subject to no authority, including Parliament. During the Caroline era, divisions between Parliament and the Crown over the exaction of taxes and matters of religion would divide the two bodies, leading Charles to initiate a period of personal rule in which he abstained from seeking the advice of Parliament. Although attempts were made to redress the prevailing problems, such as through the publication of the Grand Remonstrance (a list of parliamentary grievances), this divide would reaching a breaking point. Many members of Parliament believed that the King had overstepped the boundaries of his authority under the principles of English constitutionalism. The resultant was a period of civil conflict throughout the British Isles. These series of wars would …show more content…
Early dissenters sought to redefine the English constitutionalism, propagating the expansion of rights among a wider distribution of the English population. One such group, the Levellers, believed that the right to vote should have been extended to the all Englishmen over the age of 21, along with a more even distribution of parliamentary seats. The Levellers also propagated anti-clerical thought, believing that the established church utilized its authority to suppress the will of the common people. The imagined communities of the Diggers, Ranters, and Quakers also arose in this era of political tumult, a period made more politically uncertain with the 1649 regicide. These imagine communities drew upon these earlier principles of the Levellers, including sociopolitical equality and anticlerical thought, in the formation of their own imagined communities. Specifically, the Diggers sought to further apply Leveller principles to the realm of landholding, coming to refer to themselves as the “True