king had washed and said his daily offices; to this were admitted the princes of the blood, certain high officers of the household and those to whom a special permit had been granted; then followed the première entrée, to which came the secretaries and other officials and those having the entrée; these were received by the king in his dressing-gown. Finally, at the grand lever, the remainder of the household, the nobles and gentlemen of the court were received; the king by that time was shaved, had changed his linen and was in his wig. In the United States the term “levee” was formerly used of the public receptions held by the president.
LEVELLERS, the name given to an important political party
in England during the period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth.
The germ of the Levelling movement must be sought
for among the Agitators (q.v.), men of strong republican views,
and the name Leveller first appears in a letter of the 1st of
November 1647, although it was undoubtedly in existence as a
nickname before this date (Gardiner, Great Civil War, iii. 380).
This letter refers to these extremists thus: “They have given
themselves a new name, viz. Levellers, for they intend to
sett all things straight, and rayse a parity and community in
the kingdom.”
The Levellers first became prominent in 1647 during the protracted and unsatisfactory negotiations between the king and the parliament, and while the relations between the latter and the army were very strained. Like the Agitators they were mainly found among the soldiers; they were opposed to the existence of kingship, and they feared that Cromwell and the other parliamentary leaders were too complaisant in their dealings with Charles; in fact they doubted their sincerity in this matter. Led by John Lilburne (q.v.) they presented a manifesto, The Case of the Army truly stated, to the commander-in-chief, Lord Fairfax, in October 1647. In this they demanded a dissolution of parliament within a year and substantial changes in the constitution of future parliaments, which were to be regulated by an unalterable “law paramount.” In a second document, The Agreement of the People, they expanded these ideas, which were discussed by Cromwell, Ireton and other officers on the one side, and by John Wildman, Thomas Rainsborough and Edward Sexby for the Levellers on the other. But no settlement was made; some of the Levellers clamoured for the king’s death, and in November 1647, just after his flight from Hampton Court to Carisbrooke, they were responsible for a mutiny which broke out in two regiments at Corkbush Field, near Ware. This, however, was promptly suppressed by Cromwell. During the twelve months which immediately preceded the execution of the king the Levellers conducted a lively agitation in favour of the ideas expressed in the Agreement of the people, and in January 1648 Lilburne was arrested for using seditious language at a meeting in London. But no success attended these and similar efforts, and their only result was that the Levellers regarded Cromwell with still greater suspicion.
Early in 1649, just after the death of the king, the Levellers renewed their activity. They were both numerous and dangerous, and they stood up, says Gardiner, “for an exaggeration of the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy.” In a pamphlet, England’s New Chains, Lilburne asked for the dissolution of the council of state and for a new and reformed parliament. He followed this up with the Second Part of England’s New Chains; his writings were declared treasonable by parliament, and in March 1649 he and three other leading Levellers, Richard Overton, William Walwyn and Prince were arrested. The discontent which was spreading in the army was fanned when certain regiments were ordered to proceed to Ireland, and in April 1649 there was a meeting in London; but this was quickly put down by Fairfax and Cromwell, and its leader, Robert Lockyer, was shot. Risings at Burford and at Banbury were also suppressed without any serious difficulty, and the trouble with the Levellers was practically over. Gradually they became less prominent, but under the Commonwealth they made frequent advances to the exiled king Charles II., and there was some danger from them early in 1655 when Wildman was arrested and Sexby escaped from England. The distinguishing mark of the Leveller was a sea-green ribbon.
Another but more harmless form of the same movement was the assembling of about fifty men on St George’s Hill near Oatlands in Surrey. In April 1649 these “True Levellers” or “Diggers,” as they were called, took possession of some unoccupied ground which they began to cultivate. They were, however, soon dispersed, and their leaders were arrested and brought before Fairfax, when they took the opportunity of denouncing landowners. It is interesting to note that Lilburne and his colleagues objected to being designated Levellers, as they had no desire to take away “the proper right and title that every man has to what is his own.”
Cromwell attacked the Levellers in his speech to parliament in September 1654 (Carlyle, Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, Speech II.). He said: “A nobleman, a gentleman, a yeoman; the distinction of these; that is a good interest of the nation, and a great one. The ‘natural’ magistracy of the nation, was it not almost trampled under foot, under despite and contempt, by men of Levelling principles? I beseech you, for the orders of men and ranks of men, did not that Levelling principle tend to the reducing of all to an equality? Did it ‘consciously’ think to do so; or did it ‘only unconsciously’ practise towards that for property and interest? ‘At all events,’ what was the purport of it but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord? Which, I think, if obtained, would not have lasted long.”
In 1724 there was a rising against enclosures in Galloway, and a number of men who took part therein were called Levellers or Dykebreakers (A. Lang, History of Scotland, vol. iv.). The word was also used in Ireland during the 18th century to describe a secret revolutionary society similar to the Whiteboys. (A. W. H.*)
LEVEN, ALEXANDER LESLIE, 1st Earl of (c. 1580–1661),
Scottish general, was the son of George Leslie, captain of Blair-in-Athol,
and a member of the family of Leslie of Balquhain.
After a scanty education he sought his fortune abroad, and became
a soldier, first under Sir Horace Vere in the Low Countries, and
afterwards (1605) under Charles IX. and Gustavus Adolphus
of Sweden, in whose service he remained for many years and
fought in many campaigns with honour. In 1626 Leslie had
risen by merit to the rank of lieutenant-general, and had been
knighted by Gustavus. In 1628 he distinguished himself by his
constancy and energy in the defence of Stralsund against Wallenstein,
and in 1630 seized the island of Rügen in the name of
the king of Sweden. In the same year he returned to Scotland
to assist in recruiting and organizing the corps of Scottish
volunteers which James, 3rd marquis of Hamilton, brought
over to Gustavus in 1631. Leslie received a severe wound in
the following winter, but was able nevertheless to be present
at Gustavus’s last battle at Lützen. Like many others of the
soldiers of fortune who served under Gustavus, Leslie cherished
his old commander’s memory to the day of his death, and he
kept with particular care a jewel and miniature presented to him
by the king. He continued as a general officer in the Swedish
army for some years, was promoted in 1636 to the rank of field
marshal, and continued in the field until 1638, when events
recalled him to his own country. He had married long before
this—in 1637 his eldest son was made a colonel in the Swedish
army—and he had managed to keep in touch with Scottish
affairs.
As the foremost Scottish soldier of his day he was naturally nominated to command the Scottish army in the impending war with England, a post which, resigning his Swedish command, he accepted with a glad heart, for he was an ardent Covenanter and had caused “a great number of our commanders in Germany subscryve our covenant” (Baillie’s Letters). On leaving Sweden he brought back his arrears of pay in the form of cannon and muskets for his new army. For some months he busied himself with the organization and training of the new levies, and with inducing Scottish officers abroad to do their duty to their country by returning to lead them. Diminutive in size and somewhat deformed in person as he was, his reputation and his shrewdness
