these publications advertised Leveller women’s efforts to have their husbands released, thus turning disenfranchised individuals into political activists.

Keywords

• press
• women
• Levellers
• English Civil War
• Rump Parliament
• English Revolution