Printing the Levellers: Clandestine Print, Radical Propaganda, and the New Model Army

Abstract

this article uses techniques of typographical analysis to identify the print houses that secretly produced the most important writings associated with the incipient ‘Leveller’ grouping as it took shape in 1646–47. It examines the key printers, Jane Coe and Thomas Paine, while illuminating the dynamics of the clandestine book trade of the 1640s. It then shows that these same printers acted as stationers of choice for the emergent New Model Army agitators, producing works such as the The Case of the Army Truly Stated and An Agreement of the People, among other titles. The resulting account sheds light on the origins and nature of the Leveller movement, and allows for discussion of the connections between the Levellers and the New Model Army. More broadly, this article highlights the centrality of printers as political protagonists and suggests that new modes of bibliographical analysis can address major problems in early-modern history.

In recent decades, dramatic strides have been made in the print history of the English civil wars and Interregnum. The convulsions of the 1640s generated new patterns of propaganda, public debate, and reading, helping to transform political life, a change that some scholars have seen as amounting to a democratization of the English polity.¹ Yet at the same time, researchers have demonstrated that, despite earlier claims that the period saw a ‘breakdown’ of censorship and unrivalled press freedom, the 1640s and 1650s brought sporadic but intense bursts of official repression against unauthorized printers and publishers.² The perilous conditions of civil war, together with the concentration of the book trade in London, meant that much book production proceeded in secrecy, as publishers sought to evade the authorities’ attentions. As a result, a moment of great liberatory potential—arguably introducing newly democratic elements into English political life—was also a period of clandestine printing, seized and broken presses, burned books, and imprisoned authors.

The present article explores this paradoxical situation by investigating the point where the history of print intersects with that most overtly democratic offshoot of the revolution, the Leveller agitation. Following recent studies, this article uses detailed typographical analysis to identify printers responsible for numerous tracts written by or on behalf of John Lilburne, Richard Overton, and their allies during late 1646 and 1647, the moment seen by the classic, early scholarship as auguring the birth of the Leveller movement. The Levellers, with their soaring claims for a wide franchise, broad religious toleration, and robust, naturally endowed rights, were long seen as precursors to modern party politics and liberal democracy.³ Subsequent waves of scholarship, beginning in the 1960s, questioned first the democratic credentials of the Levellers, then latterly, their wider significance, with the most comprehensive revisionist assessments asking whether there existed a coherent ‘Leveller movement’ at all.⁴ Nevertheless, the novelty and sophistication of the Levellers’ thought, combined with the spectacular mobilizations they inspired, have continued to captivate, generating new approaches and empirical finds. In the wake of revisionism, some scholars looked beyond the strictly political face of Leveller organization, to examine cultural and literary implications of Leveller thought and activities.⁵ Meanwhile, in recent years, a new generation of historians, adopting novel methodologies and sometimes adducing fresh evidence, has resuscitated the movement in the public eye, often emphasizing anew the centrality of the Levellers to the revolutionary turn of the 1640s.⁶ Reconstructing the print history of the early Leveller tracts is therefore a project of significance in itself, allowing us to identify the print houses responsible for some of the most persistently fascinating books of the epoch.

Identification of these printers also allows for exploration of wider questions and problems. First, it helps to explain how these innovative ideas arrived in the public domain. It was not a foregone conclusion that, even if people were thinking crypto-democratic or egalitarian thoughts, those thoughts would be presented to the public on a mass scale. The appearance of these ideas in print resulted from a particular constellation of forces in civil-war England’s political ecosystem—a mixture of willing stationers, pre-existing sectarian organization, propagandists schooled in the arts of clandes tine publicity, political circumstance, and market demand which made the production of such material viable. Without these forces in alignment, the Levellers as we know them could not have existed. This article explores this alignment of forces, shedding new light on the practical mechanics, commercial dynamics, legal risks, and political conditions of clandestine print operations in the 1640s.

Secondly, this study emphasizes the importance of printers in this configuration of political forces. The activity of printers and booksellers as political actors was not unheard of prior to the civil wars, but the roiling crises of the 1640s opened new opportunities for stationers to influence affairs or pursue favoured agendas.⁷ These agendas were never, of course, prosecuted without a view towards commercial interests. But this article reveals how religio-political partisanship blended with mercenary motives to allow printers and booksellers to emerge as important agents on the broader stage. The printers responsible for the works of Lilburne, Overton, and their accomplices may thus be taken as exemplary of a wider phenomenon—the ideologically committed printer or publisher—that was endemic during the period, helping to explain the profuse and rebarbative world of civil-war print culture.

Finally, analysis of the print history of these radical tracts also contributes to our understanding of the early development of the ‘Leveller’ agitation, as a discrete political phenomenon. Not least, it sheds light on the controverted question of the relationship between London ‘Leveller’ propagandists such as John Lilburne and Richard Overton, on the one hand, and the newly politicized New Model Army, on the other. By identifying the printers behind crucial military pamphlets such as The Case of the Army Truly Stated, the analysis here helps to make sense of the complex but important phase leading to the Putney Debates, the Ware mutiny, and schisms within the independent coalition that shaped the revolutionary turn of 1647–1649. At its broadest level, then, this article seeks to demonstrate the potential of newly intensive techniques of bibliographical research to address major problems and debates in early modern history.

Overton, Neile, and Paine

Any investigation into the history of ‘Leveller’ printing begins with Richard Overton. Long familiar as a bold political theorist, Overton has in recent years been identified as a master of the art of secret printing. In 1640, he participated in the operation of a private press erected by oppositional puritans in London.⁸ Overton again set up an underground press in late 1644, and over the next two years, he used this press to produce many controversial books, some of his own authorship, others written by ideological comrades such as Lilburne and William Walwyn. David Adams has reconstructed the operation of Overton’s presses of the mid-164os in comprehensive detail, showing that Overton printed not only many key texts laying out the underpinnings of later ‘Leveller’ programs, but also a diverse range of pamphlets, supportive of toleration and unorthodox religious opinions.⁹

On 11 August 1646, after eighteen months of pursuit by parliamentary authorities, Overton’s latest press was seized, and he was deposited in prison.¹⁰ The present investigation begins with this critical event. Through late 1646 and 1647, Overton and his collaborators were forced to find new outlets for their writings. They were keen, moreover, to exploit Overton’s imprisonment to promote their program. Within a week of his arrest, Overton wrote a blistering screed, A Defiance against All Arbitrary Usurpations or Encroachments, either of the House of Lords, or any other, upon the sovereignty of the supreme house of commons, which retold details of his arrest, and used his case to assert the supremacy of the House of Commons. Although Overton dated his tract 17 August, the work was not published until around 9 September, hinting at delays in securing a trustworthy printer.¹¹

Here, as throughout this article, identification of the printer relies upon detailed typographical analysis. Readers are referred to a series of lettered tables and figures, keyed between [ ] brackets hereafter in the text, and found at the conclusion of the article, which furnish the images on which these analyses are based. Overton’s Defiance opened with an initial ‘T’, with a pronounced nick in its upper-left border. That ornament apparently belonged to the Aldersgate printer Matthew Simmons, who used it frequently between 1646 and 1649 [A].¹² At first sight, this suggests Simmons as the likely printer of A Defiance. This is not implausible: Simmons, with his erstwhile partner Thomas Paine, had long been among the city printers most favourable to independency. While Simmons and Paine dissolved their overt partnership in 1644, they continued for a time to collaborate in printing surreptitious books, including, it has been argued, Milton’s Areopagitica of November 1644. Thereafter, Simmons regularly produced works by congregationalists and sectaries under his own imprint.¹³

In this case, however, the incriminating ornament proves misleading. As Sharon Achinstein and Benjamin Burton have demonstrated, Simmons at times in the 1640s shared ornaments with another Aldersgate printer, Francis Neile.¹⁴ Detailed analysis of the type used to print A Defiance suggests Neile, rather than Simmons, printed Overton’s pamphlet. Neile in 1646 used a pica type, which included a number of distinctively damaged letters. Many of these deformed letters can be found in Overton’s A Defiance, identifying Neile as the probable printer [A].

There remains some uncertainty over this identification; it is possible, given the sharing of ornaments, that type was also swapped between the two printers, or that they collaborated in printing Overton’s work. However, a survey of Simmons’s output from this period has not located any use of the distinctive type deployed by Neile in 1646 and in printing A Defiance. The most likely hypothesis, then, is that Overton’s backers brought the manuscript to Neile, who printed the work with his own letter, borrowing an ornament from Simmons’s repertoire.

Neile was perhaps something of an emergency fallback for Overton. Neile’s career does not suggest deep partisan commitment. In 1646, Neile printed books for presbyterian stationers and ministers, figures considered enemies by the likes of Overton. However, as early as 1644, Neile had done work for congregationalist publicists, and the next year, he probably participated in the unlicenced printing of John Milton’s Tetrachordon.¹⁵ Neile thus had contacts among independents and had shown willingness to collude in illicit printing. Although his book list has a generically godly flavour to it, he was apparently ready to handle work of varying descriptions to make a living.

Neile’s involvement may also have been necessary because more trusted presses were engaged when Overton sought a printer. On 21 August, Thomason acquired Liberty Vindicated Against Slavery, a book expatiating against unjust imprisonment, using as its chief example the sectarian propagandist John Lilburne, whose recent sentence to indefinite imprisonment by the Lords’ House crystallized many concerns and principles of London’s radical independents. Printed without publisher’s name, the work used no distinctive ornaments, a technique of anonymization that made investigation by the authorities more difficult. Nevertheless, the involvement of Thomas Paine is rendered certain by close examination of the pica roman and italic type used to print the body of the tract. The work contained several heavily damaged letters that can be found elsewhere in Paine’s acknowledged output of the period [B].

Paine had been producing controversial radical puritan material since the early 1640s, prior to 1645 in partnership with Simmons, and afterwards on his own. Paine surreptitiously printed numerous important pamphlets by figures in the circle of Lilburne and Overton in 1645–1646. In 1646, he openly printed a separatist letter by Lilburne and several of William Walwyn’s tracts.¹⁶ It is thus unsurprising to find him printing Liberty Vindicated against Slavery. Unlike Neile, Paine’s list of publications shows a consistent ideological slant. He routinely executed works by congregationalists, sectarian authors, and tolerationists, often it seems as publisher as well as printer.¹⁷

Predictably, Richard Overton turned to Paine for his next work. On 10 October, George Thomason obtained An Arrow against All Tyrants and Tyranny. Again, examination of the type leaves no doubt that it was executed using pica letters owned by Paine and habitually used in his acknowledged work of 1645–1647 [B]. Paine repeated the service a few weeks later: on 30 November, George Thomason acquired An Unhappy Game at Scotch, a vigorous attack on the Scots that falsely claimed it was printed at Edinburgh by Evan Tyler. An Unhappy Game, which has been attributed to both Lilburne and Overton, also shows several deformed letters found in Paine’s acknowledged work, including some used weeks earlier in An Arrow [B].¹⁸ The resort to Paine to print Liberty Vindicated against Slavery, An Arrow, and An Unhappy Game at Scotch reveals Paine as a critical outlet for Lilburne, Overton, and their friends after the seizure of Overton’s press. It was a role that deepened and evolved in the next year.

John Lilburne, Jane Coe, and Regall Tyrannie

In the final weeks of 1646, Paine’s efforts were supplemented by still another printer. Beginning in November of that year, Lilburne and Overton issued a series of tracts clarifying their increasingly radical vision for the polity. On 2 November 1646, George Thomason acquired Londons Liberty in Chains Discovered, Lilburne’s exploration of the corruptions of the city’s government. Expressing the aspirations of more extreme parliamentarians for reform of London’s constitution, the tract also broached the principle that all free men should be entitled to vote in elections, both civic and parliamentary. On 13 November, Lilburne brought out An Anatomy of the Lords Tyranny, chronicling his ongoing woes at the hands of the peers. Immediately thereafter, on 15 November, Thomason acquired Vox Plebis, or The Peoples Out-cry Against Oppression, Injustice, and Tyranny, a work in support of Lilburne, which contained a letter from the ‘Publisher to the Reader’, recommending Londons Liberty and An Anatomy. Then, on 18 December, there appeared The Charters of London: or, the second part of Londons Liberty in Chaines Discovered, Lilburne’s sequel to his book of November. Finally, in the first days of January, there appeared Regall Tyrannie Discovered, one of the most radical books of England’s conflict to date.

Typographical analysis reveals that all these books were executed using a shared reservoir of roman and italic pica type, showing many distinctively broken letters in common. It remains only to identify the printer who owned this type. The ornaments provide an important clue. The Charters of London and Regall Tyranny Discovered each used a unique ‘factotum’, devices designed to enclose moveable type within an ornamental border. Both were badly worn pieces that had seen extensive recent action in the print work of Jane Coe, a London widow, who after her husband’s death in 1644 operated the family business in her own name and that of her child, Andrew.¹⁹ Apparently used exclusively by their print house, these damaged ornaments appeared in Jane Coe’s acknowledged work as late as July and August 1646, respectively [E].²⁰

This suggests Coe as the chief suspect in printing the books. However, it remains possible that, as with Neile and Simmons, ornaments might have been shared between printers. Hence, more detailed typographical analysis is required. Identification is rendered secure through the discovery of a series of pica letters with unique and distinctive fractures and deformations, which appear in the acknowledged work of Jane Coe in 1646 and 1647. A slew of these letters can be found in Regall Tyrannie—a long tract that contains copious specimens for comparison—and many recur in the other books just described [F]. Moreover, Regall Tyrannie contained dozens of other damaged letters, many of which can likewise be found in the succession of tracts discussed here [F]. Combined with the evidence of Coe’s ornaments, this leaves no doubt that all five books—Anatomy of the Lords Tyranny, Londons Liberty in Chaines, Vox Plebis, The Charters of London, and Regall Tyrannie—were printed using materials owned by Jane Coe.

It is possible that the ornaments and type had been moved from Coe’s print house to some other printer or location. But this is extremely unlikely, and if so, it suggests willingness to lend the tools of her trade to a network of controversial propagandists who were sure to use those tools to produce inflammatory, legally hazardous books using materials that could be traced back to her. This was tantamount to producing the books herself, which undoubtedly remains the most likely scenario.

The involvement of Coe is in keeping with her previous career. Coe’s husband, Andrew, was a vigorous pro-parliamentarian printer with pronounced godly leanings, and after his death, Jane quickly showed willingness to handle unlicenced works by congregationalists.²¹ In May 1645, probably after printing books by the tolerationist author Henry Robinson, she was summoned before parliament’s Committee for Examinations alongside Robinson and John Lilburne.²² Her biggest commercial venture during this period was the newsbook, Perfect Occurrences, edited by the emerging independent spokesman, Henry Walker. In 1645–1646, moreover, Coe produced books by prominent sectaries, including the anabaptists Hanserd Knollys and Paul Hobson, and the notorious lay preachers (and later accused ‘Ranters’) Thomas Webbe and Lawrence Clarkson.²³ Although Coe very occasionally printed work of less partisan hue, the unusual preponderance of tracts by such controversial authors suggests at least some ideological sympathy, and helps to explain her willingness to print very radical surreptitious books of the kind analysed here.²⁴

Coe’s status as one of London’s only female printers likewise merits comment. Other widows of course owned print houses in the seventeenth century, but during the civil-war decade, only one, Ruth Raworth, appears to have operated on a scale comparable to Jane Coe.²⁵ Coe maintained a high level of output for three years after her husband’s death, producing dozens of titles under her own name, often as sole publisher, while printing many thousands of pamphlets without her name attached. Moreover, no other widow-printer of the 1640s, including Raworth, showed the sort of pronounced ideological slant evident in Coe’s oeuvre. One or two female booksellers revealed comparable partisan preferences in the 1640s, but Coe was evidently the only female printer who oriented her business around her factional and ideological commitments.²⁶ As a result, a succession of the most innovative and daring books of the decade were printed by one of London’s few female printers.

Regall Tyrannie, in particular, was an explosive package indeed. It was perhaps the most extreme work of propaganda that had yet appeared in the 1640s. Its author argued that when humans joined together to live in ‘mutuall society ... there is none above, or over another but by mutuall consent and agreement, and all the particulars or individualls knit and joyned together by mutuall consent and agreement, becomes a Sovereign Lord and King’. This principle of total popular sovereignty sat at odds with those ‘Monsters, commonly called Kings or Monarks’, who through a long train of deceits and brutalities, had imposed an ‘Iron Norman yoak’ on the English. Insofar as kings had any legitimacy, it was conferred by contract with their people, and as the author bluntly argued: ‘KING CHARLES HATH BROKEN HIS CONTRACT AND AGREEMENT’. The consequences were laid out a few pages later: ‘If the ... Accessarie or assistant) be guilty of Treason: Then much more is the . the chiefe mover, and beginner, or originall actor, and setter on) guilty of treason ... Ergo ... the King; who sets all his assistants at worke; is much more guilty of Treason’. In case the message was unclear, the book’s table of contents laid out the consequences: the king ‘ought to be executed’.²⁷

Regall Tyrannie was the first publication explicitly to argue that Charles I deserved to be put to death.²⁸ The book immediately elicited outrage. The House of Lords ordered the tract burned and launched an investigation to find its author and publisher. Agents raided Richard Overton’s house, where they found his wife Mary and brother Thomas in possession of copies of Regall Tyrannie. Thomas was interrupted, ‘sitting, with divers Books before ready bound up, and a Bodkin sticking in One of the said scandalous Pamphlets, having Holes in it ready to be made up’.²⁹ The distribution network Overton’s circle had built earlier in the decade evidently remained intact after he was imprisoned, held together by his family. Coe may have been entrusted with printing the writings of Lilburne and Overton, but Overton’s kin and allies remained deeply implicated in their production and diffusion. Mary and Thomas Overton refused to talk, and they were dispatched to prison, where they remained for months. Investigation into the tract continued: two weeks later, ‘Divers were sent for before the Judges to be examined about the printing and publishing of a booke called REGAL TYRANNY’, a fact reported in Coe’s own newsbook, perhaps suggesting she escaped unscathed.³⁰

Coe’s printing materials continued to be used on behalf of the propa - ganda collective surrounding Lilburne and Overton. On 1 February 1647, Lilburne’s latest tract, The Oppressed Mans Oppressions Declared was acquired by George Thomason.³¹ The edition obtained by Thomason was certainly printed with the same type used a month earlier to produce Regall Tyrannie, as revealed by the recurrence of a range of damaged letters, identifying Coe as its printer [F].³²

Oppressed Mans Oppressions triggered another investigation, this time by the lower house. Lilburne’s home was searched, and he and his wife were examined before a Commons’ committee, which was authorized to hunt down the work’s printers and distributors.³³ Nevertheless, despite multiple investigations unfolding around her, Coe continued to produce controversial material. On 10 February 1647, Thomason acquired Overton’s latest work, The Commoners Complaint: or, A Dreadful Warning From Newgate, to the Commons of England. Again, analysis of the pica type used on the tract shows without question that it was printed with the same stock of letters deployed by Coe in her acknowledged work, as well as the succession of tracts beginning with Londons Liberty [F].

That Paine and Coe served so reliably as producers of such incendiary material provides interesting insight into the printing world of civil war London. This was dangerous business, carrying significant legal risk. The known output of both figures suggests they participated partly out of ideological solidarity. Their careers add to a growing body of work demonstrating that many civil war printers and booksellers possessed discrete ideological or religious preferences, which affected the sort of work they were willing to undertake.³⁴ Indeed, the level of exposure endured by Paine and Coe suggests that they should be seen not just as passive conduits for radical independent polemicists, but as promoters or propagandists in their own right, making decisions that mixed business with the desire to project particular and chosen messages. This is not to say that all printers behaved in this way or that ideologically motivated producers were wholly pure and consistent: even some very partisan printers occasionally executed books at odds with the main thrust of their work (presumably when potential profits were too great to ignore).³⁵ In other cases—Francis Neile, for instance—ideological niceties were evidently overlooked for the sake of survival, resulting in highly varied and eclectic book lists.

But Neile’s case also points towards a crucial undercurrent here: while these were dangerous print jobs, they were also potentially lucrative. We lack detailed information about the financing and retailing of these books, but enough evidence survives to make informed hypotheses. Lilburne later claimed, for instance, that he paid ‘almost twenty pounds’ to transcribe manuscripts from the Tower archives and to print a thousand copies of The Charters of London; ‘the greatest part’ of these thousand copies were subsequently seized, unsold, from Lilburne’s house, during the search in February 1647.³⁶ This suggests that Lilburne and his friends advanced money directly to Coe and other printers to produce their works, then handled distribution themselves, relying on family, friends, or sympathizers to find outlets for sale.

And there is no doubt that the radical books of 1646 and 1647 were available for retail purchase. One surviving copy of Vox Plebis, a work of eight sheets, shows that its owner paid sixpence, roughly in line with standard London pricing for the period. Another copy of Coe’s Oppressed Mans Oppressions, a shorter book of five sheets, likewise reveals a manuscript price of sixpence, suggesting a somewhat higher margin for the seller (although, again, such a price was not excessive for a pamphlet of this length and period).³⁷ One of Paine’s surreptitious productions, a work of seven quires, fetched sixpence in October 1647.³⁸ Clandestine pamphlets printed by Paine and Coe thus sold in London at prices commensurate with those of licenced, registered books simultaneously on the market. This is noteworthy, in part, because other investigations have revealed that earlier in the century, including during the crisis of the early 1640s, unlicenced or censored books often sold at a premium, commanding high prices on account of their illicit content and the risks attendant in their production and distribution.³⁹ The evidence presented here implies that as the novelty of unlicenced print decreased, and as the volume of unregistered, unauthorized books increased, this price premium evaporated, meaning that by 1646 even unusually inflammatory unlicenced works were selling at typical market rates.

The precise means through which the books were brought to market is uncertain. Overton’s earlier secret printing network relied on a mixture clandestine delivery to booksellers (who then vended the books from their shops), street hawking, and hand-to-hand sales by ideological fellow travellers and friends.⁴⁰ These sales presumably helped to subsidize more targeted, political dispersion of the propaganda at low or no cost, which can also be traced in some instances.⁴¹ This blend of techniques for distribution likely persisted after Lilburne and Overton were imprisoned. The evidence surrounding Regall Tyrannie and Charters of London does, however, suggest that Coe was insulated from the dangers of retailing the books; the pamphlets were ordered up and paid for by Lilburne, Overton, and their allies. Their backers then carried the books away and assumed the risks of distribution, effectively acting as publishers. Avoiding the expenses of licencing and registration, protected from the hazards of distribution, and confident that few other printers would touch this species of material, Coe and Paine were perhaps able to charge elevated rates for such risky work, and thus to wring unusually high profits from these jobs, despite the fact that the books were subsequently retailed at standard market prices.⁴² Indeed, the evidence suggests that by late 1646, both print houses had begun to specialize in such pamphlets, with their output of unlicenced and illicit material far outstripping the amount of open, acknowledged work coming from their presses.

This points towards a further observation about both printers, and the ways business interests and ideology could prove mutually reinforcing: both Paine and Coe appear to have been operating at the edge of insolvency. Paine was in debt in the early 1640s, and Coe began in mid-1647 to divest herself of the tools of her trade, culminating in her departure from the business at the end of that year, and suggesting that she was having difficulty staying afloat during these months. Paine followed a similar path, disappearing from the trade after 1650 and becoming an impoverished pensioner of the Stationers’ Company in 1652.⁴³ While ideology apparently played a major role in prompting both to collaborate with the likes of Lilburne and Overton, pressing financial need—even desperation—may have amplified their willingness to gamble on such combustible material.

The Arrest of Thomas Paine, Printer to the New Model Army Organizers

The risks became undeniably apparent when Thomas Paine was arrested and imprisoned for his activities. On 11 May 1647, in response to the publication of dangerous royalist texts by David Jenkins and Dudley Digges, the Commons created a special committee, empowered to attach the printers and distributors of these books and to prosecute them in King’s Bench. While the typography of these pamphlets does not suggest any connection to Thomas Paine, on 18 May the committee ordered Paine imprisoned in the Gatehouse for ‘printinge scandalous and seditious pamphletts against the Parliament’.⁴⁴

Paine’s incarceration temporarily disrupted the propaganda activities of Lilburne and his circle. On 31 May 1647, Lilburne completed a long, splenetic letter, directed to his erstwhile ally Henry Marten, which was clearly intended for publication. Perhaps because of Paine’s troubles, the letter was not released for almost a month. Lilburne continued in the interim to add material to the tract, and it was finally printed as Rash Oaths Unwarrantable, appearing sometime around 25 June.

Without question, Rash Oaths was printed using letters of Thomas Paine. Although executed in multiple typefaces, it included a number of unmistakable deformed pica letters from Paine’s stock [C]. Interestingly, Paine’s print house, presumably operated by his wife, servants, and family members, continued to function during his imprisonment. Meanwhile Paine eagerly tried to free himself. At some point before 31 May, he evidently sought a writ of Habeas Corpus to secure his release. The attempt failed, and Lilburne in the final pages of Rash Oaths turned his printer’s predicament into an exemplary case of the Long Parliament’s reign of injustice, lamenting that ‘when the prisoner according to the law ... sues for a Habias Corpus, which legally cannot be denyed’, the current King’s Bench judges ‘contrary to law and their owne oathes . refuse to deliver the prisoner so unjustly imprisoned ... but returne him back to prison againe ... Oh horrible tyrannie oppression, and injustice, and yet as I am certainly informed, this was the case of Mr. Thomas Paine a Printer the last tearme’.⁴⁵

Rash Oaths also pointed towards the recent, dramatic turn in English politics. Between late March and May 1647, the New Model Army underwent a process of intense politicization in response to attempts by Denzil Holles and his parliamentary allies to disband the force, an escalation that resulted in the creation of a network of elected soldier ‘agitators’ to conduct the army’s political business.⁴⁶ Lilburne included within Rash Oaths several documents related to this process of politicization, and he strongly urged the army to remain intact until Holles’s faction had been crushed and until the soldiers had ‘firmly setled the peace and justice of the Kingdome’.⁴⁷

A few days later, Lilburne bragged that he had ‘been instrumentall with the expence of a great deale of money, and withall the interest and industry I had in the world’ in settling ‘the Souldiers in a compleat and just posture, by their faithfull agitators chosen out by common consent from amongst themselves’.⁴⁸ While Lilburne may have been inflating his own importance, there is no reason to doubt that he did indeed disburse money to assist the agitators and army organizers in some way. One important feature of the early phases of army organization involved securing presses and defraying printing costs; as the New Model became a potent political force, and as the standoff with parliament intensified, army activists needed outlets for printed propaganda to make their case. Space does not permit a full investigation of the complex evidence surrounding the earliest organization and publications of the army agitators—including the extent of Lilburne’s involvement—but it should be noted that considerable proof survives to demonstrate that Thomas Paine was the chief printer for army activists during the crucial phase between March and May 1647.⁴⁹ This central role was confirmed in a newsletter written from London by one of the soldier organizers, ‘Lt. Cⁿ’ (almost certainly Lieutenant Edmund Chillenden), back to the army on 18 May, the day that Paine was imprisoned in the Gatehouse. Chillenden informed his fellow soldiers ‘that the Printer is taken and undone, and if it be not thought on to have a Presse in the Army wee are undone’.⁵⁰

This comment not only underlines Paine’s pivotal role as de facto printer for the nascent agitator organization, but also highlights growing awareness among army activists that a reliable printing press was essential to their delicate political position. Chillenden was an old associate of Lilburne’s, with deep experience in surreptitious print, dating back to their mutual involvement in book smuggling networks of the 1630s. The two men were implacable sectarian puritans, and earlier in the 1640s, Lilburne had procured Chillenden his commission as a cornet.⁵¹ It is therefore entirely plausible, even likely, that these longstanding ties were now reenergized, and that Lilburne helped to broker entry for army activists into his own well-established print and distribution channels. Certainly, evidence suggests that in early 1647 Chillenden was one of the key organizers within the embryonic agitator organization, serving as a liaison between the army and London, with a particular brief to manage the soldiers’ printed communications.⁵² Paine’s imprisonment underscored for Chillenden the risks of relying on a private London printer, and so intensified the need for a dedicated Presse in the Army. Chillenden’s newsletter offered a ready solution: ‘Here is one perfect and workmen: Lett him therefore see what will be done amongst the Officers concerning itt’.⁵³ This initiated a new phase in the history of army propaganda.

The Army Press and Radical Propaganda in the Summer of 1647

The acquisition of a press was apparently delayed by a few days, as the army entered the most sensitive phase of its struggle with parliament. Responding to the houses’ orders to begin disbandment, the army launched moves—planned and executed by the agitators, but with leading officers’ connivance—to secure the magazine at Oxford, seize the king, and convince Fairfax to order a general rendezvous, where the soldiery entered a Solemn Engagement not to disband until their grievances had been redressed and the kingdom settled. At this point, the agitator organization, heretofore an unofficial shadow network, was effectively folded into the army’s governing structure, included as part of a ‘General Council’, which began meeting shortly thereafter.

This fusion between the army command, agitators, and longstanding allies in London was embodied in the press the army erected in the days after the Solemn Engagement. It is unclear if Chillenden’s ‘perfect’ press was purchased, but his general advice was heeded, and an army press was established at Oxford, beyond reach of parliament and city. The press began operation by 12 June 1647, overseen by John Harris and Henry Hills.⁵⁴ Hills had reportedly been trained as a printer in the establishment of Thomas Paine and Matthew Simmons, having been put in contact with the stationers by Lilburne himself.⁵⁵ In the following two months the press produced at least eleven pamphlets, many of which have recently been analysed by Michael Mendle. Most obviously, the army press generated ‘official’ army declarations. But it also printed an agitator letter and a range of more unofficial polemics by army insiders and allies, including an attack on parliament’s leaders, Plain Truth Without Feare or Flattery (published under the pseudonym ‘Amon Wilbee’), and an incendiary work of political theory first published in London by William Larner, a member of the propaganda network of Lilburne and Overton.⁵⁶

The acquisition of the army press remains obscure. Surviving New Model accounts reveal that on 30 August 1647 there was a payment of £78 17s ‘To Lt Chillenden for Mris Coes printing press’.⁵⁷ This is the sole payment in the accounts for a press of any kind, and the Oxford press is the only press definitely operated by and for the army. The most probable interpretation is therefore that the payment in August was a reimbursement to Chillenden for money that he (and presumably others) fronted in May to acquire the ‘perfect’ press he had located in London.⁵⁸ If this is correct, the press was then transferred to Oxford to operate under Harris and Hills. This reconstruction is uncertain, however, and it remains possible that the 30 August payment referred to another press entirely.⁵⁹

In either case, Jane Coe’s entanglement with soldier-organizers such as Chillenden and her willingness to sell her press to the army should be no surprise, given her provocative history as one of the two favoured printers for London’s most extreme independent propagandists. It suggests that Coe’s print house was struggling and that she was winding down her business. But the sale of her press did not immediately remove her from the trade. In summer 1647, before and after Chillenden received payment for her press, Coe continued to release pamphlets, printed both ‘for’ her and ‘by’ her. The last known production to emerge as ‘printed by Jane Coe’ appeared in October 1647. Like other printers, Coe probably owned two presses, and her sale of one to the army allowed her to continue to operate in truncated fashion. As we will see, sometime in mid-November, she apparently took a final step out of the business, transferring her existing interests and remaining printing materials to another stationer, John Clowes, with whom she continued a brief partnership before retiring from the trade.⁶⁰

Over the summer of 1647, in addition to printing items under her own name, Coe evidently produced important army documents on behalf of George Whittington, who increasingly became a semi-official distributor of army propaganda in the city.⁶¹ However, even as her ties deepened with the army, she also remained involved with more extreme figures in London’s independent coalition. Around the beginning of August, her materials were used to print The Just Request of The Officers, and Souldiers of this Army, a petition from unnamed soldiers to the agitators on behalf of Lilburne and Overton.⁶² The title of this pamphlet used two large letters, a cracked ‘S’ and a distinctively deformed ‘E’ with a forked serif, each verifiably used by Coe in her acknowledged work [J].

The other chief printer discussed here, Thomas Paine, continued his activities in these months despite his legal woes. Even as Paine remained in prison, on 3 July 1647, George Thomason acquired Prima Pars. De Comparatis Comparandis, another work allegedly by ‘Amon Wilbee’, which purported to expose corruption at the heart of parliament’s establishment. Although it bore an ‘Oxford’ imprint, Thomason struck the location, and replaced it with ‘London’. The stationer’s judgment was surely correct. In its opening quire, Prima Pars used two initial letters—one an ‘H’ with a tell-tale wormhole—deployed regularly by Paine before and after 1647 [G]. The book was executed in at least two different typefaces, but the one used for the first two sheets of the book (including the pages with Paine’s ornaments) showed at least two damaged pica letters seen in Paine’s acknowledged work, as well as others that appeared in surreptitious pamphlets printed with Paine’s materials in the following weeks [C].

Interestingly, however, the subsequent sheets of the tract were evidently executed in a different typeface, and probably by a second printer. Quire C in particular reveals a very distinctively damaged pica ‘G’ that can be observed in the acknowledged output of Jane Coe, as well as several of Coe’s surreptitious pamphlets analysed above [F]. It is likely, therefore, that Prima Pars was printed by two separate printers. Paine’s establishment executed the first two quires, using materials verifiably associated with his acknowledged work. But quire C, and possibly succeeding sheets of the book, were likely printed by Coe. The use of multiple printers for a single job was common during the period, and it is unsurprising to find Paine and Coe brought together to complete two ends of the same job. As we will see, it was not the last time the two would combine to collaborate on a controversial pamphlet.

Meanwhile, Paine appears finally to have won his freedom. On 5 July 1647, the King’s Bench ordered a writ of Habeas Corpus on his behalf, and the next day he was brought before the court and granted bail. He was apparently released, under recognizance, with the expectation that he would appear again the next term.⁶³ The threat of further legal action did nothing to deter him, and now perhaps further hardened by his recent experiences, Paine resumed and intensified his service to the London radical collective. On 17 July 1647, Thomason obtained Richard Overton’s An Appeale from the Degenerate Representative Body the Commons of England Assembled at Westminster, which called for the army to take immediate action to purge parliament, to avoid delays in settling the nation, and to resist attempts to subvert the agitators’ authority. It is one of Overton’s more celebrated works, containing a postscript, laying out an elaborate program for political reform. The work began with a conspicuously damaged initial ‘I’ which can be found in Paine’s acknowledged productions before and after July 1647 [G].⁶⁴ Overton’s book offered fulsome praise for Wilbee’s Prima Pars, and as in that recent tract, the opening two sheets of An Appeale (including the one showing the incriminating initial ‘I’) revealed deformed pica letters found in Paine’s acknowledged work [C]. Together, the ornament and broken type implicate Paine beyond reasonable doubt as printer of the first two sheets of Overton’s Appeale.

The ‘New Agents’ and The Case of the Army Truly Stated

The publication of An Appeale was indicative of still another shift in the political landscape. More radical Londoners such as Overton were coming to show growing suspicion of the army’s leaders; this was followed, in parallel, by rising disaffection among more extreme soldiers, dismayed by the slow progress of settling the nation and meeting the army’s demands, and deeply sceptical about the draft peace plan, ‘The Heads of the Proposals’, which Cromwell, Ireton, and their allies were seeking to hammer out with the king.⁶⁵ At this stage, Paine helped to produce perhaps the most controversial pamphlet of 1647, The Case of the Army Truly Stated. The result of gathering frustration among more forward soldiers, The Case was the first and most elaborate statement of the so-called ‘New Agents’, freshly elected agitators who were chosen by some of the regiments beginning in late September 1647. Generations of historians have scrutinized The Case and the controversies it unleashed, which provoked fierce contention within the army, prompting the Putney Debates, the formulation of An Agreement of the People, and finally, in full form, the Leveller groundswell.

The Case of the Army was obtained by Thomason on 19 October. Its printing history is complicated. Almost all surviving copies of the pamphlet include four quarto quires, with quires B and D composed of half sheets.⁶⁶ A single printer was responsible for quires A and C of every surviving copy of the book. In addition, this same printer produced some (but not all) copies of quires B and D of The Case of the Army. This means that many extant copies were printed entirely by a single printing operation, which was responsible for sheets A–D of the work. These copies were executed chiefly in pica letters, supplemented in quire C with brevier type. Several variants of this printer’s sheets survive, reflecting stop-press corrections and additions that were applied to all four of his quires during printing.⁶⁷ Happily, identification of the owner of the printing materials is straight - forward. All surviving copies of quire A (and hence all surviving copies of The Case of the Army) show at Air a distinctive initial capital ‘W’ identical to one used in a book openly printed by Thomas Paine in 1644 [H]. Detailed typographical comparison shows that many uniquely deformed pica roman letters used in these four quires of The Case can be found in acknowledged work printed by Paine in 1646-1649 [D]. There is no question, then, that the printing materials of Thomas Paine were used to print The Case of the Army Truly Stated.

There exists, however, a significant variant setting of the pamphlet: the half-sheet quires B and D of some copies were printed using a different typeface and ornaments entirely; these quires were then interspersed with quires A and C, as printed by Paine, to assemble some copies of the tract [I].⁶⁸ These alternative quires were printed with damaged pica letters found in August and September 1647 in Jane Coe’s newsbook, Perfect Occurrences. Moreover, several surviving copies of The Case of the Army bear a ‘singleton’ title page, that is, a single quarto page printed separately from the rest of the pamphlet, then stitched to the front of the bound quires. Two separate variants of this singleton title page were printed. One contained large roman capitals, including two distinctively malformed ‘E’ letters and a similarly cracked ‘S’, all of which were used by Coe in her recent acknowledged work.⁶⁹ Indeed, two of those letters had appeared on The Just Request in support of Lilburne and Overton a few weeks earlier [J].

Materials from two print houses were thus involved in printing The Case of the Army Truly Stated. Paine’s materials were responsible for most of the surviving sheets, including quires A and C of all extant copies (with each of Paine’s sheets existing in multiple, slightly variant states). Another press produced some, but not all, copies of quires B and D, and the culprit here was almost certainly Coe, whose printing materials were undoubtedly used to print ‘singleton’ title pages affixed to odd copies of the pamphlet.

As the army had purchased a press from Coe in late August, it remains possible that she no longer controlled her printing materials, and that command of her implements now rested with elements within the army itself.⁷⁰ This possibility is rendered significantly less likely because only seven days before The Case of the Army Truly Stated appeared, the broadsheet Truth Flatters Not, ‘Printed by J. Coe’, was acquired by Thomason in London. This shows that Coe was still printing in her own name in mid-October; moreover, the broadside used the same deformed ‘E’ and ‘S’ that a week later appeared on the title page of The Case of the Army [J]. Coe was thus still actively in control of a press and the materials used to print The Case, directly implicating her alongside Paine in its production.

As controversy mushroomed over The Case of the Army, both presses continued to print controversial works. Paine’s energies were devoted anew to his old customer Lilburne. On 25 October 1647, George Thomason acquired The Grand Plea of Lieut. Col. John Lilburne, a recapitulation of the imprisoned propagandist’s case. This book was rendered in two typefaces. The tract’s first quire was printed in the same distinctive pica type that Paine had used on An Appeale and The Case of the Army, recycling some of the same damaged letters used on these pamphlets [D]. Before the type was broken down, an appendix was added to The Grand Plea, requiring some resetting, and resulting in a slightly modified second impression. This was accompanied, on 1 November, by the publication of The Additionall Plea of Lieut. Col. John Lilburne (1647), a sequel to The Grand Plea; again, it used precisely the same font, and showed damaged letters that were part of the set, identifying it securely as Paine’s handiwork [D].⁷¹

Meanwhile, during these very same days, as Elliot Vernon and Philip Baker have suggested, the printing materials of Jane Coe were used to produce pamphlets emanating from the ‘New Agents’.⁷² These included Two Letters from the Agents of the Five Regiments (acquired by Thomason on 28 October) and most importantly, An Agreement of the People, the famous constitutional blueprint that was available in London by 3 November. Again, both these pamphlets showed the uniquely damaged large capital ‘E’ and ‘S’ that had been used on the singleton title page of The Case of the Army, and which Coe herself deployed in her own acknowledged work in early October [J].

During the critical days in which An Agreement of the People was being drafted and the Putney debates were underway, Paine’s presses were engaged in printing Lilburne’s latest works; Coe’s printing materials were used to print the manifestos of the New Agents. Having finished with Lilburne’s print jobs, Paine quickly returned to work on behalf of the internal army agitation in support of The Case of the Army and An Agreement of the People. On 11 November 1647, George Thomason acquired The Copy of a Letter Sent to his Excellencie Sir Thomas Fairfax by Major Francis White, a strong proponent of the program laid out in The Case and An Agreement. The Copy of a Letter was certainly printed using Paine’s materials. The first page of the pamphlet was adorned with an initial ‘I’ that Paine used frequently before and after 1647 [G]. And the text was printed with the self-same set of damaged pica letters used by Paine throughout the year to print An Appeale, The Case of the Army, and Lilburne’s The Grand Plea and Additionall Plea [D].

The mounting tension came to a head on 15 November, when soldiers of some regiments, called to rendezvous at Ware, staged a demonstration in support of the radical program of the ‘New Agents’. The mutiny was suppressed, followed by the execution of one soldier, and a number of New Agitators were arrested and imprisoned. Paine continued his work on behalf of their cause; a few weeks later, his printing materials were again used on A Plea for the Late Agents of the Army, a pamphlet denouncing martial law proceedings against the New Agitators [D].

The evidence presented here shows that Paine and Coe (or Coe’s successors) served as the chief printers for the New Agents and their allies between October and December 1647. They were not alone in promoting the program of The Case of the Army. At least one other London printer—perhaps Francis Neile or his sometime collaborator Matthew Simmons—was likely responsible for a letter of the New Agents, which was scattered in London’s streets on 11 November 1647.⁷³ Robert Ibbitson, a printer increasingly tied to the army’s cause, issued reprint editions of a section of The Case as well as An Agreement; a number of other knock-off versions of An Agreement of the People were produced by unspecified printers.⁷⁴ Meanwhile, some of the most aggressive propaganda supporting the radical army program—A Cal to all the Souldiers (usually attributed to John Wildman) and the virulently anti-monarchical Alarum to the Headquarters, which emerged around 31 October and 11 November 1647 respectively—were apparently products of a wholly different printing outfit. Although more work remains to be done, these tracts were possibly produced by the official army printers John Harris and Henry Hills. The Oxford army press appears to have ceased overt operations when the New Model marched on London in August 1647. What happened to the press and associated equipment in the ensuing weeks remains shrouded in uncertainty, but its activities were perhaps complicated and curtailed by the growing rifts in the army; by November, Harris and Hills had sided wholeheartedly with the radical wing against the military grandees (with Harris republishing at least one letter of the New Agents in London).⁷⁵ By the end of 1647, the two had certainly removed to the city, with Hills establishing a press in Southwark, and it is possible that Harris and Hills were behind works such as A Cal to all the Souldiers.⁷⁶ These ancillary publications deserve deeper bibliographical analysis, as do the murky machinations involving the army’s printers and press; but whatever the allegiances and activities of Hills and Harris, the New Agitators and their allies opted to rely on trusted city stationers for their chief statements. The print houses of Paine and Coe indisputably served as the anchors for the publicity campaign mounted by the ‘New Agents’ and their closest allies—or the ‘Levellers’, as they were now dubbed in press and public statements.

Print, the Army, and the Leveller Agitation

The Ware mutiny and its aftermath serve as the endpoint for this investigation. This is not to suggest that army conflicts ceased or that the flow of radical propaganda from London presses was staunched. Indeed, the conjuncture described here represented the beginning of more intensive efforts to reshape the polity. By early November 1647, contemporaries were rapidly adopting an epithet to describe the ‘New Agents’ and their most enthusiastic civilian backers, labelling them ‘Levellers’.⁷⁷ The concerted political mobilizations spearheaded by this so-called ‘Leveller’ group after November 1647 lie beyond the scope of this article. The analysis presented here, however, offers insight into the origins and dynamics of that political mobilization.

One of the main developments in the revisionist historiography of the period has been an attempt to decouple the politicization of the army from the ‘Leveller’ ideological brain-trust of Lilburne, Overton, and their closest collaborators. In response to older views, which saw the army agitators and the rank and file of the New Model Army as decisively under the sway of Lilburne and his friends, scholars beginning in the 1970s argued that there was limited influence exerted by the ‘Levellers’ upon the army (either in the earliest phases of army mobilization, or subsequently, with the advent of the dissident ‘New Agents’). The evidence here provides scant support for these revisionist positions. Indeed, the analysis in this article serves to correct one recent account, by Morrill and Baker, who bolstered their argument for the limits of Leveller influence on the New Agents by maintaining that The Case of the Army ‘was almost certainly not sent to a printer used by the Levellers’, and that ‘[n]ot until mid-November did a new agent pamphlet appear with any semblance of a possible Leveller connection’.⁷⁸ In fact, The Case of the Army and most of the attendant publications of the ‘New Agents’ were executed by precisely those two printers responsible for producing every important ‘Leveller’ work of the previous year.

What is most striking about the evidence adduced here, considered from start to finish, is the impressive continuity of radical publication between late 1646 and November 1647. Almost all of the significant works of the leading ‘Leveller’ theorists were printed by Coe or Paine. Paine then became de facto printer to the emerging ‘Agitator’ organization, as it took shape in April—May 1647, during the period of the New Model Army’s initial politicization. When Paine was imprisoned, Coe apparently took up the slack, eventually selling one of her presses to the army. All the while, both continued to print aggressively on behalf of Lilburne, Overton, and their allies. Finally, when rising divisions within the army pushed the dissident ‘New Agents’ to launch their own mobilization in late 1647, they too turned to Paine and Coe as printers of choice.

The simplest way of explaining these developments is to hypothesize that (as Lilburne himself boasted and as many contemporaries suspected) from the very beginning of the politicization of the army, key organizers within the ranks were in close consultation with London radical activists, who helped them to manage their publicity campaigns, and who attempted from the outset to ally the struggles in the army over disbandment, pay, and indemnity with a broader political vision which imagined far-reaching constitutional change. While printed pamphlets alone cannot definitively resolve these intriguing questions surrounding connections between the army and the ‘Levellers’, the evidence presented in this article furnishes an important piece to a puzzle that will only be solved by bringing to bear new sources and techniques of historical analysis.

To remain open to the notion that Lilburne and his circle might have played an intimate role in the political mobilizations of the army is not to revert to older views, which saw the agitators (old and new) as in thrall to the Levellers, or to insist, as one royalist did, that ‘the Army is one Lilburne through out’.⁷⁹ In fact, we require a more subtle and nuanced assessment of the role of these activists, and in turn of the nature of internal army politics, relying on new evidence and frames of reference. Indeed, the analysis offered here provides one potential shift in frame of reference, allowing us to step beyond the spectacular pronouncements and personalities of the ‘Leveller’ leaders, and to focus instead on the men and women who laboured in determined anonymity to bring those pronouncements to public view. On this view, Overton, Lilburne, and their friends, on the one hand, and the various army agitators, on the other, resorted to Coe and Paine because these stationers were among the few whose ideological convictions and high tolerance for risk rendered them willing to handle controversial, indeed frankly dangerous, independent publications. These printers—along with a handful of other stationers—produced a disproportionate number of the most adventurous radical puritan and militant parliamentarian books of the 1640s. In the process, they undertook considerable risks, dodging constant surveillance, and enduring serial investigations, interrogations, arrests, raids, and imprisonments. Although of course commercial motives conditioned these choices, these printers should be viewed as crucial public figures and political actors in their own right. Because they assiduously sought to hide their tracks, this centrality has not been clear to subsequent commentators. But, arguably, these stationers might be seen as unusually important players within the ‘independent coalition’ that ultimately drove forward the English Revolution. The fact that the so-called ‘Levellers’, the earliest army agitators, and a wide range of other extreme puritans and independents, turned to these printers is a token of that importance.

Ironically, rising divisions and schisms among independents, and in particular the emergence of the ‘Levellers’ as a discrete force—a process in which these stationers played a preponderant role—forced these printers into difficult choices. In early 1647, while acute observers might have recognized that Lilburne, Overton, and their allies were emerging as spokesmen for a distinctive and transformative vision, there is a sense in which these figures remained merely the most vocal members of a broader independent alliance, sharing large swathes of ideological ground with other members of the coalition.⁸⁰ Coe and Paine surely recognized the controversial nature of these authors’ ideas—which may, in fact, have rendered work for them more profitable—but the printers likely viewed these propagandists as members of a broader, fluid, sectarian puritan community. Similar sentiments presumably undergirded Paine’s and Coe’s involvement in printing The Case of the Army and An Agreement of the People. When approached to print these works, they would have been aware that they were handling controversial material; but it was material coming from their sort of people, soldiers with obvious independent leanings, peddling ideas consistent with stuff they routinely printed. The divisive, indeed radioactive, nature of these texts would not, perhaps, have been immediately obvious. Still less could the printers have foreseen that they were producing books that would be viewed by twentieth-century historians as marking the emergence of the west’s first modern political party.

The divisions that emerged as a result of these publications made it more difficult to sustain this sort of broadminded posture. As the ‘Levellers’ came to be branded as a dangerously subversive faction, intent on dividing the army and undermining the social order, and as splits within the independent coalition grew more pronounced, it became more challenging to see them as merely full-throated participants in a broader, unitary coalition, still less as spokesmen for the generality of ‘the people’ or the ‘well affected’ as a whole. The resulting confusions of allegiance among militant parliamentarians can be observed in the careers of Paine and Coe. On 9 November, for instance, as conflict percolated through the army, Coe’s printing materials were used to execute a pamphlet for the bookseller George Horton, which reproduced An Agreement of the People, but which also transcribed a remonstrance from the regiment of John Hewson, disavowing ‘all Incendiaries, who ... shall beget Divisions ... in the Army’ (an obvious allusion to the New Agitators and their manifestos).⁸¹ The pamphlet could probably be made to stand for the ambivalence felt by many diehard supporters of the army: sympathetic with many of the New Agents’ demands, but equally convinced that army unity was all-important, hard-line parliamentarians found their loyalties continually tugged in different directions over the next two years. It was perhaps no accident that at this moment Coe apparently took a decisive step out of the print trade. On 12 November, for the first time, her longstanding newspaper Perfect Occurrences was printed jointly with the young stationer John Clowes. At the end of 1647, Clowes replaced her entirely, taking control of her printing materials as well as her newsbook.⁸² Jane Coe thereafter disappeared from the annals of the print trade.

Paine, meanwhile, continued secretly to produce pamphlets associated with the radical wing of the army into 1649, when his print house was raided and his press disassembled for ongoing Leveller printing.⁸³ However, in June 1649, after the regicide and the failed Leveller mutiny at Burford, Paine could be found printing anti-Leveller propaganda in support of the government.⁸⁴ Like others baffled at the Levellers’ mounting radicalism and resistance—even after the achievement of the objectives of executing the king, abolishing the House of Lords, and establishing a republic—Paine apparently abandoned his frequent bedfellows and moved into alliance with the commonwealth regime. This was the fate of many erstwhile Leveller supporters after 1649. Yet it should not be forgotten, as Isaac Pennington reminded parliament after Burford, that although ‘Yee have subdued the outward ... strength of the Levellers and have much rejoyced in it’, yet ‘Divers things that you your selves have now done were very hardlie thought on ... [and] spoken against by your selves when they were first propounded by them’.⁸⁵ Regal tyranny was dead, even if those who first propounded its demise relinquished the axe just before it fell.

All letters are Pica, approximate size (mm): X=3, x=1.8-2; Xy=4

Copies used:

PM = Giles Workman, Private-men no Pulpit-men: Or, A Modest Examination of Lay-Mens Preaching (London: F. Neile for Tho. Underhill, 1646), Huntington Library, 124548.

DAU = A Defiance against All Arbitrary Usurpations or Encroachments ([London]: s.n., 1646), Huntington Library, 53833.

Letters are identified by word/book/page/line

e.g. ‘Mr’/PM/3/8 = ‘M’ in ‘Mr’, Private-Men no Pulpit-men, page 3, line 8.

Line numbers are exclusive of blank lines.

Column 1:

Row 1: ‘ML/PM/3/8; Row 2: ‘given’/PM/3/20; Row 3: ‘Gospel’/PM/26/23; Row 4:

‘equal’/PM/18/34; Row 5: ‘woman’/PM/y/16; Row 6: ‘woman’/PM/y/16; Row 7:

‘here,’/PM/3/31; Row 8: ‘Tongues’TM/16/13

Column 2:

Row 1: ‘Ministery’/PM/14/8; Row 2: ‘writing/PM/sig. A2r/3; Row 3: ‘Grace’/PM/13/15;

Row 4: ‘all’/PM/16/35; Row 5: ‘members’/PM/15/6: Row 6; ‘of’/PM/14/14; Row 7: ‘,

adoo’/PM/3/36; Row 8: ‘This’/PM/8/19

Column 3:

Row 1: ‘Mr/DAU/4/36; Row 2: ‘Augusti’/DAU/18/31; Row 3: ‘Gentle’/DAU/11/catchword;

Row 4: ‘will’/DAU/25/36; Row 5: ‘accomplish’/DAU/3/29; Row 6: ‘freedoms’/DAU/5/13;

Row 7: ‘Rebels,’/DAU/1/33; Row 8: ‘Title’/DAU/21/25

All letters are Pica, approximate size (mm): 81/20 lines; X=3, x=1.8-2; Xy=4

CR = J[ohn] P[rice], The City-Remonstrance Remonstrated (London: printed by Tho. Paine, 1646), FSL, 181-417.4q

CR2 = J[ohn] P[rice], The City-Remonstrance Remonstrated (London: printed by Tho. Paine, 1646), Newberry Library, Chicago, Case F 4595.885 v. 1

SA = R. Younge, A Soveraigne Antidote against all griefe (London: Thomas Paine for Nath. Web and William Grantham, 1647), Private Copy

SA2 = R. Younge, A Soveraigne Antidote against all Griefe (London: Thomas Paine for Nath. Web and William Grantham, 1647), Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, BV5011.Y7

VP = Vox Populi, or the Peoples Cry Against the Clergy (London: Thomas Paine for John Pounset, 1646), Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 18080

CM = R. Younge, The Cure of Misprision (London: Thomas Paine for Benjamin Allen, 1646), Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, BV5011.Y7

UD = J[ohn] P[rice], Unity our Duty (London: Thomas Paine for John Hancock, 1645), Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, C.14.8[10] Linc.

LV = Liberty Vindicated Against Slavery (1646), Huntington Library, 8316

AA1 = An Arrow against All Tyrants and Tyrany (1646), FSL, O622

AA2 = An Arrow against All Tyrants and Tyrany (1646), Huntington Library, 8191

UG1 = An Unhappy Game at Scotch and English (1646), Newberry Library, Case F 4552 .6575

UG2 = An Unhappy Game at Scotch and English (1646), Huntington Library, 218928

UG3 = An Unhappy Game at Scotch and English (1646), FSL, 133-332q

Letters are identified by

word/book/page/line

e.g. CR/’Bishops,’ first occurrence/23/19 = ‘B’ in the first occurrence of ‘Bishops’ in J[ohn] P[rice], The City-Remonstrance Remonstrated, FSL, 181-417.4q, page 23, line 19 Line numbers are exclusive of blank lines and running heads.

Column 1:

Row 1: CR/’Bishops,’ first occurrence/23/19; Row 2: SA2/’Messengers’/21/2; Row 3: CR/‘Magistrates’/19/15; Row 4: CR/‘City’/7/15; Row 5: SA/‘assistance’/383/21; Row 6: CR/‘Lords’/23/14; Row 7: VP/‘Saints’/27/1; Row 8: SA2/‘Messengers’21/2; Row 9: CR/‘King’/23/17; Row 10: CR/‘Lords’/23/14; Row 11: CM/‘Dissembler’/52/18

Column 2:

Row 1: SA2/‘But’/56/7; Row 2: SA/‘Matth.’/311/33; Row 3: CR2/‘Masters’/16/38; Row 4: CR/ ‘Conjunction’27/2; Row 5: SA2/‘Christ’/202/21; Row 6: VP/‘distance’/6/32; Row 7: CR/‘Sectary’/3/24; Row 8: CR/ ‘Ministers’19/23; Row 10: SA2/‘and’/86/29; Row 11: UD/‘Dragons’/9/23

Column 3:

Row 1: LV/‘By’/26/31; Row 2: LV/‘Mirro’’4/10; Row 3: LV/‘Mr.’/26/13; Row 4: LV/‘Countesse’9/20; Row 5: LV/‘worst’/sig. D3v/15

Column 4:

Row 1: AA1/‘Body’/10/5; Row 6: AA2/‘Repealed’/7/25; Row 7: AA2/‘Sir’/5/19; Row 8: AA2/‘Mag-’/9/18; Row 9: AA2/‘King’/4/14

Column 5:

Row 1: UG1/‘But’/7/12; Row 6: UG2/‘third’/8/13; Row 9: UG2/‘King’/16/11; Row 10: UG1: ‘and’/21/18; Row 11: UG3/‘Declar-’/7/18

All letters are Pica, approximate size (mm): 81/20 lines; X=3, x=1.8-2; Xy=4

Copies used:

CR = J[ohn] P[rice], The City-Remonstrance Remonstrated (London: printed by Tho. Paine, 1646), FSL, 181-417.4q

CSL = Francis White, The Copies of Severall Letters Contrary to the Opinion of the Present Powers (London: T. Paine for Tho. Slater and Stephen Bowtell, 1649), University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IUA13044

AW = William Walwyn, A Whisper in the Eare of Mr. Thomas Edwards Minister (London: Thomas Paine for William Ley, 1646), Huntington Library, 18083

VP = Vox Populi, or the Peoples Cry Against the Clergy (London: Thomas Paine for John Pounset, 1646), Huntington Library, 18080

SA = R. Younge, A Soveraigne Antidote against All Griefe (London: Thomas Paine for Nath. Web and William Grantham, 1647). Private Copy

SA2 = R. Younge, A Soveraigne Antidote against All Griefe (London: Thomas Paine for Nath. Web and William Grantham, 1647), Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, BV5011.Y7

RO = John Lilburne, Rash Oaths Unwarrantable: And the Breaking of Them as Inexcusable ([London]: s.n., 1647), Newberry Library, Case J 5453 .5097.

PP = Amon Wilbee, Prima Pars. De Comparatis Comparandis (Oxford [London]: s.n., 1647), Huntington Library, 148375

PP2 = Amon Wilbee, Prima Pars. De Comparatis Comparandis (Oxford [London]: s.n., 1647), FSL, W2113

AD = Richard Overton, An Appeale From the Degenerate Representative Body the Commons of England ([London]: s.n., 1647), Houghton Library, Harvard, *EC65 Ov275 647a

Letters are identified by word/book/page/line

e.g. CR/‘Kings’/23/17 = ‘ K’ in ‘King,’ The City-Remonstrance Remonstrated, page 23, line 17.

Line numbers are exclusive of blank lines and running heads.

Column 1:

Row 1: CR/‘King’/23/17; Row 2: AW/‘singly’/sig. A2r/37; Row 3: SA/‘assistance’/383/21; Row 4: CR/‘Estate’/23/15; Row 5: AW/‘singly’/sig. A2r/37; Row 6: SA/‘assistance’/383/21; Row 7: CR/‘Bishops,’ first occurrence/23/19

Column 2:

Row 1: CSL/‘Kings’/9/18; Row 3: WE/‘lost’/sig. Bv/8; Row 4: VP/‘Erastian’/27/7; Row 5: SA/‘might’/335/24; Row 6: SA/‘Christ’/202/21; Row 7: SA2/‘But’/120/30

Column 3:

Row 1: RO/‘Kingdome’/51/38; Row 2: RO/‘right’/48/24; Row 3: RO/‘against’/sig. G3v/25; Row 4: RO/‘Excise’/50/32.

Column 4:

Row 2: PP/‘growth’/4/9; Row 6: PP/ in ‘injustice’/9/18; Row 7: PP2/‘But’/4/36

Column 5:

Row 1: AD/‘King’/5/34; Row 4: AD/‘goe’/6/37

All letters are Pica, approximate size (mm): 81/20 lines; X=3, x=1.8-2; Xy=4

Copies Used:

CR = J[ohn] P[rice], The City-Remonstrance Remonstrated (London: printed by Tho. Paine, 1646), FSL, 181-417.4q

SA = R. Younge, A Soveraigne Antidote against All Griefe (London: Thomas Paine for Nath. Web and William Grantham, 1647), Private Copy

SA2 = R. Younge, A Soveraigne Antidote against All Griefe (London: Thomas Paine for Nath. Web and William Grantham, 1647), Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, BV5011.Y7

AW = William Walwyn, A Whisper in the Eare of Mr. Thomas Edwards Minister (London: Thomas Paine for William Ley, 1646), Huntington Library, 18083

CM = R. Younge, The Cure of Misprision (London: Thomas Paine for Benjamin Allen, 1646), Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, BV5011.Y7

VP = Vox Populi, or the Peoples Cry Against the Clergy (London: Thomas Paine for John Pounset, 1646), Huntington Library, 18080

AP = The Additionall Plea of Lievt. Col. Iohn Lilburne ([London], s.n., 1647). Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, C 14.14 (31) Linc.

CA1 = The Case of the Army Truly Stated ([London]: s.n., 1647), FSL, W2168, copy 2

CA2 = The Case of the Army Truly Stated ([London]: s.n., 1647), Huntington Library, 10734

CA3 = The Case of the Army Truly Stated ([London]: s.n., 1647), Huntington Library, 53832

CSL = Francis White, The Copies of Severall Letters Contrary to the Opinion of the Present Powers (London: T. Paine for Tho. Slater and Stephen Bowtell, 1649), University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IUA13044

GP = J. Lilburne, The Grand Plea ([London]: s.n., 1647), FSL, 149-608q

CL1 = Francis White, The Copy of a Letter Sent to his Excellencie Sir Thomas Fairfax ([London]: s.n., 1647), Worcester College Library, AA.1.19[108], with permission from the Provost and Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford

CL2 = Francis White, The Copy of a Letter Sent to his Excellencie Sir Thomas Fairfax ([London]: s.n., 1647), Newberry Library, Chicago, Case F 4552 .966

PL1 = A Plea for the Late Agents of the Army, against the Proceedings of the Gen. Officers ([London]: s.n., 1647), Worcester College Library, AA.1.19[147], with permission from the Provost and Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford

PL2 = A Plea for the Late Agents of the Army, against the Proceedings of the Gen. Officers ([London]: s.n., 1647), University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IUA09924

Letters are identified by word/book/page/line

e.g. = CA1/‘Bishops’/16/38 = ‘B’ in ‘Bishops’, The Case of the Army Truly Stated [FSL, W2168, copy 2], page 16, line 38.

Line numbers are exclusive of blank lines and running heads.

Column 1:

Row 1: CR/‘Bishops’, first occurrence/23/19; Row 2: SA/‘assistance’/383/21; Row 3: CR/‘Lords’/23/14; Row 4: CR/‘Lords’/23/14; Row 5: AW/‘singly’/sig. A2r/37; Row 6: CM/‘God’/14/4; Row 7: CR/‘Bishops’, first occurrence/23/19; Row 8: CR/‘King’/23/17

Column 2:

Row 1: SA2/‘But’/56/7; Row 2: SA/‘Christ’/202/21; Row 3: VP/‘distance’/6/32; Row 4: SA2/‘and’/86/29 Row 5: SA/‘might’/335/24; Row 6: SA/‘God’/23/26; Row 7: SA2/‘But’/120/30; Row 8: CSL/Kings9/18

Column 3:

Row 1: CA1/‘Bishops’/16/38; Row 2: CA2/‘obstructions’/15/33; Row 3: CA3/‘and’/9/18; Row 4: CA2/‘prevented’/3/23; Row 5: CA1/‘grievances’/6/13; Row 6: CA3/‘Gover-’/15/20; Row 7: CA3/‘Bishops’/16/13

Column 4:

Row 1: GP/‘Bill’/6/32; Row 2: GP/‘testimonie’/7/14

Column 5:

Row 5: AP/‘great’/19/37; Row 6: AP/‘God’/19/26; Row 8: AP/‘King’/19/9

Column 6:

Row 3: CL1/‘did’/1/32; Row 8: CL2/‘Kings’/5/30

Column 7:

Row 3: PL1/‘could’/2/6; Row 6: PL2/‘Generall’/1/21

Top left: Factotum used in W. Sydenham, The Last Speeches and Confessions of Captain John Cade and John Mils (London: printed by Jane Coe, 1645), p. 1, FSL, 236-943q

Top right: Factotum used in John Lilburne, The Charters of London: or, the second part of Londons Liberty in Chaines Discovered ([London]: s.n., 1646), p. 1, FSL, L2087

Bottom left: Factotum used in The Copy of A Letter from The Commissioners about the Propositions (London: printed by Jane Coe, 1646), sig. A2r, Houghton Library, Harvard, *EC65 G798C 646c

Bottom right: Factotum used in Regall Tyrannie Discovered ([London]: s.n., 1647), p. 1, FSL, L2172

All letters are Pica, approximate size (mm): 82/20 lines; X=3-3.1, x=2; Xy=4

Copies Used:

BCN = A Briefe and Compendious Narrative of the Renowned Robert, Earle of Essex, His Pedegree, and his Valiant Acts (London: printed by Jane Coe, 1646), FSL, 154-157q.

LFN = A Letter from Newcastle, of The Commissioners (London: printed by J. Coe, 1647), FSL, 149-588q

UA = James Pope, The Unveiling of Antichrist (London: Jane Coe for Henry Overton, 1646), Huntington Library, 8186.

RT1 = Regall Tyrannie Discovered ([London]: s.n., 1647), FSL, L2172.

RT2 = Regall Tyrannie Discovered ([London]: s.n., 1647), Huntington Library, 8310

RT3 = Regall Tyrannie Discovered ([London]: s.n., 1647), Honnold/Mudd Library, Claremont CA, JC381 .L55 1647

VPL = Vox Plebis, or The Peoples Out-cry Against Oppression ([London]: s.n., 1646), courtesy of the Sutro Library, California State Library, PE 34:2A

CL1 = The Charters of London: or, the second part of Londons Liberty in Chaines Discovered ([London]: s.n., 1646), Huntington Library, 135742

CL2 = The Charters of London: or, the second part of Londons Liberty in Chaines Discovered ([London]: s.n., 1646), FSL, L2087

OMO1 = Oppressed Mans Oppressions, 1st ed. (1647), Huntington Library, 135740

CC = The Commoners Complaint: or, A Dreadfull Warning from Newgate, to the Commons of England ([London]: s.n., 1647), courtesy of the Sutro Library, California State Library, PE 40:14

PP2 = Amon Wilbee, Prima Pars. De Comparatis Comparandis (Oxford [London]: s.n., 1647), FSL, W2113

ALT = An Anatomy of the Lords Tyranny ([London]: s.n., 1647), FSL, L2080

LL = Londons Liberty In Chains Discovered ([London]: s.n., 1646), Huntington Library, 135738

Table F1:

Column 1:

Row 1: BCN/‘Croyland’/8/9; Row 2: BCN/ ‘Gentleman’/9/36; Row 3: BCN/‘Castle’/8/6; Row 4: BCN/‘Baskerville’/13/3; Row 5: BCN/‘Cerencester’/7/21; Row 6: BCN/‘Morpith’/9/34

Column 2:

Row 1: BCN/‘Chartley’/12/29; Row 2: LFN/‘Generall’/5/22; Row 3: UA/‘Covenant’/11/7; Row 4: LFN/‘Pembroke’/1/12; Row 5: BCN/‘Craford’/8/3; Row 6: LFN/‘Skippon’/2/21

Column 3:

Row 1: RT1/‘Commons’/46/36; Row 2: RT2/‘God’/57/21; Row 3: RT2/‘Conquest’/17/35; Row 4: RT1/‘likely’/27/13; Row 5: RT1/‘Chri’/74/2; Row 6: RT3/‘pockets’/108/28

Column 6:

Row 1: VPL/‘Conyers’/49/34; Row 2: VPL/‘Gentleman’/48/9; Row 3: VPL/‘Councel’/27/12; Row 5: VPL/‘Coron.’/56/7

Column 7:

Row 1: CL1/‘Con-’/36/6; Row 2: CL2/‘Clericos’/sig. C2r/20

Column 8:

Row 1: OMO1/‘Camerade’/22/26; Row 2: OMO1/‘God’/20/27; Row 3: OMO1/‘Cor’/22/6; Row 4: OMO1/‘broken’/28/2; Row 5: OMO1/‘Church’/21/31

Column 9:

Row 3: CC/‘Committee’/2/26; Row 5: CC/‘Commoners’/title page/15

Column 10:

Row 2: PP2/ ‘Geery’; 18/17

TABLE F2:

Column 1:

Row 1: BCN/‘Owestree’/9/24; Row 2: BCN/‘castle’/8/5; Row 3: BCN/‘Sir’/8/7; Row 4: BCN/‘L.’/9/17; Row 5: BCN/‘House’/8/8; Row 6: BCN/‘Knight’/12/23

Column 2:

Row 1: UA/‘stumbling’/8/35; Row 2: LFN/‘last’/1/11

Column 3:

Row 1:RT1/‘detested’/73/38; Row 2: RT2/‘first’/sig. Ov/13; Row 3: RT2/‘Sir’/75/11; Row 4: RT2/‘Law’/97/14; Row 5: RT2/‘House’/84/22; Row 6: RT1/‘KING’/13/13

Column 4:

Row 2: ALT/‘majesty’/9/28; Row 3: ALT/‘Sir’/7/12; Row 5: ALT/‘Honourable’/2/6

Column 5:

Row 1: LL/‘destroyers’/15/27; Row 3: LL/‘Sons’/sig. C2r/20; Row 4: LL/‘Lords’/27/6

Column 6:

Row 2: VPL/‘Arrest’/11/21; Row 4: VPL/‘Law’/11/22

Column 7:

Row 3: CL2/‘Scaccario’/17/11; Row 4: CL1/‘London’/7/21

Column 8:

Row 4: OPO1/‘Lodging’/17/14

Row 1: (left) Englands Monarch. Or a Conviction and Refutation by the Common Law (London: printed by Thomas Paine, 1644), sig. A2r, University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IUA05641; (right) Amon Wilbee, Prima Pars. De Comparatis Comparandis (Oxford [London]: s.n., 1647), p. 3, Huntington Library,148375

Row 2: (far left) Thomas Welde, An Answer to W.R. his Narration (London: printed by Thomas Paine, 1644), sig. A2r, Newberry Library, Case C 733 .733; (centre left) Amon Wilbee, Prima Pars. De Comparatis Comparandis (Oxford [London]: s.n., 1647), sig. A2r, Huntington Library, 148375

Row 2: (centre right) John Spittlehouse, Rome Ruin’d by White Hall (London: printed by Thomas Paine, 1649), p. 140, FSL, S5013; (far right) Richard Overton, An Appeale from the Degenerate Representative Body the Commons of England ([London]: s.n., 1647), p. 1, Houghton Library, Harvard, *EC65 Ov275 647a

Row 3: (left): Paul Amiraut, The Triumph of a Good Conscience (London: printed by Thomas Paine, 1648), sig. Br, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Vet. A3 d.244; (right) Francis White, The Copy of a Letter Sent to Excellencie Sir Thomas Fairfax ([London]: s.n., 1647), p. 1, Worcester College Library, Oxford, AA.1.19[108]

Top left: The Case of the Army Truly Stated ([London]: s.n., 1647), sig. Ar, setting 1, FSL, W2168, copy 2

Top right: The Case of the Army Truly Stated ([London]: s.n., 1647), sig. Dr, setting 1, FSL, W2168, copy 1

Bottom left: Englands Remembrancer, or a Warning from Heaven (London: Thomas Paine for Francis Eglesfield, 1644), p. 1, FSL, 181-396q

Bottom right: The Case of the Army Truly Stated ([London]: s.n., 1647), sig. Ar, detail from top left, FSL, W2168, copy 2.

Top left: The Case of the Army Truly Stated ([London]: s.n., 1647), sig. Dr, from alternative quire D, British Library, 103.a.46, © British Library Board

Top right: The Case of the Armie Truly stated ([London]: s.n., 1647), singleton title page, version 1, FSL, W2168, Copy 1

Bottom: The Case of the Armie Truly stated ([London]: s.n., 1647), singleton title page, version 2, Huntington Library, 31110

Image to the left: An Agreement of the People For a Firme and Present Peace (1647), FSL, 148-942q

Image above: detail from Two Letters From the Agents of the five Regiments (1647), 1, FSL, 150-220q

Table above: Original Letters are 11 –12 mm in height

Column 1: Row 1: Letter from Newcastle, of the Commissioners (London: printed by J. Coe, 1647), title page. FSL, 149-588q; Rows 2 and 3: Truth Flatters Not (London: printed by J. Coe, 1647), British Library, 669.f.11[91]. © British Library Board

Column 2: Rows 1 and 2: The Just Request of the Officers ([London: s.n., 1647), p. 1, Huntington Library, 10772

Column 3: Rows 1, 2, 3: The Case of the Army Truly Stated ([London], s.n., 1647), singleton t.p., version one, FSL, W2168, Copy 1

Column 4: Rows 1 and 3: Two Letters from the Agents of the Five Regiments (1647), p. 1, FSL, 150-220q

Column 5: Rows 1 and 3: An Agreement of the People (1647), title page, FSL, 148-942q

Column 1: Row 1: Perfect Occurrences (London: printed for J. Coe and A. Coe, 20–27 Aug. 1647), p. 230, line 30, British Library, E.518[23]; Row 2: Perfect Occurrences (London: Printed for J. Coe and A. Coe, 29 Oct.–5 Nov. 1647), p. 312, line 44, British Library, E.520[2], both © British Library Board

Column 2: Row 1: The Case of the Army Truly Stated ([London]: s.n., 1647), 12, line 24, Huntington Library 31110; Row 2: The Case of the Army Truly Stated (1647), 12, line 16, Huntington Library 31110

Footnotes