Richard Overton
Pamphleteer who wrote satirical attacks on the Presbyterians and radical political tracts. He was a founder member of the Levellers. The earliest pamphlets attributed to him appeared around 1640-2 and are satirical attacks on Catholicism and the Laudian church reforms. In 1645, Overton published a series of satirical attacks on the Presbyterians. He also began to write political tracts expounding what were to become key principles of the leveller movement: the abolition of tithes, monopolies and the excise, reform of the law, annual parliaments with paid state officials excluded from seeking election. The Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens, published in July 1646 and probably written by Overton in collaboration with William Walwyn, is generally regarded as the founding document of the Leveller movement.
He made a case against the House of Lords in An Alarum to the House of Lords, published in August 1646. The pamphlet was condemned and Overton was promptly arrested. Upon refusing to acknowledge the Lords' jurisdiction, he was committed to Newgate Prison. He called upon the New Model Army to intervene in reforming the corrupt Parliament and took the first steps towards associating the civilian Levellers with the army Agitators by drawing attention to the soldiers' grievances against Parliament. Leveller supporters kept up a sustained campaign of petitioning, which resulted in the release of Overton and John Lilburne in the autumn of 1647.
In December 1648, Overton attended the meetings at Whitehall when the Grandees and London Independents debated the constitutional proposals set out in An Agreement of the People. However, he and Lilburne walked out of the talks in protest at the Grandees' attempts to modify the Agreement.
Overton commended the Army's purging of Parliament and the execution of King Charles 1, but he mistrusted Oliver Cromwell's motives and attacked him in The Hunting of the Foxes (March 1649), written in support of five soldiers cashiered for trying to organise a petition critical of the new régime. All three leading Levellers published England's New Chains Discovered, which Parliament condemned as treasonous. Lilburne, Overton, Walwyn and Thomas Prince were arrested and brought before the Council of State and sent to jail. The Leveller leaders were released from prison in November 1649 following Lilburne's trial and acquittal. After the establishment of Cromwell's Protectorate, Overton became involved in Leveller-Royalist conspiracies against the government and although several political tracts and pamphlets are attributed to Overton during the Protectorate, details of his later life are uncertain.
| Date"Date" is a type and predefined property provided by Semantic MediaWiki to represent date values. | |
|---|---|
| Act Abolishing the Office of King | 17 March 1649 |
| Army Remonstrance | 18 November 1648 |
| Civil War - Regicide | 6 December 1648 30 January 1649 |
| Civil War - Restoration | 4 April 1660 |
| Commissions of Array | 1 June 1642 |
| Execution of Archbishop William Laud | 10 January 1645 |
| Execution of Charles I | 30 January 1649 |
| Execution of Thomas Wentworth | 12 May 1641 |
| Four Bills | 24 December 1647 |
| Grand Remonstrance | 22 November 1641 |
| Heads of Proposals | 22 September 1647 |
| Instrument of Government | 16 December 1653 |
| Militia Ordinance | 7 December 1641 |
| Naseby | 14 June 1645 |
| National Covenant | 27 February 1638 |
| Newcastle Proposals | 1 July 1646 |
| Nineteen Propositions | 1 June 1642 |
| Petition of Right | 7 June 1628 |
| Petition of the Leveller Women | 11 September 1649 |
| Putney Debates | 1 October 1647 |
| Representation of the Army | 5 June 1647 |
| Root and Branch Petition | 11 December 1640 |
| Saffron Walden | 1 May 1647 |
| Scottish Prayer Book | 23 July 1637 |
| Short Parliament | 13 April 1640 |
| The Bishop's War | 1 January 1639 |
| The Five Members | 4 January 1642 |
| The Second Civil War | 22 February 1648 |
| The Self Denying Ordinance | 19 December 1644 |
| Treaty of Uxbridge | 29 January 1645 |
