Pamphleteer who wrote satirical attacks on the Presbyterians and radical political tracts. He emerged as a founder member of the Leveller movement.
Biography
Nothing is known for certain about Richard Overton's origins or early life. The earliest pamphlets attributed to him appeared around 1640-2 and are satirical attacks on Catholicism and the Laudian church reforms. He probably became a convert to General Baptism around this time. In January 1644, Overton published Man's Mortalitie, in which he argued that the human soul as well as the body is subject to death, but both are resurrected at the Last Judgement. This belief was widespread among General Baptists, but was denounced as heretical by Presbyterians.
In 1645, Overton published a series of satirical attacks on the Presbyterians under the pseudonym Martin Mar-Priest (a reference to the Elizabethan "Marprelate" tracts), which proved popular among Independents and soldiers of the New Model Army. He also began to write political tracts expounding what were to become key principles of the Leveller movement: the abolition of tithes, monopolies and the excise, reform of the law, annual parliaments with paid state officials excluded from seeking election. The Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens, published in July 1646 and probably written by Overton in collaboration with William Walwyn, is generally regarded as the founding document of the Leveller movement.
Overton took up the imprisoned John Lilburne's case against the House of Lords in An Alarum to the House of Lords, published in August 1646. The pamphlet was condemned and Overton was promptly arrested. Upon refusing to acknowledge the Lords' jurisdiction, he was committed to Newgate Prison. Like Lilburne, Overton kept up a steady stream of pamphlets during his imprisonment in which he proclaimed individual rights and the nation's liberties. He also called upon the New Model Army to intervene in reforming the corrupt Parliament and took the first steps towards associating the civilian Levellers with the army Agitators by drawing attention to the soldiers' grievances against Parliament. Leveller supporters kept up a sustained campaign of petitioning, which resulted in the release of Overton and Lilburne in the autumn of 1647. After holding a series of meetings with Agitators in London, they both went to Ware in Hertfordshire to support the Leveller mutineers at Corkbush Field, only to find the mutiny suppressed and the Grandees firmly in control.
In December 1648, Overton attended the meetings at Whitehall when the Grandees and London Independents debated the constitutional proposals set out in An Agreement of the People. However, he and Lilburne walked out of the talks in protest at the Grandees' attempts to modify the Agreement. Unlike Lilburne, Overton commended the Army's purging of Parliament and the execution of King Charles, but he mistrusted Cromwell's motives and attacked him in The Hunting of the Foxes (March 1649), written in support of five soldiers cashiered for trying to organise a petition critical of the new régime. Around the same time, Lilburne published the second part of England's New Chains Discovered, which Parliament condemned as treasonous. Lilburne, Overton, Walwyn and Thomas Prince were arrested and brought before the Council of State. Refusing to incriminate themselves by admitting authorship of the document, the Leveller leaders were imprisoned in the Tower of London to await trial. The final version of the Agreement of the People was published in May 1649 during their imprisonment, but the suppression of the army Levellers at Burford by Fairfax and Cromwell in the same month effectively ended the movement's political viability.
The Leveller leaders were released from prison in November 1649 following Lilburne's trial and acquittal. After the establishment of Cromwell's Protectorate, Overton became involved in Leveller-Royalist conspiracies against the government and joined Edward Sexby at Amsterdam in February 1655. The plots came to nothing, however, and Overton returned to England, where he published a revised version of his treatise Man Wholly Mortal. Although several political tracts and pamphlets are attributed to Overton during the Protectorate, details of his later life are uncertain.
Essay from 1646
An Arrow Against All Tyrants
Overton was one of the Levellers who, during the English Civil War, were among the very first to articulate the early ideas of liberalism. In this essay, he argues that every individual owns himself and so has rights to life, liberty, and property.
To every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature not to be invaded or usurped by any. For every one, as he is himself, so he has a self-propriety, else could he not be himself; and of this no second may presume to deprive any of without manifest violation and affront to the very principles of nature and of the rules of equity and justice between man and man. Mine and thine cannot be, except this be. No man has power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man’s. I may be but an individual, enjoy my self and my self-propriety and may right myself no more than my self, or presume any further; if I do, I am an encroacher and an invader upon another man’s right — to which I have no right. For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like propriety, liberty and freedom; and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a natural, innate freedom and propriety — as it were writ in the table of every man’s heart, never to be obliterated — even so are we to live, everyone equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege; even all whereof God by nature has made him free.
And this by nature everyone’s desire aims at and requires; for no man naturally would be befooled of his liberty by his neighbour’s craft or enslaved by his neighbour’s might. For it is nature’s instinct to preserve itself from all things hurtful and obnoxious; and this in nature is granted of all to be most reasonable, equal and just: not to be rooted out of the kind, even of equal duration with the creature. And from this fountain or root all just human powers take their original — not immediately from God (as kings usually plead their prerogative) but mediately by the hand of nature, as from the represented to the representers. For originally God has implanted them in the creature, and from the creature those powers immediately proceed and no further. And no more may be communicated than stands for the better being, weal, or safety thereof. And this is man’s prerogative and no further; so much and no more may be given or received thereof: even so much as is conducent to a better being, more safety and freedom, and no more. He that gives more, sins against his own flesh; and he that takes more is thief and robber to his kind — every man by nature being a king, priest and prophet in his own natural circuit and compass, whereof no second may partake but by deputation, commission, and free consent from him whose natural right and freedom it is… .
For by nature we are the sons of Adam, and from him have legitimately derived a natural propriety, right and freedom, which only we require. And how in equity you can deny us we cannot see. It is but the just rights and prerogative of mankind (whereunto the people of England are heirs apparent as well as other nations) which we desire; and sure you will not deny it us, that we may be men and live like men. If you do, it will be as little safe for yourselves and posterity as for us and our posterity. For sir, look: what bondage, thraldom, or tyranny soever you settle upon us, you certainly, or your posterity will taste of the dregs. If by your present policy and (abused) might, you chance to ward it from yourselves in particular, yet your posterity — do what you can — will be liable to the hazard thereof.
These selections have been excerpted from a letter written by Richard Overton, while a prisoner at Newgate, to Henry Marten, a member of the House of Commons, in protest of what he saw as tyranny.
Source: www.libertarianism.org
