On the afternoon of 5 November 1688, the people of a Devon fishing village looked out at Tor Bay and could not see the water for ships. Something like four hundred and sixty of them, carrying fifteen thousand professional soldiers, their horses, their siege guns, and a printing press. It was the largest fleet to reach English shores since 1066, it had sailed the length of the Channel unopposed, and it belonged to a foreign head of state. Fourteen months later that same kingdo

Episode 9 traces the Levellers, the print-and-petition network of London radicals and army agitators who took Sir Edward Coke’s defense of English liberty and moved its foundation out from under it.