Overton, Richard

▪ British pamphleteer and rebel

flourished 1631–64

      English pamphleteer and a Leveler leader during the English Civil Wars and Commonwealth.

      The details of Overton's early life are obscure, though he probably lived in Holland and studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, before becoming a professional actor and playwright in Southwark. In 1640 he became a political activist, writing some 50 tracts attacking the Church of England, monopolies, the Earl of Strafford (Charles I's controversial adviser), and civil law. In Man's Mortality (1643), he argued that the soul as well as the body dies and must be resurrected. His tracts of 1645–46, published under the pseudonym Martin Marpriest, castigated the Presbyterians and the Westminster Assembly of Divines for their intolerance. In a series of 40 tracts published between 1645 and 1649 and 20 editorials in the Leveler newspaper, The Moderate (1648–49), he enunciated his radical political theory, with its key ideas of popular sovereignty, the equality of all men under natural law, republican government, and the social contract as the foundation of government and society. He also demanded major social and legal reforms, including the abolition of mandatory tithes, the return of enclosed lands to communal use, and university reform.

      Within the Leveler movement, of which he was a key leader, Overton worked as a theorist, a journalist, and a political organizer. He was especially effective with the use of mass petitions espousing the Leveler cause. For his efforts he was imprisoned in Newgate (1646–47) and the Tower of London (1649). By the time of his release in November 1649, the government had suppressed the Leveler movement, but in 1654 Overton was still trying to create an alliance of Levelers, army republicans, and Royalists to topple Oliver Cromwell. Although Overton had to flee to the Continent, he was back and plotting again by 1656. He apparently continued to support republican causes into the early 1660s, after which nothing is known of him.

Additional Reading

Joseph Frank, The Levellers: A History of the Writings of Three Seventeenth-Century Social Democrats: John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn (1955, reprinted 1969).

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