Teresa Bejan

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

Teresa Bejan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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In Our Time · The Levellers · 18 Jun 2026 podcast

But in this pamphlet, I mean, the author, I think we still don't know who it was, but makes the case not only for a lot of kind of standard Loeffler claims, but also for the claim for redistributive taxation.

And the idea that if we're committed to the sort of natural equality of human beings, then we should be committed to eliminating extreme inequalities of wealth, not just in land ownership, which I think was more authentically what the diggers were after.

The author of Tyrannopocrites says, no, we've got to have a redistributive taxation regime, which again, I don't think you're going to find that sort of argument again until probably the 20th century.

In French at the time, in the late 18th century, you get the new logism niveleur, meaning leveller.

So that word is sort of introduced into modern French at that time.

Oh, that's fascinating.

There's an interest in the Quakers and the politics of pronouns.

So the abolition of the plural you is understood as channeling this kind of English Civil War, radical religious sensibility and a demand for social equality.

And I mean, I mentioned Clarendon briefly at the end, but it seems that one of the reasons Clarendon is so keen to sort of tar Hobbes with the leveller brush is because Clarendon himself had been trying to entertain a kind of royalist leveller alliance following the...

I mean, if I could just say, Ted mentioned this in the main program, but Lilburn, you know, he's just such a dyed-in-the-wool contrarian.

So he just never, he never defends the position that you, and once his side seems to be winning, he instantly takes the other side.

But sort of what's going on in the late, sort of in 1649 is Lilburn.

Lilburn is making the case that not only is the tribunal instituted to try the king illegitimate, because it's just not properly constituted, but also the several royalist peers who are being put on trial by similarly special tribunals.

Lilburn befriends a bunch of them while he's in the Tower of London and begins to sort of offer them legal arguments for their case.

And so he makes the case that even the peers...

are entitled to the same rights under Magna Carta, including to a trial by a jury of their peers.

And so I think that's just a wonderful illustration of, you know, Lilburn's principles leading him to sort of make friends with people you might not expect.

And then also just one thing Claire mentioned, which I think is worth stressing.

So the regicide...

Charles is executed by beheading with an axe by the public executioner.

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