One would think the world bewitched

The radical pamphlet Killing Noe Murder was published 369 years ago. An an apology for tyrannicide.

After decapitating the king in the 1650’s, the people of England saw Oliver Cromwell take on that most tyrannical role of which he claimed to have rid the country, despite at first promising to be all but a king.

An anonymous pamphlet was delivered to him, asking “whether my Lord Protector be a tyrant or not?” and its contents echoed throughout the Islands, eschewing mental, financial and physical enslavement of the commoner’s position as “janizaries” (devotees). Whenever were its words more apt than today when tyrants rule with one hand and steal with the other?

It cost dear Edwards Sexby his life, but many had fallen just for the English to reach this point of progress: when it was no longer taken as fact that Kings and Queens ruled by ‘God’s will’, for a republic, in that any one man is level with all others.

The levellers were revolutionary in that they worked for need, not for profit. Today we must actively remember the English Levellers, remember The Diggers, remember the power of the people to make seismic change in their own destinies…

“…let not this monster think himself the more secure, that he has suppressed one
great spirit: he may be confident that longus post illum sequitur ordo idem petentium decus: (a long row of claimants of the same honour follows behind him) there’s a great roll behind, even of those that are in his own muster-rolls, that are ambitious of the name of the deliverers of their country, and they know what the action is that will purchase it.

His bed, his table is not secure; and he stands in need of other guards to defend him against his own.
Death and destruction pursues him wheresoever he goes: they follow him everywhere like his fellow-travellers, and at last they will come upon him like armed men.

Darkness is hid in his secret places. A fire not blown shall consume him; it shall go ill with him that is left in his tabernacle. He shall flee from the iron weapon, and a bow of steel shall strike him through.

Because he has oppressed and forsaken the poor, because he has violently taken away a house which he builded not, we may be confident – and so may he – that ere long all this will be accomplished. For the triumphing of the wicked is but short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment.

Though his Excellency mount up to the Heavens, and his head reaches unto the clouds, yet he shall perish for ever, like his own dung. They that have seen him shall say: Where is he?“