Leveller-influenced soldiers mutinied at several locations over political demands, arrears and orders for service in Ireland. Cromwell and Fairfax rapidly suppressed the largest concentration at Burford in Oxfordshire in May 1649. Three soldiers were executed in the churchyard, ending the Levellers' effective power within the army.

Leveller pamphlets commemorated the executed soldiers as victims of leaders who had betrayed the revolution's promises. Their plain-spoken protests remained an important archive of dissent, popular rights and defeated political possibility.