From 1642, England’s King and Parliament were at war with each other. The English revolution of these years culminated in the trial and execution of King Charles I in 1649, after which the Stuart monarchy was replaced by a Commonwealth. Leadership of the Parliamentary camp lay with figures such as Oliver Cromwell, who wanted to preserve oligarchic rule. However, the struggle against Charles Stuart also created an opening for more radical ideas about a truly democratic and egalitarian society.

After the military defeat of the monarchists, radical members of Cromwell’s New Model Army pressed for an open discussion about the kind of political system they wanted to establish. At the Putney Debates of 1647, Thomas Rainsborough made a famous argument in favor of democratic government, which his fellow officers dismissed as “anarchy”:

Really I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under . . .