The Agitators were a political movement as well as elected representatives of soldiers, including members of the New Model Army under Lord General Fairfax, during the English Civil War.
The soldiers, whose pay was largely in arrears, refused to accept either alternative, and eight of the cavalry regiments elected agitators, called at first commissioners, who laid their grievances before the three generals, and whose letter was read in the House of Commons on the 30 April 1647.
[1] Again alarmed, the agitators decided to resist; a mutiny occurred in one regiment and the attempt at disbandment failed.
A few weeks later, there was another meeting while the army was camped at Thriplow Heath near Royston, the soldiers refused the offers made by Parliament, and the agitators demanded a march towards London and the "purging" of the House of Commons, which did not happen.
Gardiner says of them, "Little as it was intended at the time, nothing was more calculated than the existence of this elected body of agitators to give to the army that distinctive political and religious character which it ultimately bore".