All the sidelights of the history of the Commonwealth show that the misery of the people was frightful. The "gentlemen" of England, and the great middle class immediately below them, gained greatly by their "rebellion"; but the poor were if anything ground down more relentlessly than before. In March 1649 (two months after Charles I. had laid his head upon the block) the misery was so extreme and so widespread that it is appalling to reflect how little account history has made of it. But for the despairing and futile efforts of Lilburne and his friends, historians would never have noticed it at all. Bulstrode Whitelocke, one of the Parliament's three Commissioners for the Great Seal, afterwards First Commissioner under Cromwell, has, among other entries on the state of the people in the summer of 1649: "Letters from Lancashire of their want of bread, so that many families were starved" (30th April). And again, in May: "Letters from Newcastle that many in Cumberland and Westmoreland died in the Highways for want of bread, and divers left their habitations, travelling with their wives and children to other parts to get Relief, but could find none. That the Committees and Justices of the Peace of Cumberland signed a certificate, that there were Thirty Thousand Families that had neither seed nor bread-corn, nor money to buy either, and they desired a Collection for them, which was made, but much too little to relieve so great a multitude." In Lancashire, the "famine was sore among them, after which the plague overspread itself in many parts of the country, taking away whole families together … the Levellers got into arms, but were suppressed speedily by the Governor." And once more, in August: "Letters of great complaints of the taxes in Lancashire; and that the meaner sort threaten to leave their habitations, and their wives and children to be maintained by the Gentry; that they can no longer bear the oppression to have the bread taken out of the mouths of their wives and children by the taxes." Never had there been such taxation in England as that of the Commonwealth. The net cast by the Long Parliament had meshes so fine that the smallest fish was taken in it.
