ABSTRACT
The Grandees, Levellers, and Diggers held divergent positions on the shape that society should take, but there is little question they were all exercised by the issue of property. The Grandees were chiefly concerned to preserve the status quo, especially the primacy of landed property. This chapter includes a Leveller positions on a wide range of questions beyond the issues of property and the franchise. Following C. B. Macpherson, scholars have examined the debates at Putney about the franchise. Macpherson contended that, contrary to the liberal historians who saw the Levellers as avatars of modern democracy, the franchise they proposed was restrictive because it disenfranchised two thirds of adult males. Discussions of the Levellers understandably focus on the debates at Putney in the autumn of 1647. As Austin Woolrych observed, Putney is probably the most famous debate in British history.
