The Agreement of the People

The first day of what will one day be called the putney debates, opened on october 20 eighth. The new agitators charged that the grandees were betraying both the spirit and the letter of the solemn engagement signed back in june. Cromwell tried to scotch the idea but a certain colonel thomas rainsborough stirred up support for immediate debate. This debate led, among other things, to the famous exchange between rainsborough and henry ireton. Ireton was incredulous on the point of universal suffrage - did rainsborough really mean that every man had the right to vote? What about servants and beggars and vagabonds? Surely you can't mean