As an episode in the history of Puritan ideas on liberty of conscience, the importance of the Whitehall Debates has long been acknowledged. Their publication at the end of the last century by Sir Charles Firth, who discovered them among the Clarke MSS., and their republication in the 1930s by A. S. P. Woodhouse, who made extensive additions to the original text, are evidence of their high regard. As Professor Woodhouse saw them, the Debates dealt with one of ‘the most significant issues of Puritan political thought:…the question of religious liberty’. Other historians have attributed even greater value to the Debates, acclaiming them as a major contribution to Puritan thought on this subject. W. K. Jordan, in his monumental study of religious toleration in England, hailed them as ‘momentous’; and, more recently, Christopher Hill has coupled them with the debates concerning James Nayler as ‘the two great set debates on religious toleration’ which survive from the revolutionary period. In view of this long-standing recognition, it is paradoxical that there exists no coherent and comprehensive discussion of the Debates: or rather, of the debate on 14 December 1648, this being the only day for which a detailed account survives. Although the arguments of various speakers have been summarised, no attempt has been made to offer an interpretation of the debate as a whole, on the grounds of the ‘confused and fragmentary’ state of the records.
Early in 1652 the leading Independent divine John Owen, with a group of other ministers, published a plan for the reform of the Church entitled The Humble Proposals. The scheme aroused antagonism and opposition. The existence of petitions against it, one of them published by Roger Williams under the title The Fourth Paper (1652), was noted by David Masson in his Life of Milton. The protest was more intense, and went on longer, than Masson suggests. Petitions were soon followed by a number of tracts, some of them anonymous, others raising the issues in an introductory epistle or an appendix to material with a wider reference. Taken together, they clearly indicate a well-organised campaign behind the scenes.
A variant transcription of one of the Whitehall Debates has been identified among the Clarke papers. Located in volume 16 of the Worcester MSS, it records the latter part of the longest debate, on 14 December 1648, concerning the Second Agreement of the People. The fair copy of this debate by army secretary William Clarke (in volume 65 of the Worcester MSS) was previously believed to be the only surviving record. The new source provides additional text, clarifies obscure passages, and is generally easier to understand. Historians now have the advantage of another account of the meeting, which reveals its importance more fully. Although the Levellers’ Agreement was never to be implemented, the Whitehall Debates took place between Pride's Purge and the trial and execution of Charles I. The variant therefore sheds new light on the thinking of the army command and its advisers both religious and lay at this time of unprecedented constitutional crisis. It also provides the first documentary evidence that the army debates at Putney (1647) and Whitehall (1648–9) were not recorded by Clarke alone, but by a team of at least three secretaries.
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