ABSTRACT
On October 28, 1647, the General Council of England's New Model Army met in the town of Putney to quell insurgency within its ranks, staging a debate between the Army's leaders and "agitators" elected to represent the concerns of the rank and file. Lasting two weeks, the Putney debates revolved around defining the "liberty" of Englishmen, as participants raised issues of parliamentary representation, manhood suffrage, religious tolerance, and limited government. The extraordinary events at Putney emerged during the English Civil War. In the early stages of the Putney debates, Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton argued that Army unity must be preserved at all costs, and that unity depended upon continued adherence to Ireton's "A Solemn Engagement of the Army," a contract that could not be broken without dire consequences. Ireton argued that government was designed to guard the "permanent fixed interest" of the community against the property-destroying anarchy that would be unleashed if any man could exercise political power.
