by Carole Barclay
ON THE face of it St Mary’s in Putney
looks like just any other heavily restored medieval parish church. But it’s a
different story inside because back in 1647 this was where the representatives
of the New Model Army opened a discussion of how they saw the future after the
defeat of the Royalists during the Civil War.
Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan leader who
would later lead the republic that followed the execution of Charles Stuart in
1649, presided over the sessions that are now known as the ‘Putney Debates’.
Here Colonel Thomas Rainsborough argued with General Henry Ireton over future
voting rights. Rainsborough, who supported the democratic ‘Leveller’ movement,
called for universal manhood suffrage. Ireton, who later married Cromwell’s
daughter, was a ‘grandee’ who believed this was a recipe for anarchy and that
only those with a stake in the country – landowners, merchants and shopkeepers
– had a legitimate right to vote.
Rainsborough
famously said: “For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath
a life to live, as the greatest he” and his words are now immortalised on the
wall of the church. Below is a small exhibition that tells the story of the
church, which goes back at least to the 13th century as well as the
background to the Putney Debates, which took place towards the end of the
bourgeois revolutionary upsurge that ended the rule of a tyrant to found the
short-lived Republic of England or Commonwealth as it was styled in English.
You can see the late Tony Benn and other politicians and scholars talk about
the relevance of the Putney Debates in a 12 minute video in the room or listen
to audio presentations on the debates.
St Mary’s is an
Anglican church just five minutes from Putney station. It’s open throughout the
week and there’s an excellent café at the entrance!
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