Ted Vallance

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144 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 18 Jun

Ted Vallance’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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In Our Time · The Levellers · 18 Jun 2026 podcast

I'd just come in and say that we can see that the Levellers are reported on by foreign observers of the civil war.

So we do get diplomatic correspondence in French and Italian, which is talking about the Levellers and is talking about, you know, their threat and their radicalism.

So they're certainly being noticed by international observers as well as domestically.

There is an attempt to intervene in the French civil war, the Fronde,

in a way, using leveler ideas.

The French translation of the agreement to the people is made, and the radical agitator Edward Sexby is tasked to take it to Bordeaux and sort of distribute it amongst the Fonders.

This is the late 40s, early 50s.

This is the 1650s by this point.

It doesn't seem to have really caught on in Bordeaux, but there was an attempt to circulate it.

Theresa?

There is.

And again, it's through Lilburn's courtroom struggles.

So in Somerset's case, which is this celebrated late 18th century case of the slave James Somerset, who abolitionist campaigners basically issue writ of habeas corpus to have him kind of freed from his master, amusingly named Charles Stewart, for our purposes in terms of thinking about the 17th century resonances.

One of the kind of precedents that they use here is a so-called Cartwright's case.

And Cartwright's case is a precedent that pops up in Lilburn's attempts to get compensation for his punishment by Star Chamber in the 1630s.

And it has this famous phrase, which is sort of, you know, this really resonant sort of idea that as soon as an enslaved person steps foot on English soil, they're automatically kind of the shackles drop off.

And in fact, the case is much more limited than that.

It doesn't really make that kind of claim.

But it is something where Lilburn is now being connected not only with struggles over freedom of the press, but also in terms of abolitionism.

I would say the Levellers are consistently anti-tyrannical, but they're not consistently Republican.

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