Lieutenant-Colonel John Rede: West Country Leveller and Baptist pioneer

Abstract

This study of the life of Leveller ally John Rede, Governor of Poole, seeks to illuminate the crucial relationship between a group of West Country Presbyterians, Independents, political and religious radicals, and Leveller allies during the critical years of the English Revolution, 1647–1651. In the course of this discussion it aims to shed some light on one of the longest-standing debates about the Levellers: the degree to which they formed an effective and coherent political movement. It concludes with an assessment of the balance of forces between the Levellers and radical Independents and their opponents. It then goes on to trace one line of religious and political descent from those events through John Rede’s work in establishing the particular Baptist church of Porton in Wiltshire.