Varieties of Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism in Context

Home , Carlo Rossetti, Gerrard Winstanley, Henry Ferne, Joseph Caryl, Masaniello, Peter Sterry

Varieties of Seventeenth- and Early m o .c te Eighteenth-Century English Radicalisma g h s .a in Context w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w Dedicated to our families and those who havew taught us w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

m o Varieties of Seventeenth- and c . te a g h s .a Early Eighteenth-Century Englishw w w

m o .c te Radicalism in Context a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s Edited by .a w w w

m Ariel Hessayono .c te a Goldsmiths College,g UK h s .a w andw w

m David Fo innegan .c te a Goldsmithsg College, UK h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material © Ariel Hessayon, David Finnegan and The Contributors 2011

m o .c te All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievala g h system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,s .a w recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. w w

m o .c Ariel Hessayon and David Finnegan have asserted their right under the Copyright,te Designs a g h and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. s .a w w w

Published by m o .c Ashgate Publishing Limited ashgate Publishing Companyte a g h Wey Court East suite 420 s .a w Union Road 101 Cherry Streetw w

Farnham Burlington m o .c Surrey, GU9 7Pt VT 05401-4405te a g h England USA s .a w w w www.ashgate.com m o .c te a g h s British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data .a w w w Varieties of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English radicalism in context. m o 1. Radicalism—England—History—17th century..c te a g 2. Radicalism—England—History—18th century.h s .a I. Hessayon, Ariel. II. Finnegan, David. w w w

320.5’3–dc22 m o .c te a g h Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publications Data .a w w Varieties of seventeenth- and early w eighteenth-century English radicalism in context /

m [edited by] Ariel Hessayon and Davido Finnegan. .c te a p. cm. g h s .a Includes index. w w w ISBN 978-0-7546-6905-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7546-9601-8 (ebook) m o 1. Radicalism—Great Britain—.c History—17th century. 2. Radicalism—Great Britain— te a g h History—18th century. 3.s Radicalism—Religious aspects. I. Hessayon, Ariel. II. Finnegan, .a w David. w w

HN400.R3V37 2010m o .c te 303.48’4—dc22 a g h s 2010043380 .a w w w

m ISBN 9780754669050o (hbk) .c te ISBN 9780754696018a (ebk) g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te Contents a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a Notes on Contributors w vii w w Acknowledgements xi m o .c xiii Abbreviations te a g h s .a w Introduction: Reappraising Early Modern Radicals and Radicalismsw 1 w

m Ariel Hessayon and David Finnegan o .c te a g h s 1 the Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics of Antinomianism:.a w w w Richard Crashaw, John Saltmarsh and the Language of m o Religious Radicalism in the 1640s .c 31 te a g Nicholas McDowell h s .a w w w

2 radicalism Relocated: Royalist Politicsm and Pamphleteering o .c of the Late 1640s te 51 a g h Jason Peacey s .a w w w

m 3 news from the New Jerusalem:o Giles Calvert and the Radical .c te a Experience g 69 h s Mario Caricchio .a w w w

m o 4 gerrard Winstanley, Radical.c Reformer 87 te a g Ariel Hessayon h s .a w w w

5 the Poetics of Biblicalm Prophecy: Abiezer Coppe’s Late o .c te Converted Midrasha 113 g h s Noam Flinker .a w w w

m 6 empire-Building:o The English Republic, Scotland and Ireland 129 .c te a Jim Smythg h s .a w w w 7 seventeenth-Century Italy and English Radical Movements 145 m o .c Stefanote Villani a g h s .a w 8 wA Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 161 w

m o Sarah Hutton .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material vi Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

9 radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late m o Seventeenth-Century England 183.c te a g h Warren Johnston s .a w w w

10 mapping Friendship and Dissent: The Letters from m o .c te Joseph Boyse to Ralph Thoresby, 1680–1710 a 205 g h s Sandra Hynes .a w w w

m o 11 The Books and Times of Anthony Collins (1676–1729), .c te a Free-thinker, Radical Reader and Independent Whig g 221 h s .a Giovanni Tarantino w w w

m o .c 12 William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture, and thete a g h Nature of Radicalism s 241 .a w Jason McElligott w w

m o .c te Index a 261 g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te Notes on Contributors a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a Mario Caricchio, now an independent scholar, was a researcher at thew University w w of Bologna and taught early modern history at the SSIS-Toscana. H e is the author m o .c of Religione, politica e commercio di libri nella rivoluzione inglese.te Gli autori di a g h Giles Calvert (Genoa: Name, 2003) and Popolo e rivoluzione?s La storiografia e i .a w movimenti radicali della rivoluzione inglese (Milan: Guerini ew associati, 2005). Dr w

m Caricchio has also written a number of essays on the Englisho Revolution. .c te a g h s David Finnegan is currently teaching at Goldsmiths,.a University of London w w w and at Rugby school. He has published several essays on Irish Catholics and m o Catholicism in the early modern period and is currently.c completing a monograph te a g based on his doctoral dissertation entitled Theh Politics of Irish Catholicism, s .a 1534–1653 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, forthcoming).w He has also co-edited a w w recently completed essay collection, The Flightm of the Earls – Imeacht na nIarlaí o .c (Londonderry: Guildhall Press, 2010). te a g h s .a w Noam Flinker is Associate Professor inw the Department of English Language w

m and Literature at the University of Haifa.o He is the author of The Song of Songs .c te a in English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge:g D.S. Brewer, 2000). Professor h s Flinker’s scholarly interests range .a from the Bible as literature through to John w w w Donne, John Milton and seventeenth-century anticipations of Ulysses. m o .c te a g Ariel Hessayon is lecturer in hthe Department of History at Goldsmiths, University s .a w of London. He is the author wof ‘Gold Tried in the Fire’. The Prophet TheaurauJohn w

Tany and the English Revolutionm (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), as well as the co- o .c te editor, with Nicholas Keene,a of a collection of essays on Scripture and Scholarship g h s in Early Modern England.a (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). His current research is w w primarily focussed onw the reception of the writings of the German mystic Jacob

m Boehme, Gerrard Winstanleyo and the Diggers, and Jews and crypto-Jews in early .c te a modern England.g h s .a w w w Sarah Hutton currently holds a chair at Aberystwyth University. Her main area m o .c of researchte is seventeenth-century intellectual history, with a special interest in the a g h Cambridges Platonists and women philosophers. Recent publications include, Anne .a w Conway.w A Woman Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004); co-edited w

m with oPaul Schuurman, Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries and Legacy .c te (Dordrecht:a Springer, 2008); Benjamin Furly (1646–1714), a Quaker Merchant g h s and.a his Milieu (Florence: Olschki, 2007); and, co-edited with Douglas Hedley, w w w © Copyrighted Material viii Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Platonism at the Origins of Modernity (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008). She is Director m o of the series International Archives of the History of Ideas. .c te a g h s .a w Sandra Hynes works at the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studiesw at w the University of Aberdeen. Her doctoral dissertation was a study of disciplinem o .c te and theology in Restoration Quakerism in Britain and Ireland, and shea has since g h s published several articles on Quakers in Ireland. Dr Hynes’s current.a research w w centres on the relationship between theology and disability from c.w1530 to 1700.

m o .c te a Warren Johnston is an Assistant Professor at Algoma Universityg in Ontario, h s .a Canada. His research focuses on religious, political, and socialw thought in early w w modern England. He is the author of Revelation Restored: The Apocalypse in m o .c Later Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Boydellte Press, 2011) and is a g h currently working on a project examining sermon literatures in seventeenth- and .a w eighteenth-century England. w w

m o .c te Nicholas McDowell is Associate Professor of Englisha at the University of Exeter. g h s He is the author of The English Radical Imagination:.a Culture, Religion, and w w w Revolution, 1630–1660 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003) and Poetry and Allegiance m o in the English Civil Wars: Marvell and the. c Cause of Wit (Oxford: Oxford UP, te a g 2008). He is the editor, with Nigel Smith,h of The Oxford Handbook of Milton s .a (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009; paperback edn,w 2011), which won the Irene Samuel w w

Memorial Award of the Milton Societym of America. His edition of Milton’s 1649 o .c prose is forthcoming in The Oxford Completete Works of John Milton. Volume VI: a g h Vernacular Regicide and Republicans Tracts. .a w w w

m Jason McElligott works at the oTrinity Long Room Hub, the arts and humanities .c te a research institute at Trinity Collegeg Dublin. He is the author of Cromwell: Our h s .a Chief of Enemies (Dundalk:w Dundalgan, 1994), Royalism, Print and Censorship w w in Revolutionary England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), and Censorship m o and the Press, 1640–1660.c (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009). He has also te a g h edited Fear, Exclusions and Revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s .a w (Aldershot: Ashgate,w 2006), and co-edited two collections with David L. Smith, w

m Royalists and Royalismo during the English Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge .c te UP, 2007) and Royalistsa and Royalism during the Interregnum (Manchester: g h s Manchester UP,.a 2010). He and Geoff Kemp were the general editors of the four- w w volume sourcebookw Censorship and the Press, 1580–1720 (London: Pickering &

m o Chatto, 2009)..c te a g h s .a Jason Peaceyw is Senior Lecturer in History at University College London. He is w w the editor of The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (Basingstoke: Palgrave, m o .c 2001),te co-editor, with Chris Kyle, of Parliament at Work (Woodbridge: Boydell a g h Press,s 2002), and editor of The Print Culture of Parliament, 1600–1800 (Edinburgh: .a w Edinburghw UP, 2007). He is also the author of Politicians and Pamphleteers. w © Copyrighted Material Contributors ix © Copyrighted Material

Propaganda in the Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate 2004).m o .c te Recent articles have focussed on parliamentary politics and the Protectoratea of g h s Richard Cromwell. He is currently completing a book on popular participationa in . w w parliamentary politics during the mid-seventeenth century. w

m o .c te a Jim Smyth is Professor of Irish and British History at the Universityg of Notre h s .a Dame. His publications include The Making of the United Kingdom,w 1660–1800: w w State, Religion and Identity in Britain and Ireland (Harlow: Longmans, 2001). m o .c He is also the editor of Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Union,te Ireland in the a g h 1790s (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000). s .a w w w

m Giovanni Tarantino is a member of the International Consortiumo for Research in .c te the Humanities ‘Dynamics in the History of Religions betweena Asia and Europe’ g h s (Ruhr University Bochum, Germany) and an Honorary. a Research Associate in the w w w School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia. A former member of m o the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton NJ, his.c publications include Martin te a g Clifford 1624–1677: deismo e tolleranza nell’Inghilterrah della Restaurazione s .a (Florence: Olschki, 2000) and Lo scrittoio di Anthonyw Collins (1676–1729): i libri w w e i tempi di un libero pensatore (Milan: Francom Angeli, 2007). o .c te a g h Stefano Villani is riceratore in the Departments of History at the University of .a w Pisa and an Assistant Professor in the Dw epartment of History at the University w

m of Maryland. He is the author of Tremolantio e papisti (Rome: Edizioni di storia .c te a e letteratura, 1996) and Il calzolaio gquacchero e il finto cadì (Palermo: Sellerio, h s 2001), as well as the editor of a modern.a edition of a text recounting the foreign w w w travels of two English Quaker women (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2003). m o Dr Villani has written numerous.c articles on early modern topics and his current te a g research projects are on Italianh translations of the Book of Common Prayer and s .a w seventeenth-century Englishw translations of Italian books. w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te Acknowledgements a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a This volume emerged from the conference ‘Rediscovering radicalismg in the h s .a British Isles and Ireland, c. 1550 – c. 1700 held at Goldsmiths College,w University w w of London between 21 and 23 June 2006. The editors wish to thank all of the m o .c speakers at this conference, and all of those who attended, fort e their enthusiasm a g h and interest. The financial and other support offered on thoses occasions by the .a w British Academy and the Department of History at Goldsmithsw is also gratefully w

m acknowledged. We should especially like to single out hereo the syndics of Friends .c te House Library, London for generously allowing us to usea the striking images of g h s James Nayler which adorned the conference poster and.a website. Special thanks w w w also to Tom Gray, Mary Murphy, Nick Wain and the rest of the staff at Ashgate for m o their courtesy, kindness and efficiency. Finally the contributors.c deserve our special te a g thanks for their unstinting cooperation and (of course)h their unfailing patience. s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te Abbreviations a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a BL British Library w w w Bodl. Bodleian Library, Oxford m o .c Burgess, G. Burgess, ‘A Matter of Context: “Radicalism”te and the a g h ‘Matter of Context’ english Revolution’, in M. Caricchios and G. Tarantino .a w (eds), Cromohs Virtual Seminars. Recentw historiographical w

m trends of the British Studies (17th–18tho Centuries), .c te 2006–2007: 2, .a w w w Burgess, G. Burgess, ‘Introduction’, in G. Burgess and M. m o ‘Introduction’ Festenstein (eds), English.c Radicalism, 1550–1850 te a g (Cambridge, 2007) h s .a Burgess, G. Burgess, ‘Radicalismw and the English revolution’, in w w

‘Radicalism and the G. Burgess and M. Festensteinm (eds), English Radicalism, o .c English revolution’ 1550–1850 (Cambridge,te 2007) a g h CC Sir Roger Twysden,s Certaine Considerations Upon the .a w Government ofw England, ed. J.M. Kemble (Camden w

m Society, 45, 1849)o .c te a CCC Calendar ofg the Proceedings of the Committee for h s Compounding.a , ed. M.A.E. Green (London, 1889–93) w w w CH Church History m o CJ Commons.c Journal te a g CKS Centreh for Kentish Studies s .a w CL Sirw Roger Twysden, The Commoners Liberty: or the w

English-Mansm Birth-Right ([14 September] 1648) o .c te EHR a English Historical Review g h s HJ .a Historical Journal w w HLQ w Huntington Library Quarterly

m JBS o Journal of British Studies .c te a JEH g Journal of Ecclesiastical History h s .a LPL w Lambeth Palace Library w w ODNB Oxford Dictionary National Biography m o .c P&P te Past and Present a g h SCJ s Sixteenth Century Journal .a w SUL, HPw Sheffield University Library, Hartlib Papers w

m TN o ‘Sir Roger Twysden’s Narrative’, Archaeologia Cantiana, .c te a 1–4 (1858–61) g h s TNA .a The National Archives, London w w wTRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society © Copyrighted Material xiv Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

WMQ William and Mary Quarterly m o YAS Yorkshire Archaeological Society .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te Introduction a g h s .a w Reappraising Early Modern Radicals andw w

m o .c Radicalisms te a g h s .a w w w Ariel Hessayon and David Finnegan m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te ‘The errours of Definitions multiply themselves, accordinga as the reckoning g h s proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they.a see, but cannot avoyd, w w without reckoning anew from the beginning; in which lyesw the foundation of their

m errours’ o .c te a g Thomash Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), p. 15 s .a w w w

m o .c The Meaning of Words and the Problem ofte Anachronism a g h s .a w Radical was originally a word relating w to a root or roots which, by the early w

m modern period, was used particularlyo in philosophy, astrology and philology. .c te a Hence radical moisture (‘humidum gradicale’) was understood to be the ‘natural h s moysture’ or ‘fundamental juyce of .athe body, whereby the natural heat is nourished w w w and preserved, as the flame in a Lamp is preserved by oyle’. In astrology a radical m o question was one put forward when.c ‘the Lord of the ascendent, and Lord of the te a g hour are of one nature and triplicitie’.h Similarly, philologists divided the letters s .a w that made up Hebrew wordsw into root and functional letters, the radical or radix w being the essential and permanentm part of the word form. By extension, radical o .c te also signified origin a and hence fundamental qualities inherent in the nature or g h 1 s essence of a person or.a thing. As Conal Condren has observed, however, radical w w only became a politicalw term associated with thorough or far-reaching political and

m social reform towardso the end of the eighteenth century. Indeed, it was apparently .c te a not until autumng 1819 – shortly before Lord Byron thought radical might mean h s .a uprooting – thatw ‘radicalism’ was coined by Jeremy Bentham. Nor was it a w w univocal word for within a decade radicalism meant not only the political views m o .c characteristicte of radicals but thoroughness of method as well. Condren’s point a g h was that shistorians aim to know the past as it really was, whereas anachronism .a w manifestlyw ‘specifies the past as it really wasn’t’. Accordingly, he stressed that ‘we w

m o .c te a g h s 1 .a Oxford English Dictionary; I. Lancashire (ed.), LEME: Lexicons of Early Modern w w Englishw , http://leme.library.utoronto.ca/. © Copyrighted Material 2 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

2 need to be particularly fastidious about our interpretive vocabulary’. Jonathan m o Clark goes further, regarding radicalism as an early nineteenth-century neologism.c te a g h applicable to ‘a fusion of universal suffrage, Ricardian economics and programmatics .a 3 w atheism’. As Glen Burgess notes in a recent debate on radicalism and the wEnglish w

Revolution, the work of both Condren and Clark may be characterised as am sceptical o 4 .c te or nominalist approach: radicalism did not exist until it was named. a g h s This is not something we agree with. If we remove anachronisms.a from w w our discourses we should be consistent – though to be fair tow Condren he

m o seems primarily and almost invariably concerned with purging.c the language te 5 a historians use to explain early modern politics. By this reasoning,g if one were h s .a to write about the world depicted in Geoffrey Chaucer’sw Canterbury Tales, w w using words that came into the English language after 1400 would be out of the m o .c question. Likewise, in discussing seventeenth-century te England we could not a g h speak of ‘angelology’ (unrecorded before 1753), ‘anti-Semitism’s (unrecorded .a w before 1882), a ‘homosexual’ (unrecorded beforew 1892), a ‘Neoplatonist’ w

m (unrecorded before 1837), ‘numerology’ (unrecordedo before 1907), a .c te ‘pantheist’ (unrecorded before 1705), a ‘vegetarian’a (unrecorded before 1839) or, g h s 6 significantly, the ‘English Revolution’ (popularised.a during the 1820s). The period’s w w w neologisms such as Milton’s ‘pandemonium’ would only complicate matters. It m o seems that in their desire to expurgate anachronism.c from our texts nominalists te a g would have us ignore the lesson of Jorge Luish Borges’s short story ‘Pierre Menard, s .a Author of the Quixote’: we cannot becomew early moderns bereft of hindsight; living w w imitations of our subjects, capable of replicatingm their language and forgetting all o .c that we know about the exceedingly complexte events that followed their deaths. Yet a g h that is not to say, as Condren highlighteds with his caveat against bad practice, that .a w w radical and its –ism(s) are not problematicw terms.

m Whatever else may be said abouto the linguistic turn, the merits and deficiencies .c te a of post-structuralism, and itsg impact on historical and literary studies, it is an h s .a w w w

m 2 o Jeremy Bentham, ‘.cRadical Reform Bill’ and ‘Radicalism not dangerous’, in te a g J. Bowring (ed.), The Worksh of Jeremy Bentham (11 vols, Edinburgh, 1838–43), 3, s .a pp. 559, 560, 599; C. Condren,w ‘Radicals, Conservatives and Moderates in early modern w w political thought: a case of Sandwich Islands syndrome’, History of Political Thought, 10 m o (1989): pp. 526–33; .cC. Condren, The Politics of Language in Seventeenth-Century England te a g (Basingstoke, 1994),h pp. 155–8. s 3 .a J.C.D. Clark,w ‘Religion and the origins of radicalism in nineteenth-century Britain’, w w in G. Burgessm and M. Festenstein (eds), English Radicalism, 1550–1850 (Cambridge, o .c 2007), p. 241.te a 4 g h Burgess,s ‘Matter of Context’, 2; Burgess, ‘Introduction’, pp. 8–9; Burgess, .a w ‘Radicalismw and the English Revolution’, p. 63. w 5 m C. Condren, ‘Afterword: Radicalism Revisited’, in Burgess and Festenstein (eds), o .c Englishte Radicalism, pp. 311–13; cf. J. Holstun, Ehud’s Dagger. Class Struggle in the a g h Englishs Revolution (London and New York, 2002), pp. 22–4. .a w 6 w w OED. © Copyrighted Material Introduction 3 © Copyrighted Material

inescapable conclusion that words are signifiers and what they signify can onlym o .c te be interpreted in relation to both the signified and other signifiers. Accordingly,a g h s words depend upon each other to provide meaning – whether they are presenta . w w or missing in texts. As context shifts so can the sense of a word. Furthermore,w

m because the meaning of certain English words has changed over time, somethingo .c te a that as historians and literary scholars we are (or should be) attuned to,g it is worth h s .a comparing the present political, social, philosophical and culturalw meaning of w w radical with contemporary alternatives. m o .c In an exploration of late Stuart radicals and their manifestos,te Richard Greaves a g h repeated a case – which had its trenchant critics – for thes usefulness of the .a w anachronistic term radical in discussing various groups of anw otherwise disparate w

m nature (Baptists, Covenanters, Fifth Monarchists, Quakers, rebelso and republicans). .c te Nor, as he pointed out, was ‘the contemporary lexicon a... lacking in words and g h s phrases’ to portray those in opposition to the post-Restoration.a Stuart regimes or w w w the Church of England. Thus terms with unmistakable pejorative connotations m o were bandied about: the disaffected, ill-affected and.c fanatics; factious, seditious, te a g restless and rebellious kind of people; and disloyalh dissenters, nonconformists s 7 .a and sectaries. The same holds true for the Englishw Revolution and earlier still in w w the seventeenth century. Hence there was a profusionm of generally derogatory and o .c often new words applied to both religious communitieste and political movements a g h – even when these groups lacked an identifiables and cohesive leadership capable of .a w imposing internal discipline and adherencew to a unified set of agreed principles. To w

m take one set of examples, there were thoseo distinguished by their real or attributed .c te a activities: Diggers, Dippers, Levellers,g Quakers, Ranters and Seekers. Diggers h s were described as ‘new fangled’,.a ‘distracted, crack brained’, ‘disorderly and w w 8 w tumultuous sort of people’. Dippers or Anabaptists were blasphemous, confused, m o confuted or erring in doctrine. Levellers.c were accused of seeking to abolish social te a g distinctions and private ownershiph of property, of levelling men’s estates and s .a w introducing anarchy. They werew also defamed as atheists, devils, mutineers, rebels w and villains. Quakers werem mocked for trembling before the secular authority of o .c te magistrates, disparaginga accounts of their assemblies conveying chaotic scenes of g h s ecstatic posturing attributed.a to either diabolic pacts or epilepsy. Ranters – those who w w declaimed vehementlyw – were associated with revelling, roaring, drinking, whoring,

m swearing and all mannero of wickedness. And Seekers or Expecters were likened to .c te a libertines who hadg scandalously defected from the bosom of the Church. h s .a None of thisw is to suggest that these pejorative contemporary words, commonly w w employed in a polemical context, must necessarily be synonymous with what we m o .c now call radicalism.te After all, anti-Catholic stereotypes and pamphlets targeting a g h s .a w 7 w rw .L. Greaves, ‘“That Kind of People”: Late Stuart Radicals and their Manifestoes, a

m Functionalo Approach’, in Burgess and Festenstein (eds), English Radicalism, pp. 87–94. .c te a8 g a. Hessayon, ‘Restoring the Garden of Eden in England’s Green and Pleasant Land: h s The.a Diggers and the Fruits of the Earth’, Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 2, no. 2 w w (2008):w p. 2. © Copyrighted Material 4 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material bishops, barbarous, bloodthirsty, cruel and cussing Cavaliers, as well as evil m o counsellors remind us of the ubiquity of propaganda. It does, however, alert.c us te a g h to the fact that just because certain signifiers did not exist during the seventeenths .a w 9 century it does not necessarily follow that the phenomena were also absent.w w

Indeed, effacing the term radical from our analyses does not seem a practicablem o .c te solution. In its absence there would be silence, while finding a universallya agreed g h s substitute would be equally problematic. Moreover, for more than a.a century – at w w least since George Gooch’s pioneering The History of English Democraticw Ideas

m o in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1898) – and especially .csince the 1930s, te a radical and radicalism have been used with ever increasing regularityg to ascribe h s .a particular characteristics to individuals and the ideas they espousedw during our w 10 w period. That is long enough for them to have become part of the discourse even m o .c if the various and occasionally conflicting ways in whichte scholars have used the a g h words to talk about the past have yet to be fully documented.s And it is a point .a w conceded by Burgess who acknowledges, despite hisw nominalist leanings, that w 11 m ‘doing without the category of radicalism’ is a forlorno hope. .c te a g h s .a w w w As for how we should understand radical and radicalism, we would do well both m o to provide a brief history of usage (which has.c not been attempted before), and to te a g take Hobbes’s advice (cited above) that anyoneh aspiring to true knowledge must s .a examine the definitions of their predecessorsw – and if necessary either correct or w w at least critique them. Thus to begin withm the first issue of a journal called The o .c Radical (1831), a Radical must prescribete not a partial or moderate dose of political a g h medicine but radical treatment for thes ills afflicting the body politic: .a w w w

m which will go to the radix, or rooto of the national disease. He will physic, purge, .c te a bleed, – he will ERADICATEg , – he will be a RADICAL. h s .a w w w This resonates with John Stuart Mill’s 1836 depiction of Philosophic Radicalism as: m o .c te a g h A radicalism ... whichs is only to be called radicalism inasmuch as it does not .a w 12 palter nor compromisew with evils, but cuts at their roots. w

m o .c te a 9 g Cf. C. Hill,h The Experience of Defeat. Milton and Some Contemporaries (London, s .a 1984), p. 26; N. wMcDowell, ‘Writing the Literary and Cultural History of Radicalism in the w w

English Revolution’,m in Caricchio and Tarantino (eds) Cromohs Virtual Seminars, 1, http:// o .c www.cromohs.unifi.it/seminari/mcdowell.html;te Burgess, ‘Introduction’, pp. 13–14. a 10 g h g.s Gooch, The History of English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century .a w (Cambridge,w 1898), pp. 123–38, 150, 157. w 11 m Burgess, ‘Matter of Context’, 4; cf. T. Cooper, ‘Reassessing the Radicals’, HJ, 50 o .c (2007):te pp. 247–52. a g h 12 s Quoted in Clark, ‘Religion and origins of radicalism’, p. 267; John Stuart Mill, .a w w quotedw in F. Rosen, ‘Jeremy Bentham’s Radicalism’, in Burgess and Festenstein (eds), © Copyrighted Material Introduction 5 © Copyrighted Material

In the same vein, Karl Marx maintained that ‘to be radical is to grasp the root mof o 13 .c te the matter’, though according to Marx, for man, that radix was man himself. a The g h s author and politician John Mackinnon Robertson likewise declared that ‘radicalisma . w w means going to the root of things in political action’, to the real causes ofw social

14 m unrest. While these etymologically faithful definitions remained fairlyo constant .c te a there was also a moderating impulse, the expectation that radicalism’sg objective h s .a was not extirpation, but pruning and renewal: w w w

m o .c Radicalism is not tearing things up by the roots, but getting down ttoe the roots of a 15 g h things and planting institutions anew on just principles. s .a w w w

m Added to this was the belief that nineteenth-century Englisho political Radicals .c te 16 were ‘pioneers of progress ... alive to the necessities of athe future’. This led to g h s what Condren has rightly – at least in an early modern.a context – recognised as a w w w ‘whole penumbra of unstable associations’ of the term radical with ‘democratic, m 17 o laudable, edifying, progressive and worthy’. .c te a g Turning to exponents from other disciplines,h since they tended to precede s .a historians in their theorising about rather than applicationw of the term, the American w w philosopher Horace Kallen defined radicalismm in the 1930s as: o .c te a g h a distinct philosophy and program of socials change looking toward systematic .a w destruction of what is hated, and its replacementw by an art, a faith, a science or a w

m 18 society logically demonstrated as trueo and good and beautiful and just. .c te a g h s Drawing on Max Weber’s work, the.a sociologist Egon Bittner updated this view, w w w explaining that radicalism’s function was to transform a normal, common-sense m o outlook into a radical, doctrinaire.c attitude that underpinned conduct. Furthermore, te a g in Bittner’s opinion, ensuringh an individual’s ideological purity and continued s .a w membership in an organisedw radical movement was achieved by the group’s w

m o .c te a g English Radicalism, p. 218.h s .a 13 w Karl Marx, A Contributionw to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844), w introduction ;m o .c N. Rotenstreich, ‘Ote n Radicalism’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 4 (1974): pp. 171, a g h 172–5. s .a 14 w J.M. Robertson,w Practical Radicalism (London, 1892), p. 1. w 15 m P. Brooks,o quoted in J.E. Shea, ‘Radicalism and Reform’, Proceedings of the .c te American Politicala Science Association, 3 (1906): p. 167. g h 16 s The.a Functions of Radicalism (London, 1879), p. 5; cf. C. Kent, The English w w Radicals,w an Historical Sketch (London, 1899), p. 4.

17 m o Condren, Politics of Language, pp. 144, 149; cf. Burgess, ‘Radicalism and English .c te a Revolution’,g p. 64. h s 18 .a H. Kallen, ‘Radicalism’, in E. Seligman (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences w w w(15 vols, New York, 1930–34),13, pp. 51–4. © Copyrighted Material 6 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material charismatic leadership employing a combination of mystification, gratification, m 19 o discipline, isolation, deception and manipulation. More recently, radicalism .chas te a g h been understood variously as ‘a system of thought that seeks to tear downs old .a w institutions and reconstruct new ones’, and as ‘any stance, practical, intellectual,w w or both, that goes to the root of existing practices, beliefs, or values’. In maddition, o .c te ‘since the term is relative, any fundamental criticism of or assault ona existing g h s practices can be reasonably termed radical’. Indeed: .a w w w

m o Radicalism is, like conservatism, a relationship term not a content. c term, and its te a particular character is, therefore, dependent on the historical circumstancesg in h s 20 .a which it is used. w w w

m o .c The sociologist Dennis Wrong has also emphasised thete connection between a g h radicalism and historical circumstances, arguing thats it ‘lacks any specific .a w substantive content’ and is therefore more indicative ofw disposition: an ‘extreme, w

m absolute, uncompromising commitment’. Given its ‘abstracto and formal nature’ as .c te well as its changeable ideological characteristics athat are inextricably bound up g h s with the passage of major historical events, the .ameaning of radicalism is ‘likely w 21 w w always to be relative and context-bound’. m o These philosophical and sociological perspectives.c offer an interesting and te a g under-utilised sidelight on comparable concernsh in the field of early modern s .a studies. For sixteenth-century Europe wthe most important contribution was w w

George Huntston Williams’s distinction,m developed in the late 1950s, between the o .c ‘Magisterial Reformation’ and a ‘Radicalte Reformation’. The latter was ‘a loosely a g h interrelated congeries of reformationss and restitutions’ which grouped together .a w w the various types of Anabaptists, wSpiritualists and Evangelical Rationalists all of

m whom, despite their many differences,o were nonetheless united by their desire .c te a to cut back to the root of Christiang faith and free ‘church and creed of what h s .a they regarded as the suffocatingw growth of ecclesiastical tradition and magisterial w w prerogative’. Williams’s etymologically precise construction had grown out of m o an earlier terminology favoured.c by Roland Bainton that discerned a ‘left wing of te a g h the Reformation’, ands Ernst Troeltsch’s older still application of sociology to the .a w w w

m o 19 .c e. Bittner, te‘Radicalism and the Organization of Radical Movements’, American a g h Sociological Reviews , 28 (1963): pp. 928–40; E. Bittner, ‘Radicalism’, in D. Sills (ed.), .a w International Encyclopaediaw of the Social Sciences (17 vols, New York, 1968), 13, w pp. 294–300. m o 20 .c d. Ate nthony, Rethinking Radicalism (Victoria, Canada, 2003), p. 17; R. Barker, a g h ‘Radicalism’,s in N. Smelser and P. Bates (eds), International Encyclopedia of the Social & .a w Behavioralw Sciences (26 vols, Amsterdam and Oxford, 2001), pp. 12723–5. w 21 m o D.H. Wrong, ‘radicalism’, in W. Outhwaite (ed.), The Blackwell Dictionary .c te of Moderna Social Thought (2nd edn, Oxford, 2002), Blackwell Reference Online, g h w © Copyrighted Material Introduction 7 © Copyrighted Material

study of Christian thought that identified two main patterns – the Church-typem o 22 .c te and the Sect-type. His critics, however, maintained that the supposed unifyinga g h s forces underpinning this vision of an ‘extremely capacious’ Radical Reformationa . w w were undercut by sectarian subdivisions and inconsistencies, by heterogeneityw

23 m as well as by a ‘highly fissiparous tendency’. Then during the mid-1980so Adolf .c te a Laube, an East German Marxist historian who, in common with his compatriots,g h s .a sought to legitimate the German Democratic Republic by emphasisingw bourgeois w w and popular revolutionary antecedents together with the wider European m o .c significance of events in German lands (the Reich) between thete beginning of the a g h Reformation and the German Peasants’ War, questioned the sappropriateness of .a w the term radical to encompass disparate sixteenth-century wphenomena, arguing w

m that it referred not so much ‘to a substantive content as too an adjectival quality’. .c te He also noted that radical was a ‘relative term’, subjecta during revolutionary g h s periods to ‘rapid change’: what was radical at one instance.a could quickly become w 24 w w the norm and hence moderated. Agreeing with L aube that the meaning of m o radical is ‘always defined by circumstances at a given.c time’, that ‘what is radical te a g at one time may cease to be so a short time later’,h Hans Hillerbrand defined s .a radical reformers during the Reformation as ‘onlyw those who undertook to alter w w the existing societal order on the basis of religion’.m Having outlined common o .c denominators as well as essential points ofte divergence, Hillerbrand concluded a g h that a Radical – or as he preferred, ‘alternate’s – Reformation occurred because .a w 25 of ‘a general yearning for change and wa desire for renewal’. Yet, despite all w

m these objections and qualifications, o the Radical Reformation remains part of .c te a the vocabulary of early modern historiansg even though it has since undergone h s an evolution from its basis in Church.a history and concomitant theological and w w w denominational concerns to accommodate growing historical awareness of the m o 26 social and cultural impact of religion..c te a g h s .a 22 w G. Williams and A. Mergalw (eds), Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers: Documents w

Illustrative of the Radical Reformationm (London, 1957), pp. 19–22, 27–8; G.H. Williams, o .c ‘Studies in the Radical Reformationte (1517–1618): A Bibliographical survey of research a g h since 1939’, CH, 27 (1958):s pp. 46–7; G. Williams, The Radical Reformation (3rd edn, .a w Ann Arbor, MI, 2000),w pp. xxix–xxx, 1, 7, 9–10; cf. R.H. Bainton, ‘The Left Wing of the w

Reformation’, Journalm of Religion, 21 (1941): pp. 124–34. o 23 .c te A.G. Dickens,a review of The Radical Reformation, in P&P, 27 (1964): p. 123. g h 24 s P. Peachey,.a ‘Marxist Historiography of the Radical Reformation: Causality or w w Covariation?’, Sixteenthw Century Essays & Studies, 1 (1970): pp. 1–16; A. Laube, ‘Radicalism

m as a Researcho Problem in the History of the Early Reformation’, in H. Hillerbrand (ed.), .c te Radical Tendenciesa in the Reformation: Divergent Perspectives, special issue of Sixteenth g h s Century Essays.a & Studies, 9 (Kirksville, MO, 1988): pp. 10–11, 15; cf. Williams, Radical w w Reformationw , pp. 1280 n. 69, 1303; Clark, ‘Religion and origins of radicalism’, pp. 241–2.

25 m o h. Hillerbrand, ‘Radicalism in the Early Reformation: Varieties of Reformation in .c te a Churchg and Society’, in Hillerbrand (ed.), Radical Tendencies, pp. 28–30, 40–41. h s 26 .a J. Roth, ‘Recent Currents in the Historiography of the Radical Reformation’, CH, w w 71w (2002): pp. 523–35. © Copyrighted Material 8 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Regarding the extensive literature on seventeenth-century England, it is m o noteworthy that there are parallels with trends in Reformation historiography. H.cere te a g h too a typology with unmistakable modern-day political connotations was developeds .a w and employed in conjunction with the term radical. This was the anachronisticw w ascription of a centre with left and right wings to Protestantism in generalm and o .c te Puritanism in particular. Used since at least 1900, but not fashionablea until the g h s later 1930s, the categories were most fully elaborated by A.S.P. Woodhouse.a in w w his introduction to the Putney and Whitehall debates, supplementedw with other

m o important contemporary texts, entitled Puritanism and Liberty.c (1938). On the te a Right, where the Puritan Church-type was dominant, were g the Presbyterians; h s .a the composite party of the Centre were the Independents; whilew the Parties of w w the Left, where the Puritan sect-type prevailed, consisted of the Levellers – the m o .c ‘one genuinely democratic party’ of the ‘Puritan revolution’te – together with a a g h ‘heterogeneous company’ of religious and political sectariess that included the .a 27 w millenarian Fifth Monarchists and the Diggers. Remainingw in vogue, albeit with w

m occasional modifications, throughout the 1940s and o 1950s, even during part of the .c te 1960s, left-wing puritanism sometimes became interchangeablea as a category with g h s radical sectarianism. Hence L.J. Trinterud claimed.a that: w w w

m o The radical left-wing Puritan groups, the Fifth.c Monarchy men, the Levellers, the te a g Diggers, the Baptists, and the other left-wingh religious and political groups took s .a the road of radical revolution through thew destruction of all old authorities, and w w 28 a return to the state of nature. m o .c te a g h Thereafter, however, this typology slargely fell out favour except in the eyes of a .a w w handful of Marxist historians (to w whom we shall return) and several students of

m Puritanism and Quakerism. o .c te a In light of this it is remarkableg how few scholars who have regularly used the h s .a terms radical and radicalism inw a seventeenth-century English context have provided w w us with a definition – with the notable exception, that is, of some participants in m o a heated debate about the.c appropriateness of certain labels to describe political te a g h factions in the Long Parliament.s Whether this was simply because the majority .a w assumed their readersw knew what they meant, and therefore felt it unnecessary, w

m is difficult to determine.o Taking Christopher Hill first (in chronological order), he .c te identified as radicals:a g h s .a w w those whow rejected any state church: both separatist sectaries, who opposed a

m o national.c church on religious principles, and others – Levellers, Diggers, Fifth te a g h s .a 27 w aw .S.P. Woodhouse, ‘Puritanism and Democracy’, Canadian Journal of Economics w and Politicalm Science, 4 (1938): pp. 4, 5, 6, 7, 13; A.S.P. Woodhouse (ed.), Puritanism and o .c Liberty,te Being the Army Debates (1647–49) from the Clarke Manuscripts (1938; 3rd edn, a g h London,s 1992), pp. [15–18, 20, 29, 30, 31, 36–9, 75, 81, 83]. .a w 28 w w l.J. Trinterud, ‘The origins of Puritanism’, CH, 20 (1951), p. 52. © Copyrighted Material Introduction 9 © Copyrighted Material

Monarchists, Ranters, etc. – whose opposition was part of a more general m o 29 .c te political, social and economic programme. a g h s .a w w By contrast, J.C. Davis initially preferred a broad, vague definition of radicalismw

m in keeping with his suggested approach for evaluating it – ‘the attempt,o in theory .c te a or practice, to subvert the status quo and replace it, rather than simplyg to improve h s 30 .a or amend it’. Again, drawing on the word’s original relationshipw with roots w w and fundamental qualities, the editors of the Biographical Dictionary of British m o .c Radicals in the Seventeenth Century considered radicals to be: te a g h s .a w those who sought fundamental change by striking at the very rootw of contemporary w

m assumptions and institutions, often in order to revert to whato they judged to be .c te the proper historic roots. a g h s .a w w w They too grasped the episodic nature of radicalism and its connection with m o ‘changing circumstances’, remarking that ‘the essence.c of radicalism is indeed te a 31 g situational, a seizure of the possibilities of the momenth for substantive change’. A s .a little later Frances Dow equated radicals with thosew who ‘sought to transform the w w political and social order’ during the English mCivil War. Linking radicalism with o .c social class, she distinguished between assortedte types of radicals including certain a g h Parliamentarians, classical republicans, Levellers,s Diggers and religious radicals .a w (Particular and General Baptists, Quakers,w Ranters, Seekers, Muggletonians, Fifth w

32 m Monarchists, assorted separatists). Moreo specifically, for J.F. McGregor and .c te a Barry Reay radical religion during theg English Revolution consisted of ‘religious h s movements and ideas which were.a fundamentally in conflict with official, w w w 33 institutionalized, established religion and theology’. Taking this further Nigel m o Smith, following Geoffrey Nuttall’s.c seminal The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and te a g Experience (1946), singled outh three distinguishing features of English ‘radical s .a w religion’ evident to differentw degrees and in a variety of ways: the ‘rejection of w

m o .c te a g 29 h C. Hill, ‘The Radicals Critics of Oxford and Cambridge in the 1650s’, in C. Hill, .a w Change and Continuityw in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1974), p. 132; cf. w

C. Hill, The Englishm Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (Harmondsworth, o .c 1994), pp. 196–7. te a g 30 h J.C. Davis,s ‘Radicalism in a traditional society: the evaluation of radical thought .a w in the English Commonwealthw 1649–1660’, History of Political Thought, 3, no. 2 (1982): w

m p. 203. o .c 31 te R. Greavesa and R. Zaller (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the g h s Seventeenth.a Century (3 vols, Brighton, 1982–84), 1, pp. viii, x; cf. J.C. Davis, ‘Radical w w Lives’, wPolitical Science, 37 (1985): pp. 166–72.

32 m o f.D. Dow, Radicalism in the English Revolution 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1985), p. 1, .c te a 57. g h s 33 .a B. Reay and J.F. McGregor, ‘Preface’, in J.F. McGregor and B. Reay (eds), Radical w w wReligion in the English Revolution (Oxford, 1984), p. v. © Copyrighted Material 10 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material idolatrous “externals”’; ‘the assertion that the believer is made perfect through the m o freely given grace of God’; the ‘feeling that the gift of the Holy Spirit ... could .cfall te a 34 g h upon any individual’. s .a w Gerald Aylmer also gave us, in an address on the ‘varieties of radicalism’,w w a pragmatic and still widely quoted definition of radical when appliedm to mid- o .c te seventeenth-century England: a g h s .a w w anyone advocating changes in state, church or society which would whave gone

m o beyond the official programme of the mainstream puritan-parliamentarians.c in te 35a the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly of Divines. g h s .a w w w For the post-Restoration period Richard Greaves justified his ‘judicious use of m o .c anachronistic terms’ distinguishing, at least in theory, tebetween a radical and a g h a reformer: ‘a radical aims at nothing less than the replacements of the status .a w quo by something new, whereas a reformer seeks itsw betterment’. All the same, w

m Greaves acknowledged that the radicals’ ‘greatest weakness’o was their inability to .c te formulate a unified and ‘commonly accepted visiona of what the new order would g h s be’. Consequently, British radicals in the early 1660s.a were effectively ‘a dissident w w 36 w “community” loosely held together by common animosities’. Likewise Gary de m o Krey preferred the ‘somewhat anachronistic.c and historicist’ designation radical te a g to the ‘antiquarian danger of transposing h seventeenth-century terminology like s .a “fanatic” or “Oliverian” into contemporaryw analytical categories’. Concentrating w w on the ‘exceptional political community’m of London, he suggested that historians of o .c seventeenth-century political ideas neededte to ‘recognize the existence of a variety a g 37 h of radicalisms’. De Krey subsequentlys differentiated between the radical ideology, .a w w activities and civic experiences of Lw ondon dissenters – who in upholding freedom of

m conscience sought to undermine othe persecuting Restoration State – and republican .c 38 te a principles. Elsewhere he reiteratedg the point, proposing that London dissenters h s .a w w w

m 34 o n. Smith, Perfection.c Proclaimed. Language and Literature in English Radical te a g Religion 1640–1660 (Oxford,h 1989), p. 2. s 35 .a g.E. Aylmer, ‘Collectivew Mentalities in mid Seventeenth-Century England. III. w w Varieties of Radicalism’, TRHS, 5th series, 37 (1988): p. 1. m o 36 .c r. Greaves,te Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–1663 a g h (New York, 1986),s pp. 4–6; T. Harris, ‘What’s New about the Restoration?’, Albion, 29 .a w (1997): pp. 195–7.w w 37 g.S. dem Krey, ‘The London Whigs and the Exclusion Crisis reconsidered’, in A.L. o .c Beier, D. Cannadinete and J. Rosenheim (eds), The First Modern Society: Essays in English a g h history in s Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 458, 461, 481; cf. G.S. de .a w Krey, ‘Politicalw Radicalism in London after the Glorious Revolution’, Journal of Modern w

Historym , 55 (1983): p. 590. o 38.c te a g.S. de Krey, ‘The First Restoration Crisis: Conscience and Coercion in London, g h 1667–73’,s Albion, 25 (1993): pp. 566–7, 571, 578–80; G.S. de Krey, ‘Party Lines: A Reply’, .a w w Albionw , 25 (1993): pp. 642–3. © Copyrighted Material Introduction 11 © Copyrighted Material

and Whigs were radical because intellectually they ‘got to the roots’ in a distinctive,m o .c te innovative and historically significant manner of ‘what was at stake in the erectiona g h s of a persecuting state’. Accordingly, de Krey defined political radicals as: a . w w w

m those who reject, challenge, or undermine the established political normso or .c te a conventions of their day, the intellectual rationales that legitimate thoseg norms h s 39 .a or conventions, and the structures of authority that maintain them. w w w

m o .c A decade ago Jonathan Scott declared that radicalism was te‘the demand for a g h fundamental change’. English radicalism, he suggested, ‘cames to question .a w customary religious, social, legal, economic and political warrangements’. Such w

m a ‘large-scale demand for change’ in a pre-modern, traditionalo society was .c 40 te extraordinary. For Scott, the overarching category herea was ‘unity-in-variety’, g h s the ‘concerns the radicals held in common’ over time. I.at was these ‘unities within w w w the variety of civil war radicalism’, he insisted, that would enable us to apprehend m o it ‘as a single process rather than as a series of discrete.c groups’. Connections, te a g fluidity and context were keys to understanding theh shape of this process. What is s .a more, Scott discerned three phases of the Englishw radical process (complementing w w his three phases of seventeenth-century England’sm troubles); Civil War radicalism; o .c 41 English republicanism; and Restoration radicalism.te Timothy Morton and Nigel a g h Smith also privileged homogeneity over s heterogeneity, stressing the ‘common .a w conditions and characteristics’ of Englishw history between 1640 and 1832 w

m that gave consistency to the various politicalo and religious visions enunciating .c te 42 a ‘extreme change’ and alternative lifestyles.g Finally, in the interests of making h s ‘the past more intelligible to the present’,.a not to mention keeping the attention of w w w a general audience, Philip Baker too believes we should continue using the word m o ‘radicalism’ in order to convey:.c te a g h s .a w the notion of axiomaticw political, constitutional, religious, social, economic w

or cultural change ... encompass[ing]m a number of ideologies that challenged o .c te existing arrangementsa for different reasons and ends. g h s .a w w While this exceedinglyw broad definition allows Baker to argue that English Civil

m War radicalism waso not ‘a single process with a specific ideological ambition’ .c te a g h s .a 39 w g.S. dew Krey, ‘Radicals, reformers, and republicans: academic language and w

m political discourseo in Restoration London’, in A. Houston and S. Pincus (eds), A Nation .c te Transformed:a England after the Restoration (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 71–80. g h 40 s J..a Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-century English Political Instability in w w Europeanw Context (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 35, 229, 231, 233.

41 m So cott, England’s Troubles, pp. 6, 37–8, 230, 239–42. .c te a42 g T. Morton and N. Smith, ‘Introduction’, in T. Morton and N. Smith (eds), Radicalism h s in. aBritish Literary Culture, 1650–1830. From Revolution to Revolution (Cambridge, 2002), w w pp.w 1–2. © Copyrighted Material 12 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material but something variegated, complex and in one strand unmistakably secular, it m o is nonetheless vulnerable to criticism: namely that, in the attempt to facilitate.c te a g h comprehension, a category has been constructed with elastic bounds, ones that .a w can be expanded or shrunk according to ever-changing historical circumstances.w w

Indeed, Baker’s focus on a ‘surprisingly wide spectrum of individuals’m who o .c te ‘fundamentally challenged contemporary arrangements’ leaves opena the wider g h s question not just of who determines what was fundamental – past actors.a or present w w historians – but how one can differentiate between degrees of change;w between

m o 43 radicals and reformers; between radicals, moderates and conservatives?.c te a Much of this debate on the validity of radical and radicalismsg as descriptors h s .a and their continued usage as explanatory categories thereforew hinges on several w w important issues: our ability to accurately comprehend and reconstruct the reality m o .c of a past in flux; precise selection of ideologicallyte neutral words to convey a g h the meaning of that past to present-day audiences; ands nuances. The strong .a w dependency of radicalism on context has been correctlyw highlighted by, among w

m others, Wrong, Laube, Hillerbrand, Scott and Burgess.o Context is naturally also .c te central to any discussion that seeks to distinguisha between, at one extreme, the g h s demand for fundamental, revolutionary transformation.a and, at the other, gradual, w w w evolutionary change. Yet, contrary to Davis and Greaves, who have both at times m o insisted on a sharp distinction between radicalism.c and reform, we think it more te a g helpful to characterise that relationship ash flexible and interwoven rather than s 44 .a static and oppositional. Neither term, forw example, entirely captures either the w w disposition or the full agenda of all participantsm at every moment during the English o 45 .c Revolution. Again, any juxtapositionte of radical with moderate, or conservative, a g h must be determined entirely by context,s rendering it a situational or relationship .a w w 46 term rather than something indicativew of content. Indeed, making radicalism

m synonymous with extremism, moderationo with restraint, and conservatism with .c te a preservation can at times be gunnecessarily restrictive (radicalism’s relationship h s 47 .a with conservation and innovationw will be discussed shortly). Otherwise what w w are we to make of seemingly oxymoronic yet suggestive couplings such as m o .c te a g h s .a w w 43 w P. Baker, ‘Rhetoric, Reality and the Varieties of Civil War Radicalism’, in m o J. Adamson (ed.), The.c English Civil War. Conflicts and Contexts, 1640–49 (Basingstoke, te a g 2009), pp. 202–5, h216, 223–4. s 44 .a Davis, ‘Radicalismw in a traditional society’, pp. 203–04; Greaves, Deliver Us from w w

Evil, p. 5; cf. Condren,m Politics of Language, p. 152. o 45 .c Cf. Ate ylmer, ‘Collective Mentalities’, pp. 7, 15, 22–4. a g 46 h Cf.s Greaves and Zaller (eds), Biographical Dictionary, 1, p. viii; Condren, .a w ‘Radicals,w Conservatives and Moderates’, pp. 529, 530, 532, 535–6, 541; Condren, Politics w of Languagem , pp. 141, 147, 152, 155–6, 159–60, 162; Burgess, ‘Radicalism and English o .c Revolution’,te pp. 63, 69–70, 73. a g h 47 s Cf. Condren, ‘Radicals, Conservatives and Moderates’, p. 537; Condren, Politics of .a w w wLanguage, p. 149; Condren, ‘Afterword’, pp. 314, 317. © Copyrighted Material Introduction 13 © Copyrighted Material

48 49 Catholic radicals, Royalist radicals, and so-called radical conservatives like them o 50 .c te Clubmen? These unusual conjunctions alert us to the interpretative possibilitiesa g h s of recasting radical and radicalism as fluid, situational categories that contravenea . w w conventional boundaries in complex ways. w

m Given these difficulties, not least because the meanings of words areo supplied .c te a rather than inherent, it might be best therefore to eschew definitionsg of radical h s .a and radicalism. To appropriate a famous quotation, we may not be wable to define w w early modern English radicalism, but we know it when we see it. In sum, what m o .c radical and radicalism give us with one hand – comprehensibility,te coherence, and a g h homogeneity – they take away with the other – anachronism,s inconsistency, and .a w heterogeneity. We turn now to how scholars have approached wwriting about people w

m considered to be radicals or individuals who were radicalisedo at moments in their .c te lives and, given its multifarious, context-specific manifestations,a what might better g h s be thought of as radicalisms rather than radicalism. .a w w w

m o .c te a g Writing Radicalisms h s .a w w w

It is a commonplace that the past is at the mercym of the present and that in every o .c generation there are those who deliberately tedistort aspects of it to reflect a vision a g h of their own or another’s making. Most historicals writing about radicalism in early .a w modern England, and particularly duringw the English Revolution (with which this w

m section is mainly concerned), can be consideredo fabrication in the sense of both .c te a manufacture and invention. There haveg been several important studies documenting h 51 s this process, and it exemplifies what.a Burgess has called a substantive approach: w w w 52 there was ‘a continuous radical tradition of definable identity’. All the same, this m o was a malleable tradition and consequently.c one readily appropriated for political te a g purposes. Indeed, although h the nineteenth century witnessed the piecemeal s .a w w w

m o 48 .c m. Questier, Catholicismte and Community in Early Modern England. Politics, a g h Aristocratic Patronage ands Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 159. .a 49 w C. Hill, ‘Two radicalw royalists’, in C. Hill, The Collected Essays of Christopher w

m Hill. Volume One. Writingo and Revolution in 17th Century England (Brighton, 1985), .c te p. 275; B. Capp, ‘Thea Fifth Monarchists and Popular Millenarianism’, in McGregor and g h Reay (eds), Radicals Religion, p. 184. .a w 50 w Dow, Radicalismw in English Revolution, p. 80; J. Morrill, Revolt in the Provinces.

m The People ofo England and the Tragedies of War 1630–1648 (2nd edn, London and New .c te York, 1999),a pp. 122, 136, 198, 204. g h 51 s r.a.C. Richardson, The Debate on the English Revolution: Revisited (1977; 3rd edn, w w Manchester,w 1998); A. MacLachlan, The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England. An Essay

m on theo Fabrication of Seventeenth-Century History (Basingstoke, 1996); M. Caricchio, .c te a Popolog e Rivoluzione? La storiografia e i movimenti radicali della Rivoluzione inglese h s (Milan,.a 2005). w w 52 w Burgess, ‘Matter of Context’, 2. © Copyrighted Material 14 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material rediscovery or recovery of what is now generally called English radicalism, that m o process was predominantly associated with two broad historiographic currents..c te a g h One was bourgeois and liberal, essentially concerned with tracing the growths of .a w democratic and republican ideas in response to acute social and economic tensionsw w as well as drawing parallels between the English and French Revolutions.m The o .c te other was Socialist and Marxist, likewise emphasising secular class strugglea but g h s this time under the shadow of capitalism. These trends dominated. a the field for w w the first seventy or so years of the twentieth century. Yet both lackedw the ability

m o to effectively integrate denominational history – traditions of .creligious dissent te 53 a – within their conception of radicalism. g h s .a While the former tendency was promoted during the firstw half of the twentieth w w century by certain North American-based scholars concerned with the development m o .c of individual liberties and constitutional restraints on the authoritariante exercise of a g h power, as well as the intellectual antecedents of the Americans Revolution, the latter .a w became particularly associated with, among others, wProtestant nonconformists, w

m Jewish-born intellectuals, members of the Fabian Societyo and Communists. For it .c te was one-time English members of the Communist aParty and the briefly influential g h s Historians’ Group of the Communist Party such as.a Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, w w w A.L. Morton and E.P. Thompson who were instrumental in creating a ‘progressive m o rationalist tradition’ of Marxist history that was.c severely critical of ‘non-Marxist te a g history and its reactionary implications’. Nh oted for its ‘moral exhortation’, their s .a passionately debated agenda had an urgentw tone because, as Hill remarked, ‘History w w plays an important part in the battle of mideas today’. Furthermore, Hill underlined o .c the political value of a Marxist approach,te believing that it alone could ‘restore a g h 54 to the English people part of their s heritage of which they have been robbed’. .a w w Hence, while Morton penned A People’sw History of England (1938), Thompson

m The Making of the English Workingo Class (1963) and Hilton Bond Men Made .c te a Free: Medieval Peasant Movementsg and the English Rising of 1381 (1973), Hill h s .a for his part turned from a w doctrinaire Soviet-style class conflict explanation of w w a supposed ‘English bourgeois revolution’ during the mid-seventeenth century m o to a readjusted conception.c of Marxism that gave greater attention to ‘History te a g h from below’: The Worlds Turned Upside Down. Radical Ideas during the English .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a 53 w A. Hessayon,w ‘Fabricating radical traditions’, in Caricchio and Tarantino (eds), w

Cromohs Virtualm Seminars, 1, . te a g 54 h e.s Hobsbawm, ‘The Historians’ Group of the Communist Party’, in M. Cornforth .a w (ed.), Rebelsw and Their Causes. Essays in Honour of A.L. Morton (London, 1978), pp. w

m 21–47;o R. Samuel, ‘British Marxist Historians, 1880–1980: Part One’, New Left Review, .c te 120 a (1980): pp. 26–8, 39–42, 51–5, 73–5; H. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians: An g h Introductorys Analysis (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 8–22, 99–130; MacLachlan, Rise and Fall of .a w w wRevolutionary England, pp. 79–87, 101–21. © Copyrighted Material Introduction 15 © Copyrighted Material

55 Revolution (1972). The fruit of this largely co-operative venture was what canm o .c te be termed the canonical English radical tradition: a single, continuous narrativea g h s spanning from the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 to the Chartists and the moderna . w 56 w working-class movement. Yet it appears that these histories also had wanother,

m self-serving, purpose as Burgess has most recently observed: o .c te a g h s .a The core historical project lay in the relationship of present to past embeddedw in w w the recovering of a radical or revolutionary heritage that could make communism m o .c not an alien, foreign and unpatriotic implant into the green and pleasantte lands of a 57 g h the sceptred isle but a suppressed, native tradition. s .a w w w

m Since this canonical English radical tradition was, as severalo British Marxist .c te historians believed, a consequence of the class strugglesa that ensued during the g h s transition from feudalism to a developed form of capitalism,.a it is instructive to w w w remind ourselves with which social classes particular radical groups were identified m o – regardless of whether they exhibited class-consciousness.c in the sense that they te a g were aware of ‘shared interests in the process h of struggling against common s 58 .a enemies’. According to John Lilburne, Levellerw support was drawn not from the w w dregs of English society but ‘the hobnails, cloutedm shooes, the private souldiers, o .c 59 the leather and woollen Aprons, and the laboriouste and industrious people’. In a g h Hill’s earliest formulation, therefore, the sLevellers were the petty bourgeoisie’s .a w mouthpiece, although they ‘never representedw a sufficiently homogeneous class w

m to be able to achieve their aims’. Theo most radical and egalitarian ‘opponents .c te a of the feudal social order’, however,g were the Diggers who represented a ‘small h s if growing class’ that was nonetheless.a weakened by the pacifism preached by w w 60 w their leaders. In a subsequent essay on ‘The Norman Yoke’, the Levellers were m o depicted as the ‘most advanced .cdemocratic group’ on the European political stage, te a g ‘appealing to the small proprietorsh in town and countryside’ against the survivals s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a 55 w C. Hill, ‘Sovietw Interpretations of the English Interregnum’, Economic History w

Review, 8 (1938): pp.m 159–67; C. Hill, The English Revolution 1640. An Essay (1940; 3rd o .c edn, 1955; reprinted,te London, 1979); Richardson, Debate on the English Revolution, pp. a g h 112–27, 173–5; MacLachlan,s Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England, pp. 46–7, 55–63. .a 56 w C. Hill, w‘From Lollards to Levellers’, in C. Hill, The Collected Essays of Christopher w

Hill. Volume m Two. Religion and politics in 17th century England (Brighton, 1986), o .c te pp. 89–116;a A.L. Morton, The World of the Ranters: Religious Radicalism in the English g h Revolutions (London, 1970), p. 15. .a 57 w w wBurgess, ‘Introduction’, p. 4; cf. Samuel, ‘British Marxist Historians’, pp. 51, 55;

m MacLoachlan, Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England, pp. 39–40. .c 58te a Kaye, British Marxist Historians, pp. 126, 232–41. g h s 59 .a John Lilburne, The Upright Mans Vindication (1653), p. 15. w w 60 w Hill, English Revolution 1640, pp. 49–52; cf. Hill, ‘Soviet Interpretations’, p. 162. © Copyrighted Material 16 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

61 of feudalism that underpinned their bondage to the ruling class. Class hostility m o and the propertied class’s ‘thinly concealed’ contempt for the ‘rude’, ‘unruly’ .andc te a g h ‘giddy-headed’ multitude’ – that ‘rascal company’ of the ‘meaner sort of people’s .a w and masterless men – was the focus of another essay on ‘The Many-wHeaded w 62 Monster’ and the ‘fear of lower-class revolt’. This supposed ‘class antagonism’,m o .c te together with a long-standing tradition of ‘plebeian anti-clericalism anda irreligion’, g h s subsequently provided the backdrop for Hill’s delineation of a popular.a revolt that w 63 w threatened the propertied in The World Turned Upside Down. Here,w on the ‘left

m o wing of radical Puritanism’, the Levellers, following Soviet theory,.c comprised both te a a ‘moderate, constitutional wing’ that upheld existing propertyg relationships, and h s .a ‘a more radical wing in the Army and among the London populace’w that defended w w poor commoners against the rich. Further along the continuum was the untainted m o .c communism of the Diggers, seemingly ‘only the visible tipte of the iceberg of True a g h Levellerism’, with Gerrard Winstanley representing thes interests of ‘those whom .a w the “constitutional” Levellers would have disfranchisedw – servants, labourers, w

m paupers, the economically unfree’. Antinomianism owas regarded as ‘Calvinism’s .c te lower-class alter ego’, Ranter swearing an act of defiancea against God and ‘Puritan g h s middle class standards’, while prophecy was reduced.a to an attention-seeking tactic w 64 w w by lower-class radicals. In the same vein, Morton had portrayed the ‘aggressive m o radicalism’ of the Ranters – which ‘formed the.c extreme left wing of the sects’ – as te a g a primarily urban movement appealing to hthe ‘defeated and declassed’, drawing s .a support from London’s ‘impoverished artisansw and labourers’ as well as ‘wage w w 65 earners and small producers’ in numerousm towns. So, too, Hill’s former pupil o .c Brian Manning, although never a memberte of the Communist party, likewise a g h understood the bulk of the Levellerss as embodying the aspirations of the ‘middle .a w w sort of people’ in a fundamental conflictw between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’; as ‘advocating

m the case of the independent smallo producers’ (craftsmen and farmers) against the .c te a g h s .a w w w

m 61 o C. Hill, ‘The Norman.c Yoke’, in C. Hill, Puritanism and Revolution (1958; te a g Harmondsworth, 1990 edn),h pp. 81, 86, 88; Kaye, British Marxist Historians, pp. 120–22. s 62 .a C. Hill, ‘The Many-w Headed Monster’, in Hill, Change and Continuity, pp. 183, 186, w w 193, 195, 196, 198, 202; MacLachlan, Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England, p. 135. m o 63 .c C. Hill, Thete World Turned Upside Down. Radical Ideas during the English a g h Revolution (1972;s Harmondsworth, 1984 edn), pp. 19, 25, 35–6. .a 64 w Hill, Worldw Turned Upside Down, pp. 14–16, 97, 114, 121, 138, 162, 202–3, 280, w

358; cf. Kaye,m British Marxist Historians, pp. 123–6; B. Reay, ‘The World Turned Upside o .c Down: A Retrospect’,te in G. Eley and W. Hunt (eds), Reviving the English Revolution: a g h Reflectionss and Elaborations on the Work of Christopher Hill (London, 1988), pp. 57, .a w 64–6; D.w Underdown, ‘Puritanism, Revolution and Christopher Hill’, in Eley and Hunt w

(eds), mReviving the English Revolution, pp. 336, 337–8; MacLachlan, Rise and Fall of o .c Revolutionaryte England, p. 189. a g h 65 s Morton, World of the Ranters, pp. 17–18, 70, 110–12; cf. MacLachlan, Rise and .a w w wFall of Revolutionary England, p. 71. © Copyrighted Material Introduction 17 © Copyrighted Material

powerful and privileged on the one hand, and the ‘poorer peasants and landlessm o 66 .c te labourers’ beloved of the Diggers on the other. a g h s .a w w w

m The Marxist preoccupation with class struggle may understandably haveo found .c te a little support among the wider community of historians of seventeenth-centuryg h s 67 .a England, but it did raise the associated question of the extent ofw radicalism’s w 68 w appeal. Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down, for example, tended in effect m o .c if not intent, as Peter Burke and Barry Reay noted, ‘to conflatete the radical with a 69 g h the popular’. Similarly, although Aylmer accepted that ‘populars and radical .a w were not identical’, he still insisted that neither were they antitheticalw or mutually w 70 m exclusive. Nor did the lack of evidence for widespreado radical religious .c te sentiments during the English Revolution prevent Reaya and McGregor from g h s claiming that they were nonetheless ‘popular in the sense.a of articulating the hopes w w 71 w and grievances of those outside the ruling groups of English society’. For even m o Hill eventually conceded that while the radical ideas.c of the period remained of te a g immense historical significance, the radicals h themselves – like the French and s .a 72 Russian revolutionaries – were a minority duringw the mid-seventeenth century. w w

Indeed, the entire spectrum of those identifiedm as radicals by Hill, Morton and o .c others never exceeded 3.85 per cent of ante estimated population ranging from a g h 5.09 to 5.28 million people between 1641s and 1661: perhaps as many as 25,000 .a w Baptists in 1660; at most a few hundredw Diggers and their adherents; probably w

m less than 10,000 Fifth Monarchists; reportedly,o though possibly exaggeratedly, .c te a g h s 66 .a B. Manning, The English Peoplew and the English Revolution (1976; 2nd edn, w w London, 1991), pp. 378–80, 396; cf. Brian Manning, 1649: The Crisis of the English m o Revolution (London, 1992), pp. 108,.c 111, 115; MacLachlan, Rise and Fall of Revolutionary te a g England, pp. 140–42. h s 67 .a w Cf. G.E. Aylmer, ‘Gwentlemen Levellers?’, P&P, 49 (1970): p. 121; Aylmer, w

‘Collective Mentalities’, pp.m 9–10; Manning, English People, pp. 7–47; Burgess, o .c ‘Introduction’, pp. 8, 11; t Burgess,e ‘Radicalism and English Revolution’, pp. 64–5; J.C. a g h Davis, ‘Afterword: Reassessings Radicalism in a Traditional Society: Two Questions’, in .a w Burgess and Festensteinw (eds), English Radicalism, pp. 349–50, 354. w 68 MacLachlan,m Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England, p. 140. o 69 .c te Reay, ‘Worlda Turned Upside Down’, in Eley and Hunt (eds), Reviving the English g h Revolution, pp. 61–2;s cf. J. Walter, Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England .a w (Manchester, 2006),w p. 192. w

70 m aylmer,o ‘Collective Mentalities’, pp. 10, 20. .c 71 te a Reayg and McGregor, ‘Preface’, in McGregor and Reay (eds), Radical Religion, h s p. v. .a w 72 w w C. Hill, Some Intellectual Consequences of the English Revolution (Madison, WI, m o 1980),.c pp. 8–9; Hill, Experience of Defeat, pp. 15–16; Underdown, ‘Puritanism, Revolution te a andg Christopher Hill’, in Eley and Hunt (eds), Reviving the English Revolution, p. 337; h s M.aacLachlan, Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England, p. 193; cf. Scott, England’s Troubles, w w p.w 35. © Copyrighted Material 18 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material anything from 10,000 to 98,064 or more backers of major Leveller-orchestrated m o petitions; several hundred Muggletonians; a maximum of 60,000 Quakers by .cthe te a g h early 1660s; a handful of actual Ranters; and an unknown number of republicanss .a 73 w and other sectaries. Leaving aside the obvious methodological issues of countingw w youthful and adult radicals – as if shifting allegiances, signing petitions, supportingm o .c te political movements, membership of religious communities that hada separated g h s from the Church of England, maintaining heterodox and inflammatory.a beliefs, w w or some combination thereof at different moments during the turbulentw years

m o of rebellion in Ireland, Civil Wars in Britain, regicide and republican.c rule were te a straightforwardly indicative of self-conscious radical identitiesg – there is also the h s 74 .a question of geographical distribution. w w w A number of studies – notably David Underdown’s pioneering work on Dorset, m o .c Somerset and Wiltshire; Mark Stoyle’s research on thete perceived and actual a g h characteristics that made Cornwall’s relatively isolateds inhabitants distinctive; .a w and Andy Wood’s examination of miners in the ‘Peak’w district of north-west w

m Derbyshire – have explored the interrelated questionso of whether environment .c te in combination with other factors such as social a structure, economic activities, g h s religious beliefs and literacy rates shaped regional.a cultures and identities, and w w w whether ecology was therefore a significant determinant of allegiance during the m o English Revolution. While there were undoubtedly.c regional contrasts between te a g settlement patterns in arable districts andh those in the fens and forests, not to s .a mention a variety of colourful local customs,w entertainments and sports, John w w

Morrill has rightly cautioned against placingm too much weight on environment in o 75 .c shaping political loyalties. Similarly,te although Hill attempted to discern doctrinal a g h s .a w w 73 w E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541– m o 1871. A Reconstruction (Cambridge,.c 1989), p. 528; J.F. McGregor, ‘The Baptists: Fount te a g of All Heresy’, in McGregor andh Reay (eds), Radical Religion, p. 33; J. Gurney, Brave s .a Community. The Digger Movementw in the English Revolution (Manchester, 2007), pp. 128– w w

37, 184–96; B. Capp, The Fifthm Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century English o .c Millenarianism (London, 1972),te pp. 76–82; Capp, ‘Fifth Monarchists’, in McGregor and a g h Reay (eds), Radical Religions , p. 174; John Lilburne, An impeachment of high treason .a w against Oliver Cromwelw (London, 1649), pp. 21–2; Anon., The Remonstrance Of many w

Thousands of the Free-Peoplem of England (London, 1649), p. 8; H.N. Brailsford, The o .c Levellers and the Englishte Revolution (ed.) C. Hill (1961; 2nd edn, Nottingham, 1983), a g h pp. 13, 347, 486–7,s 574; Dow, Radicalism in English Revolution, pp. 51–2; B. Reay, ‘The .a w Muggletonians:w An Introductory Survey’, in C. Hill, B. Reay and W. Lamont (eds), The w

World of the mMuggletonians (London, 1983), pp. 50–55; B. Reay, The Quakers and the o .c English Revolutionte (Hounslow, 1985), pp. 11, 26–9; cf. J.C. Davis, Fear, Myth and History. a g h The Ranterss and the Historians (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 75, 124. .a 74 w wCf. Davis, ‘Radicalism in a traditional society’, p. 195; Condren, ‘Radicals, w

Conservativesm and Moderates’, p. 540; Condren, Politics of Language, p. 162; Condren, o .c ‘Afterword’,te p. 320; Davis, ‘Afterword’, pp. 343, 365. a g h 75 s d. Underdown, ‘The Problem of Popular Allegiance in the English Civil War’, .a w w TRHSw , 5th series, 31 (1981), pp. 69–94; D. Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: © Copyrighted Material Introduction 19 © Copyrighted Material

and geographical continuities between fifteenth- and seventeenth-century radicals,m o .c te particularly in pastoral, forest, moorland and fen areas where ecclesiastical controla g h s was less tight, the argument was difficult to sustain and consequently dismisseda . w 76 w by Aylmer as an unsophisticated form of ‘geographical determinism’. w All the

m same, manifestations of ideas unquestionably radical in their context ooccurred, .c te a as several historians have pointed out, primarily in urban settings. Lgondon, ‘the h s .a largest protestant city in Europe by 1640’, was undoubtedly the mostw important w w centre, with parishes like St Stephen Coleman Street a notorious ‘hive of religious m 77 o .c radicalism’. te a g h London’s densely populated intra-mural parishes and burgeonings suburbs, .a w continually depleted by high levels of mortality but swelledw by a stream of w

m migrants, provided the conditions conducive for extendingo pre-existing social .c te networks based in large measure on shared ethnicity, kinshipa and social status as g h s well as neighbourliness, religious affiliation, economic.a interests, friendship and w w w love. These interconnections in turn facilitated mustering political support through m o traditional methods, like petitioning the Crown, Parliament.c or governing elites for te a g redress of grievances. The transition from passingh around handwritten petitions s .a and from disseminating manuscript copies of textsw more generally, to circulating w w printed petitions within the framework of an efficientm method of distributing printed o .c literature indicates both the adaptability oft e the London print trade to changing a g h 78 consumer markets and impressive levels ofs organisation. Furthermore, following .a w belated engagement with Jürgen Habermas’sw The Structural Transformation of w

m the Public Sphere (1962; English translation,o 1989) there has been a sustained .c te a examination of the variety of other waysg through which debates were conducted h s and opinion mobilised in early modern.a media; notably broadsides, newsletters, w w w newspapers, pamphlets, plays, proclamations, rumours, scribal publication, m o sermons, speeches and woodcuts..c These are considered fundamental for te a g bringing into being public spheresh – envisaged as both modes of and spaces for s .a w w w

Popular Politics and Culturem in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985); M. Stoyle, ‘“Pagans o .c te or Paragons?”: Images ofa the Cornish during the English Civil War’, EHR, 111 (1996): g h pp. 299–323; M. Stoyle,s ‘The Dissidence of Despair: Rebellion and Identity in Early .a w Modern Cornwall’, JBSw , 38 (1999): pp. 423–44; A. Wood, ‘Beyond Post-Revisionism? The w

m Civil War Allegianceso of the Miners of the Derbyshire “Peak Country”’, HJ, 40 (1997): .c te pp. 23–40; cf. J. Morrill,a ‘The Ecology of Allegiance in the English Revolution’, JBS, 26 g h (1987): pp. 451–67.s .a w 76 w hill, ‘Fwrom Lollards to Levellers’, in Hill, Collected Essays, 2, pp. 89–116; Aylmer,

m ‘Collective Mo entalities’, pp. 4–5. .c 77 te a B. gReay, ‘Radicalism and Religion in the English Revolution: an Introduction’, h s in McGregor.a and Reay (eds), Radical Religion, p. 12; Manning, 1649, pp. 36–43; Scott, w w England’sw Troubles, p. 231; A. Johns, ‘Coleman Street’, HLQ, 71 (2008): pp. 33–54 (at

m p. 33).o .c te a78 g J. Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, h s 2003);.a D. Hirst, ‘Making Contact: Petitions and the English Republic’, JBS, 45 (2006): w w wpp. 26–50. © Copyrighted Material 20 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material communication – such as booksellers’ shops, coffee houses, markets, squares and m 79 o other urban locations. Women too sometimes challenged patriarchal norms.c by te a g h playing visible roles as preachers, messengers, fund-raisers and petitioners,s as .a w well as being the authors and publishers of several works competing for attentionw w 80 within the bustling market place of ideas. m o .c te As Jason Peacey has shown, propaganda techniques also becamea more g h s sophisticated, as new relationships developed between polemicists .aand political w w patrons keen to exploit print’s potential to change attitudes w and influence

m o behaviour. Consequently the methods of producing propaganda.c during what is te a now termed a ‘news revolution’ became increasingly ‘bureaucratised,g centralised h s 81 .a and professionalised’. Even so, despite what historians ifw not bibliographers w w now refer to as an explosion of print, not to mention Hill’s claim that the English m o .c Revolution was a short-lived age of ‘freedom’ when relativelyte cheap and portable a g h printing equipment may have made it easier than ever befores for radical ideas to .a w see the light of day, the desire to censor – as is widelyw recognised – remained in w 82 m many quarters. There were three effective ways in owhich this could be achieved: .c te through pre-publication, post-publication and self-censorship.a Yet, with the g h s effective collapse of pre-publication censorship .athe licensing system upon which w w w it had been built became increasingly used to protect the publisher’s copyright m o rather than to indicate official approbation.. c Indeed, lack of a universally agreed te a g strategy and inconsistent practice becameh a characteristic feature of licensing s .a during the later 1640s and 1650s. Withoutw an equivalent to the Papal Index of w w prohibited books pre-publication censorshipm appears to have been almost entirely o .c at the licenser’s discretion and as suchte was utterly ineffective. By contrast, post- a g h publication censorship proved mosts effective when implemented by those with .a w w intimate knowledge of the printingw trade. And in exceptional circumstances its

m outcome could be dramatic. Foro although no one had been burned at the stake .c te a for heresy in England since g1612, the published writings of blasphemers and h s .a seditionists were still consignedw to the flames in public book-burning rituals that w w 83 resembled Protestant Autos da Fé by proxy. m o .c te a g h s 79 .a P. Lake and S. wPincus (eds), The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern w w England (Manchester and New York, 2007). m 80 o K.V. Thomas,.c ‘Women and the Civil War Sects’, P&P, 13 (1958): pp. 42–62; te a g Manning, 1649, pp.h 135–72; A. Hughes, ‘Gender and politics in Leveller literature’, in s .a S. Amussen andw M. Kishlansky (eds), Political culture and Cultural Politics in Early w w

Modern England.m Essays presented to David Underdown (Manchester, 1995), pp. 162–88. o 81 .c J. Peacey,te Politicians and Pamphleteers. Propaganda during the English Civil a g h Wars and sInterregnum (Aldershot, 2004), p. 305. .a 82 w wC. Hill, ‘Censorship and English Literature’, in Hill, Collected Essays, 1, pp. 34, w

40, 51;m Hill, World Turned Upside Down, p. 17; Hill, Experience of Defeat, p. 21. o 83.c te a A. Hessayon, ‘Incendiary texts: book burning in England, c.1640–c.1660’, Cromohs g h – Cybers Review of Modern Historiography, 12 (2007): 1–25, . © Copyrighted Material Introduction 21 © Copyrighted Material

Over-dependence on accessible printed sources, however, such as the Londonm o .c te bookseller George Thomason’s extensive collection of about 24,000 titles a now g h s housed in the British Library, meant that Hill, Morton, Manning and aothers . w w untrained in palaeography neglected a storehouse of archival records. Nw or was

m this point lost on the so-called revisionists, who tended to privilege manuscripto .c te a materials in the assumption that these enabled the reconstruction of realg rather than h s 84 .a perceived or supposed events. Stressing consensus and contingencyw rather than w w class or ideological conflict in their analyses of political and religious instability, m o .c this paradigmatic revisionist shift was accompanied – at leastte in the hands of a g h some practitioners – by a renewed emphasis on religious sbeliefs rather than .a w secular thought. One significant outcome was the marginalisationw of radicalism. w

m Prominent figures within the canonical English radicalo tradition were regarded .c te as unrepresentative of the conforming, traditionalist, uncommitteda majority; their g h s extreme opinions advocated for only a brief period of their.a lives (‘a mid-life crisis w 85 w w of epic proportions’ in Winstanley’s case); their impact upon society exaggerated m o both by panicked political elites and skilled propagandists.c preying on fears of te a g property damage or cautioning against introducingh religious toleration and its s .a corollary, moral dissolution. Similarly, conventionalw forms of popular protest such w w as food, enclosure and tax riots were reducedm in scale and scope and drained of o .c radical ideological content. Instead these incidentste were presented as sporadic, a g h uncoordinated, locally specific, largely bloodlesss examples of conservative disorder .a w – sometimes richly symbolic – that werew played out against the backdrop of what w

m John Walter has called a ‘public transcripto of commonwealth: neighbourliness and .c te a the moral community, the good lordg and the good king, and the responsibilities h 86 s of office’. Indeed, if canonical radicalism.a was as popular as Marxists and their w w w fellow-travellers maintained, then why did so much of the ancient regime survive m o the English Revolution, why .cwas there a restoration of the monarchy, what te a g happened afterwards to the defeatedh radicals, and why did several of the religious s .a w communities and political movementsw of the period vanish almost without trace w

m o .c te a g 84 h Richardson, Debates on the English Revolution, pp. 150–72; G. Burgess, .a w w ‘On Revisionism: An Aw nalysis of Early Stuart Historiography in the 1970s and 1980s’, HJ,

m 33 (1990): pp. 609–27;o MacLachlan, Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England, pp. 231–51; .c te Caricchio, Popolo ae Rivoluzione?, pp. 111–51; M. Caricchio, ‘Radicalism and the English g h s Revolution’, in Caricchio.a and Tarantino (eds), Cromohs Virtual Seminars, 1, 3, .w

85 m M. Kishlansky,o A Monarchy Transformed. Britain 1603–1714 (Harmondsworth, .c te a 1996), p. 196.g h 86 s J..aD. Walter and K. Wrightson, ‘Dearth and the Social Order in early modern w w w England’, P&P, 71 (1976): pp. 22–42; J.S. Morrill and J.D. Walter, ‘Order and Disorder in m o the English.c Revolution’, in A. Fletcher and D. Stevenson (eds), Order and Disorder in early te a Moderng England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 137–65; Reay, ‘World Turned Upside Down’, h s in. a Eley and Hunt (eds), Reviving the English Revolution, pp. 62–3; Walter, Crowds and w w wPopular Politics, pp. 1–26, 124–80, 181–95, 196–222 (at p. 206). © Copyrighted Material 22 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material until vestiges of their ideologies were rediscovered and refashioned in different m o contexts during the second half of the eighteenth century? .c te a g h Hill’s answer to the first of these important questions was that ‘the revolt s within .a w the Revolution’ was betrayed by the propertied bourgeoisie, whose Protestantw ethic w 87 triumphed. According to Davis’s method for evaluating radicalism, however,m what o .c te Burgess has termed the functional approach, canonical English radicalisma failed g h s because it did not sufficiently delegitimate the old monarchical order,.a established w w Church and traditional basis of society; nor did it adequately legitimatew the new

m o republic, alternative forms of Church government or far-reaching.c social change; te a nor was there an effective transfer mechanism to get from the displacedg system to h s 88 .a its replacement. And it must be said that Davis’s analysis is wpersuasive. w w Thus the republic’s failure to fully legitimate itself can be seen in a missed m o .c opportunity: notable events in Protestant English historyte interpreted as signs of a g h providential favour – the accession of Queen Elizabeth,s defeat of the Spanish .a w Armada and discovery of the Gunpowder plot – hadw been memorialised and w

m commemorated for political purposes (as Charles oStuart’s ‘martyrdom’ and his .c te son’s restoration were to be too), yet unlike the foundationala dates of the American, g h s French and Russian Revolutions, there was no national.a holiday celebrating a single w w w Parliamentary military victory, only religiously based public fasting expressing m 89 o communal solidarity. Again, despite a fresh.c coat of arms and Parliamentary te a g mace, manufacturing seals, minting coins h and medals, commissioning portraits, s .a holding banquets, choreographing triumphalw parades, state funerals and foreign w w ambassadors’ visits, not to mention usingm English in all public documents, the o .c oligarchic republic was supplanted byt ean uncrowned Lord Protector presiding with a g h the aid of his council and successives Parliaments over a perpetual Reformation .a w w 90 implemented by an unsteady alliancew of magistracy, ministry and military power.

m Furthermore, although an estimatedo 80,000 soldiers were killed or maimed during .c te a the first English Civil War, theatresg of conflict in England did not quite resemble h s .a the horrors experienced by wthose German-speaking territories devastated during w w the Thirty Years War. Contrary to its reputation as a benign conflict conducted m o .c te a g h s 87 .a Hill, World Turnedw Upside Down, pp. 14–17; cf. Reay, ‘Radicalism and Religion in w w English Revolution’, in McGregor and Reay (eds), Radical Religion, p. 21. m o 88 .c Davis, ‘Radicalismte in a traditional society’, pp. 202–3; cf. Greaves, Deliver Us from a g h Evil, pp. 5–6; Laube,s ‘Radicalism as a Research Problem’, in Hillerbrand (ed.), Radical .a w Tendencies in thew Reformation, pp. 13, 20, 23; Burgess, ‘Introduction’, p. 8; Burgess, w

‘Radicalism andm the English Revolution’, pp. 62–3, 67–8; Davis, ‘Afterword’, pp. 338, o .c 341. te a g 89 h d.s Cressy, ‘The Protestant Calendar and the Vocabulary of Celebration in Early .a w Modern wEngland’, JBS, 29 (1990): p. 36. w 90 m o s. Kelsey, Inventing a Republic: The Political Culture of the English Commonwealth, .c te 1649–1653a (Manchester, 1997); D. Hirst, ‘The Failure of Godly Rule in the English g h Republic’,s P&P, 132 (1991): pp. 33–66; C. Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals: Godly .a w w Governmentw during the English Revolution (Manchester, 2001). © Copyrighted Material Introduction 23 © Copyrighted Material

within strict honorific codes of conduct, atrocities were committed (includingm o .c te on women) and the accepted professional, religious and moral laws of a war g 91 h s occasionally transgressed. Yet in its aftermath there was nothing – at leasta on . w w English soil – comparable to the brutality of la Terreur or the Red Terror. Dw efeated

m Royalists were imprisoned, disarmed, placed under surveillance and in exceptionalo .c te a circumstances publicly put to death. As with the State’s confiscationg of property h s .a belonging to the Crown, bishops, dean and chapters, so too a numberw also had w 92 w their estates seized and sequestered. There were, however, no mass executions m o .c of political prisoners. Similarly, despite longstanding identificationte of the Pope a g h with Antichrist, stigmatisation of Catholics (accusations of superstition,s idolatry, .a w disloyalty, licentiousness), and alarming stories warning of wforeign intervention, w

m widespread fear of Popish plots resulted only occasionally in assaultso on worshippers .c te departing foreign embassy chapels, some rioting and severala executions rather than g h s a Protestant equivalent to the St Bartholomew’s Day .massacrea – again, at least w 93 w w on English soil. Puritan iconoclasm was also usually more than just mindless m o vandalism borne of Biblicist zeal, reflecting in its .c sanctioned implementation by te a g local elites and Parliamentary commissioners a legalistich distinction between what s .a were considered superstitious and idolatrous artefacts,w images and inscriptions w w on the one hand, and approved components ofm funeral monuments such as coats o .c 94 of arms and sepulchral brasses on the other.te Even army mutinies over arrears a g h of pay together with arguably pro-Levellers mutinies, had their counterpoint in .a w microcosm with the Diggers’ non-resistance.w Indeed, if a measure of canonical w

m English radicalism’s transformative potentialo was not merely its ability to turn the .c te a g h s .a 91 w i. Roy, ‘England Turned Germany?w The Aftermath of the Civil War in Its European w

Context’, TRHS, 5th series, 28 (1978):m pp. 127–44; B. Donagan, ‘Codes of Conduct in the o .c English Civil War’, P&P, 118 (1988):te pp. 65–95; B. Donagan, ‘Atrocity, War Crime, and a g h Treason in the English Civil War’,s American Historical Review, 99 (1994): pp. 1137–66; .a w M. Stoyle, ‘The Road to Farndonw Field: Explaining the Massacre of the Royalist Women at w

Naseby’, EHR, 123 (2008): pp.m 895–923. o 92 .c te H.J. Habakkuk, ‘Publica finance and the Sale of Confiscated Property during the g h Interregnum’, Economic sHistory Review, n.s., 15 (1962): pp. 70–88. .a w 93 w r. Clifton, ‘Thew Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution’, P&P,

m 52 (1971): pp. 23–55;o R. Clifton, ‘Fear of Popery’, in C. Russell (ed.), The Origins of .c te the English Civil aWar (London, 1973), pp. 144–67; I.Y. Thackray, ‘Zion Undermined: g h s The Protestant Belief.a in a Popish Plot during the English Interregnum’, History Workshop w w Journal, 18 (1984):w pp. 28–52; P. Lake, ‘Anti-popery: the structure of a Prejudice’, in

m R. Cust and A.o Hughes (eds), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and .c te a Politics, 1603–42g (London, 1989), pp. 72–106; J. Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in h s Protestant.a England 1558–1689 (Harlow, 2000), pp. 90, 157–8. w 94 w w J. Morrill, ‘William Dowsing, the Bureaucratic Puritan’, in J. Morrill, P. Slack m o and D..c Woolf (eds), Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England te a (Oxford,g 1993), pp. 173–203; J. Walter, ‘Popular iconoclasm and the politics of the parish h s in. aEastern England, 1640–1642’, HJ, 47 (2004): pp. 261–90; Walter, Crowds and Popular w w Politicsw , pp. 184–6. © Copyrighted Material 24 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material old world upside down but to eradicate it, then part of its failure was attributable m o to moderation, compromise and restraint – the quest for settlement. .c te a g h Another reason provided for canonical English radicalism’s failure wass that .a w its modernising agenda was too advanced for a traditional, technologicallyw limited w 95 society. Sometimes, however, this has been reframed as criticism: them notion o .c te that radicals were ahead of – or before – their time, with its obvious teleologicala g h 96 s implications, has been frequently and effectively challenged. Linked.a to this w w is a further key issue; was radicalism essentially innovatory? Yetw if so, unless

m o the proposed changes were cloaked in the language of custom.c or conservation te a 97 to dampen down hostility, we are in danger of creating a paradox.g For like the h s .a preceding Radical Reformation, many of the various ideologicalw manifestations w w of radicalism during the English Revolution were marked by a desire to return m o .c to uncorrupted roots: the prelapsarian purity of Adam andte Eve in the Garden of a g h Eden; the primitive Christianity of the Apostles; the unadulterateds text of Holy .a w Scripture; the classical republicanism of ancient Rome;w the privileges enjoyed by w

m freeborn Anglo-Saxons before the imposition of a Normano Yoke; the fundamental .c te and inalienable provisions of Magna Carta buttresseda by precedent, common law g h s and custom. So too millenarian beliefs were based.a on the expectation of Christ’s w w w return in either material or spiritual form; an event preceded by the return of his m o heralds, the prophets. Again, the legacy of R.c enaissance Humanism coupled with te a g the effective diffusion of texts by noted Florentineh syncretists stimulated interest s .a in a rediscovered ancient theology. w w w

Where a strong case can be made form the innovatory nature of the radicalisms o .c under discussion was in several of tthee methods adopted by people who were a g h radicalised to achieve their ends, ands in the distinctive ways that ideologies which .a w w were radical in particular contexts wcould be expressed. The latter has led to a literary

m approach, pioneered by Hill’s examinationo of ‘radical prose’ and exemplified by .c te a the rewarding work of Nigelg Smith and Nicholas McDowell. Thus Smith has h s .a argued that ‘the radicals, asw churches, sects, and individuals ... created their own w w distinctive language usages, their own habits of expression and communication, m o .c te a g h s 95 .a w Cf. Hill, Worldw Turned Upside Down, p. 321; C. Hill (ed.), Winstanley: The Law w of Freedom and Otherm Writings (Harmondsworth, 1973), pp. 9–10; C. Hill, ‘The Religion o .c of Gerrard Winstanley’,te in Hill, Collected Essays, 2, pp. 234–6; Aylmer, ‘Collective a g h Mentalities’, p. 12.s .a 96 w Davis, w ‘Radicalism in a traditional society’, p. 194; Greaves and Zaller (eds), w

Biographical mDictionary, 1, p. ix; Condren, Politics of Language, p. 151; Scott, England’s o .c Troubles, p.t e233; Burgess, ‘Radicalism and English Revolution’, pp. 64, 66. a g 97 h Cf.s Greaves and Zaller (eds), Biographical Dictionary, 1, p. viii; Condren, .a w ‘Radicals,w Conservatives and Moderates’, pp. 533, 537; Condren, Politics of Language, w

m pp. 144,o 149, 151; Scott, England’s Troubles, pp. 7, 229, 233–4; Burgess, ‘Radicalism and .c te Englisha Revolution’, pp. 63, 68; Greaves, ‘“That Kind of People”’, pp. 105–6; Condren, g h ‘Afterword’,s p. 318; Baker, ‘Rhetoric, Reality and Varieties of Civil War Radicalism’, .a w w p.w 204. © Copyrighted Material Introduction 25 © Copyrighted Material

their own literature and culture’. Despite Davis’s caveat against treating the speechm o .c te acts and writings of radicals as if they were a category sufficiently homogenousa g h s to make valid general statements about, there is still much to be learned froma an . w 98 w interdisciplinary approach. w

m Ultimately, the inescapable conclusion that canonical English radicalismo failed .c te a in the short term has been glossed over by its advocates, who emphasiseg instead h s .a its long-term achievements: the separation of Church and State; anticlericalism;w w w religious toleration; rationalism; scientific enquiry; the growth of democratic, m o .c egalitarian, communist and (lately) environmentalist thought. Thiste too, of course, a g h is teleological. And by overlooking those radicalisms that dids not produce these .a w desired outcomes it resembles a form of intellectual naturalw selection; one w

m privileging only those ideas which were carried through theo Enlightenment to our .c te modern age. a g h s .a w w w

m o Our Contributors’ Central Concerns .c te a g h s .a The essays in this volume originated at a conferencew held at Goldsmiths, University w w of London, which invited consideration of individuals,m movements, ideologies and o .c events that challenged the fundamental political,te religious or social axioms of their a g h day; examined the usefulness of the termss radical and radicalism together with .a w the validity of a radical tradition; and exploredw the changing nature of radicalism w

m together with the impact of the movemento of people, ideas, images and texts .c te a across and within geographical boundaries,g as well as over time. Addressing h s these questions in distinct yet interlinked.a ways, their central concerns include: w w w definitions and how meanings can evolve; context; print culture; language and m o interpretative techniques; literary.c forms and rhetorical strategies that conveyed, or te a g deliberately disguised, subversiveh meanings; and the existence or construction of s .a w a single, continuous radicalw tradition. Naturally, there are no firm conclusions, but w we believe there to be an memerging consensus that consolidates recent important o .c te work in this field. a g h s Thus one significant.a outcome is that no contributor denies outright radicalism’s w w usefulness as an explanatoryw category in scholarly discussions of the early

m modern period. Thiso suggests that the nominalist approach, for all its thought- .c te a provoking scepticism,g has found few adherents. Nonetheless, many contributors h s .a have emphasisedw the need for sensitivity to context and consequently the w w situational, episodic and variegated nature of radicalism. Moreover, by widening m o .c the scope ofte what constituted radicalism our contributors have not only opened a g h s .a w 98 w w C. Hill, ‘Radical Prose in 17th Century England: From Marprelate to the Levellers’, m o in Hill,.c Collected Essays, 1, pp. 75–95; Smith, Perfection Proclaimed, pp. 3, 341; J.C. te a Davis,g ‘Puritanism and Revolution: Themes, Categories, Methods and Conclusions’, HJ, h s 34.a (1991): pp. 485–7; Burgess, ‘Matter of Context’, p. 3; Burgess, ‘Radicalism and English w w wRevolution’, p. 68. © Copyrighted Material 26 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material up unexpected new directions for research but also contributed towards the m o gradual process that is shattering the canonical English radical tradition and .cthe te a g h Marxist foundations upon which it was constructed. For even though vestigess of .a w radicalism recovered in manuscripts and rediscovered in printed texts didw (and w do) constitute part of perceived (and sometimes romanticised) radical heritages,m o .c te the substantive approach to the study of radicalism is problematic – aand indeed g h 99 s arguably no longer sustainable. So much so, that, of the remaining.a alternatives, w w the functional approach seems generally closest to a number of the wmethodologies

m o adopted here. .c te a Turning from methods to recurrent themes, Sarah Hutton’sg essay is one of h s .a several highlighting the softening effect of the passage of timew and the necessity w w of relocating ideas within their original context. Hence, although the Cambridge m o .c Platonists’ mild disposition now appears to us as ‘divorcedte from the political a g h sphere, and anything but radical’, they were, for all theirs ‘sweet reasonableness’, .a w decidedly radical in their detractors’ eyes. Althoughw Hutton cautions against w

m reconfiguring all aspects of the Cambridge o Platonists’ milieu within a radical .c te framework, she notes that while some attention hasa been paid to the reading habits g h s of prominent autodidactic artisans, the Cambridge.a Platonists’ radicalism was w w w likewise derived mainly from exposure to the spoken and written word – even if m o theirs developed from higher learning. This. c accords with Nicholas McDowell’s te a g argument in his exploration of how post-Tridentineh Catholic poetry influenced the s .a army chaplain John Saltmarsh: rather thanw equating radical with popular culture, w w

‘radical ideas and texts’ need to be situatedm within ‘the context of a continuous o .c interaction between humanist and vernacular,te “elite” and “popular”, traditions’. a g h He maintains that ‘radical ideas’ cans as easily be found in ‘mainstream political, .a w w religious and intellectual culturew as in its margins’. Similarly, Noam Flinker’s

m chapter on the poetics of biblicalo prophecy illustrates how a ‘radical discourse’ .c te a could be fashioned from Judaicg materials, in this instance Abiezer Coppe’s h s .a appropriation of the rabbinicw exegetical technique known as Midrash. Collating w w scriptural texts into a millenarian declamation which combined warnings about m o the consequences of social.c injustice with autobiographical passages recounting te a g h spiritual awakening ands provocative sexual imagery, enabled Coppe to speak .a w with ‘a prophetic voicew simultaneously imitative and radically new’. All of which w

m also chimes with Jasono Peacey’s claim that ‘radical ideas ... proved capable of .c te migrating into unexpecteda areas of the political nation, and across the political g h s spectrum’. His. a essay begins with an emphatic reaffirmation that the essence of w w early modernw radicalism was situational since it ‘was intrinsically conditioned

m o by factors relating.c to time, place, author, and context, as well as literary form’. te a g Moreover,h by demonstrating that ‘what was mundane in one moment and one s .a mediumw could be dangerous at another time and in a different context’, Peacey is w w able to suggest that ‘late 1640s “radicalism” became a phenomenon in some ways m o .c te a g h 99 s Cf. Edward Vallance, A Radical History of Britain. Visionaries, Rebels and .a w w wRevolutionaries: The Men and Women who Fought for Our Freedoms (London, 2009). © Copyrighted Material Introduction 27 © Copyrighted Material

distinct from, and capable of breaking down the barriers’ between Royalist andm o .c te Parliamentarian political affiliations. a g h s It is also noteworthy that a number of essays tend to focus on individualsa . w w – all male – or well-defined social networks. Thus Ariel Hessayonw contends

m that Gerrard Winstanley’s heterodox religious views were not an unexpectedo .c te a aberration but the product of a spiritual journey with distinct puritan gand Baptist h s .a phases. Hessayon argues that ‘the imprint of distinctive General Baptistw tenets, w w especially in Winstanley’s first five publications, is both unmistakable and crucial m o .c for understanding the development of his ideas’ and that thesete are recoverable a g h through reminiscences, citations, allusions, suggestive parallelss and circumstantial .a w evidence. Yet if Winstanley’s religious radicalism was morew deep-rooted and of w

m longer duration than the brief hiatus currently allowed byo revisionists, then it .c te must be contrasted with the findings of Sandra Hynes,a Giovanni Tarantino and g h s Jason McElligott. For, in their respective chapters on Joseph.a Boyse (1660–1728) w w w and Ralph Thoresby (1658–1725), Anthony Collins (1676–1729), and William m o Hone (1780–1842), they demonstrate that people. c were not always unfailingly te a g radical: rather they could be radicalised or deradicalisedh by a combination of s .a personal experience and wider political, social,w economic, intellectual, cultural w w and religious factors. In addition, they suggestm that, as with the complex, flexible, o .c symbiotic relationship between orthodoxy teand heterodoxy brought out notably a g h in McDowell’s discussion of how Saltmarshs ‘forged his radical theology’, so .a w radicalism was determined as much byw hegemonic attitudes and constraints as w

m its situational characteristics. Thus Hyneso suggests that, in light of the religiously .c te a ‘moderate’ Boyse’s sensitivity to theg treatment of dissenters, ‘it was often the h s State and its Established Church as.a much as the dissenters that defined the limits w w w of radicalism and orthodoxy’. S imilarly, although a leading exponent of the m o ‘Radical Enlightenment’, Collins.c repeatedly hid his identity when ‘intervening te a g in the theological, philosophicalh and political controversies of his age’ so that to s .a w all intents and purposes hisw public life was largely uneventful. Hone too, once ‘a w minor figure in London radicalm circles’ with objectives extending beyond political o .c te reform (he disapproved aof corruption, oppression, tyranny and bigotry), eventually g h s ‘rejected progressive politics.a and embraced reaction’. w w Given our contributors’w interest in printed texts, it is worth observing that

m the Cambridge Platonists,o Boyse, Thoresby and Collins were bibliophiles, while .c te a the bookseller Honeg had an ‘encyclopaedic knowledge of early-modern print h s .a culture’. Anotherw bookseller, Giles Calvert (1615–63), forms the subject of Mario w w Caricchio’s chapter. Calvert issued and sold writings by several figures discussed m o .c in this collection,te including Coppe, Saltmarsh and Winstanley. According to a g h Caricchio’ss reckoning, he published 813 titles, which was almost 9 per cent of .a w the publishedw output of London booksellers from 1641 to 1662. Caricchio argues w

m that theo core of Calvert’s authorial stable can be considered ‘an offshoot of the .c te “radical”a wing of the Reformation’ and that at the height of the English Revolution g h s individuals.a identified with a cluster of social networks – which had one nexus at w w wCalvert’s bookshop – participated in ‘the heated debate about Church settlement © Copyrighted Material 28 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material and religious toleration from a shared antinomian and spiritualist standpoint’. m o Moreover, through ‘unity and diversity, publicity and political capability’,.c te a g h Calvert’s bookshop embodied a significant aspect of ‘the “radical substance”s that .a w struck at the very foundation of the early-modern State and political culture’.w w

Caricchio, however, acknowledges that, as well as being ‘a matter of substance’,m o .c te radicalism was ‘a matter of context’ – a key aspect being the public spacea provided g h s by bookshops and the printed word. .a w w Recovering those influences that shaped texts which were radicalw in particular

m o contexts and tracing these texts’ intermittent afterlives have together.c often formed te a part of the substantive approach to the study of radicalism. Althoughg he thinks h s .a that the canonical English radical tradition is no longer viablew as an historical w w enterprise, Hessayon has nonetheless suggested that ‘it is fruitful to consider m o .c the Diggers as an offshoot from the main branch of thete General Baptists, with a g h roots going back to the Radical Reformation’. All the s same, he also recognises .a w that for all the resonances and parallels between Winstanley,w his contemporaries w

m and their predecessors, what he shows here is not ano unbroken lineage but how a .c te rich genealogy of religious and political ideas cana with skilful adaptation furnish g h s material for radical discourses in suitable contexts..a Similarly, McElligott accepts w w w ‘that there was no trans-historical radical party, no fixed, permanent “programme” m o for which radicals in each and every age struggled.c against the same, unchanging te a g enemy’. Even so, he stresses ‘that radicalsh of the English Revolution and the s .a early-nineteenth century (and, one suspects,w radicals in every other era of human w w history) looked to the past for inspiration,m legitimation and vindication’. What o .c is more, although ‘all traditions – whetherte radical or conservative, left or right a g h – are shaped, moulded and manufactured’,s that does not in McElligott’s view .a w w necessarily make them fabrications.w Warren Johnston too underscores continuities

m in his examination of Protestanto apocalyptic ideas after the Revolution of 1688– .c te a 89, arguing that all the maing elements of early- and mid-seventeenth century h s .a apocalyptic thought were stillw present. In addition, he notes that apocalyptic w w convictions were not the preserve of radicals since they were likewise articulated m o by mainstream Anglicans.c and moderate dissenters. Consequently, for Johnston as te a g h well, context is paramount:s ‘a belief can be either radical or not depending on the .a w purpose to and the circumstancesw within which it is used’. w

m Interpreting signso of God’s providence and apocalyptic rhetoric connects .c te Johnston’s essaya with Jim Smyth’s exploration of English republican empire- g h s building. Going.a beyond the conventional emphasis ‘on immediate political and w w military contingenciesw as the thrust behind English expansion in 1649–53’, Smyth

m o argues that .cProtestant providentialists, classical republicans and defenders of de te a g facto politicalh authority, among others, shared ‘an ingrained and impregnable sense s .a of Englishw superiority’ that more often than not was underpinned by their ‘belief w w in England’s destiny as an elect Nation’. Again, context – the supposed military m o .c threatte posed by Ireland, anti-popery, the desire to avenge the 1641 massacres and a g h thes need to pay off Parliament’s war debts with confiscated Irish land – forged .a w somethingw distinctive; and most clearly in James Harrington’s effort in his The w © Copyrighted Material Introduction 29 © Copyrighted Material

Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), ‘to reconcile the republic for increase with them o .c te republic for preservation and found an “immortal commonwealth”’. As Smytha g h s reminds us, it was Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy that distinguisheda . w w between republics for increase (Rome) and republics for preservation (Venice),w

m clearly favouring the former. Machiavelli brings us to Stefano Villani’so chapter .c te a on the widespread Italian interest in the English Revolution. Overwhelminglyg h s .a and unambiguously sympathetic to the defeated Royalists, Italian diplomatsw and w w historians tended to interpret the conflict as a political struggle between social m o .c elites (the aristocracy) and the mob. Although religious discord tewas dismissed as a g h a ruse intended to disguise political ambitions, commentatorss were nonetheless .a w ‘astonished by the proliferation of sects in England’. Curious travellersw enumerated w

m these with wonder in textual equivalents of curiosity cabinets,o while certain .c te heresiographers compiled baroque bestiaries of the spirita that were ultimately g h s derived from Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena (1646). Yet.a these Catholic writers w w w also understood that when unleashed, religious heterodoxies could strike axe m o blows to dismember polities and so, vindicated in their.c belief that these were the te a g rotten fruits of separation from Rome’s spiritualh authority, they too warned of s .a the dangers of introducing religious toleration. Fw urthermore, when confronted by w w the novelty of Quaker emissaries on the Italianm peninsula, inquisitors and wary o .c governing elites frequently dismissed them teas extravagant, deluded and ignorant a g h proselytisers. s .a w The ‘enormous distance that separatedw revolutionary England from Counter- w

m Reformation Italy’ draws our attentiono to the question of whether the English .c te a experience was exceptional, since g the prevailing view is that what mainly h s distinguished the English Revolution.a from baronial revolts, religious wars, w w w rebellions and the ‘general crisis’ destabilising mid-seventeenth-century Ireland, m o France, Catalonia, Portugal, N.c aples and elsewhere, was radicalism. We hope te a g that, despite this volume’s Ah nglocentric focus, there are enough indications of s .a w transnational contexts – thew transmission of texts in their original language or w

English translations, lettersm from abroad, emigration and foreign journeys – to o .c te stimulate research furthera afield not only on the comparatively less-explored g h s varieties of Irish and S.a cottish radicalism, but on continental European variants as w w well. Likewise, we welcomew further contextual studies on radicals and radicalisms

m both within and beyondo the chronological span of this collection. Finally, because .c te a the conference fromg which this volume derives aimed to offer new perspectives h s .a on radicals andw radicalisms, and because its aspirations are explorative rather than w w conclusive, no fixed editorial position has been imposed on the contributors in m o .c their choicete of subject matter, nomenclature, method or the conclusions reached. a g h Althoughs some important commonalties, links and themes have been indicated .a w here, tow have enforced any overarching interpretative frameworks would have w

m gone oagainst the spirit of this enterprise. The essays have therefore been presented .c te in chronologicala order. Taken together they offer a sense of the complexity and g h s variety.a of the subject as well as making the point that much work remains to be w w wdone on radicals and radicalism in early modern England and beyond. © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 1 m o .c te a g h s The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics .ofa w w w

m o Antinomianism: Richard Crashaw, John.c te a g h s .a Saltmarsh and the Language of Religiousw w w

m * o c

1 . Radicalism in the 1640s te a g h s .a w Nicholas McDowell w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o This essay was inspired by a couple of unexpected.c conjunctions between two of te a g the most infamous religious radicals of the 1640s,h Abiezer Coppe (1619–72) and s .a John Saltmarsh (d. 1647), and the Laudian, finallyw Catholic, poet Richard Crashaw w w

(1612/13–47). The first conjunction occurs inm the diary of Thomas Dugard (bap. o .c 1608, d. 1683), the headmaster of Warwickte School in the 1630s. Dugard’s star a g h pupil was Coppe, who was to become ins 1649 the most notorious of the so- .a w called ‘Ranters’, alleged to subvert the wdivine economy of sin, heaven and hell w

m through the committing of acts commonlyo thought to be sinful to demonstrate their .c te a release from moral and religious law.g In his entries for 1634, Dugard records the h s fifteen-year-old Coppe coming round.a to his house after dinner for extra lessons w w w in Latin and Greek. Among the texts that Coppe read to Dugard was Crashaw’s m o 1 Epigrammata sacrorum liber . (1634).c This collection of neo-Latin devotional te a g verse was mostly written by Crashawh to fulfil the conditions of his scholarship at s .a w Pembroke College, Cambridge,w and was given the unusual honour, for a single- w authored volume, of publicationm by the University Press. Dugard’s diary for the o .c te period 1632–42 leaves aan account of the Puritan circle in which Dugard mixed, g h s revolving around Lord.a Brooke’s hospitality at Warwick Castle. As Ann Hughes has w w shown, Dugard’s diaryw reveals him to have been part of a ‘“Parliamentary-Puritan

m connection”, a broado circle of the godly that comprised minor provincial figures .c te a and prominent nationalg politicians, and which helped to create the challenge to h s .a w w w

m o .c * te

1 a thisg chapter was delivered as a paper at two conferences in the summer of 2006: h s ‘Rediscovering.a Radicalism in the British Isles, 1500–1800’, Goldsmiths, University of w w London,w and ‘Religious Heterodoxy in Seventeenth-Century England’, Centre for Research

m in theo Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge. I am grateful to Ariel Hessayon .c te a andg William Poole, respectively, for inviting me, and to the audiences for their comments, in h s particular.a Anne Dunan-Page, Peter Lake, Anthony Milton, Joad Raymond and Nigel Smith. w w 1 w BL, Add. MS 23,146, fol. 33v. © Copyrighted Material 32 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

2 Charles I’s personal rule’. However, Dugard’s zealous anti-Laudianism evidently m o did not stop him from enjoying Crashaw’s epigrams and using them as a study.c te a g h in neo-Latin eloquence, despite the intense and sensuous liturgical imagerys that .a w characterises many of the poems and Crashaw’s praise, in the prose addressw to the w reader that prefaces the Epigrammata, of the Jesuit writers who have providedm him o .c te with a model of sacred eloquence. a g h s The second conjunction is to be found in the tracts collected by.a the London w w bookseller George Thomason (1602–66). In volume 1152 of the tracts,w the second

m o (1648) edition of Crashaw’s Steps to the Temple, a vernacular .collectionc which te a includes free translations of many of the Latin epigrams, isg collected beside h s .a the first (1645) edition of Free-Grace, or the Flowings of Christ’sw Blood Freely w w to Sinners by the New Model Army chaplain John Saltmarsh. Now this may m o .c simply be a random pairing by Thomason, about whosete organising habits we a g 3 h still know little. On the other hand, a few months befores the Crashaw volume .a w appeared, Samuel Rutherford (1600–61), the Presbyterianw Professor of Divinity w

m at St Andrew’s, had responded in some detail to othe theological arguments of .c te Free-Grace, citing Saltmarsh as the leading Englisha ‘antinomian’ – by which g h s Rutherford meant someone who believes ‘the Saints.a are perfect, and their works w w w perfect’ in this life, and consequently have no need of obedience and repentance. m o Rutherford warned that the ‘Antinomians and.c Anabaptists now in England joyne te a g hands with Pelagians, Jesuits, and Arminiansh ’ for they are all ‘enemies to the s 4 .a grace of God’. For Rutherford, ‘antinomian’w and Arminian theologies were two w w sides of the same coin and both hereticalm inversions of true Calvinist doctrine. In o .c 1648, Rutherford stepped up his attackte on Saltmarsh in the vitriolic A Survey of the a g h Spiritual Antichrist opening the secretss of Familisme and Antinomianisme, in the .a w w Antichristian Doctrine of John Saltmarsh,w and William Dell, the present Preachers

m of the Army now in England. Ino fact by 1648 Saltmarsh was no longer a ‘present .c te a preacher in the Army’ – he hadg died a memorable death in December 1647 after h s .a travelling, though seriously will, to tell Fairfax and Cromwell that God was angry w w 5 with them for imprisoning the Levellers. m o .c te a g h s 2 .a ann Hughes, ‘Tw homas Dugard and his Circle in the 1630s: A “Parliamentary- w w Puritan” Connexion?’, HJ, 29 (1986): p. 784. m o 3 .c Jason McElligottte points out how little we know about how Thomason read or a g h regarded the publicationss he collected in Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary .a w England (Woodbridge,w 2007), p. 36. w 4 samuelm Rutherford, Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself (London, 1647), o .c ‘To the Reader’,te sigs. A3r, A4v–B1r. a g 5 h Sees Wonderfull predictions declared in a message, as from the Lord, to his .a w Excellencyw Sr. Thomas Fairfax and the Councell of his Army. By John Saltmarsh preacher w

m of theo Gospell. His severall speeches, and the manner of his death. December 29. 1647 .c te (London,a 1647); Englands Friend Raised from the Grave .... Being the true copies of three g h letterss written by Mr. John Saltmarsh, a little before his death (London, 1649); also Roger .a w w Pooley’sw entry for Saltmarsh in the ODNB. © Copyrighted Material The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics of Antinomianism 33 © Copyrighted Material

Might Thomason’s binding of Free-Grace and Steps to the Temple be morem o .c te than coincidence? Might it indicate his recognition of the linguistic and theologicala g h s similarities between Saltmarsh’s prose and Crashaw’s poetry? In terms of theology,a . w w there is a shared emphasis on Christ crucified and the assurance of salvationw in the

m writings of the ‘antinomian’ Saltmarsh and the Laudian, Catholic-leaningo Crashaw. .c te a More intriguingly, the rhetorical resources which Saltmarsh used to expressg this h s .a assurance of salvation also originated in the neo-Latin poetics practisedw in Caroline w w Cambridge. Reading Saltmarsh alongside Crashaw will reveal how the experience m o .c of writing neo-Latin devotional verse in Cambridge in the 1630s providedte Saltmarsh a g h with a language to express a tolerationist, antinomian theologys in the 1640s, just .a w 6 as it provided Crashaw with a poetics for a Laudian, Anglo-Catholicw theology. As w

m the young Coppe’s reading of Crashaw’s Latin verse indicates,o the assumption that .c te the language of English radical religion in the 1640s wasa a language of popular g h s biblical apocalypticism which ‘had nothing to do with.a Renaissance Latinity’ w 7 w w needs revision. We need rather to place radical ideas and texts in the context of m o a continuous interaction between humanist and vernacular,.c ‘elite’ and ‘popular’, te a 8 g traditions, rather than automatically equating radicalh culture with popular culture. s .a Glenn Burgess has recently argued that early modernw radicalism should not be w w

m o 6 .c as Rutherford’s usage suggests, the term ‘antinomian’te was essentially one of abuse, a g h and was linked by those who used it with immorals and libertine behaviour, whereas the .a w claim to define properly the ‘free grace’ ofw God, as Saltmarsh does in Free-Grace, was w one made by all sides in the disputes of them mid-seventeenth century; see M. Winship, o .c te Making Heretics: Militant Protestantisma and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–41 g h (Princeton, NJ, 2002), p. 1. At the sames time it is not quite true, as is often claimed, that .a w the term ‘antinomian’ was never acceptedw as self-descriptive. The Leveller leader William w

m Walwyn writes in his Just Defenceo (1649): ‘I, through God’s goodnesse, had long before .c te been established in that part of doctrinea (called then, Antinomian) of free justification by g h Christ alone; and so my heart wass at much more ease and freedom, then others, who were .a w entangled with those yokes ofw bondage, unto which Sermons and Doctrines mixt of Law w

m and Gospel, do subject distressedo consciences’, see J.R. McMichael and B. Taft (eds), The .c te Writings of William Walwyna (Athens, GA, 1989), pp. 395–6. ‘Antinomian’ is used as a g h label by David R. Como s in his study of the pre-war origins of religious radicalism, Blown .a w w by the Spirit: Puritanismw and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-

m War England (Stanford,o CA, 2004), although he is careful to emphasise the difficulty of .c te defining the term. aIn this essay I will refer to Saltmarsh’s ‘antinomian’ theology to underline g h s the radical implications.a of his ideas as they were received by more orthodox Calvinist w w contemporaries.w

7 m r. Pooley,o English Prose of the Seventeenth Century, 1590–1700 (London and New .c te a York, 1992),g p. 164. h 8 s this.a is the central argument of N. McDowell, The English Radical Imagination: w w w Culture, Religion, and Revolution, 1630–1660 (Oxford, 2003). See also N. McDowell , m o ‘Writing.c the Literary and Cultural History of Radicalism in the English Revolution’, te a in g M. Caricchio and G. Tarantino (eds), Cromohs Virtual Seminars. Recent h s Historiographical.a Trends of the British Studies (17th–18th Centuries) (2006–2007): 1–4 w w whttp://www.cromohs.unifi.it/seminari/mcdowell.html. © Copyrighted Material 34 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material approached as a ‘phenomenon with a continuous existence’ but as one ‘forged, and m o forged repeatedly, from the discursive and cultural materials – e.g. the languages.c – te a g h that lay to hand’. These languages may be as likely to reinforce as subvert pre-wars .a w orthodoxies and to be found in the mainstream political, religious and intellectualw w 9 culture as in its margins. The language of neo-Latin poetics which was partm of the o .c te orthodox education of both Crashaw and Saltmarsh in Caroline Cambridgea was g h s also part of the ‘cultural and discursive material’ from which Saltmarsh.a forged his w w radical theology amidst the unprecedented religious innovation of thew Civil Wars.

m o And Coppe’s teenage lessons in Crashavian eloquence may even .tellc us something te a about the origins of his ecstatic ‘Ranter’ prose. g h s .a w w w

m o .c Crashaw’s verse is best known for its use of sensuous and eroticte imagery to convey a g h the loving relationship between Christ and man. The physicalitys of the descriptions .a w of Christ’s crucifixion is conventionally associated wwith a continental ‘baroque’ w

m poetics that Crashaw derived from his reading of Jesuito and Counter-Reformation .c te writers. This interpretation fits neatly, perhapsa too neatly, with Crashaw’s later g h s conversion to Catholicism after he left for the .aContinent when Cambridge was w w 10 w occupied by the Parliamentary Army in 1643. A fine example of Crashaw’s m o extravagant, some have said grotesque, play .cwith the spiritual significance of the te a g physical ravages suffered by Christ’s bodyh is ‘On the Wounds of our Crucified s .a Christ’, which is a vernacular rendering ofw one of the neo-Latin epigrams: w w

m o .c O these wakeful wounds of thine! te a g h are they Mouthes? Or are they seyes? .a w w Be they Mouthes, or be they eyne,w

m each bleeding part some oneo supplies. .c te a g h s .a Lo! A mouth, whose full-bloom’dw lips w w at too deare a rate are roses. m o Lo! A blood-shot! that.c weepes te a g h and many a cruels teare discloses. .a w w w

O thou that on thism foot hast laid o .c te Many a kisse,a and many a Teare, g h s Now thou shal’t.a have all repaid, w w Whatso’erew thy charges were.

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w 9 m Burgess, ‘Radicalism and the English revolution’, p. 68. o 10.c te a see, for example, A. Warren, Richard Crashaw: A Study in Baroque Sensibility g h (London,s 1957); R.V. Young, Richard Crashaw and the Spanish Golden Age (New Haven, .a w w w1982). © Copyrighted Material The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics of Antinomianism 35 © Copyrighted Material

This foot hath got a Mouth and lippes, m o .c te To pay the sweet summe of thy kisses: a g h To pay thy Teares, an Eye that weeps s .a w w In stead of Teares such Gems as this is. w

m o .c te a The difference onely this appears, g h s .a (Nor can the change offend) w w w The debt is paid in Ruby-Teares, m 11 o .c Which thou in Pearles did’st lend. te a g h s .a w The constantly shifting images of blood and water, kisses andw tears, rubies and w

m pearls, invoke transubstantiation and sacramental ceremony.o Such imagery is .c te difficult to comprehend on a visual, as opposed to an emotional,a level, just as the g h s incarnation and Passion, and their repetition in Eucharistic.a ritual, defy rational w w w comprehension. The use of paradox and antithesis conveys the resolution of the m o seeming opposites of law and mercy, the ‘type’ of the.c Old Testament and the ‘anti- te a g type’ of the Gospel, through the saving grace of Christ’sh blood. s .a Crashaw’s poetry was mostly written while w he was at Cambridge, before his w w conversion to Catholicism. Yet, as Thomas Healym observes in his fine little book o .c on Crashaw’s poetic evolution, Crashaw’s versete is ‘distinguished by a confidence a g h in salvation unusual in Protestant writing’.s We might attribute this confidence .a w to the development of Crashaw’s Arminianismw at Cambridge: he was elected w

m in 1635 to a Fellowship at Peterhouse,o the college at the heart of the Laudian .c te a movement. Healy shows how the vernacularg expansions of the neo-Latin epigrams h s in Steps to the Temple tend to increase.a the physicality of the imagery, consistent w w w with ‘Laudian ideas on the use of physically exaggerated and explicit imagery in m 12 o describing sacred events’. Yet.c the assurance of salvation and the celebration of te a g the physicality of Christ crucifiedh are also to be found in Saltmarsh’sFree-Grace . s .a w For both ‘antinomian’ and Lwaudian oppose a bleeding, loving Christ – whose blood w is testimony to his love – tom the Old Testament God of Law who, as Saltmarsh puts o .c te it, ‘commands us ... as aa Lawgiver, and Tutor, or Minister’, and whose ‘end’ is ‘to g h 13 s bondage, fear, tutorship,.a revealing of sin, outward obedience and conformity’. w w In Free-Grace, Sw altmarsh maintains that those who experience the revelation

m of the free grace purchasedo by Christ’s death are released absolutely from the .c te a bondage of externalg laws and are perfected on earth, regardless of works: ‘The h s .a Spirit of Christw sets a beleever as free from Hell, the Law, and bondage here on w w Earth, as if he were in Heaven; nor wants he anything to make him so, but to make m o .c him beleevete that he is so’. It is important to note that this is not a proclamation of a g h s .a w 11 w wThe Poems, English Latin and Greek, of Richard Crashaw, ed. L.C. Martin (2nd

m edn, Oxford,o 1957), p. 99. All references to Crashaw’s poetry are to this edition. .c 12te a g t. Healy, Richard Crashaw (Leiden, 1986), pp. 64, 127. h s 13 .a John Saltmarsh, Free-Grace: or, the Flowings of Christs Blood freely to Sinners w w (2ndw edn, London, 1646), p. 148. © Copyrighted Material 36 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

14 universal salvation or even of the potential for all to obtain salvation. In the opening m o page of the tract, Saltmarsh declares his intention to separate grace from works,.c te a g h ‘for else it is but a Popish, an Arminian free-grace’. And while the Presbyterians .a w heresiographers represented antinomianism as a belief in universal redemptionw and w thus as a subversion of the Calvinist doctrine of election, the conceptionm of free o .c te grace held by Saltmarsh and his fellow Army chaplain William Dell reallya extended g h s Calvinist theology to its logical conclusions. If works are irrelevant.a to salvation w w and some have been predestined to be saved whether they are sinnersw in this life or

m o not, then anyone, no matter their status in society or their level of .ceducation, could te a be one of God’s saints. Saltmarsh consequently rejected the g spiritual authority h s .a of education and ordination in favour of the truths vouchsafedw by the experience w w of free grace. As Saltmarsh emphasised in Sparkles of Glory (1647), which was m o .c dedicated to Parliament, the theology of free grace made thete notion of an ordained a g h clergy, qualified by a linguistic education, redundant. s Moreover the antinomian .a w conviction that the new dispensation of grace had abrogatedw absolutely the Mosaic w

m Law could lead to the defence of religious toleration,o as advanced by Saltmarsh in .c te Groanes for Liberty (1646). As David Wootton hasa explained in his analysis of the g h s theological underpinnings of Leveller ideas: .a w w w

m o If grace was free then the magistrate was not.c obliged to punish the wicked for te a g their own moral good and as an exampleh to others, but only insofar as was s .a necessary for the protection of society. Hw e no longer had any role to play in the w w

salvation of men’s souls, or any obligationm to prevent the ungodly from sharing o .c power with the godly. te a g h s .a w w Wootton sees this understanding ofw the relationship between law and grace, Old and

m New Testaments, type and antitype,o as ‘crucial to the religious defence of Leveller .c te a principles’. Indeed, though Saltmarshg ‘was never part of the Leveller organization, h s 15 .a he supported many of their waims, and was cited by them in the Putney debates’. w w It was surely the rejection of a clerical caste and of religious uniformity that m o upset Presbyterian heresiographers.c such as Rutherford and Thomas Edwards, in te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g 14 h Saltmarsh,s Free-Grace, p. 140; L.F. Salt, ‘John Saltmarsh: New Model Army .a w Chaplain’, JEHw, 2 (1951): pp. 69–80. A.L. Morton’s extensive discussion of Saltmarsh in w

The World of them Ranters: Religious Radicalism in the English Revolution, (London, 1970), o .c pp. 45–69, iste misleading in this respect. a g 15 h D.s Wootton, ‘Leveller Democracy and the Puritan Revolution’, in J.H. Burns (ed.), .a w with thew assistance of M. Goldie, The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700 w

m (Cambridge,o 1991; 1996), pp. 438–9; Pooley, entry for Saltmarsh in the ODNB. See also .c te the comparisona of Milton and Saltmarsh on grace, law and toleration in Joan S. Bennett, g h Revivings Liberty: Radical Christian Humanism in Milton’s Great Poems (Cambridge, MA, .a w w 1989),w pp. 97–103. © Copyrighted Material The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics of Antinomianism 37 © Copyrighted Material

whose Gangraena (1646) Saltmarsh figures prominently, as much as any potentialm o 16 .c te justification of libertinism. a g h s Nonetheless, what is striking and provocative about Saltmarsh’s formulationa . w w is the claim that the revelation of free grace perfects the individual on earth,w ‘as if

m he were in heaven’. The realisation of earthly perfection through the graceo freely .c te a obtained from the ‘Covenant of the Gospel’, which has abrogated the ‘Covenantg of h s .a the Law’, issues in ecstatic celebration of the incarnation and of Christ’sw physical w w suffering. He writes of Christ’s ‘bloody sweating ... his peircing, his nailing, his m o 17 .c drinking Vinagar and Gall ... his blood flowing out from his feet, handste , and side’. a g h This celebration of violence and suffering also involves an erotics aestheticising of .a w Christ’s wounded body: he was ‘red in his apparel, as he thatw treadeth the wine- w

m presse’, but the blood is also ‘his sweet oyntments or powringso out of spirit’ which .c 18 te make ‘the Virgins follow him’. Saltmarsh incorporatesa the erotic language of g h s Canticles as Christ becomes the Bridegroom who wounds.a the saved soul as he w w w was wounded, but these are ‘the woundings and meltings of love’; paradoxically m o the wound inflicted by Christ on the soul is.c also a balm, one ofthe‘Gospel- te 19 a g applications’. We might compare Crashaw’s Vexillah Regis: s .a w w w

Look up, languishing soul! Lo where the fair m o .c Badg of thy faith calls back thy care, te a g h and biddes thee ne’re forget s .a w thy life is one long Debt w w

m Of love to him, who on this painfull To ree .c te a Paid back the flesh he took for thee.g h s .a w w w Lo, how the streames of life, from that full nest m o Of loves, thy lord’s too liberal.c brest, te a g Flow from an amorous floudh s .a w of WATER wedding BwLOOD. w

With these he wash’t thym stain, transfer’d thy smart, o .c te And took it home to ahis own heart. g h s .a w w But through greatw LOVE, greedy of such sad gain

m Usurp’t the Portiono of THY pain, .c te a and from gthe nailes and spear h s .a turn’d thew steel point of fear, w w Their use is chang’d, not lost; and now they move m o .c Not stingste of wrath, but wounds of love. (227–8) a g h s .a 16 w w w see Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford,

m 2004),o pp. 58–61, 200–201, 314–17. .c 17te a Saltmarsh, Free-Grace, p. 195. g h s 18 .a ibid., pp. 131, 136. w w 19 w ibid., pp. 47, 37–8. © Copyrighted Material 38 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Crashaw refers to human life as ‘one long Debt’ to Christ, indicating the Arminian m o emphasis on works which is absent from Saltmarsh’s conception of grace.c as te a g h freely given to the elect. Equally Crashaw’s ‘amorous floud / of WATER weddings .a w BLOOD’ alludes to the stain of sin removed in baptism and to Christ’s w bloody w sacrifice as repeated in the Eucharist – external ordinancesm which Saltmarsh o .c te bluntly and provocatively rejects in Free Grace as irrelevant to thea believer g h s because ‘Christ was crucified for sinners; this is salvation, we need go.a no further; w 20 w the work of salvation is past, and finished;sins are blotted out’. Thisw echoes Acts

m o 3:19 in the Authorised Version: ‘Repent ye therefore, and be converted,.c that your te a sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall comeg from the presence h s .a of the Lord’. Saltmarsh’s point is that no repentance is necessaryw for the already w w converted. Yet the similarities of thought and expression between Laudian poet m o .c and antinomian controversialist are evident as both dwellte on the glories of Christ a g h crucified and the resolution of contraries in divine love.s .a w The similarities become even more striking ifw we consider ‘A Divine w

m Rapture upon the Covenant’, the verses with whicho Saltmarsh concluded a 1643 .c te pamphlet: a g h s .a w w w See here a chain of Pearl, and watry dew m o Wept from the side of God for you; .c te a g See here a chain of Rubies from each wound,h s .a Let down in Purple to the ground: w w w

Come tye your hearts with ours, to makem one Ring, o .c21 And thred them on our golden string:te a g h s .a w w At this point Saltmarsh had not yetw moved to an antinomian position; the pamphlet

m is a celebration of the covenant o theology of the gathered churches. Independents .c te a believed that for the elect the dispensationg of grace abolished the legal dispensation h s .a of the Mosaic Law; the electw were no longer subject to the legal compulsions of w w a holy commonwealth according to the model of Israel and were free to gather m o in their own self-administering.c congregations. However, most Independents also te a g h stressed that the magistrates was obliged to establish a national church structure .a w for the unregenerate,w for whom the law remained in force; they also tended to w

m emphasise religiouso ordinances within the congregation and the role of these .c 22 te ordinances in controllinga the continuing temptation to doubt and sin. Saltmarsh g h s displays no concern.a for national church structures or the efficacy of ordinances. w w His emphasisw in his Independent tract is, as the poem suggests, almost entirely on

m o .c te a 20 g h Saltmarsh,s Free-Grace, p. 191. .a 21 w wJohn Saltmarsh, A Solemn Discourse upon the Grand Covenant (London, 1643), w p. 72. m o 22.c te a see M. Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints: the Separate Churches of England, g h 1616–1649s (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 130–38. Compare G.F. Nuttall, Visible Saints: the .a w w Congregationalw Way, 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1957). © Copyrighted Material The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics of Antinomianism 39 © Copyrighted Material

how the ‘flowings of Christ’s blood’ have released believers from the bondagem of o .c te the law. The imagery of Saltmarsh’s ‘A Divine Rapture Upon the Covenant’a is g h s virtually identical to that of Crashaw’s ‘On the wounds of our Crucified a Christ’ . w w – incongruous, paradoxical images of tears and pearls, rubies and bloody wounds,w

m beauty and pain strung together in the elaborate style characteristico of late .c te a ‘metaphysical’ verse. g h s .a w w w

m o .c It is less surprising that Saltmarsh writes about Christ and gracete like Crashaw a g h when we consider Saltmarsh’s career in Cambridge in the s1630s. For, before .a w his movement towards radical religious ideas in the early 1640s,w Saltmarsh had w

m himself been a neo-Latin poet of some standing in Carolineo Cambridge. In 1636, .c te to mark his graduation as Master of Arts from Magdalenea College, the Cambridge g h s University Press published Saltmarsh’s Poemata Sacra Latinè.a et Anglicè Scripta, a w w w collection of sacred epigrams in both Latin and the vernacular dedicated to, among m o others, the Master of Magdalene and Sir Thomas.c and Lady Metham, recusant te a g gentry in Saltmarsh’s native Yorkshire. The languageh and imagery of Saltmarsh’s s .a ‘A Divine Rapture upon the Covenant’ are evidentlyw indebted to that of his neo- w w

Latin epigrams, such as ‘Aquas Mutatis in Sanguinem’:m o .c te a g h No caede erubit, (memorat miracula Memphiss ) .a w Murice nec ripis it gravis unda suis. w w

m Unde cruor fluxit? Nunquid nova vulnerao sensit .c te a Neptunus? Venae purpura tanta suae?g h s Mirac’lum hoc Mosis mirac’lo concolor.a extat w w w 23 Christi: is enim vino, hic sanguine mutat aquas. m o .c te a g Roger Pooley’s entry on Saltmarshh in the ODNB declares that ‘there is nothing s .a w in [the Poemata Sacra] whichw suggests the political and religious radicalism for w which Saltmarsh later becamem known’. But the erotic and aestheticised images of o .c te Christ’s flowing blood a and of drinking and feasting on Christ’s wounds which we g h s find in Free-Grace are.a also a recurring feature of the Cambridge epigrams, such w w as ‘The Resurrection’:w

m o .c te a With whatso’ereg pale brook thy blushing floud h s .a Did mix complexions,w yet thy bloud’s thy bloud, w w And shall return swift from those watrie tanks, m o .c Turn crimsonte current in thy azure banks. a g h s .a w The ‘blushingw floud’ that mixes with the ‘watrie tanks’ and ‘pale brook’ resembles w

m Crashaw’so ‘amorous floud / of WATER wedding BLOOD’ in Vexilla Regis. .c te a g h s 23 .a John Saltmarsh, Poemata Sacra Latinè et Anglicè Scripta (Cambridge, 1636), w w wp. 6. © Copyrighted Material 40 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Saltmarsh’s epigrams exhibit the same erotic fixation with Christ’s bleeding m o wounds as Crashaw’s ‘On the wounds of our Crucified Christ’: .c te a g h s .a w Yet while thou bind’st my wounds up, oh I see w w

Thine fresh & bleeding, yawning more then mine. m o .c te Lord let thy wounds lie open still to me: a g h s To heal my wounds, I’le lay them close to thine. .a w w w

m o The eroticised images of the union of the saved soul with Christ.c that Crashaw te a develops from Canticles, which have often unnerved moderng readers and been h s .a associated with his taste for the European baroque, are even wmore extravagant in w w Saltmarsh’s ‘Meditation Upon the Song of Songs’. Saltmarsh’s ‘wanton, amorous’ m o .c Christ breathes lust and is ‘perfumed with a Grave’, like somete over-sexed zombie: a g h s .a w How is my Saviour such a lover turn’d? w w

m Is he grown wanton, amorous, that mourn’d? o .c te […] a g h s Can his complexion suit a Ladies room .a w w w Who hath but lately peept out of his tombe? m o Whose hair & breath’s still powderd with the.c dust, te a g Perfumed with a grave, can he breathe lust,h s 24 .a Lust holy like himself? w w w

m o .c The imagery of blood, water and winete in Crashaw’s Laudian verse is a linguistic a g h representation of sacramental ceremonys and so of the ‘legal’ religion which .a w w Saltmarsh regarded as a form of carnalw bondage over the perfected believer, freed

m from sin. Nonetheless his academico training in the composition of neo-Latin .c te a devotional verse provided Saltmarshg with a suitably rich, sensuous and indeed h s .a erotic language in which tow express the rapturous experience of free grace. The w w linguistic patterns in both the Anglo-Catholic poetry of Crashaw and the antinomian m o prose of Saltmarsh originated.c in the academic traditions of pre-war Cambridge. It te a g h is clear, though, that, whiles Crashaw and Saltmarsh were regarded as heterodox .a w writers by Calvinistsw in the 1640s, in Caroline Cambridge in the 1630s the poetic w

m style that was to shapeo the expression of their heterodoxy was uncontroversial .c te – indeed their versea was honoured by publication through the University press. g h s In fact, as .aHealy has shown, the sensuous devotional poetics practised by w w Crashaw andw Saltmarsh in their neo-Latin verse derives in part from Counter-

m o Reformation.c texts on sacred eloquence that were apparently recommended te a g reading forh Cambridge undergraduates. One of the fullest surviving accounts of the s .a curriculum,w ‘Directions for a Student in the Universitie’, probably dating from the w w 1640s and attributed to Richard Holdsworth (1590–1649), recommends rhetorical m o .c textbookste by Jesuits, specifically Nicolas Caussin’s De Eloquentia Sacrae et a g h s .a w 24 w w Saltmarsh, Poemata Sacra, vernacular book, pp. 9, 11, 14. © Copyrighted Material The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics of Antinomianism 41 © Copyrighted Material

Humanae parallela (1619) and Famianus Strada’s Prolusiones Academicae,m o 25 .c te Oratoriae, Historicae, Poeticae (1617). In the university context, Holdswortha g h s was certainly not, like Crashaw, a high church Petrian; from 1637 he was Mastera . w w of Emmanuel, where the chapel was never formally consecrated and whichw was a

m generally Puritan institution in the first half of the seventeenth century.o Although .c te a he was to support the Royalist cause, in the 1630s he refused to read theg ‘Book of h s 26 .a Sports’. His recommendation of Jesuit books on sacred eloquencew reveals that w w the study of Counter-Reformation texts in Cambridge was certainly not confined m o .c to Laudian circles. te a g h Peter Sterry (1613–72), the Independent minister appointeds preacher to the .a w Council of State immediately after the regicide, entered Emmanuelw in 1629 and w

m became a Fellow in 1637; his prose is quoted by Healyo to illustrate how the .c te ‘sensational devotional techniques’ which were instilled ain Crashaw by his study g h s of Counter-Reformation rhetorics in Cambridge in the. a 1630s also influenced the w w w style and thought of those with Puritan affiliations: m o .c te a g O sweet and Divine mystery! O musical Discord,h and harmonious Contrariety! s .a O peaceful and pleasant War! Where the supreamw Love stands on both sides, w w

where, as in a mysterious Love-sport, or a Divinem Love-play, it fights with it self, o .c suffering for it self, dying by it self, and so teit self sinking by death into its own a g h sweetest bosom and dearest embraces, thes fountain of Life, the center and circle .a w of all Delights ... Thus Love it self, inw the place of us all, most lovingly, and w

m 27 beauty it self, most beautifully is becomeo a Sacrifice for itself to it self. .c te a g h s We can compare Sterry on the paradox.a of Christ’s bloody sacrifice in the name of w w w love and life with the ecstatic and erotic celebration of the union of the saved soul m o with Christ in Crashaw’s ‘On a .cPrayer Booke’: te a g h s .a w Amorous Languishments,w Luminous trances, w

sights which are not mseen with eyes o .c te Spirituall and soule piercinga glances. g h s Whose pure and. asubtle lightening, flies w w Home to the heart,w and setts the house on fire;

m And melts it downeo in sweet desire: .c te a yet doth notg stay h s .a To aske thew windows leave, to passe that way. w w Delicious deaths, soft exhalations m o .c te a g h 25 s The.a ‘Directions’ are printed in H. Fletcher (ed.), The Intellectual Development of w w John Miltonw (2 vols, Urbana, IL, 1961), 2, pp. 623–64. See the illuminating discussion in

m relationo to Crashaw in Healy, Richard Crashaw, pp. 45–52. .c 26te a g P. Collinson, entry for Holdsworth in the ODNB. h s 27 .a Healy, Richard Crashaw, pp. 32–3; Peter Sterry, A Discourse of the Freedom of the w w Willw (London, 1675), p. 163. © Copyrighted Material 42 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Of soule; deare, and divine annihilations. m o A thousand unknowne rites .c te a g h Of joyes, and rarifyed delights (128–9). s .a w w w

Crashaw’s rapturous invocation of the ‘amorous Languishments’ of mthe heart o .c te melted by ‘sweet desire’ for union with Christ and the ‘delicious deaths’a which g h s the soul will experience in this union is initiated by reflection . a on the Prayer w w Book. Crashaw conceives of liturgical ritual and church ceremonyw as a means

m o of continually re-enacting the events of the Passion. Equally Sterry.c describes the te a ‘harmonious Contrariety’ by which the eternal life of grace isg infused into the h s .a sinful soul through the temporal shedding of Christ’s blood as w‘a mysterious Love- w w sport, or a Divine Love-play’. But Sterry also condemns the misplaced sensuality m o .c of those who identify the mystical marriage of man and teChrist with sacramental a g h ritual: ‘Wanting that bread of heaven, that new wine of thes Kingdom, the beauties .a w and sweetness of God in the Spirit, which should feastw the inward man; they w

m entertain the fancy, and senses, with all objects sutableo to them, with a pretence .c te of subserviency to devotion, as in the Temple of a old’. Crashaw, in imitation of g h s Herbert, represented his lyrics as linguistic representations.a of liturgical forms, as w w w verbal ‘steps to the temple’ of the parish church. For Sterry, who held a conventicle m o after the Restoration, the re-enactment of the.c Passion is an internalised bodily te a g experience which has nothing to do with theh aesthetic, sensual appeal of external s .a objects (such as Peterhouse chapel): thew Spirit ‘gives forth his Oracles in his w w 28 Temples, which are his Saints’. Neverthelessm the shared sense of assured grace o .c leads both Sterry and Crashaw to celebratete the unity of the self with Christ in very a g h similar language – a language with s which it seems they were both familiar from .a w w the Counter-Reformation rhetoricsw that they studied in Caroline Cambridge.

m Sterry attacked the Presbyterianso for seeking to ‘bind up the sweet influences .c te a of the Spirit’ in ‘legal’ religiong and misrepresent the Spirit’s ‘Impressions upon h s 29 .a the heart ... as Enthusiasmesw’. Although Healy cites Sterry simply as an example w w of a ‘Puritan’ writer, Sterry was in fact a proponent of free grace and religious m o toleration, although he did.c not systematically set out his theological views until te a g h after the Restoration. Richards Baxter (1615–91) categorised him as an ‘enthusiast’ .a w and accused him of wholding antinomian beliefs little different from those of the w 30 m Ranters. Sterry indeedo accepted that the theology which he outlined fully in .c te a g h s 28 .a w Peter Swterry, England’s Deliverance From the Northern Presbytery, compared w

With its Deliverancem from the Roman Papacy: by Peter Sterry, Once fellow of Emmanuel o .c Colledge in teCambridge, now Preacher to the Right Honorable the Councell of State, sitting a g h at White-Halls (London, 1652), pp. 18, 20. The fullest discussion of Sterry remains V. de .a w Sola Pinto,w Peter Sterry, Platonist and Puritan, 1613–1672. A Biographical and Critical w

Study (Cambridge,m 1934). o 29.c te Sterry, England’s Deliverance, pp. 8, 20. a g h 30 s richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianiæ, ed. M. Sylvester (London, 1696), pt i, pp. .a w w w74–8. On Sterry’s version of free grace, see D.P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth- © Copyrighted Material The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics of Antinomianism 43 © Copyrighted Material

Free Grace Exalted (1670) may seem ‘to confirm the Ranters in their licentiousm o 31 .c te Principles and Practices’. Yet he maintained, like Saltmarsh and Tobias Crispa g h s (1600–43), the pre-war cleric who sought to establish the doctrine of free gracea on . w w a respectable intellectual basis, that ‘all that have this freedom purchased byw Christ

m for them, they have the power of God in them, which keeps them that theyo break .c te a not out licentiously’. Nonetheless Crisp’s language in his sermons, publishedg after h s .a his death, could be as provocative as Saltmarsh’s: ‘To be called a libertinew is the w w most glorious title under heaven; take it from one that is truly free by Christ ... m o .c If you be freemen of Christ, you may esteem the curse of thete law as no more a 32 g h concerning you than the laws of England concern Spain’. s .a w Sterry was associated by his enemies with antinomian radicals,w although the w

m exact nature of the association remains ambiguous. He attachedo a refutation of .c te ‘practical’ antinomianism, before the term ‘Ranter’ was commona currency, to the g h s published version of his sermon on 1 November 1649,.a celebrating Cromwell’s w w w return from Ireland. This has been described as the ‘first intellectually structured m o presentation of Ranter doctrine not based on gossip.c and hearsay’, in which te a g Sterry uses ‘Ranter terminology and allegoricalh imagery’. Opinion is divided s .a over whether Sterry was trying to ‘disengage’ himselfw from these more extreme w w 33 religious radicals or whether he was their lifelongm opponent. Lawrence Clarkson o .c (1615–67) recorded preaching ‘some while’te at ‘Mr Sterry’s place’ at ‘Bowe’ in a g h London (probably St Mary-le-Bow) arounds 1647, a period in which Clarkson ‘had .a w 34 a high pitch of free Grace’ from reading wCrisp’s sermons. Sterry may even have w

m o .c te a g h Century Discussions of Eternal Torments (London, 1964), pp. 104–5, 119. Walker makes .a w illuminating comparisons with the theologyw of Richard Coppin, for whose Divine Teachings w

(London, 1649) Abiezer Coppe wrotem a preface. On Sterry’s tolerationism, see de Sola o .c Pinto, Peter Sterry, pp. 19–20. te a g 31 h Sterry, Discourse of the sFreedom of the Will, p. 156. .a 32 w tobias Crisp, Christ alonew exalted in fourteene Sermons preached in, and neare w

m London, by the late Reverendo Tobias Crispe Doctor in Divinity, and faithfull Pastor of .c te Brinkworth in Wiltshire. Asa they were taken from his owne mouth in shortwriting, whereof g h severall Copies were diligentlys compared together, and with his owne Notes. And published .a w w for the satisfaction andw comfort of Gods people, ed. Roger Lancaster (London, 1643), pp.

m 194, 196, 210; Tobiaso Crisp, Christ alone exalted In the Perfection and Encouragements .c te of the Saints, notwithstandinga Sins and Trialls. Being laid open in severall sermons. By the g h s late spirituall and.a faithfull Preacher of the Gospell, Tobias Crispe, D.D. (London, 1648), w w pp. 87, 156–57.w On Crisp’s theology, see most recently D. Parnham, ‘The Humbling of

m “High Presumption”:o Tobias Crisp Dismantles the Puritan Ordo Salutis’, JEH, 56 (2005): .c te pp. 50–74; a D. Parnham, ‘The Covenantal Quietism of Tobias Crisp’, CH, 75 (2006): g h s pp. 511–43..a w 33 w wPeter Sterry, The Commings Forth of Christ (London, 1650), ‘The Epistle

m Dedicatory’;o N.I. Matar, ‘Peter Sterry and the Ranters’, Notes and Queries, n.s., 29 (1982): .c te a pp. g 504–06; C. Hill, A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical Politics, Religion and h s Literature.a in Seventeenth-Century England, (London, 1990; 1993), pp. 189–90. w w 34 w Lawrence Clarkson, The Lost Sheep Found (London, 1660), pp. 9, 23. © Copyrighted Material 44 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material known the young Abiezer Coppe in Warwickshire. Sterry left Emmanuel in 1638 m o to become chaplain to Lord Brooke. Dugard’s diary records his frequent lunching.c te a g h with Brooke at Warwick Castle, with Sterry sometimes in attendance. Coppes had .a w left Warwick for Oxford in 1636 but had returned with the outbreak of thew war; it w appears that on his return Dugard used his influence to secure patronage form Coppe, o .c te who preached two Sunday sermons and five lectures in Warwick in 1641a despite g h 35 s not being ordained or even having completed his degree. Dugard’s.a diary raises w w the possibility that Coppe met Sterry through Dugard when both Coppew and Sterry

m o were preaching in Warwick in 1640–41. Combined with Clarkson’s.c reference, this te a suggests that Sterry may have been involved in the 1640s with gfigures later called h s .a Ranters, whom Sterry was quick to denounce as he became morew closely linked to w w Cromwell, or as their views became more extreme. m o .c te a g h s .a w This brings us back, then, to a post-prandial Dugard andw Coppe, teacher and pupil, w

m reading Crashaw’s Latin epigrams in Warwick in 1634.o Recognition of the common .c te language and images of assured grace in Crashaw,a Saltmarsh and Sterry and the g h s academic origins of aspects of that language in .neo-a Latin devotional poetics can w w w shed light on the startlingly physical and sexual imagery of Coppe’s prose. One m o of the most striking and provocative moments.c in A Fiery Flying Roll (1649), for te a g which Coppe was imprisoned and which hseems to have helped bring the 1650 s .a Blasphemy Act into existence, begins withw Coppe’s acknowledgement that ‘Kisses w w are numbered amongst transgressors m – base things – well!’ The exclamatory o .c ‘well!’ is often used by Coppe to suggestte a parody of pulpit rhetoric. He goes on to a g h insist that by ‘wanton kisses, kissings hath been confounded; and externall kisses, .a w w have been made by the fiery chariots,w to mount me swiftly into the bosom of him

m whom my soul loves, [his excellento Majesty, the King of glory]’. As ‘beauty is the .c te a father of lust or love’, Coppe admitsg to having ‘gone along the streets impregnant h s .a with that child [lust] which aw particular beauty had begot’. Christopher Hill quotes w w these lines in his chapter in The World Turned Upside Down (1972) on the sexual m o freedom released by the breakdown.c of religious and social order during the 1640s. te a g h Taking his lead from Normans Cohn’s discussion of the Ranters in The Pursuit of .a w the Millennium (1957),w Hill suggests that Coppe’s language here reveals that the w 36 m practice of free loveo by the Ranters was not a purely polemical fiction. .c te a g h s .a 35 w For Coppe’sw preaching in 1641, see BL, Add. MS 23,146, fols 93r, 97r; on Dugard’s w meetings withm Sterry, see fols 77r–v, 81v, 95v. For Coppe’s biography, see McDowell, ‘A o .c Ranter Reconsidered:te Abiezer Coppe and Civil War Stereotypes’, The Seventeenth Century, a g h 12 (1997):s pp. 173–205; McDowell, English Radical Imagination, pp. 89–95; A. Hessayon, .a w ‘Abiezerw Coppe’ in the ODNB; A. Hessayon, ‘The Making of Abiezer Coppe’, JEH, 62 w

(2011):m pp. 38–58. o 36.c te a N. Smith (ed.), A Collection of Ranter Writings from the Seventeenth Century g h (London,s 1983), p. 108; C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the .a w w wEnglish Revolution (1972; Harmondsworth, 1991), pp. 253–60; N. Cohn, The Pursuit of the © Copyrighted Material The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics of Antinomianism 45 © Copyrighted Material

Yet Crashaw expresses the assurance of grace and the ecstatic experience mof o .c te union with Christ in the overtly erotic language of ‘Amorous languishments’,a g h s ‘Delicious deaths’, ‘divine embraces’ and ‘immortall kisses’. Christ, as bridegrooma . w w to the bride of the redeemed soul, is the ‘spouse of Virgins’. Crashaw derivesw such

m bodily and erotic imagery from his study of patristic and Counter-Reformationo .c te a commentaries on Canticles. The most disturbing of Crashaw’s epigramsg for h s .a modern readers (and the most frequently anthologised) is ‘Blessed bew the paps that w w thou hast sucked’: m o .c te a g h Suppose he had been Tabled at thy Teates, s .a w thy hunger feels not what he eates: w w

m Hee’l have his Teat e’re long (a bloody one) o .c te Thy Mother then must suck the Son. (94) a g h s .a w w w Healy points out that Crashaw’s imagery here is likely under the influence of m o St Bernard’s sermons on Canticles. Mary, as a personification.c of the ‘Mother te a g Church’, is identified as both mother and bride hof Christ the bridegroom, whose s .a bleeding nipples on the Cross are ‘portrayed asw a type of unending sweetness w w where the bridegroom helps to satisfy the highm desires he has created in his bride’. o .c St Bernard also provided religious radicals tewith a language in which to express a g h their experience of free grace. John Rogerss (b. 1627), the Independent minister .a w and later Fifth Monarchist, who in 1653w was imprisoned on the Isle of Wight w

m by Cromwell, includes Saltmarsh’s Free-Graceo and St Bernard on Canticles (as .c te a well as Tobias Crisp’s sermons) in hisg recommended reading for saints who have h s experienced ‘warme tenders of the .ablood of Christ, lively openings of a crucified w w w Christ, which melt their souls’. R ogers, who attended King’s College, Cambridge, m o in the early 1640s, celebrates the.c ‘soule-raptures’ and ‘love songs’ of the soul in a te a g state of grace as ‘a new Canticlesh ’, citing St Bernard: s .a w w w

Such sweet souls, humblem Saints, sayes Bernard, are like the violets, which grow o .c te low and hang their headsa downward, but are full of excellency and vertue. The g h s grass on the house-top.a , and the fine July-flower on the wall will soon lose their w w lustre, and witherw away, but the violets ... hold longer and livelier and smell

37 m sweeter. o .c te a g h s .a It is less surprisingw that figures such as Saltmarsh and Rogers might have recalled w w patristic commentaries and post-Tridentine Catholic lessons in sacred eloquence m o .c to convey tetheir experience of free grace when we remember that the ‘emphasis a g h upon directs divine inspiration put [radical religious writers] in the same position .a w w w

m Millenniumo (London, 1957), pp. 364–71. On the influence of the 1960s ‘sexual revolution’ .c te a on Hg ill’s interpretation of the 1640s, see Hessayon, ‘Fabricating radical traditions’: 1–6. h s 37 Ohel or Beth-Shemesh. A אהל ,a Healy, Richard Crashaw, p. 21; John Rogers. w w Tabernaclew for the Sun: or Irenicum Evangelicum (London, 1653), pp. 361, 380. © Copyrighted Material 46 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

38 as Catholic spiritual writers’. Rogers believed that all the conversion experiences m o of his gathered Church in Dublin that he collected in 1653 exemplified the process.c te a g h of progressive illumination through ‘annihilation’ of reason and the will outlineds .a w by the Catholic mystic Benet of Canfield. Rogers read Canfield’s late sixteenth-w w century treatise A Bright Starre, Leading to, & Centering in, Christ our perfectionm o .c te in the 1646 translation (from either Latin or French) by the Oxford graduatea Giles g h s Randall, alleged to be a leading London antinomian and ‘Familist’ by.a Rutherford w 39 w and Thomas Edwards. A Bright Starre ‘recommends an extremew form of unio

m o mystica based upon Bernard and the via negativa of Pseudo-.cDionysius’. The te a influence of Bernard’s interpretation of Canticles is g evident in the sexualised h s .a imagery in which the process of self-annihilation is expressed:w w w

m o .c [The soul] opens her selfe, and entertaines this Being, notte as a vessell receives a g h what it holds, but as the Moon does the shine of the Ss un. Here she throwes .a w abroad her white and Lilly armes, to fold and close-inchainew her Lover, but w 40 m much closer is shee embrac’t and inchained by him. o .c te a g h s 41 The Song of Songs acts as a recurring refrain throughout.a Coppe’s prose. In Some w w w Sweet Sips, of Some Spiritual Wine (1649) the ecstatic celebration of the internalised m o apocalypse, of the resurrection of Christ within.c the perfected saint, is expressed in te a g the language of Canticles: ‘The day star is hup, rise up my love, my dove, my faire s .a one, and come away. The day star wooethw you. It is the voice of my beloved that w w 42 saith open to me – I am risen indeed, risem up my love, open to me my faire one.’ As o .c we have seen, in Bernard’s interpretationte Mary is both the virgin mother of Christ a g h and the bride of Christ, the bridegrooms in the Song of Songs. In Sancta Maria .a w w Dolorum, Crashaw envisages Maryw as drinking the blood/wine of Christ on the

m Cross, which is identified with theo palm tree of Canticles 7: 7–8: ‘This thy stature is .c te a like to a palm tree, and thy breastsg shall be as clusters of the vine’. Crashaw desires h s .a to follow Mary in ‘sucking’ wat the ‘vine’ of Christ’s bloody wounds: w w

m o o teach mine too the.c art te a g h To study him so, tills we mix .a w Wounds; and becomew one crucifix. w

m o .c te 38 a g Smith, Perfectionh Proclaimed, p. 17. s 39 .a Rogers, w Ohel or Beth-Shemesh, p. 382; Samuel Rutherford, A Survey of the w w

Spirituall Antichristm (London, 1647), part i, p. 167, Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (3 parts, o .c 1646), 3, p. te25. a 40 g h Smith,s Perfection Proclaimed, p. 39; Benet of Canfield, A Bright Starre, Leading .a w to, & Centeringw in, Christ our perfection, trans. Giles Randall (London, 1646), pp. 61–2. w 41 m For extended if somewhat predictable discussion, see Noam Flinker, The ‘Song o .c of Songs’te in English Renaissance Literature: Kisses of Their Mouths (Cambridge, 2000), a g h pp.s 120–39. .a w 42 w w Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 52. © Copyrighted Material The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics of Antinomianism 47 © Copyrighted Material

O let me suck the wine m o .c te So long of his chast vine a g h Till drunk of the dear wounds, I be s .a w w A lost Thing to the world, as it to me. (287) w

m o .c te a Having drunk of the spiritual wine of free grace, Coppe representsg himself as h s .a a type of both Mary the bride and Mary the virgin mother, givingw birth to the w w internally resurrected Christ: m o .c te a g h The Lord is risen indeed: I see him, not only risen out of Josephs sTombe, without .a w me, but risen out of the bowells of the earth within me, and is alivew in me, formed w

m in me, grows in me: The Babe springs in my inmost wombe, oleapes for joy there, .c te and then I sing, and never but then, O Lord my song! To mea a childe is borne, a g h 43 s son is given, who lives in me, O Immanuel! .a w w w

m o In the passage in A Fiery Flying Roll quoted by Hill.c as evidence of the sexually te a g libertine practices of the Ranters, Coppe alludes hto Canticles 7:9 in the midst of s .a proclaiming that ‘base things so called’ have confoundedw ‘fleshly holinesse’: ‘I w w have been hug’d, imbrac’t, and kist with the kissesm of his mouth, whose loves are o .c better then wine, and have been utterly overcomete therewith’. The ‘beauty’ which a g h 44 begot his ‘lust’ is ‘my spouse, my love, mys dove, my fair one’. It is anachronistic .a w to assume that such erotic religious languagew necessarily had any basis in actual w

m behaviour or was part of a popular subcultureo of sexual freedom. Sterry’s reading .c te a has been called ‘oceanic’ and his libraryg list of 1663 contains a range of patristic, h s mystical and Neoplatonic authors, .a including Pseudo-Dioynius, Plotinus, Origen w w w and Bernard. In the sermon which he preached at Westminster as a thanksgiving m o for the defeat of the Royalist and.c Scottish forces at Worcester in September 1651, te a g he compared the relationshiph between Christ and his saints in the sexualised s .a w terms which he would havew found in writers such as Bernard: ‘The Lord JESUS w hath his Concubines, his Queensm , his Virgins; Saints in Remoter Forms, Saints in o .c te Higher Forms, Saints unmarrieda to any Form, who keep themselves single for the g h 45 s immediate embraces of.a their Love’. w w The image of Coppew as pregnant with lust for the beauty of Christ may be

m shocking, but no moreo so than Donne’s desperate plea to be ravished by the Holy .c te a Spirit in his ferociousg sonnet ‘Batter my heart, three person’d God’. Donne’s h s .a Calvinist desperationw in this sonnet, his sense of being ‘betrothed’ unto sin, is w w a consequence of the lack of external assurance which the Laudian and later m o .c Catholic Crashawte found in the liturgical ceremony of the Church and which a g h s .a w w w

43 m o ibid., p. 68. .c 44te a g ibid., p. 109. h s 45 .a for Sterry’s reading, see de Sola Pinto, Peter Sterry, pp. 57–8; Sterry, England’s w w Deliverancew , p. 6. © Copyrighted Material 48 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

46 Saltmarsh and Coppe found in the inner revelation of free grace. Yet Donne’s m o residually Catholic poetic sensibility still represents the sinner’s (dysfunctional).c te a g h relationship with the divine in terms of the sexualised allegory of Canticles:s it is .a w this clash between Counter-Reformation imagery and Calvinist doctrine thatw gives w the sonnet its disturbing, violent energy. Coppe expresses his spiritual rapturem in o .c te sexual imagery both to emphasise the physicality of the experience of in-dwellinga g h s and to subvert linguistically the moral categories of the Puritan clergy..a Kisses and w w lust, which the clergy reflexively condemn as ‘base things’, are w(spiritually) the

m o ‘base’ from which the saint ascends to union with Christ. This apparent.c paradox te a echoes the fundamental Christian paradox of the payment of man’sg sin by Christ’s h s .a freely given sacrifice, as described by Sterry: ‘Thus love of itw self, in the place of w w us all, most lovingly, and beauty it self most beautifully is become a Sacrifice for m o 47 .c itself to it self’. Or as Crashaw puts it in Charitas Nimiate: a g h s .a w if my base lust w w

m Bargain’d with Death and well-beseeming dust o .c te a g h s Why should the white .a w w w lamb’s bosom write m o the purple name .c te a g of my sin’s shame? h s .a w w w

Why should this unstained brest makem good o .c My blushes with his own heart-blood?te (281–2) a g h s .a w w Coppe may have encountered atw Oxford the patristic commentaries and post-

m Tridentine Catholic works on sacredo eloquence which Crashaw, Saltmarsh and .c te a Sterry studied at Cambridge; Coppeg went up in 1636, the year in which the Laudian h s .a code, which placed increasedw emphasis on the study of patristic theology, came w 48 w into force. It is also tempting to speculate that Coppe’s reading of Crashaw’s m o Latin epigrams in the 1630s.c had a residual influence on the radical prose of the te a g h late 1640s. The surprisings intellectual and literary connections that can be made .a w between Crashaw andw Saltmarsh, Sterry and Coppe should serve to make us reflect w

m on the relationship obetween orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the early modern period. .c te Scholars have starteda to recognize in recent years that this relationship is always g h s symbiotic, never.a starkly oppositional, or simply equivalent to the dichotomy of elite w w w

m o .c te a 46 g h Ons the Calvinist despair of Donne’s sonnets, see J. Stachniewski, The Persecutory .a w Imagination:w English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair (Oxford, 1991). w 47 Sm terry, Discourse of the Freedom of the Will, p. 163. o 48.c te a See the interesting comments on the Laudian code in P. Allen, ‘Scientific Studies g h in sthe English Universities of the Seventeenth Century’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 10 .a w w (1949):w p. 221. © Copyrighted Material The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetics of Antinomianism 49 © Copyrighted Material

49 and popular. Post-Tridentine Catholic eloquence was part of orthodox academicm o .c te culture, and even, it seems, orthodox Puritan culture, in early Stuart England;a at g h s the same time it provided the linguistic resources not only for an anti-Calvinista . w w Laudian poetics, as might be expected, but for the expression of an antinomianw

m theology that extended Calvinist doctrine to its logical, if heretical, conclusions.o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h 49 s J.G.A. Pocock,.a ‘Within the Margins: the Definitions of Orthodoxy’, in R.D. Lund w w (ed.), The Marginsw of Orthodoxy: Heterodox Writing and Cultural Response, 1660–1750

m o (Cambridge,. c 1995), pp. 33–53. For the need to recognise that the relationship between te a ‘orthodoxy’g and ‘heterodoxy’ in pre-war England, whether in terms of religious organisation h s or intellectual.a exchange, is dynamic and symbiotic rather than static and oppositional, see w w w also P. Lake, The Boxmaker’s Revenge: ‘Orthodoxy’, ‘Heterodoxy’ and the Politics of the m o Parish.c in Early Stuart London (Manchester, 2001); Como, Blown by the Spirit. See also te a the gessays in A. Hessayon and N. Keene (eds), Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern h s England.a (Aldershot, 2006), in particular N. McDowell, ‘The Ghost in the Marble: Jeremy w w Tw aylor’s Liberty of Prophesying (1647) and its Readers’, pp. 176–91. © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 2 m o .c te a g h s Radicalism Relocated: Royalist Politics and.a w w w

m o Pamphleteering of the Late 1640s.c te a g h s .a Jason Peacey w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m This paper argues that what constituted early modern radicalismo was intrinsically .c te conditioned by factors relating to time, place, author and context,a as well as literary g h s form. What was mundane in one moment and one medium.a could be dangerous at w w w another time and in a different context, and vice versa. The central focus will be m o provided by an analysis of Royalist newspapers and.c pamphlets of the later 1640s, te a g which challenge conventional notions regardingh the nature of radical political s .a thought and tactics after the end of the First Civilw War in 1646. It argues that in w w the particular circumstances of the late 1640s –m namely growing tension regarding o .c the nature of the political settlement, growingte assertiveness on the part of the New a g h Model Army, and what appeared to be a permanents Parliament – Royalists were .a w prepared to develop new ideas and neww political tactics in order to undermine w

m their enemies. These centred upon ideaso regarding political accountability and .c te a the relationship between representativesg and the public, as well as broader issues h s regarding constitutional structures and.a arrangements. The traces of such ideas can w w w be found in the writings of Royalist grandees such as Sir Roger Twysden, as well as m o in the more ephemeral literature .cproduced by journalists and political pamphleteers. te a g Radical ideas, in other words,h proved capable of migrating into unexpected areas s .a w of the political nation, andw across the political spectrum. Ultimately, it will be w possible to draw attentionm to particular works from among the huge range of o .c te anonymous and populara political pamphlets of the late 1640s which defy easy g h s categorisation in terms.a of royalism and Parliamentarianism, and to suggest that w w late 1640s ‘radicalism’w became a phenomenon in some ways distinct from, and

m capable of breakingo down the barriers between, such political affiliations. .c te a g h s .a w w w Historians are now familiar with historiographical problems concerning Civil m o 1 .c War radicalism.te One of these relates to linguistics. On 19 November 1640, for a g h example,s during a debate on the disputed Long Parliament election at Great Marlow .a w w w

m 1 o .c C. Condren, ‘Radicals, Conservatives and Moderates in early modern political te a thought:g a case of Sandwich Islands syndrome’, History of Political Thought, 10 (1989): h s pp..a 526–33; C. Condren, The Politics of Language in Seventeenth-Century England w w (Basingstoke,w 1994), ch. 5. © Copyrighted Material 52 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material in Buckinghamshire, it was the diarist Sir Simonds D’Ewes who expressed – or m o claimed to have expressed – his opinion that ‘the poorest man ought to have.c a te a 2 g h voice; that it was the birthright of the subjects of England’. This often overlookeds .a w statement, uttered as it was by an MP not noted for his ‘radicalism’, andw who w indeed is somewhat renowned for his attacks upon ‘fiery spirits’ such as Johnm Pym, o .c te is of considerable interest. D’Ewes’s speech was made nearly seven yearsa before g h s one of the most quoted lines in the canon of Civil War radicalism, from.a Thomas w w Rainborowe’s speech at Putney: w

m o .c te a the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he;g and therefore h s .a truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a governmentw ought w w first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and … I should m o .c 3 doubt whether he was an Englishman or no that should doubtte of these things. a g h s .a w Without wishing to claim that Rainborowe meant nothingw more radical than did w

m D’Ewes, it is evident from the fact that these two meno clearly did not see eye-to- .c te eye on the franchise that phrases such as Rainborowe’sa ‘the poorest he’, and words g h s such as ‘birthright’ do not necessarily and intrinsically.a signify ‘radicalism’. It is w w w too easy, in other words, to merely assume that such words and phrases ought to m o be interpreted as evidence of ‘progressive’ thought..c te a g Another problem with radicalism concernsh those aspects of Civil War s .a ‘radicalism’ which are apt to be downplayed,w or even explained away, because w w they sit uneasily with historians’ preconceptionsm regarding ‘progressive’ thought. o .c This idea has generally been pursuedte in order to demonstrate the tendency of a g h Marxist historians, when interpretings individuals such as Gerrard Winstanley and .a w w John Warr, to ignore religious viewsw and accentuate secular radicalism. Attempts

m have been made, therefore, to exposeo this selective privileging of modern elements .c te 4 a of seventeenth-century thought.g h s .a Together, these problemsw undermine what Glenn Burgess calls the ‘substantive’ w w approach to radicalism; the idea that there is ‘a continuous radical tradition of m o definable identity’. They.c suggest instead the need for a somewhat relativised te a g h and contextualised understandings of radicalism, which is recognised as being .a w fundamentally ‘functional’w and ‘situational’ in nature. Ideas and policies can be w

m characterised as ‘radical’,o therefore, according to the way in which they were .c te a g h s 2 .a w W. Notesteinw (ed.), The Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (New Haven, 1923), p. 43; w

Commons Journalm [hereafter CJ ], ii, 31a. o 3 .c The Clarkete Papers. Selections from the papers of William Clarke, Secretary to the a g h Council ofs the Army, 1647–1649, and to General Monck and the commanders of the army .a w in Scotland,w 1651–1660, ed. C.H. Firth (Camden Society, n.s. 49, 1891), 1, p. 301. w 4 m o J.C. Davis, ‘Radicalism in a traditional society: the evaluation of radical thought .c te in thea English Commonwealth 1649–1660’, History of Political Thought, 3, no. 2 (1982): g h pp.s 193–213; L. Mulligan, J. Graham and J. Richards, ‘Winstanley: a case for the man as he .a w w saidw he was’, JEH, 28 (1977): pp. 57–75. © Copyrighted Material Royalist Politics and Pamphleteering of the Late 1640s 53 © Copyrighted Material

5 deployed in their own time, and in terms of their local aims and targets. Radicals,m o .c te in other words, could merely be those delegitimising the status quo, and envisaginga g 6h s a ‘transfer mechanism capable of bringing about the desired transformation’.a This . w w means that what is ‘radical’ changes over time and in different contexts, wwithout

m of course necessarily implying that earlier expressions of particular oideas are .c te a necessarily more radical than later incarnations. It also means that particularg political h s .a actors and authors can be characterised with the label ‘radical’ onlyw in relation w w to particular political circumstances and situations, and that both individuals and m o .c ideas could cease to be ‘radical’ fairly quickly. Lastly, it opens tupe the possibility a g h that genuine radicalism can be found in unexpected places, ands in the policies and .a w pamphlets of those previously excluded from the radical pantheon.w w

m The implications of such attempts to rethink and relocateo radicalism naturally .c te relate to ‘conservatism’ equally well. This is increasingly arecognised by historians g h s of the Reformation, and Michael Mendle has recently.a sought to recover the w w w ‘royalism’ of Levellers and other ‘radicals’ – notably those authors whose works m o were printed on the presses of John Harris and Henry.c Hills in 1647 – and to show te a 7 g how this too has been downplayed in twentieth-centuryh historiography. Mendle’s s .a piece, together with recent methodological insights,w serves to underpin and inspire w w what follows in this piece, which in many waysm represents an attempt to confirm o .c Mendle’s conclusions by exploring the otherte side of his Leveller–Royalist axis, a g h and to relocate radicalism through a contextuals analysis of previously neglected .a w sources. w w

m The key to understanding the allianceo between a Leveller like John Wildman .c te a and a Royalist like Sir John Maynardg in the spring of 1648 is, as Mendle h s recognises, the political experience.a of the 1640s. This is not as simplistic a w w w statement as it might appear, because much of the historiography of Civil War m o radicalism has been too eager .cto extrapolate radical principles from apparently te a g ‘radical’ statements, and becauseh ‘radicals’ such as the Levellers have tended to be s .a w studied in a degree of isolationw from their contemporaries, and in an insufficiently w contextualised fashion. Bym shifting the focus away from the more abstract aspects o .c te of radical thought – birthrights,a natural rights and, to a lesser extent, constitutional g h s models – towards an exploration.a of their perceptions of Parliament in the 1640s, as w w well as their recommendationsw regarding parliamentary practice, it is possible to

m o .c te a g h s .a w 5 w Burgess,w ‘Matter of Context’, 1–3; Burgess, ‘Radicalism and the English Revolution’,

m p. 67. o .c 6 te a J.C.g Davis, ‘Afterword: reassessing radicalism in a traditional society: two questions’, h s in G. Burgess.a and M. Festenstein (eds), English Radicalism, 1550–1850 (Cambridge, w w 2007), p.w 340.

m 7 o .c E. Shagan, ‘Rumours and popular politics’, in T. Harris (ed.), The Politics of the te a Excludedg (Basingstoke, 2001), p. 56; M. Mendle, ‘Putney’s pronouns. Identity and indemnity h s in. a the great debate’, in M. Mendle (ed.), The Putney Debates of 1647 (Cambridge, 2001), w w pp.w 125–47; Burgess, ‘Radicalism and the English Revolution’, pp. 72–3. © Copyrighted Material 54 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

8 gain a deeper understanding of what groups such as the Levellers believed. In the m o process, however, it will also be possible to contextualise them more thoroughly.c in te a g h terms of the ideas of their contemporaries, and the result will hopefully be a clearers .a w idea about what is, and is not, constitutive of Civil War radicalism. w w

m o .c te a g h s In the same way that Mendle has drawn attention to the Royalism of. akey ‘radical’ w w tracts from the late 1640s it is also possible to explore the ‘radicalism’w contained

m o within the pamphlets which emerged from the pens of Royalist or.c crypto-Royalist te a authors during the same period. It is possible to show, for example,g that Nedham’s h s .a development of interest theory could serve Royalist as wellw as parliamentarian w w ends, as one of his key parliamentarian tracts was republished as a Royalist m o 9 .c pamphlet in 1647. But more importantly, it is also possiblete to show that detailed a g h scrutiny of ‘conservative’ pamphlets and newspapers froms the second half of the .a w 1640s reveals that Sir John Maynard’s alliance with thew ‘radical’ press, in defence w

m of John Lilburne, was far from unique. o .c te One of the most important, and often most neglected,a ways of understanding g h s Civil War radicals is by examining their perceptions.a of parliamentary politics w w 10 w – institutionally and procedurally – in the 1640s. Scrutiny of contemporary m o commentators upon Civil War politics reveals.c that Westminster was recognised te a g as being riven by factionalism, and that thish could be analysed in terms of the s .a internal structures and relationships of suchw groups. Analysis of political factions w w at Westminster revealed, therefore, thatm sophisticated parliamentary tactics had o .c become the tools of such interest groups,te and were intrinsically important to a g h factional politics. Commentators recogniseds the need to look behind the scenes and .a w w beyond the two Houses, and to explorew financial and administrative management

m in order to appreciate the extent oto which conventional procedures had fallen prey .c te a to factional power, as well asg the identity of those who bore most responsibility h 11 s .a for such developments. w w w The texts of ‘radical’ writers reveal, in other words, the extent to which their m o disillusionment was informed.c not so much by abstract theorising as by observing te a g h parliamentary proceduress and parliamentary practice; not so much by particular .a w w w

m o .c te a 8 g J. Peacey,h ‘The people of the Agreement: the Levellers, civil war radicalism and s .a political participation’,w in P. Baker and E. Vernon (eds), The Foundations of Freedom: w w

The Agreementsm of the People, the Levellers, and the Constitutional Crisis of the English o .c Revolution, tec.1647–1660 (Basingstoke, forthcoming). a 9 g h Peacey,s Gerrard Politicians and Pamphleteers. Propaganda During the English .a w Civil Warsw and Interregnum (Aldershot, 2004), p. 281. w 10 m davis, ‘Afterword’, p. 341. o 11.c te a J. Peacey, ‘Perceptions of Parliament: factions and “The Public”’, in J. Adamson g h (ed.),s The English Civil War. Conflicts and Contexts, 1640–49 (Basingstoke, 2009), .a w w wpp. 82–105. © Copyrighted Material Royalist Politics and Pamphleteering of the Late 1640s 55 © Copyrighted Material

12 policies as by a sense of the systemic abuse of power. Although radicals naturallym o .c te focused their criticism upon the upper House, they eventually extended atheir g h s analysis much further in order to suggest that ‘subtle practices’ also entaileda a . w w 13 betrayal of trust by MPs, and required that they should be ‘called to account’.w

m Financial impropriety prompted John Wildman to ask, therefore, ‘to whato purpose .c te a should the strength of the ploughman be spent in sowing the field, gwhose tender h s .a fruit is always blasted in the blossom’, and to inquire ‘wherefore shouldw the people w w trifle away their precious time in tedious toilsome journeys to elections, to send the m 14 o .c worthies of their country?’ Cheney Culpeper, meanwhile, advocatedte ‘the purging a g h of our great committees’, and both George Wither and John Ms usgrave defended .a w the public’s right to submit accusations against particular members.w Betrayal of w

m trust, therefore, was felt to justify the attempt to institute quasi-judicialo proceedings .c te against MPs, and this liberty to prosecute members was regardeda as providing an g h 15 s important bulwark against arbitrary government. Army.a apologists thus annoyed w w w Independent grandees by legitimising the impeachment of the eleven Presbyterian m o MPs in June 1647, on the grounds that people were.c ‘experimentally conscious of te a g some members [being] guilty of gross crimes’, andh of advancing their own ends, s 16 .a as well as those of their factions. w w w

Factionalism and financial impropriety,m however, also provides the key to o .c understanding the most sophisticated responseste to emerge from ‘conservative’ a g h authors such as Clement Walker and Williams Prynne, as well as the radicalism of .a w a number of Royalist or crypto-Royalist w pamphlets during the same period. Like w

m those more conventionally regarded as ‘radicals’,o these writers damned factionalism .c te a while advocating a return to traditionalg financial institutions, and government by h 17 s the three estates. Moreover, it was.a Edward Massey’s ‘reformado’ soldiers who w w w threatened tumults at Westminster in January 1647, having berated ‘the liberal m o gifts of the Parliament to their.c own members’. These ‘gifts’ were apparently te a g h s .a w w w 12 A Publike Declarationm and Solemne Protestation (London, 1648), p. 5. o 13 .c John Lilburne, A Whipte for the Present House of Lords (London, 1648); An Alarum a g h to the House of Lords, p. s 9; John Lilburne, Englands Birthright Justified (London, 1645), p. .a w 33; The Journal of Thomasw Juxon, ed. D. Scott and K. Lindley (Camden Society, 5th series, w

13, 1999), p. 104. m o 14 .c te John Wildman,a Putney Projects (London, 1647), p. 32. g h 15 s ‘The letters.a of Sir Cheney Culpeper, 1641–1657’, ed. M.J. Braddick and w w M. Greengrass,w in Camden Miscellany XXIII (Camden Society, 5th series, 7, 1996), p. 231;

m George Wither,o Justitiarius (London, 1646), p. 14; John Musgrave, Another Word to the Wise .c te (London, 1646);a John Musgrave, A Fourth Word to the Wise (London, 1647), p. 8; Journal of g h s Thomas Juxon.a , pp. 104–5; Reasons Why the House of Commons Ought … to Suspend the w w Membersw (London, 1647), p. 4.

16 m o A Moderate Answer to a Late Printed Pamphlet Intituled Nine Queries (London, .c te a 1647),g p. 4; Journal of Thomas Juxon, pp. 157–8. h s 17 .a An Eye-Salve for the Armie (London, 1647), sigs. Av, A4; Clement Walker, Relations w w wand Observations (London, 1648), sig. B, pp. 4, 6–7, 9, 12, 16, 17, 50, 58, 115–16. © Copyrighted Material 56 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

‘much spoken of among the people, who say surely the Parliament is dying in m 18 o that they distribute their legacies so fast’. Likewise, it was a Presbyterian who.c te a g h claimed that ‘the people … expect a more exact account and ample satisfactions .a 19 w than they have yet had, for their profuse expense of wealth and blood’. However,w w the importance of such texts and such ideas lies not merely in Presbyterianm and o .c te crypto-Royalist diagnosis of the disease within Westminster politics, a but also in g h s the cures which such authors were provoked to advocate, since these .solutionsa can w w be shown to have borne remarkable similarities to those outlined byw writers more

m o conventionally regarded as ‘radicals’. .c te a g h s .a w w w In part, the ‘radicalism’ of Royalist and crypto-Royalist commentators was m o .c tacit and pragmatic. Condren has described this as ‘ante extremity casuistry of a g h conservation’, according to which ‘in extremis you mays innovate to conserve’. .a w 20 This is the radicalism of the excluded and the alienated.w In order to discredit w

m parliamentarian leaders, therefore, the modus operandio of many such authors .c te conflicted with their determination that, ina an ideal world, MPs ought notbe g h s 21 questioned or held to account for their ‘demeanour.a within those walls’. Their w w w attempts to discredit Parliamentarians, in other words, involved breaking down m o the secrecy which they apparently prized so.c highly, and created a conflict with te a g an otherwise dogged attachment to the arcanah imperii. It is this paradox which s .a explains the need to reconsider late 1640sw ‘conservatives’. In part, this means w w recognising their willingness to drawm attention to detailed evidence regarding o .c parliamentarian financial arrangements,te not least by cataloguing the offices held a g h by particular MPs, and the pensionss and salaries which they received. More .a w w importantly, it means recognising wtheir tendency to expose to public view evidence

m regarding parliamentary debates.o .c te a The secrecy of parliamentaryg proceedings – particularly debates – was h s .a traditionally guarded most w closely, and opposition to the reporting of debates w w was a key principle of early Stuart politics. What is interesting, therefore, about m o Royalist propaganda during.c the 1640s is the extent to which such principles were te a g h laid aside, and the ways in which pioneering Royalist news books penetrated .a w the veil of secrecy withw which parliamentary proceedings were conventionally w

m covered. At the mosto basic level, Royalist newspapers provided readers with .c te details regardinga the membership of committees, at least in terms of the most g h s important appointments.a and the most powerful bodies, and analysed the factional w w w

m o 18 .c Bodl.,te MS Clarendon 29, fol. 72r–v. a 19 g h A sWarning for all the Counties (London, 1647), pp. 4–5; Journal of Thomas Juxon, .a w p. 149. w w 20 m Condren, ‘Afterword: radicalism revisited’, in Burgess and Festenstein (eds), o .c Englishte Radicalism, pp. 317, 320. a g h 21 s The Parliamentary or Constitutional History of England (24 vols, 1761–63), 16, .a w w wp. 156; Walker, Relations, p. 139. © Copyrighted Material Royalist Politics and Pamphleteering of the Late 1640s 57 © Copyrighted Material

nature of nominations, and changes to such bodies. Editors also scrutinisedm o .c te patterns of attendance and absence from either House, and could occasionallya g h s name the entire list of those present in the Lords. As the House of Commonsa . w w grew ‘thin’ in late 1648, moreover, some journalists evidently felt justifiedw in

m demonstrating who was, and who was not, present. o .c te a Ultimately, some Royalist newspapers went much further, byg describing h s .a motions made in the Commons by individual MPs, and outliningw the sense of w w debates, as well as providing direct quotations from both the Commons and the m o .c Lords. Although this sensitive area was one into which authors andte editors strayed a g h only tentatively and infrequently in the early 1640s, such tacticss clearly infuriated .a w Parliamentarians at Westminster, and their frustration only wgrew as such tactics w

m became more common later in the decade. Editors in the lateo 1640s displayed far .c te less reticence about identifying authors of particular motions,a and about providing g h s readers with a sense of the nature of debates in either H.aouse. w w w Royalist behaviour amounted, therefore, to a practical embracing of ‘open m o government’, and a tacit admission that the availability.c of such information would te a g foster genuine public debate. Indeed, such reportingh might even be argued to have s .a represented a ‘functional radicalisation’ of the relationshipw between Parliament and w w the people, by promoting political accountability,m and the individual responsibility o .c of MPs. Key Royalist editors provided the publicte with startling evidence regarding a g h the attitudes and financial circumstances ofs individual MPs, and as the Restoration .a w approached in early 1660, readers and welectors were encouraged to hold such w

m members to account for their performance,o not least by refusing to elect them to .c 22 te a Parliament again. g h s It is, of course, important to recognise.a that Royalist tactics, particularly the w w w reporting of parliamentary debates, tended to represent nothing more than a m o pragmatic, rather than a principled,.c attitude towards ‘the public’, and only fleeting te a g support for a realm of publich debate, provoked by an overwhelming desire to s .a w undermine their parliamentarianw enemies. However, there is at least some evidence w that certain Royalists becamem much more explicitly ‘radical’ in their response o .c te to parliamentarian government,a and that their arguments became much more g h s sophisticated. Royalists.a participated, in other words, in a trend which began in w w 1645, and which saww calls for the removal of MPs who neglected their duties, and

m indeed for a wholesaleo purge, or even dissolution, of Parliament, in order to reclaim .c te a 23 power which hadg merely been entrusted to representatives. Such language can be h s .a w w w

22 m J. Peacey,o ‘Royalist news, parliamentary debates, and political accountability, .c te a 1640–1660’,g Parliamentary History, 26 (2007): pp. 328–45. h 23 s Wildman,.a Putney, sig. F4v; Englands Lamentable Slaverie (London, 1645), pp. 6–7; w w w Warning for all the Counties, pp. 4, 8, 10; Thomas Harbye, The Nations Claim of Native Right m o (London,.c 1650), pp. 18–20. Similar ideas had been expressed in response to material grievances te a sinceg before the war, but those who made such claims in the later 1640s tended to do so on the h s back.a of analysis of parliamentary practice: Lilburne, Englands Birthright, p. 33; Surrey History w w wCentre, G85/5/2/10a. © Copyrighted Material 58 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material shown to have been deployed across the political spectrum, including by supporters m o of the Surrey petition in May 1648, who warned that ‘we will have a new Parliament.c te a 24 g h … we will have an account of all the monies that we have paid’. One crypto-s .a w Royalist tract from 1647 claimed that MPs who went beyond their trust couldw be w held accountable, that electors could ‘recall them back again as often as theym please o .c te and send others more honest, diligent, and better qualified’, and that sucha malefactors g h 25 s ought to be punished by fines, imprisonment, and even death. .a w w More important still was the way in which disillusionment withw parliamentary

m o practice provoked some Royalists, as it did the Levellers, to demand.c reform of the te 26 a representative system. It is now well known that parliamentaryg radicals began h s .a to demand annual or even biannual Parliaments, in order wto prevent ‘faction, w w oppression, partiality, and injustice’, and to advocate electoral reform, as a means m o .c 27 of thwarting ‘all court craft, and faction, avarice and ambition’.te John Lilburne, a g h therefore, demanded frequent elections explicitly in orders to remove those whose .a 28 w performance in Parliament was found wanting. Whatw is rather less well known, w

m however, is that such demands were echoed by quasi-o Royalist commentators. .c te One pamphleteer in 1647 demanded the enforcementa of a sizeable quorum as g h s well as greater publicity and openness regarding.a parliamentary proceedings and w w w individual members’ contributions to debates. This author also advocated the m o creation of a public registry of members’ votes,.c so that ‘each county, corporation te a g 29 or any particular man may see how they behaveh themselves upon all occasions’. s .a The problem with such tracts, of course,w centres upon uncertainty regarding their w w authorship and the Royalist credentialsm of those responsible for their appearance. o .c Nevertheless, it is an interesting historicalte parlour game with some pamphlets a g h to try an establish whether they oughts to be labelled as ‘radical’ or ‘Royalist’, .a w w and the very fact that certain tractsw from the late 1640s resist easy designation is

m surely significant. What is necessaryo in the light of such uncertainty, and for those .c te a who dislike parlour games, is gevidence that ‘radical’ views emanated from known h s .a Royalists, and the remainderw of this paper will be devoted to exploring the views w w of just such a man, the Kentish cavalier Sir Roger Twysden. m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te 24 a g A True Relationh of the Passages Between the Surrey Petitioners (London, 1648), p. 2; s .a Harbye, Nations wClaim, p. 17. w 25 w Certain Queries Lovingly Propounded to Mr William Prynne (London, 1647), m o p. 2. .c te a 26 g h M.s Kishlansky, ‘Ideology and politics in the parliamentary armies, 1645–9’, in .a w J. Morrillw (ed.), Reactions to the English Civil War, 1642–1649 (Basingstoke, 1982), p. 176. w 27 Mm usgrave, Fourth Word, pp. 11–12; Lilburne, Englands Birthright, p. 33; Independency o .c Striptte and Whipt (London, 1648), p. 14; Harbye, Nations Claim, p. 71. a g h 28 s Lilburne, Englands Birthright, p. 33; Certain Queries, p. 3. .a w 29 w w Lilburne, Englands Birthright, p. 33; Certain Queries, p. 3. © Copyrighted Material Royalist Politics and Pamphleteering of the Late 1640s 59 © Copyrighted Material

Sir Roger Twysden (1597–1672) of Roydon Hall in East Peckham, Kent, wasm o .c te the scion of an ancient, albeit somewhat impoverished, Kentish family, whoa had g h s represented Winchelsea in the 1620s, and whose life during the 1630s hada been . w 30 w divided between zealous service as a justice of the peace, and historical scholarship,w

m the latter of which was reflected in the acquisition of ancient manuscripts,o as well .c te 31 a as in extensive reading and note-taking. That Twysden grew uneasyg regarding h s .a Caroline financial policies is clear from his annotated copy of Johnw Cowell’s The w w32 Interpreter, or Booke Containing the Signification of Words (1607), and from his m o .c interest in Ship Money, not merely in terms of following Hampden’ste trial, but also a g h in terms of denying the royal claim of ‘necessity’ and defendings a parliamentary .a 33 w response to emergencies. Nevertheless, Twysden representedw Kent in the Short w

m Parliament of 1640, as a variety of ‘constitutional royalist’,o and if he was out of .c te step with Caroline political and financial policies, he a was nevertheless tolerant g h s of Laudian reforms, and opposed to ‘further reformation’.a beyond his beloved w 34 w w Elizabethan settlement. Although not exactly a court candidate in the county m o election, therefore, he was clearly opposed to Sir .Ec dward Dering, the supposed te a 35 g candidate of local Puritans, in what became a controversialh episode. s .a A rather inactive MP, Twysden nevertheless wsupported the calling of the Long w w 36 Parliament and the aims of the reformers in itsm opening months. According to his o .c te a g h s 30 .a Centre for Kentish Studies [hereafter wCKS], U951/O7/18; U47/47/Z2, pp. 115–18; w w U47/47/O1, pp. 1–5, 13–15; U47/47/Z1, pp. 11–12, 43–4, 75–82; U49/F19; Lambeth Palace m o Library [hereafter LPL], MS 1389. .c te a 31 g BL, MSS Burney 3, 220, 224; h Add. MS 53,710; MS Egerton 2677, fol. 2; MS s .a Stowe 12, fol. 375v; MS Stowe 49; MSw Stowe 62, fol. 2v; MS Stowe 96, fol. 1; MS Stowe w w

378, fol. 1; MS Stowe 312; CKS, U1655/F9.m o 32 .c BL, Add. MS 34,163, fol.te 130; Add. MS 24,281, fols 86r–v; Add. MS 24,282, a g h fol. 94; CKS, U48/Z1, p. 252. s .a 33 w BL, Add. MS 34,176, wfol. 70; Add. MS 24,283, fols 17v, 99; Sir Roger Twysden, w

Certaine Considerations Uponm the Government of England, ed. J.M. Kemble (Camden o .c te Society, 45, 1849) [hereaftera CC], p. 145; CKS, U47/47/O1, pp. 3, 14; U47/47/Z1, g h pp. 45–74, 133–41; U47/47/Z2,s pp. 107–10, 189–92, 197–8, 202–4; U49/F19, unfol. .a 34 w w BL, Add. MS 34,163,w fols 109v, 131; Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1637–38,

m p. 299; CKS, U47/47/Z2,o p. 204; U47/47/Z1, p. 142; U49/F19, unfol; U49/Z19, p. 300; .c te U1655/F8, p. 23. a g h 35 s BL, Add..a MS 34,163, fols 108v, 109; Add. MS 26,785, fols 1r–v; MS Stowe 743, w w fol. 140; MS Stowew 184, fols 10v–11; Bodl., MS Rawl. D. 141, p. 4; J. Peacey, ‘Tactical

m organisation oin a contested election: Sir Edward Dering and the spring election at Kent, .c te a 1640’, in C.g Kyle (ed.), Parliament, Politics and Elections, 1604–1648 (Camden Society, h s 5th series,.a 17, 2001): pp. 237–72. w 36 w w BL, Add. MS 34,173, fols 18r–v; Add. MS 24,282, fol. 180v; Add. MS 24,283, m o fols 17v,.c 19, 99; CJ, ii. 4a; The Short Parliament (1640) Diary of Sir Thomas Aston, ed. te a J. Maltbyg (Camden Society, 4th series, 35, 1988): pp. 22, 143; ‘Sir Roger Twysden’s h s Narrative’,.a Archaeologia Cantiana, i–iv (1858–61) [hereafter TN], i. 187, 194–5; CC, w w pp.w 83, 141, 144; CKS, U49/Z19, p. 293. © Copyrighted Material 60 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material later testimony, however, Twysden soon became alienated by the methods and ideas m o of Parliamentarians, and concerned regarding the threat posed to ancient liberties.c te a 37 g h by arbitrary parliamentary power. It was such concerns which underpinneds .a w Twysden’s involvement in the controversial Kentish petition in the spring ofw 1642, w 38 the incident which brought about his arrest and brief imprisonment. Rm enewed o .c te involvement in proto-Royalist agitation in Kent in the summer ofa 1642, in g h s response to growing parliamentary power and infringements of subject’s.a liberties, w 39 w eventually led to a second period of incarceration. Twysden’sw subsequent

m o experience of parliamentary rule involved not merely confinement,.c however, but te a 40 also tax evasion, plunder, and sequestration, as well as frustratedg petitioning. It h s .a was this treatment which prompted his research into, and reflectionw upon, politics w 41 w and government. m o .c Twysden’s political views are contained in a number ofte printed and manuscript a g h sources. A devoted keeper of manuscript notebooks filleds with evidence from his .a w extensive reading in law, history and religion, Twysdenw also wrote memoirs which w

m remained in manuscript until the late nineteenth century,o and which have never .c te been printed in full. His (slightly) more polished astatements were contained in a g h s manuscript entitled ‘Certaine considerations upon.a the government of England’, w w 42 w apparently written in a parliamentarian prison and eventually published in 1849, m o and a tract called The Commoners Liberty, written.c after his eventual release in 1646, te a g and based in part upon his eye-witness observationsh of political developments in s 43 .a London. Twysden was clearly struck by wthe emergence of radicalism in both City w w

m o .c 37 te a TN, i. 187–92, 195, 196–200, ii. g177, iii. 149; CC, p. 154. h 38 s TN, i. 200–206, 210–13, ii. 179–80;.a LPL, MS 1390, p. 152; CKS, U47/47/Z2, w w w pp. 217–20; Private Journals of the Long Parliament, ed. W.H. Coates, V.F. Snow and A.S. m o Young (New Haven, 1982–92), ii. 100–101,.c 114, 192, 248–9, 256; CJ, ii. 501b, 502b–503a, te a 507a, 516a, 517a, 520b, 550a, 568a;g BL, MS Stowe 184, fol. 49; Add. MS 34,161, fol. 2. h s 39 .a TN, ii. 181, 184–5, 189–90,w 192, 199–201; CJ, ii. 700b, 704a, 712b, 735b, 758b, w w 761a; CKS, U47/47/O1, pp. 21–2; LPL, MS 1390, p. 152; Private Journals, iii. 337. m 40 o BL, Add. MS 34,163,.c fols 96, 127; MS Harleian 165, fol. 200a; Add. MS 34,174, te a g fol. 47; Add. MS 34,166,h fol. 34; LPL, MS 1390, pp. 152–5, 159; TN, ii. 193, 194–5, 199, s .a 201–3, 205–6, 208–10, iii.w 145–49, 152–62, 166–75, iv. 131–2, 134, 137–48, 160–70, 173–4, w w 180–81, 185; The National Archives [hereafter TNA], SP 28/210b, unfol.; SP 23/173, pp. m o 163, 179; CJ, iii. 124b,.c 137a, 203b, 297b, 409a, 674a; Calendar of the Proceedings of the te a g Committee for Compoundingh [hereafter CCC], ed. M.A.E. Green (London, 1889–93), 102, s .a 864; CJ, iv. 72a,w 370b, 460a. Twysden refused to join the king at Oxford, and remained w w critical of Charlesm I: TN, ii. 197–9. o 41 .c CKS,te U47/47/Z1, pp. 161–3; U47/47/Z2, pp. 237–8, 596; U49/Z19; BL, MS a g h Harleian 374,s fol. 237; TN, iv. 145, 148; Add. MS 22,916, fol. 56; MS Stowe 329, fols 1, .a w 13v–17;w MS Stowe 312; MS Stowe 359, fol. 13; Historiae Ecclesiasticae Gentis Anglorum, w ed. Abrahamm Wheelocke and Sir Roger Twysden (Cambridge, 1644), pt 2, pp. 153–216. o 42.c te CKS, U49/Z15; CC, passim. a g h 43 s sir Roger Twysden, The Commoners Liberty: or the English-Mans Birth-Right ([14 .a w w wSept.] 1648) [hereafter CL]; CKS, U48/Z2–3. © Copyrighted Material Royalist Politics and Pamphleteering of the Late 1640s 61 © Copyrighted Material

44 and Army, and had personal experience of discussing politics with Levellers.m o .c te Indeed, Twysden’s pamphlet, interestingly subtitled ‘the English-Mans Birth-a g h s Right’, was printed in September 1648 as part of a Leveller-inspired pamphleta . w w debate. Twysden’s tract was explicitly framed as a response to William Prynne’sw

m defence of the legal power of the House of Lords, the latter of which waso written .c te a 45 in response to attacks upon the upper House produced by Leveller leaders.g h s .a Twysden was, therefore, a moderate Royalist who not only supportedw some of w w the reforms of 1640–41, but also defended mixed and limited monarchy against m o .c polemicists such as Sir Robert Filmer and Henry Ferne, and hete denied that the a g h liberties of the people, properly conceived, encroached upon thes royal prerogative, .a 46 w or that they owed their origin to the king’s grace. More importantly,w Twysden w

m defended the right of resistance – by Parliament if not theo people, and in order .c te to oppose the king but not to remove the crown. Yet hea also claimed that the g h s ‘common people’ had generally been ‘excited … to join.a in arms’ by ‘specious w w w pretences’, which tended to be little more than ‘the covers to the most damnable m 47 o wickedness that ever was practised’. He also professed.c that he had ‘never read te a g of any nation [that] attained that liberty they hopedh for by arms, or that grew s 48 .a to a greater sanctity of life by war’. Furthermore,w Twysden bemoaned both the w w weight of parliamentarian taxation (which he regardedm as reflections of ‘ambitious o .c appetites’), private interests, and lust for powerte within the ranks of parliamentarian a g h grandees, as well as what he considered financials and political corruption on an .a 49 w unprecedented scale. w w

m More interesting than such hints o of constitutional royalism, however, are .c te a Twysden’s statements regarding the powerg of Parliament and the role of MPs. It is h s possible to demonstrate, firstly, a .repeateda insistence upon the legal requirement w w w 50 for, and practical benefit of, annual Parliaments. Twysden claimed that James m o I’s failure to call regular Parliaments,.c and his speeches regarding dissolutions, te a g ‘perhaps might be yet not wisdomh in a prince on those terms to show a discontent s .a w with the representative bodyw of this whole kingdom, nor to give factious spirits w 51 opportunity to raise discontentsm with his commons’. Writing of the personal rule, o .c te Twysden noted that fewa men expected ‘to see any more parliaments’; an opinion g h s which he claimed was.a ‘the more increased when they saw an endeavour to supply w w the public wants withoutw one, a course being taken 1634 by writ to raise money

m for setting out a navy’.o Of the dissolution of the Short Parliament, meanwhile, .c te a Twysden claimedg that the king’s action was undertaken ‘not without the great h s .a w w 44 w TN, ii. 210–14. m o 45 .c CL, tepassim. a g 46 h CCs , pp. 17, 22, 33, 41, 44, 83, 86, 87, 94, 111, 112, 127, 128. .a 47 w wIbid., pp. 93–4, 98–9, 100; TN, iv. 148–60. w 48 m o CC, p. 100. .c 49te a TN, i. 194–5, ii. 214–15, 219; CC, pp. 167, 171; CL, p. 4. g h s 50 .a CKS, U49/Z19, p. 293; CC, p. 141. w w 51 w CC, p. 144. © Copyrighted Material 62 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material amazement of many understanding men, that (it having carried itself with such m o moderation as not to have put to the question anything might displease the king).c te a 52 g h they should be sent home without doing ought’. s .a w More dramatic still were Twysden’s comments regarding the jurisdictionw of the w

House of Lords. Writing in response to Prynne, Twysden explicitly defendedm the o .c te claims made by John Lilburne and Richard Overton against the legal powera of the g h 53 s upper House, explicitly citing their pamphlets and arguments. Twysden.a claimed, w w therefore, that ‘[t]he subjects of this kingdom have ever esteemed (amongstw earthly

m o blessings) the greatest to have consisted in the due administration.c of justice’, and te 54 a one of the most important customs was trial by one’s peers. Hg e went on to say h s .a that ‘this ancient and fundamental way of proceeding hath neverw been in any kind w 55 w altered, but to the intolerable detriment of the subject’. I n explaining himself m o .c further, Twysden made an interesting choice of words andte phrases: a g h s .a w Under this impartial way of distributing equal justicew to all men (in receiving w

m which certain it is reasonable the highest duke shouldo be levelled with the lowest .c te beggar, and is for ought I know the chiefest levellinga aimed at) the subjects of g h s England have enjoyed great peace and happiness,.a ever struggling against the w w w exercise of any arbitrary power whatsoever. But now of late, when we are freed m o of the Star Chamber etc, there is an opinion.c raised by some grandees who are te a g feared to aim at an arbitrary power, to carryh on their designs, that the Lords, s .a without any presentment upon oath, or trialw by jury, may upon a bare information, w w

and examining of certain witnesses, proceedm against any commoner whatsoever, o .c and that to deny this, or not submit untote them, is a breach of the privilege of the a g 56 h house of peers. s .a w w w

m Although Twysden declined to commento in detail upon ‘Lilburne’s and Overton’s .c te a railing and libelling against g the persons and jurisdictions of the Lords’, he h s .a nevertheless added, ‘I cannotw but say I have heard they have been great and long w w sufferers, and by the English proverb, we may give losers leave to speak, such m o 57 being the frailty of human.c nature’. te a g h As well as expressings crypto-radical views regarding the legal powers of the .a w House of Lords, Twysdenw also developed firm views on the issue of petitioning. w

m He applauded the oway in which the House of Commons had promoted petitions .c te regarding grievances,a not so much as ‘framers of them’, but rather as ‘preferrers g h s 58 and forwarders,.a as good servants to the commonwealth’. By extension, he also w w w

m 52 o CC, .p.c 145. te 53 a g CLh , pp. 9, 12, 21, 25. s 54 .a iwbid., p. 1. w w 55 m ibid., p. 3. o 56.c te ibid., p. 4. a g h 57 s ibid., pp. 12–13. .a w 58 w w CC, p. 152. © Copyrighted Material Royalist Politics and Pamphleteering of the Late 1640s 63 © Copyrighted Material

defended the rights of petitioners, and, with his own experience in mind, expressedm o .c te concern at the inconsistent attitude of the Commons, in a way which placeda his g h s views very close to those of the radicals. In unpublished portions of his memoirs,a . w w Twysden therefore noted that: w

m o .c te a This very House of Commons, having spent much time in considerationg of the h s .a petition of several citizens in favour of the treatise called the Agreementw of the w w People, the 2 of December 1647, came to this resolution, that it is the right of m o the subject to petition the Parliament, and the right of the Parliament.c to judge of te a g h such petitions. And that the petitioners are bound to acquiesce ins such answer as .a 59 w the House should give unto such petitions. w w

m o .c te Having highlighted Leveller petitions, Twysden then drewa attention to the fact that g h s the Kentish MP, Richard Browne, had twice been sent to.a the Commons by the Kent w w w county committee, ‘to know their opinion whether men were to be sequestered for m o only having an hand in that [Kentish] petition, but the.c House of Commons would te a g not declare they were, but seemed to incline to theh contrary, so never any was but s 60 .a myself’. Twysden concluded that ‘it agrees notw with the justice and mercy of the w w

House of Commons formerly practised to punishm so severely such as offend them o 61 .c ignorantly’. te a g h Twysden’s most interesting comments srelate to the role of representatives and .a w the power of their constituents. Based uponw his reading of historical records, not w

m least on the issue of MPs’ wages, Twysdeno concluded that representatives were: .c te a g h s such as appear in Parliament to .abe no other than servants deputed wholly to w w w manage their business whom they represented, who paid them for their abode, m o called in the rolls their wages,.c which when some towns neglected, the most te a g notable and wisest withdrewh themselves from the service, of which commons s 62 .a w made complaint. w w

m o .c te ‘From hence’, Twysdena concluded, ‘is gathered how strict a dependence the g h s members of the lower.a House did take themselves to have upon those towns or w w countries whom theyw represented, who looked on them but as trustees to the

63 m commonwealth.’ o .c te a Moreover, Twysden’sg scholarship clearly led him to believe that MPs were h s .a susceptible to wreceiving precise instructions from their constituents. He said of w w representatives: m o .c te a g h s .a 59 w w lPL, MS 1390, pp. 158–9. w 60 m o ibid., p. 159. .c 61te a ibid., p. 159. g h s 62 .a CC, p. 153. See also, CKS, U49/Z19, pp. 209, 373. w w 63 w CC, p. 154. © Copyrighted Material 64 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Neither did they hold so blind an obedience from those whom they represented m o due unto them, as they must believe all good because they concluded it, but .c te a g h many times, in points of difficulty, they did desire to have the advice of thoses .a w from whom they came, and indeed as it is a vanity to think fit for them to havew w

recourse to those who chose them in matters do ordinarily occur in Parliament,m o .c te so in things are so new, as the like did perhaps never happen before, ora very g h s rarely, I can see no reason, under the general title of a trust, any should.a engage w w (contrary to former use) a county or kingdom, without at all acquaintingw them

m 64 o with it. .c te a g h s .a Once again, Twysden’s views were formulated in response to whis own experience, w w notably the occasion in July 1642 when he observed at close hand the attempt by m o .c ‘divers young gentlemen’ in Kent to deliver instructionste to their MP, Augustine a g 65 h Skinner, who resolutely refused to receive them. As s Twysden noted in his .a w memoirs, the local JPs, ‘being … full of resentment,w did require Mr Augustine w

m Skinner, as their servant … to offer their humbleo advice for the settling the .c 66 te distractions of the times’. a g h s Ultimately, such views provided the foundation.a for the most intriguing w w w aspect of Twysden’s thought, regarding the accountability of MPs to their m o constituents. As we might expect from someone.c who defended the advantages of te a g annual Parliaments, Twysden expressed concernh regarding the impact of a long s .a Parliament. He claimed that ‘when the membersw of it grew more intent on their w w private [interest] and less on the public,m that which was in the first practice a o .c 67 benefit became a burden to thet e subject’. More specifically, having observed a g h politics in the 1640s, he claimed that:s .a w w w

m the committee of privileges ando elections, now joined in one, hath gained the .c te a scandalous name of the committeeg of affections, and I remember myself to have h s .a heard Parliament men excusew some partiality used in that place, by affirming it w w 68 the only particular one friend could do another pleasure in. m o .c te a g h Referring back to his scomments regarding the legitimacy of giving instructions .a w to MPs, Twysden lookedw to the Netherlands as a model of parliamentary practice, w

m ‘where the electedo are so strictly tied to the elector’s instructions, as failing in .c 69 te performance of them,a they are subject to their censure’. g h s .a w w 64 w CC, p. 154. m 65 o TN, .ii.c 186–7; CKS, U47/47/O1, pp. 19–21; U47/47/Z2, pp. 231–3; U47/47/Z1, te a g pp. 155–8.h s 66 .a w wTN, ii. 187–8. See also: CC, pp. 153–4; LPL, MS 1390, p. 157. w 67 m CC, p. 167. See also: CKS, U49/Z19, pp. 209, 373. o 68.c te CC, p. 171. a g h 69 s TN, ii. 188. Twysden referred readers to the decree of Holland and West Friesland, .a w w w1587, ‘lately printed in the Reipublica Hollandia’. This may have been a reference to Hugo © Copyrighted Material Royalist Politics and Pamphleteering of the Late 1640s 65 © Copyrighted Material

Fortunately, Twysden’s papers also record practical applications of his views.m o .c te He wrote at length, for example, about the revolt against Parliament’s excisea tax, g 70 h s which resulted in the Butchers’ riot at Smithfield in early 1647. Referringa to . w w Parliament’s declaration in response to such disorder, Twysden claimed wthat this

m document: o .c te a g h s .a filled the world with astonishment, and such as had been wholly devotedw to the w w two Houses began to fear they should not meet with more liberty than they had m o .c enjoyed before these wars, but indifferent men saw plainly they mustte never see a g h that monster totally buried, it being the most equal course to raises money. They .a w laughed to see them keep their first principles of abusing the peoplew by promises w

m of better times. And I do well remember some did then sayo there was nothing .c te but the army could moderate the tyranny the subject lay under,a and for my part, g h s I am confident that the House of Commons had never .aredressed it in the least, w w w had they been solicited by any of less power to persuade than the officers of the m o army, upon whose entreaty, and their drawing near London.c the excise was taken te 71 a g off from some things most burdensome. h s .a w w w

He also noted in detail his response to havingm witnessed at first hand radical o .c political lobbying during this period. Twysden’ste memoirs, therefore, recorded an a g h occasion when, ‘[g]oing up to the Parliaments with one of the House of Commons’, .a w he met: w w

m o .c te a a person who stood in the lobby beforeg entering it, with several petitions in his h s hands to present them each member,.a gave me one (as supposing me one of the w w w number) couched in very high language (such as at other times would not have m o been endured) concerning certain.c prisoners [that] had, by some power derived te a g from them, been restrained.h s .a w w w

Twysden was engaged in mconversation by one of the protesters who spotted him o .c te reading the petition, anda who justified the boldness of its language by saying g h s that: .a w w w

m it is time, for weo see these men that sit there have neither truth nor honesty, for .c te a they have hadg our persons and estates at their command, and now, instead of the h s .a liberty theyw promised, and we expected, they imprison us (who have gone along w w with them) on every slight occasion. m o .c te a g h s Grotius, A.a Treatise of the Antiquity of the Commonwealth of the Battavers, which is now the w w Hollandersw , trans. T. Woods (London, 1649).

70 m o BL, Add. MS 34,169, fol. 18. See, M.J. Braddick, ‘Popular politics and public .c te a policy:g the excise riot at Smithfield in February 1647 and its aftermath’, HJ, 34 (1991): h s pp..a 597–626. w w 71 w TN, ii. 212–13. © Copyrighted Material 66 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Twysden’s interlocutor also noted that the Commons, having insisted that the hated m o excise was an absolute necessity, subsequently proved willing to compromise.c te a 72 g h in the face of pressure from the Army. Twysden’s response to this harangues is .a w particularly interesting, for although he ‘thought not fit to hold long discoursew with w so discontented an humour’, he nevertheless added that ‘for my part, I couldm not o 73 .c te tell how to answer him’. a g h s .a w w w

m o Twysden’s published and unpublished works from the 1640s therefore.c demonstrate te a the willingness of at least some Royalists to challenge acceptedg notions regarding h s .a the nature of parliamentary practice, and representative politicsw in the light of w w their experience of governance during the Long Parliament. He facilitates the m o .c development of a picture of Civil War royalism as somethingte which was able a g h to offer not only a diagnosis of the corruption of Parliaments – in terms of the .a w prevalence of private interests, factionalism, and financialw impropriety – but also w

m something capable of embracing annual Parliamentso and mechanisms for ensuring .c te the responsiveness of MPs to their constituents. Thisa could be achieved by means g h s of salaries, instructions before and during Parliaments,.a and the guaranteeing of w w w petitioning rights, or by more systematic means of publicising the activity of MPs, m o and the financial benefits which they had secured..c In diagnosing the ‘corruption’ te a g of Parliament during the 1640s, and in offeringh novel solutions to such problems, s .a there was much common ground betweenw Royalists such as Twysden and those w w more commonly associated with Civil Warm ‘radicalism’. Indeed, by giving radical o .c royalism theoretical grounding and ideologicalte justification, it is difficult to conclude a g h that the response by the king’s supporterss was merely pragmatic in nature. .a w w As such, scrutiny of Royalist w ‘radicalism’ during the late 1640s suggests the

m need for re-evaluation of the thingso which are, and are not, constitutive of mid- .c te a seventeenth century radicalismg – let alone the ‘radical tradition’. This seems to be h s .a no easy task if the purpose isw to maintain a distinction between men like Lilburne w w on the one hand and those like Twysden on the other, and if the intention is to m o retain conventional notions.c of the radical canon. One possible means of doing te a g h this would be to distinguishs between ‘means’ and ‘ends’; indeed to suggest that .a w Royalist goals were w ‘conservative’ while those of groups such as the Levellers w

m were ‘progressive’.o Such a distinction, however, is only superficially helpful. Men .c te like Twysden clearlya sought to turn the clock back to a time before the Long g h s Parliament, to a.a time when Parliaments ‘were chosen to petition and expedite the w w affairs of others,w to assent in making laws by which themselves as well as the

m o poorest is to.c be governed, to see how the necessary charges of the commonwealth te a g may be furnished’.h He did not want to perpetuate a situation which would s .a ‘conducew only to their own private ends’; a situation where, ‘in lieu of making w w laws to be governed by, they will themselves be governors’, and where, ‘instead m o .c te a g h 72 s TN, ii. 213. .a w 73 w w ibid, ii. 213–14. See also: LPL, MS 1390, pp. 158–9. © Copyrighted Material Royalist Politics and Pamphleteering of the Late 1640s 67 © Copyrighted Material

of being givers to the king, they will be the expenditors themselves, as well as them o 74 .c te granters of the tax’. Even so, Mendle’s work highlights the danger of assuminga g h s that ‘radicals’ such as the Levellers were necessarily willing to jettison the notiona . w w of the three estates, and of the king as one of the bulwarks against the abusew of

m parliamentary power, not least because of evidence regarding their hostilityo to .c te 75 a the trial and execution of Charles I. There are then at least some groundsg for h s .a regarding Twysden and the Levellers as having shared a perspectivew of exclusion w w and alienation, a drive to restore things that the Long Parliament had destroyed, m 76 o .c and an ‘extremity casuistry of conservation’. te a g h In the face of such problems it might be better to employ wordss such as ‘radical’ .a w and ‘radicalism’ with extreme caution. In order to use the termsw substantively it w

m would be necessary to find ideas and policies which truly odistinguished a Lilburne .c te from a Twysden. The political ‘populism’ described in thisa essay, in terms of tactics g h s for guaranteeing effective representation, open government.a and accountability, w w w can be shown to have been shared by these two authors in the late 1640s, and m o consequently does not fit the bill. Since Twysden .cand the Levellers shared views te a g not merely regarding the nature of the problems createdh by the Long Parliament, s .a but also concerning the solutions required, it wouldw be vital to do more than – as w w

Davis suggests – just draw attention to evidencem of a willingness to transform o 77 .c constitutional constraints. Given that the ideaste of both Twysden and the Levellers a g h 78 combined ‘a mixture of the restorative and sthe transformative’, it would probably .a w be necessary to look elsewhere within thew thought of the Levellers for ideas and w

m policies which could successfully enableo their location within a distinct ‘tradition’. .c te a One possibility might involve exploringg their attitudes towards the permanence h s of such remedies, and arguing that.a the advocacy of a written constitution along w w w the lines of the ‘Agreements of the People’ indicated a rather more principled m o attachment to checks and balances.c than anything demonstrated by writers such te a g as Twysden, Prynne or Walker.h Even here, however, comparisons might prove s .a w difficult, given that oppositionw to the Agreements was often prompted by loyalty w to previous oaths, and angerm over its advocacy of religious toleration, rather o .c 79 te than by its clauses regardinga representation. Pending further research into the g h s ‘foundations of freedom’.a during the late 1640s and early 1650s, it would perhaps w w be better therefore tow abandon the ‘substantive’ approach to radicalism in favour of

m one which is situationalo and functional. .c te a g h s .a 74 w TN, ii. 214.w w 75 Mendle,m ‘Putney’s pronouns’; A. Sharp, ‘The Levellers and the end of Charles o .c te I’, in J. Peaceya (ed.), The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (Basingstoke, 2001), g h pp. 181–201.s .a 76 w w wDavis, ‘Afterword’, p. 357; Condren, ‘Afterword’, pp. 317, 320.

77 m o davis, ‘Afterword’, pp. 357, 358, 362. .c 78te a g ibid., p. 363. h s 79 .a E. Vernon, ‘The reaction to the Agreements of the People’, in Baker and Vernon w w (eds),w Foundations of Freedom. © Copyrighted Material 68 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

The attraction of this shift lies partly in the possibility of developing a more m o historicised understanding of groups like the Levellers. But its utility also rests.c te a g h on enabling the radicalism of Sir Roger Twysden – together with that of Williams .a w Prynne and Clement Walker – as well as a host of Royalist journalists andw other w anonymous pamphleteers from the late 1640s, to be recognised and acknowledged.m o .c te Whatever else they were, these writers were functionally oppositional, ina the sense g h s that they shared a determination to de-legitimise an existing order, and.a to provide w w means with which to create a new or remodelled political system.w This is not to

m o characterise any of these authors as ‘radicals’ in a substantive .sense,c but rather te a merely to recognise that their utterances were genuinely radicalg at the moment h s .a of their composition and publication. They became radicalisedw in the turbulent w w circumstances of Civil War, and particularly in the situation which existed between m o .c the end of the First Civil War and the execution of Charleste I. And they may have a g h felt little need to develop their ideas once circumstancess had changed yet again. .a w Indeed, they may subsequently have sought to distancew themselves from ideas w

m and tactics which they had been prepared to considero under the Long Parliament .c te – although it is not entirely clear that they did so.a Twysden’s political energy g h s certainly evaporated after 1649, partly because .aof the need to concentrate upon w w w rescuing his financial fortunes, and partly because he found the Commonwealth m 80 o regimes ‘easier to be embraced’; though it.c is noteworthy that his Commoners te a g Liberty was republished in 1659, probablyh in response to the republication of s 81 .a Prynne’s tract. Thereafter, however, hew devoted much of his time to scholarly w w 82 research, correspondence and publication.m As such, writers like Twysden may o .c be characterised as having had radicalte moments, and of having ceased to deserve a g h the label of radical during the 1650ss and 1660s. They serve, in other words, to .a w w highlight the protean nature of Civilw War radicalism. And they represent a warning

m that historians create neat politicalo labels and concise political descriptions for the .c te a ideas and individuals of this metamorphicg age at their peril. h s .a w w 80 w

BL, Add. MS 34,171,m fols 13, 15, 17, 21, 28; Add. MS 34,162, fols 2–61; Add. MS o .c 34,164, passim; Add. MS 34,167,te passim; Add. MS 34,172, fols 14, 16; Add. MS 34,170, a g h fols 22, 24, 26, 28; Add.s MS 34,161, fol. 32; TN, iv. 181–94; CCC, pp. 864–5; TNA, SP .a w 23/228, fols 84–5; SP 23/125,w pp. 577, 579; SP 23/212, p. 397; Calendar of Proceedings of w the Committee for Advancem of Money, ed. M.A.E. Green (London, 1888), p. 1394; LPL, MS o .c 1390, p. 154; CJ, vi.te 202b, 212a. a g 81 h sir Rogers Twysden, The Commoners Liberty (1659). .a 82 w CKS, U49/Z16,w pp. 90, 101; U47/47/Z2, pp. 32, 51–8, 253, 292, 295–6, 299–300, w

m 306, 343–4, 583;o U47/47/Z1, pp. 83–131; U49/Z3/1; U1655/Z2; U49/Z3/3; CKS, U48/Z1; .c te BL, Add. MSa 4783, fol. 21; Add. MS 34,164, fol. 100; MS Stowe 857, fols 3, 17–18v; g h Add. MS s34,176, fols 74r–v; Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores X, ed. Sir Roger Twysden .a w (1652); wRobert Filmer, Quaestio Quodlibetica, ed. Sir Roger Twysden (1653), sigs. A2– w

m a2v; Archaionomiao , ed. Abraham Wheelocke and Sir Roger Twysden (1654), pp. 153–8; W. .c te Hamper,a The Life, Diary and Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale (1827), pp. 330–31, g h 335–7;s HMC 4th Report, p. 412; Roger Twysden, An Historical Vindication of the Church .a w w ofw England (1657); LPL, MS 1391, fols 2, 3–4v, 5-6v, 7–9v. © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 3 m o .c te a g h s News from the New Jerusalem: Giles Calvert.a w w w

* m

1 o and the Radical Experience .c te a g h s .a Mario Caricchio w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m In June 1649, one of John Sadler’s acquaintances gave himo a copy of Gerrard .c te Winstanley’s The New Law of Righteousnes (1649), praisinga it as ‘one of the best g h s Books that ever hath been written next to the Bible’. All.a of Winstanley’s earliest w w w works – with the exception of the first edition of the Mysterie of God (1648) – m o bore Giles Calvert’s full imprint. Published in January.c as the fifth of Winstanley’s te a g tracts, The New Law of Righteousnes had announcedh the imminent beginning of s 1 .a the Diggers’ communistic experiment. w w w

The Digger colony had been established inm early April on St George’s Hill in o .c the parish of Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Supportte for it had been organised towards a g h the end of March through Giles Calvert’s sbookshop at the ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’. .a w There Richard Maidley – one of the Diggersw known to historians – had to collect w

m ‘hands’ for a petition asking the House oof Commons to grant the ‘poor of England’ .c te a part of King’s, Deans’ and Chapters’g lands together with Commons, Forests and h s the like legitimately ‘due to them’..a This petition had been framed on the basis w w w 2 of Peter Chamberlen’s Poor Mans Advocate (1649). The educational reformer m o Samuel Hartlib also noted that .Sc ir James Harrington hoped to obtain £20,000 for te a g h s .a * w 1 this essay summarises,w with a few revisions, some of the main arguments of my w

m book, Mario Caricchio, Religione,o politica e commercio di libri nella Rivoluzione inglese. .c te Gli autori di Giles Calverta 1645–1653 (Genoa, 2003). I would like to thank Dave Collier, g h David Como, Ariel Hessayon,s Ann-Marie Kilgallon, Silvia Sebastiani, Simona Troilo and .a w w Stefano Villani for theirw help and useful suggestions.

1 m Sheffield oUniversity Library, Hartlib Papers [hereafter SUL, HP], 28/1/21A; .c te G. Sabine (ed.), Thea Works of Gerrard Winstanley. With an appendix of documents relating g h s to the Digger Movement.a (Ithaca, NY, 1941), pp. 194–5. The second edition of The Mysterie w w of God (1649), whowever, does bear Calvert’s imprint.

2 m o To the.c Supreme Autoritie of England. The Humble Petition of Officers and Souldiers, te a Citizens andg Countrimen, Poor and Rich; and all sorts with all Distressed and Oppressed h s people of. a England [1649]; Peter Chamberlen, The Poor Mans Advocate (London, 1649), w w w pp. 47–[49]. The relationship between them and the identification of Richard Maidlee (as m o spelled.c in the broadside petition) is discussed in Caricchio, Religione, politica e commercio te a di librig , pp. 69, 149–50; M. Caricchio, ‘Poveri, terra e libertà: petizioni nel passaggio dalla h s monarchia.a al Commonwealth’, in C. Nubola and A. Würgler (eds), Operare la resistenza. w w Suppliche,w gravamina e rivolte in Europa (Bologna and Berlin, 2006), pp. 81–106. © Copyrighted Material 70 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material the foundation of colonies projected by Chamberlen. On 4 April 1649, the Council m o of State appointed a committee of three to consider Chamberlen’s plan: Harrington.c te a g h himself (Member of Parliament and cousin of the author of Oceana) ands two .a 3 w Rumper Republicans, Cornelius Holland and Edmund Ludlow. w w

The paths of Parliament members and petitioners, of Republicans andm Diggers o .c te were not the only ones that crossed at Calvert’s bookshop in 1649. aThomasina g h s Pendarves, wife of the Abingdon Baptist John Pendarves, defended the.a prophetess w w Elisabeth Poole in print from the aspersions of her former Baptistw brethren,

m o inviting them to post their responses at Calvert’s shop. Some.c months before, te a several letters to a ‘T.P.’ of Abingdon had been published by Calvertg in Abiezer h s .a Coppe’s Some Sweet Sips, of Spirituall Wine (1648), T.P. beingw the ‘converted Jew’ w w Thomasina Pendarves. Poole’s and Pendarves’s pamphlets were published early in m o 4 .c 1649 though without Calvert’s full imprint; Pendarves’s tlettere in Poole’s defence a g h would, however, be republished in a little-known collections of epistles bearing .a 5 w Giles Calvert’s name on the title-page. This collectionw was News from the New w

m Jerusalem. o .c te Issued in September 1649, it recorded debatesa on contemporary problems g h s within a spiritual community which, branching out.a from London to the Midlands, w w w had both a virtual and real meeting centre in Calvert’s bookshop. Appalled by the m o momentous changes of the last two years, they.c asked each other whether William te a g Sedgwick was right in denouncing the ‘darkh side’ of the Army which had purged s .a the Parliament in December 1648 and whetherw executing a King was the way to w w justice. The collection illustrates the contextm in which several army chaplains and o .c renowned London Divines – Thomaste Collier, William Erbury, Joshua Sprigge a g h and Robert Bacon – divided on theses issues, while the prophetess Elisabeth .a w w Poole was introduced to the Councilw of Officers to warn them against threatening

6 m Charles I’s life. o .c te a According to the letters containedg in News from the New Jerusalem, one person h s .a ‘shaked and trembled’ at internalw regeneration, while another began to reason about w w achieving sanctity through sinning. If a reader found anything too obscure, wrote m o 7 an anonymous contributor,.c he could ask ‘G.C.’ to interpret the spiritual meaning. te a g h The ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’s was the forwarding address of these epistles (as it would .a w w w

m 3 o SUL, HP, 28/1/19A-B;.c CSPD 1649–50, p. 7. te a 4 g M. Bell, ‘Thomasinah Pendarves’ and ‘Elizabeth Poole’, in M. Bell, G. Parfitt and s .a S. Shepherd, A Biographicalw Dictionary of English Women Writers 1580–1720 (London, w w

1990), pp. 152,m 159; M. Brod, ‘Politics and Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England: The o .c Case of Elizabethte Poole’, Albion, 31 (1999): pp. 395–412; M. Brod, ‘A Radical Network a g h in the Englishs Revolution: John Pordage and his Circle, 1646–54’, EHR, 119 (2004): .a w pp. 1232–8;w Caricchio, Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 79, 139. w 5 m News from the New Jerusalem (London, 1649), pp. 121–36. o 6 .c te Caricchio, Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 136–42; Brod, ‘Politics and a g h Prophecy’.s .a w 7 w w News from the New Jerusalem, pp. 23, 37, 54–68, 88–9, 112–15, 152–8. © Copyrighted Material Giles Calvert and the Radical Experience 71 © Copyrighted Material

be for a number of Quakers’ letters in the 1650s), so it is plausible to identify ‘G.C.’m o .c te with Giles Calvert. He also tested Lawrence Clarkson before recommendinga him g h s to the ‘My One Flesh’ group and Clarkson reached them when Abiezer Coppea had . w 8 w just ended one of his spectacular prophetic performances. One epistle hintedw at

m the end of sin because there ‘shall be no self and no more curse’. Anothero was sent .c te a from the Head-Quarters of Divine-Majesty saying ‘I in thee have borneg the sinne h s .a and curse of the old world … into a land of forgetfulnesse, which havew forgotten w w and forgiven all transgression’. One wonders if those were the same head-quarters m o .c where Clarkson experimented with the pleasures of sin with Sarahte Kullin and ‘two a 9 g h more like herself’. s .a w The letters printed in News from the New Jerusalemw , however, stop in w

m September 1649. The preface, interwoven with Neoplatonico imagery, spoke of .c te the erring brethren who were going the wrong way, especiallya a ‘preciouse soule, g h s walking in darkness having no light’. God’s plan was,.a nevertheless, to show w w w light and love even through a person’s errors. The author finished the preface on m o 24 September 1649, saluting ‘S.P.D.’ (Salutem Plurimam.c Dicit, ‘bids abundant te a g peace’). Three days later, Parliament delivered ah declaration against those ‘who s .a should abuse and turn into Licentiousness the libertyw in matters of conscience’ – a w w 10 statement which would be cited in the Blasphemym Act of August 1650. On 26 o .c September, Calvert published Divine Teachingste by Richard Coppin accompanied a g h by the astonishing ABC for the ‘Original’s by Coppe. Shortly after, in a sermon .a w to Parliament, Peter Sterry, chaplain to thew Council of State, censured those who w

m transformed antinomianism into libertinismo by blurring the distinction between .c te a good and evil. This sermon was to gbe one of the first publications for Gregory h s 11 Moule and Thomas Brewster, two of.a Giles Calvert’s former apprentices. w w w News from the New Jerusalem opens a window onto a community of fellow- m o travellers who took divergent paths.c in 1649. Arguably, this marks the origin of the te a g ‘Ranter’ moment in the Englishh Revolution. At the same time, the petition linking s .a w Harrington’s protégé Peter Chamberlenw to Winstanley and his comrades relates to w the beginning of the Diggerm moment. Together they illuminate a crucial phase in o .c te the progress of a milieua which revolved around Calvert’s ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’. g h s This essay argues that. aindividuals coming from a cluster of social networks, which w w had one nexus at Calvert’sw bookshop, took part in the heated debate about Church

m settlement and religiouso toleration from a shared antinomian and spiritualist .c te a standpoint. In thisg sense, the core authors of Calvert’s stable – those who had h s .a durable relationshipsw with him and appear to have held a common perspective – can w w

m o .c te a g 8 h Lawrences Clarkson, The Lost Sheep Found (London, 1660), pp. 24–5. .a w 9 w wNews from the New Jerusalem, pp. 36–7; Clarkson, Lost Sheep Found, pp. 25–6.

10 m o C. Firth and R.S. Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 .c te a (3 vols,g London, 1911), 2, pp. 409–12. h s 11 .a Peter Sterry, The commings forth of Christ in the power of his death (London, w w 1649).w © Copyrighted Material 72 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

12 be considered an offshoot of the ‘radical’ wing of the Reformation. Nonetheless, m o radicalism is not considered here as being part of a previous or future ‘tradition’..c te a g h It is argued instead that radicalism is a matter of context as well as a matters of .a 13 w substance. w w

The relevant context here is the ‘printed space’ of the English Revolution,m o .c te namely the virtual and real structure that the printed page and bookshopsa provided g h s for the political and religious debates of the 1640s and 1650s. This public.a printed w w contest added a new dimension to the opinions of individuals and to theirw coalescing

m o in a way that could cut across denominational labels and infringe.c upon churches’ te a boundaries. The Levellers as a ‘petitionary movement’ born g of and exploiting h s .a ‘print culture’ are a typical example of this phenomenon, thoughw not the only w 14 w one. Giles Calvert’s encounters with the Levellers and their propaganda appear m o .c to have been ephemeral and peripheral. This very fact, te however, increases the a g h relevance of considering Calvert’s bookshop an importants test case, as it transpires .a w that the antinomian culture which had fissured the Puritanw world in the previous w 15 m decades came here to share a public non-confessionalo identity. This is not to .c te assume a sort of ‘broad consensus’ among so-calleda ‘radicals’. Rather the reverse; g h s for, by demonstrating the centrality of Calvert’s.a bookshop in the experience of w w w the English Revolution, I intend to reveal radicalism as embodying diversity m o and difference. Of course all the hundreds of.c Calvert’s publications by no means te a g shared the same stance. Nonetheless, in myh view it is a plausible and demonstrable s .a argument that the pluralistic feature of hisw output between 1645 and 1653 was due w w to a non-dogmatic outlook on which Calvertm and his main authors agreed. Unity o .c is, therefore, not an essential feature, butte a consequence, as individuals and groups a g h came to share a common public space.s .a w w Connected with the antinomianismw and spiritualism of Calvert’s main authors,

m a consistent line of political oppositiono and alternative to any national Church .c te a settlement is discernible as mostg of the successive embodiments of the ‘radical h s .a expectations’ – Levellers, Diggers,w Ranters, Fifth Monarchists, Quakers – passed w w 16 through the door of the ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’. This was the ‘radical substance’ m o .c te a g h s 12 .a g. Williams, Thew Radical Reformation (3rd edn, Ann Arbor, MI, 2000). w 13 w ‘Context’ and ‘substance’ appear as mutually alternative in the typology recently m o offered by Glenn Burgess,.c who distinguishes three possible approaches to the definition of te a g ‘radicalism’: ‘substantive’,h ‘functional’ and ‘linguistic’: Burgess, ‘Introduction’, pp. 7–8; s .a Burgess, ‘Matterw of Context’, 1–3. w w 14 d. Zaret,m Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions and the Public Sphere in o .c Early Modernte England (Princeton, NJ, 2000); J. Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering a g h in Early Moderns Britain (Cambridge, 2003); A. Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for .a w the Englishw Revolution (Oxford, 2004). w 15 m d.R. Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian o .c Undergroundte in Pre-Civil-War England (Stanford, CA, 2004). a g h 16 s J. Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-century English Political Instability in .a w w Europeanw Context (Cambridge, 2000), p. 241. In my view, antinomianism, spiritualism and © Copyrighted Material Giles Calvert and the Radical Experience 73 © Copyrighted Material

that struck at the very foundation of the early-modern State and political culture.m o .c te Through printed debate, spiritual antinomianism and the struggle for libertya of g h s conscience could evolve broader perspectives impacting on the social, morala and . w w political domains, and could find common ground with more secular or w properly

m millenarian positions. The printed world of the bookshop and the overlappingo .c te a networks it brought together give this consistent line of opposition,g as well as h s .a its varieties and ephemeral connections, an important political wweight. Such w w a relevance of radicalism in the English Revolution is underestimated in many m 17 o .c current studies. Instead, Gerald Aylmer was, I suggest, correct tine saying, despite a g h the apparent paradox, that booksellers like Giles Calvert ands William Larner .a 18 w ‘invented’ the ‘popular movement’ of the Revolution. Uw nity and diversity, w

m publicity and political capability, if not effectiveness, are theo elements which most .c te cause Giles Calvert’s Black-Spread-Eagle to embody a radicala phenomenon. g h s .a w w w

m o Around 800 items can be attributed to Giles Calvert’s.c activity between 1641 and te a g 1662. While this is not the number of differenth titles traded by him (which is s .a around 600 items), I refer to this figure becausew it allows a comparison with other w w stationers of the period. Calvert was the only stationerm who had such a large number o .c of publications, except for the printers whosete trade was heavily determined by a g h 19 serving either Parliament or the Council ofs State for a long time. Reasons for this .a w can be grounded in a second, even more wmeaningful, peculiarity: the pluralism of w

m Calvert’s ‘catalogue’, which led Donaldo McKenzie to speak of his bookshop as ‘the .c te a one point in London where nearly allg radical writers went to seek a sympathetic h s 20 trade response to, and efficient dissemination.a of, their new ideas’. w w w

m o .c te a g h opposition to State-Church link sCalvert’s output of the 1640s to his close association with .a w the Quaker movement in the 1650s.w Though I do not deal here with these issues, I see an w important change of context inm the two moments: in the first Calvert’s authors moved within o .c the coalition which gained tpowere from the revolution, in the second they were in opposition a g h to the settlement which thats revolution had established. .a 17 w for the most recentw argument against the political capability of many which are w

m commonly identifiedo as radical, and are central to this chapter, see G. Burgess, ‘Radicalism .c te and the English revolution’,a in G. Burgess and M. Festenstein (eds), English Radicalism, g h 1550–1850 (Cambridge,s 2007), pp. 62–86. .a w 18 w g.E. Awylmer, ‘Collective Mentalities in mid Seventeenth-Century England. III.

m Varieties of Ro adicalism’, TRHS, 5th series, 37 (1988): p. 18. .c 19 te a suchg as John Wright, Edward Husband and John Field. Ariel Hessayon’s entry on h s Calvert in.a the ODNB states that Calvert issued or sold, either individually or in partnership, w w more thanw 475 known different publications. This is an underestimate, though my count of

m Calvert’so publications extends to titles he sold but did not publish, as well as others without .c te a his gfull imprint. h s 20 .a d.F. McKenzie, ‘The London Book Trade in the Later Seventeenth Century’, w w wSandars Lectures (1976), p. 12. © Copyrighted Material 74 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

This aspect is even evident following a bird’s eye view. As well as the notable m 21 o presence of Independents at the beginning of Calvert’s career, Baptists were.c te a g h also constantly present. While the fluidity of the 1640s warns against too srigid a .a w denominational classification, it can be said that both the Calvinistic and, tow a lesser w 22 extent, the Arminian strands of Baptism are represented. The ‘Black-Spread-m o .c te Eagle’ is also especially associated with the chaplains – John Saltmarsh,a Thomas g h s Collier, William Dell, William Erbury, William Sedgwick – who emerged.a as a w w kind of coordinated group of Army ‘ideologues’ between 1646 andw 1649. A small

m o number of Leveller works, and later some Fifth Monarchist texts.c also appeared at te a Calvert’s bookshop. The first group contains an ironic piece gby Walwyn against h s .a Edwards’s Gangraena, several under-the-counter titles by Rwichard Overton, and w w the third Agreement of the People. The second group includes titles by Mary Cary, m o .c Thomas Tillam, and other anonymous authors. Calvert alsote published the main a g h religious and political works of Gerrard Winstanley, as wells those of the ‘Ranters’ .a w 23 Abiezer Coppe, Lawrence Clarkson, Richard Coppinw and Joseph Salmon. He w

m played an important part in the distribution of Jacob Boehme’so works in translation, .c te and was the reference point in London for the newa edition of books by Hendrick g h s Niclaes, the founder of the Family of Love. The.a Marrow of Modern Divinity w w w (1645) by Edward Fisher, with which the London Familist connection of the 1630s m o became public, was one of Calvert’s first ‘best-sellers’..c The writings emanating te a g from John Pordage’s ‘Family’ in Reading andh some by TheaurauJohn Tany were s .a 24 also published at the ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’.w w w

As is well known, in the 1650s Calvertm became the Quakers’ main publisher. o .c Yet he also issued several collectionste of scientific pieces promoted by Samuel a g h Hartlib, and a few republican items,s among them John Streater’s A Glympse of .a w w that Jewel, Judicial, Just, Preservingw Libertie (1653), William Sprigge’s A Modest

m o .c te 21 a g Calvert was probably parth of William Carter’s gathered church in 1643. His son, s .a Nathaniel, was baptised by Carterw who, along with Joseph Caryl, was also one of Calvert’s w w first authors, see: Guildhall Library, London, MS 5685, loose page between pp. 138 and m o 139; Caricchio, Religione, politica.c e commercio di libri, pp. 32, 66. te a 22 g h among Calvert’ss authors who at some time embraced what we would now call a .a w ‘General’ Baptist stancew were Francis Cornwell, Thomas Tookey, Henry Danvers, Henry w

Haggar, Samuel Lovedaym and Thomas Lambe with The Fountain of Free Grace opened o .c (2nd edn, 1648). Tookey’ste and Cornwell’s are the only General Baptist titles from before a g h 1647 at Calvert’s sbookshop. .a 23 w Caricchio,w Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 31–9, 41–8, 146–7, 107, w

164–82, 269. m o 24 .c te Ibid.,a pp. 40, 70, 74–7, 176–8; A. Hessayon, ‘“The Teutonicks writings”: translating g h Jacob Boehmes into English and Welsh’, Esoterica, 9 (2007): pp. 129–65; A. Hessayon, .a w ‘Gold Triedw in the Fire’. The Prophet TheaurauJohn Tany and the English Revolution w

m (Aldershot,o 2007), pp. 3, 192–3, 201, 365; Como, Blown by the Spirit, pp. 1–9. In the .c te casea of the translations of Boehme, Calvert’s role seems to have been auxiliary to that of g h Humphreys Blunden and Lodowick Lloyd, who took over Blunden’s shop at Pope’s Head .a w w Aw lley. © Copyrighted Material Giles Calvert and the Radical Experience 75 © Copyrighted Material

Plea, for An Equal Common-wealth (1659), Henry Stubbe’s The common-wealthm o .c te of Oceana Put into the Ballance, and found too light (1660) and John Cook’sa A g 25 h s Sober Vindication of Lt. Gen. Ludlow (1660). In the first years of the Restoration,a . w w Calvert, his former apprentices Thomas Brewster and Richard Moone, andw their

m trade-relations Livewell Chapman and Francis Smith were the core-groupo of .c te a ‘Confederate Stationers’ who printed and circulated A Phoenix: or, gthe Solemn h s 26 .a League and Covenant, among other ‘seditious’ pamphlets. w w w On a closer examination it appears that, among other important titles, Calvert m o .c sold Roger Williams’s The Bloudy Tenet, of Persecution (thete 1644 book, as a g h opposed to his twin-piece of 1652 which openly bore the ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’s .a w brand), some of the earliest works by English anti-Trinitarians,w and works by the w

m London perfectionist group of Robert Gell, William Draytono and William Parker. .c te On the evidence of his imprint, Calvert openly owned Divinitya Anatomized, the g h s pamphlet in which Salmon dared to hold that the Fall had.a been ‘no more but Gods w 27 w w weakness’ and sin was merely a relative concept. m o Notwithstanding that some of the most famous burned.c books of the age could te a g doubtless be found in Calvert’s stacks and drawers,h from the very beginning of s .a his career he also issued a clearly identifiablew batch of propaganda designed to w w 28 bolster the policies of powerful men in the Puritanm coalition. The twin pieces The o .c Souldiers Pocket Bible (1643) and The Pathwayte to Peace (1643), Hugh Peters’s A a g h word for the Armie. And two words to the Kingdomes and John Cook’s Redintegratio .a w Amoris and What the Independent’s wouldw have from the crucial months of 1647 w

29 m are just a few examples. In 1649, at theo same time as he distributed the Levellers’ .c te a Agreement of the People and Diggerg pamphlets, Calvert was part of the syndicate h s of Stationers who issued the Army Officers’.a Agreement and published John Cook’s w w w indictment against Charles I. Calvert’s constant relationship with men within m o the ‘party who made the revolution’.c culminated in his appointment as ‘Official te a g h s .a w w w 25 Caricchio, Religione,m politica e commercio di libri, pp. 49–59, 259–63. For the o .c identification of Cook as tethe author of Ludlow’s apology, see Edmund Ludlow, A Voyce a g h from the Watchtower. Parts Five: 1660–1662, ed. B. Worden, Camden Society, 4th series, 21 .a w (London, 1978), p. 87. w w 26 m Caricchio, Religione,o politica e commercio di libri, pp. 57–64; M. Bell, ‘Elizabeth .c te Calvert and the “Confederates”’,a Publishing History, 32 (1992): pp. 5–49; M. Bell, ‘“Her g h usual practices”: sthe Later Career of Elizabeth Calvert 1664–75’, Publishing History, 35 .a w (1994): pp. 5–64.w w

27 m Caricchio,o Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 33, 43–5, 71–2, 76; Joseph .c te Salmon, Divinitya Anatomized (London, 1649), pp. 65–8. g h 28 s J..a Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers. Propaganda During the English Civil w w Wars andw Interregnum (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 1–25.

m 29 o .c Caricchio, Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 25, 36–9. For Cook’s te a pamphletsg and their links to Lord Saye and Sele’s political agenda, see Peacey, Politicians h s and.a Pamphleteers, pp. 116–17; J.S.A. Adamson, ‘The English Nobility and the Projected w w Sw ettlement of 1647’, HJ, 30 (1987): pp. 589–90. © Copyrighted Material 76 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Printer’ for the Council of State from May to October 1653, together with his ex- m o apprentice Thomas Brewster and his associate at the time of the ‘Ranter’ challenge,.c te a 30 g h the printer Henry Hills. s .a w The pluralistic character of Calvert’s catalogue was very much a productw of w the conditions of the book-trade and the politics of the mid-1640s, when mthe take- o .c te off of his publishing enterprise can be clearly perceived. The items carryinga his g h s name suddenly increased from four to fifty-five a year between 1644.a and 1646, w w maintaining a yearly rate of over thirty from then on. From the pointw of view of

m o the evolution of the London book-trade this happened at a time.c when the main te a Baptist and Independent stationers, who had set up in the 1630s,g disappeared. h s .a Gregory Dexter fled to Rhode Island after printingThe Bloudyw Tenet, while Henry w w Overton (d. 1647), a member of John Goodwin’s gathered church, had been the m o .c young Calvert’s most important trade relation. Benjamin Allente and John Dawson, a g h who were connected to Overton, also died between 1645s and 1646. Significantly, .a w Calvert’s trade relations during the period of his risingw success can nearly all be w

m traced to the networks of apprentices, printers and obooksellers who had worked .c te with these four men. Hence people like Matthew Simmons,a Thomas Paine, William g h s Larner, Peter Cole, all of whom printed Independent,.a separatist and Leveller w w w pamphlets, had already met Calvert within the illicit pamphleteering circuit of the m o early 1640s. Furthermore, Gartrude Dawson.c was one of the printers most used te a g by Calvert and Brewster, while Henry Hillsh had been apprenticed to Simmons s .a and Paine. Ruth Raworth and her secondw husband, Thomas Newcombe, would w w free some of Calvert’s future printers likem James Cottrell and the Quaker Andrew o 31 .c Sowle. This network of relations alsote incorporated the Howses, whose members a g h 32 had been part of the Familist and Antinomians underground since the 1630s. .a w w w

m 30 o Caricchio, Religione, politica.c e commercio di libri, pp. 39, 48. Contrary to what is te a g generally assumed, Calvert, Hillsh and Brewster remained official printers to the Council of s .a State until October 1653. Theirw last publication openly bearing the Commonwealth’s arms w w is an order against mutinous mmeetings (Wing E794), dated 27 October 1653. o 31 .c Caricchio, Religione,te politica e commercio di libri, pp. 64–5; M. Caricchio, ‘Le a g h relazioni di mestiere di Gs iles Calvert, libraio-editore della Rivoluzione inglese’, Annali del .a w Dipartimento di Disciplinew Storiche di Bologna (2001–2002): pp. 45–62. w 32 Robert Howsem (also spelled Howes), father of Hannah Allen, was the 1630s o .c bookbinder in Lombardte Street named by Giles Creech’s deposition to the High Commission. a g h The Howses weres well established in the book trade and Hannah Allen, after the death of .a w her husband, wasw a trade-partner of Henry Overton and Matthew Simmons in Independent w

m publishing. Sohe then married Livewell Chapman, the 1650s Fifth Monarchist publisher. .c te Thomas Brewstera freed an apprentice with Robert Howse. The Howse stationers were most g h probably relativess of the known Familist Edward Howes and it should be noted that the .a w ironmongerw (Samuel) Dawson, named in Creech’s deposition, may be related to the Dawson w

m printers;o TNA, SP 16/520/85, 86; D.F. McKenzie (ed.), Stationers’ Company Apprentices, .c te 1605–1640a (Charlettosville, VA, 1961), nos. 913, 1484 or 2676, ‘Appendix’, p. 177; D.F. g h McKenzies (ed.), Stationers’ Company Apprentices, 1641–1700 (Oxford, 1974), nos. 516, .a w w 2246;w M. Bell, ‘Hannah Allen and the Development of a Puritan Publishing Business, © Copyrighted Material Giles Calvert and the Radical Experience 77 © Copyrighted Material

Being of a younger generation than his first Independent and mBaptist o .c te associates, Calvert appears to have inherited their system of trade relationsa at g h s a time when political conflict underwent a decisively radical turn. Othera young . w w stationers covered some areas of this market: William Larner and Thomasw Paine,

m for example, were the main disseminators of Leveller propaganda, whileo Henry .c te a Cripps inherited his master Henry Overton’s links to the Independents gand to John h s .a Goodwin’s congregation. Even so, most non-Presbyterian publicationsw passed w w through the hands of Calvert and his relations, to such an extent that they can be m o .c said to have shaped the radical market of the 1650s, as those ofte Henry Overton a g h had done, to a lesser degree, until the mid-1640s. Thomas Es dwards described .a w Overton as an Independent bookseller, and Calvert as a ‘sectary’w in the space w 33 m of a single paragraph. The shift from Overton to Calverto as a main outlet of .c te non-Presbyterian publications is a fundamental aspect to abe considered when one g h s realises that Calvert’s increasing success began with the.a polarisation of parties, w w w which shattered the Puritan coalition. m o .c te a g h s .a As Ann Hughes’ complex enquiry into the textw and context of Gangraena has w w brilliantly shown, two opposed political communities,m the Presbyterian and the o .c sectarian, were then created through print. Ate new aggressive Presbyterian politics a g h was a crucial factor. I am not totally convinced,s however, that the Presbyterians .a w had the lead in the political developmentw and that the sectarian community w

m coalesced – just or mainly – as a reactiono to Gangraena’s elision of its internal .c te34 a differences for propaganda purposes.g Seen from the perspective of the ‘Black- h s Spread-Eagle’, the coming together.a of the different strands of ‘sectarians’ took w w w root independently in various social networks, contingent political alliances and m o shared religious outlooks. .c te a g Calvert’s rise began whenh the rupture in the Puritan front became public s .a w through his bookshop and thew medium of Henry Burton’s vociferous polemic, his w ex-fellow Presbyterian sufferersm having closed the ‘doors’ of the Church to the o .c te latter for the predicationa of the ‘truth’. In September 1645 Presbyterians were g h s indeed circulating the.a petition for the ‘speedy’ settlement of the Church, which w w had been framed byw the majority of the Assembly of Divines. In Burton’s wake,

m John Saltmarsh begano to argue that the proceedings about the Church settlement .c te a should take theirg time and gain publicity. Throughout the paper fight which h s .a followed, combiningw with the controversies aroused by Gangraena, Calvert was w w to be fundamental in constructing Saltmarsh’s identity by using his expertise in the m o .c trade and thete legitimising licences of John Bachilor. Saltmarsh appeared in print a g h s .a w w 1646–51’,w Publishing History, 26 (1989): pp. 6–7; Como, Blown by the Spirit, pp. 7, 415–

m 31, 469–73.o .c 33te a g Caricchio, ‘Le relazioni di mestiere di Giles Calvert’, pp. 52–62; Thomas Edwards, h s The.a Second part of Gangraena (London, 1646), pp. 7–8. w w 34 w Hughes, Gangraena, pp. 313–17, 349, 354, 383–5, 403, 409. © Copyrighted Material 78 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material as a ‘private’ Christian who sought truth through errors, as against the pretended m o certainties of a host of divines. .c te a g h In contrast to Edwards’s sectarian labelling exercise, that identity was somethings .a w of a puzzle to Presbyterian ministers such as John Ley who acknowledgedw being w unable, even after reviewing all his writings, to ascertain Saltmarsh’sm actual o .c te position, or indeed to firmly call him a Seeker or an Antinomian. Ley’s acolleague in g h s the Assembly and Hartlib’s close friend, John Dury, had a clearer insight:.a according w w to him, Saltmarsh’s religion pivoted on an ‘unruly’ spirituality whichw ushered in

m o all kinds of opinion about the Church as well as instilling a democratic.c principle te a in the State. For Dury, writing to Hartlib in April 1646, Saltmarshg had become h s .a the main writer on behalf of a ‘party’ which aimed to impedew the Presbyterian w w Church-settlement, at the risk of ruining any possibility of ‘Orderly Courses and m o 35 .c Establishments’. te a g h This web of interests – the ‘party’ at which Dury hinteds – had a basis in existing .a w social networks. They existed and expanded outside the pagesw of Gangraena, though w

m clearly detectable within Calvert’s publications. Someo of their threads appear to be .c te connected to the environment of merchants and nobles,a who converged first in the g h s Providence Island Company and then in the Summers.a Islands Company, and who w w w also clustered around the extended family of the Earl of Warwick and Viscount m 36 o Saye and Sele. It is significant that, shortly.c after the first Burton and Saltmarsh te a g pamphlets against the Presbyterian settlementh were issued, Calvert published s .a Truth Gloriously Appearing by Nathanielw White, minister in the Summers Islands w w

(the tract was intended to lobby Parliamentm to defend the ‘tolerant’ religious policy o 37 .c of the Company). During these samete months at Calvert’s ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’ a g h Robert Bacon defended himself froms an attack which he felt actually aimed at .a w w injuring his patron, William Fiennes,w Viscount Saye and Sele, ‘the most constant

m Patriot of this Countrey’. Bacono dedicated one of his writings in 1646 to Saye .c te a and Sele and another to his wifeg Elizabeth. Similarly, Calvert’s spearhead in the h s .a toleration debate, John Saltmarsh,w dedicated his The Smoke in the Temple (1646) w w 38 to those ‘Noble Patriots’ S aye and Sele and Oliver Cromwell. m o .c te a g h s .a w w 35 w John Ley, Light for Smoke (London, 1645), sigs. B2r–C1v; John Dury, m o A demonstration of .c the Necessity of settling some Gospel Government (London, 1654), te a g sig. A3v, pp. 21, 41,h 43; SUL, HP, 3/3/13A–B; Caricchio, Religione, politica e commercio s .a di libri, pp. 87–133;w M. Caricchio, ‘John Dury, reformer of education against the radical w w challenge’, Lesm Dossiers du Grihl, 2010: http://dossiersgrihl.revues.org/3787. o 36 .c r. Brenner,te Merchants and Revolution. Commercial Change, Political Conflict, a g h and London’ss Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Cambridge, 1993). .a 37 w wCaricchio, Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 67–8. An Act for ‘liberty of w conscience’m at the Summers Islands was granted in October 1645. o 38.c te a robert Bacon, The Spirit of Prelacie yet working (London, 1646), p. 32; Robert g h Bacon,s Christ Mighty in Himself & Members (London, 1646); John Saltmarsh, Smoke in .a w w thew Temple (London, 1646). © Copyrighted Material Giles Calvert and the Radical Experience 79 © Copyrighted Material

Joshua Sprigge, who like Bacon had the ear of Saye and Sele, then publishedm o .c te his main theological writings through Calvert and helped into print more athan g h s one piece by his spiritual fellows like William Sedgwick and Christopher aGoad. . w w Among the minor pieces Sprigge sent to the ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’ wasw a text

m against enclosures by the former Providence Island officer, Henryo Halhead. .c te a Sprigge added a preface wishing that England and the new-born Commonwealthg h s .a ‘might deservedly be christned The Isle of Providence’. He was a wlong-standing w w friend and fellow-traveller of Bacon both during the revolutionary period and after m o .c the Restoration, and was identified together with Peter Sterry aste a mainstay of the a g h ‘Vanists’ – as Richard Baxter styled the circle of friends sharings Henry Vane’s .a 39 w ‘obscure’ theological opinions. w w

m The Eleutherian Islands Project, the colonial venture o which was born from .c te the religious conflict affecting the Summers Islands, groupeda together a number g h s 40 of Behemenists and Republicans among whom TheaurauJohn.a moved. Readers w w w and translators of Boehme’s writings were connected to Calvert by the fact that m o some of their editions bore the ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’.c imprint. Other important te a g figures in Calvert’s milieu included a number of hEleutherian adventurers. One was s .a Peter Chamberlen, whose Poor Mans Advocatew was connected to the foundation w w of William Everard’s and Gerrard Winstanley’sm Digger colony in Surrey. This text o .c was committed to the consideration of a committeete which included the republican a g h Cornelius Holland. Also an Eleutherian adventurer,s Holland had connections with .a w Vane and Bacon. Another example is Nwathaniel Rich, who was probably patron w

m to the author of The State of Christianityo stated published by Calvert in 1650. .c te a The first trip to the Eleutherian Islands,g moreover, failed because of the extreme h s antinomian opinions of one Captain.a Butler. He may perhaps be identified as the w w w author of The Little Bible of the Man ‘Printed in the first year of Englands Liberty, m o 41 1649 … at the black spread Eagle.c ’. te a g An original and constant coreh of the spiritual community centred on the ‘Black- s .a w Spread-Eagle’ is therefore tow be found in the net of relationships which clustered w around the extended familym of Saye and Sele, Henry Vane and the new colonial o .c te companies. It should bea emphasised, however, that while this contributed to g h s shaping Calvert’s catalogue.a and stable of authors it was just one – albeit probably w w the most important w – of several overlapping networks that his bookshop was

m instrumental in knittingo together and expanding. Hence the ‘revolutionary opening .c te a g h s .a w w w

39 m henryo Halhead, Inclosure thrown Open (London, 1650), sig. A2r; K. Kupperman, .c te Providence a Island, 1630–1641: the Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge, 2004); Caricchio, g h s Religione,.a politica e commercio di libri, pp. 68–70, 74, 314. w 40 w Hw essayon, ‘Gold Tried in the Fire’, pp. 294–6.

m 41 o .c Caricchio, Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 69–72; The More Excellent te a Wayg (London, 1650), sig. A3v; The State of Christianity Examined, unfolded, and h s character’d.a (London, 1655). It is noteworthy that a reader has repeatedly written the name w w ofw Morgan Llwyd on one extant copy of this second tract. © Copyrighted Material 80 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

42 of the press to Socinian works’ also began at the ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’. Bacon’s m o Spirit of Prelacie was a vindication of his preaching in Gloucester at a time when.c te a g h John Biddle was first apprehended for holding anti-Trinitarian beliefs. Bacons had .a w been a founder of the Broadmead Church of Bristol with Richard Moonew senior: w

Moone’s son and namesake, who was apprenticed to Calvert on Bacon’sm arrival o .c te in London in 1645, was to be Biddle’s publisher in the 1650s. In thea meantime, g h s another Gloucester anti-Trinitarian, John Knowles, together with John.a Fry – the w w ‘Socinian’ MP defended by Vane and Holland in the House of Commonsw – had

m 43 o published at the ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’. Knowles, and indeed .cCalvert himself, te a had connections with the Dukinfield Independent congregation gin Cheshire, which h s .a in turn was linked to Morgan Llwyd’s in Wrexham. Nor wasw Fry exempt from w w accusations of holding ‘Ranter’ opinions. m o .c The anti-Trinitarians from Gloucester and Dukinfield,te mystic readers and a g 44 h authors like Bacon, members of the Eleutherian project,s the rural Behmenist .a w circle of John Pordage in Bradfield, the Baptist communitiesw in the Abingdon area w

m where Abiezer Coppe began insinuating extreme antinomiano principles as well as .c te those of the Midlands where Richard Coppin preached,a the circle of Independents g h s and Baptists in Rye which issued the manuscript.a of John the Divine’s Divinity, w w w the perfectionist group around Robert Gell which attracted London Antinomians m o and Familists, the Diggers and the utopian projectors.c like Chamberlen – all were te a g interwoven in an expanding web. It was dueh to the existing links between members s .a of this milieu and to Calvert’s reputationw in giving them a public dimension that w w the 1630s Antinomian and Familist Johnm Webster and members of the new Quaker o .c movement, who came down to Londonte in the 1650s, went through his ‘open door a g h for the Truth’. Many Republican ands Fifth Monarchist texts also passed through .a w w 45 his hands together with those of hisw closest trade-relations for the same reasons.

m A core group, however, can beo detected in this complex set of networks, whose .c te a spiritualist and antinomian interestsg shaped the activity of Calvert’s bookshop h s .a and were identified with it. w This was the community which corresponded in News w w from the New Jerusalem and from which the Digger and ‘Ranter’ moments of m o the English Revolution emerged..c It was also the circle of ‘friends of Saltmarsh’, te a g h who in the summer ofs 1649 published his final words and letters to the Officers’ .a 46 w Council. Samuel Gw orton, the New England Familist, described them in 1656 w

m o .c te 42 a g J. Marshall,h ‘Some Intellectual Consequences of the English Revolution’, The s .a European Legacyw , 4 (2000): p. 538. w 43 w

Caricchio,m Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 71–3. o 44 .c On Bacon’ste interest and translation of continental mystic work, and for his possible a g h contacts withs Behmenists in Holland, see: T.A. Birrell, ‘English Catholic Mystics in Non- .a w Catholicw Circles’, Downside Review, 94 (1976): pp. 66–9. w 45 m Caricchio, Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 74–85. o 46.c te a Englands Friend Raised from the Grave (London, 1649). For evidence of the close g h relationships of Calvert with Mary Saltmarsh after John’s death, see: TNA, C54/3865, mems. .a w w 6–7;w TNA C54/3808, mems. 26–8. © Copyrighted Material Giles Calvert and the Radical Experience 81 © Copyrighted Material

47 as those for whom the name of Saltmarsh was ‘an oyntment poured out’. Thism o .c te community was both the Familist milieu, which according to Geoffrey Nuttall,a g 48 h s surrounded James Nayler in the 1650s, and the spiritual fellowship that Ra obert . w w Rich – Nayler’s most faithful disciple – called the ‘Church of the Firstw Born’.

m Rich, one-time Quaker, Boehme reader, and long after the 1650s, ‘loving’o friend .c te a to Robert Bacon, Joshua Sprigge, John Warr and Joseph Salmon wrote gthat Calvert h s .a had been like Rahab for this community. By implication the ‘Black-Spreadw Eagle’ w w had been the house on the walls from which ‘the spiers out of the Truth and the m 49 o .c new Light’ came to conquer Jericho. te a g h s .a w w w

m ‘Unity in variety’, which according to Jonathan Scott characteriseso radicalism .c te as a process, represented both the truth and substance ofa religion at the ‘Black- g h s Spread-Eagle’. From the late 1640s Calvert’s imprint .abecame synonymous with w w w a strand of works which increasingly merged complete liberty of conscience with m o a spiritualistic and antinomian understanding of religion..c This consistent line of te a g thought began with Saltmarsh’s writings and was hcontinued with by several Army s .a chaplains, the London preachers and soldier prophetsw – Nicholas Couling, Thomas w w

Butler, Francis Freeman, Robert Wilkinson andm Joseph Salmon – with Gerrard o .c Winstanley’s five theological works, and Johnte Warr’s brief aphoristic and intense a g h Administrations Civil and Spiritual. s .a w The ideas of the complete liberty ofw the spirit, the exaltation of free grace w

m against the law and of Christ’s residingo in the believer as well as all the ambiguous .c te a leanings towards, and relationships g with, perfectionist theological opinions, so h s powerfully analysed by David Como.a for the antinomian culture of the 1620s and w w 50 w 1630s, fully came into the open via Calvert’s authors. From the point of view of m o the transience of ‘forms’ and their.c insignificance for ‘true’ religion they constantly te a g dealt with the political issuesh of the day; firstly with the problem of the Church s .a w w w 47 s[amuel], G[orton],m Saltmarsh returned from the dead, in Amico Philalethe o .c te (London, 1655), sig. A2r.a ‘Philalethe’ may be the nickname by which ‘insiders’ of this g h community called Roberts Bacon. On Gorton, see P. Gura, ‘The Radical Ideology of Samuel .a w Gorton. New Light on wthe Relation of English to American Puritanism’, WMQ, 3rd series, w

m 36 (1979): pp. 78–100;o P. Gura, ‘Samuel Gorton and Religious Radicalism in England .c te 1644–1648’, WMQa , 3rd series, 40 (1983): pp. 121–4. g h 48 s g.F. Nuttall.a , ‘James Nayler. A Fresh Approach’, Journal of Friends’ Historical w w Society, supplementw no. 26 (1954).

49 m TNA,o Prob 11/361; Robert Rich, Love without Dissimulation ([London], 1667), p. .c te a 7; Robert Rich,g Mr. Robert Rich His Second Letters from the Barbadoes (London, 1669), h s pp. 2, 9–10..a On the ‘Church of the First-born’, see: G.F. Nuttall, ‘The Last of James Nayler. w w Robert Rw ich and the Church of the First Born’, The Friends’ Quarterly, 23 (1985): pp. 527–

m 34, N.o Smith, ‘Hidden Things Brought to Light: Enthusiasm and Quaker Discourse’, in T. .c te a Cornsg and D. Loewenstein (eds), The Emergence of Quaker Writing. Dissenting Literature h s in. aSeventeenth-Century England (London, 1995), pp. 57–69. w w 50 w Como, Blown by the Spirit, pp. 35–49, 138–391. © Copyrighted Material 82 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material settlement, but also with the problem of the regicide and then with the meaning of m o freedom for a Commonwealth. They could differ on specific issues. Some, such.c as te a g h Sedgwick and Erbury, emphasised more than most that the divine destructions of .a w all powers and forms impelled the new authorities to alleviate all religious,w social w and political oppression. Others, like Winstanley, brought this ideal of mpractical o .c te Christianity to a more original intellectual turn. Yet they shared thea common g h s antinomian and spiritualist outlook which fostered dialogue and .a pluralism at w w Calvert’s bookshop. w

m o Following J.C. Davis, many – though not all – historians now.c describe this te a kind of spiritualist outlook as ‘anti-formalism’, thereby implyingg a kind of inherent h s .a political impracticability typical of the ‘radicalism’ of the wEnglish Revolution w w 51 (if ‘radicalism’ is even still a concept useful in this context). According to m o .c this view, radicalism seems destined to end in an experiencete of disillusionment a g 52 h because of its own ‘anti-formalist’ ambitions. This emphasiss on being against .a w forms appears to be overstated. The core authors at thew ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’ were w 53 m mostly speaking of a dispensation that was above anyo form, in respect of which .c te all known religious opinions and fellowships werea erroneous yet at the same time g h s 54 also ‘degrees, distances and approaches’ or further.a steps towards its revelation. w w w This outlook falls under the category of ‘Seekerism’, which was intended as the m o retreat from all existing religious creeds in expectation.c of a revelation of the true te a g uniting faith. What I am describing, however,h was a distinctive position which did s .a not await the return of the primitive Church,w in contrast to the more noticeable w w 55 ‘Seeker’ attitude. Saltmarsh and Collierm agreed in the late 1640s that not only the o .c Baptist but also the ‘Seeker’ dispensationte would be superseded. All dispensations a g h s .a w w 51 w J.C. Davis, ‘Radicalism in a traditional society: the evaluation of radical thought m o in the English Commonwealth 1649–1660’,.c History of Political Thought, 3, no. 2 (1982): te a g pp. 193–213; J.C. Davis, ‘Againsth Formality: One Aspect of the English Revolution’, s .a TRHS, 6th series, 3 (1993): pp. w265–88. For the most recent critiques of the term radicalism w w in relation to the English Revolution, see Burgess, ‘Radicalism and the English revolution’; m o T. Cooper, ‘Reassessing the.c Radicals’, HJ, 50 (2007), pp. 241–52. te a 52 g This seems to beh true even for Jonathan Scott, for whom radicalism defines the s .a English Revolution. Swee Scott, England’s Troubles, pp. 9, 240–42, 267–8; J. Scott, w w ‘Radicalism and Restoration: The shape of the Stuart Experience’, HJ, 31 (1988): pp. 455– m o 7. To Burgess many .cof those who are labelled ‘radicals’ were led into a ‘passive’ ‘apolitical’ te a g and ‘antipolitical’ hattitude by their religious principles, and consequently cannot be defined s .a as ‘radicals’: seew Burgess, ‘Radicalism and the English revolution’, pp. 78–81. w w 53 this distinctionm between ‘anti-formalism’ and ‘supra-formalism’ has been made o .c by Brian Gibbonste to highlight differences between the ‘Behmenists’ and ‘Quakers’: see a g h B. Gibbons,s Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenism and Its Development in .a w Englandw (Cambridge, 1996), p. 6. w 54 m John Saltmarsh, Sparkles of Glory (London, 1647), pp. 53, 67–72. See also Bacon, o .c Christte Mighty in Himself, pp. 6–8. a g h 55 s My reading builds upon the distinction clarified in D. Gwyn, ‘Joseph Salmon: From .a w w wSeeker to Ranter – and Almost to Quaker’, Journal of the Friends Historical Society, 58 © Copyrighted Material Giles Calvert and the Radical Experience 83 © Copyrighted Material

were indeed temporary and therefore never destined to restoration. God was notm o 56 .c te confined in any church, not even the primitive one. a g h s This meant that any national Church settlement would ‘dam’ the infinite a liberty . w 57 w of spirit, ‘which blows when and where it listeth’. It also implied that erroneousw

m opinions had to be fully tolerated as a pathway towards truth and that the millenniumo .c te a generally had to be considered as an individual spiritual regeneration.g The New h s .a Jerusalem, thought Bacon, would be that heaven depicted in Hebrewsw 12:22–4 w w where believers united and churches disappeared. In Sprigge’s words, it was m o .c ‘unity of believers in the principle, and destruction of the believerste in the forms’ a 58g h because ‘God is in all forms, but comprehended by no form’.s Every individual .a w and community had to freely enjoy the dispensation, opinionsw and ordinances they w

m were in. The ‘comprehensive’ Christian would discern theo element of truth they .c te contained, being free whether to use those ‘forms’ or not:a everyone should be free g h s to pray to God as he or she was persuaded, but the S.aintsa ‘of several opinions’ w 59 w w should also be free to ‘worship together’. m o This kind of ‘supra-formalism’ in the antinomian.c circles of the Revolution te a g encouraged interest in Boehme and Niclaes. hIt was an ecumenical stance. s .a Consequently it also contributed to drawing thew line at the ‘High-attainers’ – w w people like Coppe and Clarkson, who boastedm of having reached perfection and o .c came to utterly despise those in inferior conditions.te Indeed, the aim of the author a g h of the preface to News from the New Jerusalems was not to: .a w w w

m take off formes, [from those] that enjoyo Gods presence in them; but to give an .c te a account to those who walked not in gformes, and to call those higher then formes, h s 60 from whom God is apparently departed.a in formes. w w w

m o .c te a g h (1998): pp. 114–15; D. Gwyn, s Seekers Found: Atonement in Early Quaker Experience .a w (Wallingfield, PA, 2000), pp. w11–12, 85–94. w 56 Saltmarsh, Sparklesm of Glory, pp. 289–97; Thomas Collier, The Marrow of o .c Christianity (London, 1647),te pp. 47–9; Thomas Collier, A General Epistle, To The Universal a g h Church of the First Borns (London, 1648), pp. 66–70; Joseph Salmon, Anti-Christ in Man .a w (London, 1647) pp. 30–31;w I[ohn] F[ile], John the Divine’s Divinity (London, 1649), pp. 14, w

30–31; William Erbury,m The Babe of Glory Breaking forth in the broken Flesh of the Saints o .c (London, 1653), pp.te 64, 73–[75], 84–5. a g 57 h Saltmarsh,s Sparkles of Glory, sig. A5v; John 3:7–8; Collier, General Epistle, .a w pp. 71–4. w w

58 m Bacon,o Christ Mighty, pp. 163; Joshua Sprigge, A Testimony to an Approaching .c te glory (London,a 1648), pp. 133–6; Erbury, Babe of Glory, sigs. B2i–B3r, p. 103. g h 59 s Collier,.a General Epistle, p. 93; Robert Wilkinson, The Saints Travel to the Land of w w Canaanw (London, 1648), p. 50; Thomas Royle, A Glimpse of some Truths (London, 1648),

m pp. 3–5;o Sprigge, Testimony, pp. 140–58; Robert Purnell, Good Tydings for Sinners (1649; .c te a London,g 1652), pp. 104–5, 109, 113–16. h s 60 .a News from the New Jerusalem, sig. t1r; see also: Purnell, Good Tydings for w w Sinnersw . © Copyrighted Material 84 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

The antinomian circles of the 1640s – which were not and did not aim at being m 61 o either a congregation or a sect – found at Calvert’s ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’ a public.c te a g h identity which went beyond confessional boundaries. s .a w Seen in this fluid context, those ‘Seekers’ ‘waiting upon God’ did notw have a w passive political attitude. ‘Christ’s rising’ in every man and woman wasm liable to o .c te bring forth challenging visions of Church, State and society, as wella as actions g h s which would cause them to be realised. While Sedgwick distanced .himselfa early w w on from the political sphere, John Warr believed that the alteration wof government

m o and laws was a way for the ‘spiritual Christian’ to ‘contemplate.c and admire the te a outgoings of God in these things, as being Himself rather aboveg then against h s 62 .a them’. In Winstanley’s view, Christ within empowered menw and women to act w w and realise the social content of ‘true and undefiled’ religion – whether occupying m o 63 .c lands, addressing Parliament or circulating petitions. te Above all the stance a g h emerging from Calvert’s bookshop during the course ofs the Revolution was one .a w which challenged both the Erastian principles pervadingw the Independent alliance, w

m and the Presbyterians’ clericalist leanings. As Dury clearlyo perceived, Saltmarsh’s .c te ‘unruly spirituality’ went beyond his patrons’ politicala aims. Likewise, while Saye g h s and Sele’s protection had enabled Bacon to obtain.a John Bachilor’s press licences in w w 64 w the 1640s, Bacon’s vision and those of the Independents had diverged by 1652. m o This kind of permeable spiritualist outlook.c entailed a clear-cut separation te a g between Church and State, enabling a convergenceh with political stances of a more s .a secular tendency, such as those held by thew Levellers. Moreover, it encapsulated a w w very pragmatic political goal as the charterm granted to the Eleutherian Adventurers o .c illustrates: Eleutheria was envisagedt e as a ‘republick’ to which every individual a g h would be granted access and wheres ‘no names of distinction or reproach, as .a w w Independents, Antinomian, Anabaptistw ’ would be tolerated; either as an offence or,

m significantly, as a self-acknowledgedo identity. Above all, it would be a land where .c te a ‘no Magistracie or Officers ofg the Republike’ would have any power of ‘judgement h s .a in matter of Religion’, becausew their ‘jurisdiction’ would extend only ‘to men as w 65 w men’. This resonates with the views Saltmarsh articulated at the same time and m o which remained the most.c coherent unifying principle within Calvert’s booklist. By te a g h arguing against magistrates’s ‘restraining powers’, his authors – Erbury, Sprigge, .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w 61 w Como, Blown by the Spirit, p. 453. m o 62 .c Johnte Warr, Administrations Civil and Spiritual (London, 1648), sig. A3r (my a g h italics). s .a 63 w wSabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 316, 373–4. w 64 m robert Bacon, A Taste of the Spirit of God (London, 1652), p. 40; see also, pp. 2, o .c 22–3,te 35. a g h 65 s Articles and Orders, made and agreed upon the 9th Day of July, 1647 […] By the .a w w Companyw of Adventurers for the Plantation of the Islands of Eleutheria ([London], 1647). © Copyrighted Material Giles Calvert and the Radical Experience 85 © Copyrighted Material

Bacon and Butler – were prominent voices that helped bring about the split in them o 66 .c te Independent coalition during the Whitehall Debates on this very issue. a g h s The indwelling spirit led to political mobilisation as oral, epistolary and printeda . w w exchanges came through the bookshop. The opposition to the reconstructionw of a

m new national Church involving the magistrates’ ‘restraining powers’ – ino the form .c te a of John Owen’s Humble Proposals – empowered a timely public campaign.g In h s .a early 1652 the ‘champions for the liberty of the soul’, to quote Rogerw Williams, w w organised themselves and published at the ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’. Some of Calvert’s m o .c earlier authors – Major Butler, Collier, Dell, TheaurauJohn and Sprigge’ste esteemed a g h friend, Christopher Goad – joined in a mobilisation that, as Polizzottos has noted, .a w involved individuals having strong ties with Henry Vane. Vanew in turn published w 67 m his intervention (his first printed statement) for Calverto in June 1652. After .c te this campaign achieved a temporary success, the clash moveda significantly onto g h s ‘freedom of the press’. This was denounced by a syndicate.a of mainly Presbyterian w w w stationers in A Beacon set on Fire (1652), which called Parliament’s attention to m o Popish and blasphemous books. The rejoinder by a. cgroup of soldiers and citizens te a g entitled The beacons quenched (1652) bore the imprinth of the stationers – Giles s .a Calvert, Henry Hills and William Larner – who mostlyw fed what their rivals called w w the ‘fair of toleration’. The nature of this pamphletm – its contents, authors and o .c publishers – underlined that the real issue at stakete in this ‘fair of toleration’ was the a g h 68 principle of loose control linked to opinionss then current in Vane’s circle. .a w During the heated controversies thatw engulfed the Barebone’s Parliament w

m in 1653 the voice of the ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’o could still be heard through the .c te a writings of John Webster, William Dgell and William Erbury. It distinguished itself h s both from a renewed Independent-Presbyterian.a coalition, which supported a new w w w national Church settlement, and from the Fifth Monarchists, who tried instead to m o gain power for the Saints and to.c advance a literal reign of Christ on earth. In the te a g vote of 10 December 1653 thoseh who understood the second coming of Christ as s .a w happening within individualsw had their own alternative political programme, even w

m o .c te a g 66 h The Clarke Paperss , pp. 84–7, 99–100, 107–9, 125–7, 171–81; C. Polizzotto, ‘Liberty .a w w of Conscience and the wWhitehall Debates of 1648–49’, JEH, 26 (1975): pp. 69–82.

67 m C. Polizzottoo , ‘The Campaign against The Humble Proposal of 1652’, JEH, 38 .c te (1987): pp. 569–81;a ‘The Winthrop Papers’, Collections of the Massachussetts Historical g h s Society, 4th series,.a 7 (1865): p. 281; The Correspondence of Roger Williams. ed. R. Cocroft, w w G. La Fantasie wand B.F. Swan (2 vols, Hanover and London: Brown University Press, 1988),

m 1, p. 355; Caricchio,o Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 201–16; Henry Vane, .c te a L’esame dellog zelo, ovvero Discorso per la libertà di coscienza nelle questioni religiose, ed. h s and trans..a M. Caricchio (Genoa, 2003), pp. 24–30, 38–53. w 68 w w Luke Fawne, Samuel Gellibrand, Joshua Kirton, John Rothwell, Thomas Underhill m o and N.c athaniel Webb, A Beacon set on Fire (London, 1652); Thomas Pride, William Gough, te a Tobiasg Bridge, Richard Merest, William Kiffen, Isaac Gray, George Gosfrith and Samuel h s Richardson,.a The beacons quenched (London, 1652), pp. 12–13; Caricchio, Religione, w w politicaw e commercio di libri, pp. 249–58. © Copyrighted Material 86 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material though they joined hands with the Fifth Monarchists in order to sink the proposed m o Church settlement based on a revised version of Owen’s plan. .c te a g h This was expressed by a small pamphlet called The Temples foundations laid: .a w or, A Way for Settlement of Religion by ‘M.T., Member of Parliament’, whichw was w intended to be presented to the House of Commons and argued against mthe need o .c te for a Church settlement. Starting from premises resonant of Saltmarsha and Vane, g h s it proposed a loose system of religious communities held together by.a the itinerant w w preaching of men ‘of enlarged spirits’ like ‘Mr Sterry, Mr. Williamw Sedgwick,

m o Mr Dell, Mr Bacon, Mr. Sprigg &c.’. With the exception of Sterry,.c they were te a preachers who had constantly published for Calvert, who recognisedg themselves, h s .a 69 and were recognised in turn, as sharing the same spiritual experience.w w w

m o .c te a g h As some contemporary accounts testify, a ‘patriot’ was handlings an ‘expedient’ to .a w end the quarrel on Church settlement and tried to presentw it above the confusion w

m and shouts in which Barebone’s Parliament dissolvedo on the morning of 12 .c te 70 December 1653. The Temples foundation laid maya be that very ‘expedient’. It g h s points out a ‘third way’ which emerged during and.a through the Revolution, as the w w w ‘Black-Spread-Eagle’ voiced Antinomian and spiritualist stances that increasingly m o departed from the coalition to which it owed.c its initial fortunes. This was the te a g ‘Seeker’ interest shielded, as Baxter put it, hby the ‘Vanists’. It was no less real and s .a effective because it refused to be a ‘Church’w and merely had a bookshop sign as w w a recognisable identity. Dury and Baxterm knew this all too well while considering o .c 71 the feasibility of an agreement betweente the different English religious ‘interests’. a g h Indeed, the ‘third way’ I have tried s to draw out in this essay dismissed a ‘stately .a w w frame of wood to preach and prayw in ... distinct forms’ and a ‘[Babel] Tower’

m made of ‘forcible laws’ and ‘fundamentals’.o It was, however, no less a politically .c 72 te a viable alternative. Here we haveg the radical ‘substance’ in the context of a printed h s .a public world of religion and wpolitics. It was defeated. In a different political setting w w the Quakers shaped it anew. Even so, disillusionment came after defeat. m o .c te a g h s 69 .a m. T[omlinson?],w The Temples Foundation laid: or, A Way for Setlement of Religion w w (London, 1653), pp. 1–8. See, for example, William Erbury, The Grand Oppressor (London, m o 1652), pp. 30, 32. .c te a 70 g h A True Narratives of the cause and manner of the Dissolution of the Late Parliament .a w (1653), p. 4; [Samue]L.w [Highlan]D., An Exact Relation of the Proceedings and transactions w of the Late Parliamentm (London, 1654), p. 25; A. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate o .c (Oxford, 1982),te p. 344; Caricchio, Religione, politica e commercio di libri, pp. 296–302. a g 71 h g.s Nuttall, ‘Presbyterians and Independents. Some Movement for Unity 300 years .a w ago’, Journalw of the Presbyterian Historical Society of England, 10 (1952): pp. 8–9. w 72 m o William Erbury, The Bishop of London (London, 1653), p. 2; [Henry Vane], Zeal .c te Examined:a Or, A Discourse for Liberty of Conscience in Matters of Religion (London, 1652), g h pp.s 45–6. Jonathan Scott rightly identifies what I call a ‘third way’ in his Commonwealth .a w w Principles:w Republican Writings of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2004), p. 52. © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 4 m o .c te a g *h

s 1 Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer .a w w w

m o Ariel Hessayon c . te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h ‘And this we count is our dutie, to endeavour to the uttermost, severy man in his .a w place ... a Reformation to preserve the peoples liberties, one as wellw as another’ w

m Gerrard Winstanley, A Declaration from theo Poor oppressed People .c te a of England (1649), n.p. g h s .a w w w ‘the main Work of Reformation lies in this, to reform the Clergy, Lawyers, and Law’ m o Gerrard Winstanley, The Law of Freedom.c in a platform (1652), p. 7 te a g h s .a w w w

From Radical Reformation to English Revolutionm o .c te a g h There are six complementary approachess that are essential for enriching our .a w understanding of the thought of Gerrardw Winstanley (1609–1676) and the w

m meaning of the short-lived Digger plantationso at St George’s Hill in Walton-on- .c te a Thames, Surrey (April to August 1649)g and the Little Heath in neighbouring h s Cobham (August 1649 to April 1650)..a One is biographical, which through careful w w w recovery and reconstruction of the available evidence emphasises the importance m o of Winstanley’s experiences – especially.c his regional origins, social background, te a g education, religious upbringing,h bankruptcy, agricultural endeavours and, after s .a w the Diggers’ defeat, intermittentw local office-holding – in the development of his w thought. The lives of his fellowm Diggers and associates have been similarly explored o .c te to the same purpose, thougha comparative lack of documentation has yielded a less g h s complete picture. A second.a concentrates on local contexts and the Diggers’ social w w networks: the topographyw of St George’s Hill and Cobham, social and political

m relations within theo parishes of Walton and Cobham, economic pressures, the .c te a shattering impactg of Civil War and widespread rural unrest. A third places the h s .a w w w

1 o * In preparing.c this essay I have profited from the advice of Sarah Apetrei, Mario te a Caricchio, gDavid Finnegan and Lorenza Gianfrancesco. Readers should be aware that it h s was completed.a before the publication of the magisterial new edition of The Complete Works w w w of Gerrard Winstanley, edited by Thomas Corns, Ann Hughes and David Loewenstein m o (Oxford,.c 2010). Though Winstanley and the Diggers sometimes glossed scriptural phrases te a theyg did not always provide sources for their biblical allusions. I have therefore supplied h s these.a references to the so-called Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) in brackets. I alone w w amw responsible for any mistakes or shortcomings. © Copyrighted Material 88 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Diggers within their wider milieu by examining what their writings and reported m o activities had in common with their contemporaries nationally; how they resembled.c te a g h yet also differed from other political and religious movements and communitiess .a w then active, including the gathered Churches; why certain concepts they espousedw w were radical at specific moments during the course of the English Revolution.m This o .c te approach invites a rigorous comparison between Diggers and Levellers,a Particular g h s and General Baptists, Familists, ‘Seekers’, ‘Ranters’, Quakers and. a Behmenists, w w in addition to less known ‘wel-affected’ communities in London andw the southern

m o and midland counties – particularly Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire..c The te a fourth involves making connections, identifying resonances and suggestingg parallels h s .a between the Diggers and their predecessors over a longer period,w going back to w w the Reformation and beyond. This requires a detailed knowledge of Winstanley’s m o .c reading habits, the manner in which he appropriated andte reworked his sources a g h – notably biblical, millenarian, hermetic, mystic, utopian,s philosophical, legal .a w and medical texts – together with a convincing explanationw for how potent ideas w

m and distinctive, sometimes proscribed, scriptural interpretationso were transmitted .c te over time and across various geographical, culturala and linguistic boundaries. The g h s fifth is primarily concerned with modes of expression,.a literary style, genre and w w w typography. Finally, there has been a tendency to stress both the Diggers’ continued m o significance and the relevance of Winstanley’s.c writings for modern political te a g activists and commentators responding to theh challenges of addressing perceived s .a class-based inequalities, widening participationw in the democratic process, the w w

‘transition from an agrarian to an industrialm society’ in parts of the Third World, as o .c well as environmental damage to our teplanet caused by human activity. a g h By embracing the first five approachess and acknowledging the sixth, this essay .a w w fits neatly into a collection focusedw on radicalism in early modern England. For it

m not only reaffirms Glen Burgess’so point that ‘context matters to understanding the .c te a history of radicalism’, but alsog partly considers whether it is still appropriate to h s .a posit a single continuous Englishw radical tradition – or even multifaceted traditions w w 1 – stretching from the peasants’ rising of 1381 through to the Chartists. This is vital m o for there is some agreement.c that what largely distinguished the English Revolution te a g h from baronial revolts, sreligious wars, rebellions and indeed what has been termed .a w the ‘general crisis’ shakingw mid-seventeenth century Ireland, France, Catalonia, w 2 m Portugal, Naples ando elsewhere was radicalism. Even so, as is usually recognised, .c te revolutionary Englanda (that supposed ‘Island of great Bedlam’) was never an g h s 3 island unto itself..a Accordingly – and with some measure of success – scholars w w w

m o 1 .c

2 Burgess,te ‘Matter of Context’, 1–3; Burgess, ‘Introduction’, pp. 2–9; Burgess, a g h ‘Radicalisms and the English revolution’, pp. 63–9. .a 2 w dw avis, ‘Radicalism in a traditional society: the evaluation of radical thought in the w

Englishm Commonwealth 1649–1660’, History of Political Thought, 3, no. 2 (1982): p. 213; o .c G. Burgess,te ‘On Revisionism: an analysis of early Stuart historiography in the 1970s and a g h 1980s’,s HJ, 33 (1990): pp. 625–7. .a w 3 w w William Erbury, The Mad Mans Plea (London, 1653), p. 8. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 89 © Copyrighted Material

have attempted to assess how and in what ways the changing political, religious,m o .c te social, economic, cultural and intellectual landscapes of early modern continentala g h s Europe influenced comparable developments in England. Thus therea have been . w w studies tracing the roots of English revolutionary experiences and the mannerw in

m which they were articulated to a number of entangled yet identifiableo traditions .c te a which, through a process of recovery, dissemination, reinterpretation andg accretion, h s .a were continually evolving: humanism; biblical criticism; natural w law; classical w w republicanism; ancient theology; occult and scientific learning; medical knowledge; m o .c Germanic mysticism; apocalypticism; and Christian primitivism.te These traditions, a g h among others, traversed, shaped or were themselves born out ofs the defining events .a w of the period, namely the Renaissance, Voyages of Exploration,w Magisterial and w

m Radical Reformations, Counter-Reformation and the Thirtyo Years War. .c te Following in the footsteps of contemporary heresiographersa and polemicists, g h s late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century students of.a theosophy, literature and w w w Protestant nonconformity began debating whether mainstream English Puritanism m o and, on its fragmentation, the multitude of sects it spawned.c was fundamentally a te a g continental import or rather a home-grown phenomenonh with its own peculiarities. s .a Unsurprisingly, the subject was extensively investigatedw by denominationally w w committed historians who tended to be preoccupiedm with constructing complicated o .c and unbroken genealogies of religious dissentte thereby further legitimating received a g h 4 accounts of believers’ sufferings and martyrdom.s Marxist historians and a number .a w of politically committed scholars, influencedw to debatable degrees at various times w

m during their careers by broadly left-wingo ideas, likewise legitimated their doctrines .c te a by stressing supposed ideological antecedents.g By turns organised and haphazard, h s this occasionally collective project.a was intended to reinforce links between an w w w imagined past and present-day exigencies (‘the battle of ideas today’) by creating m o histories about aspects of an assumed.c ‘heritage’ of which the ‘English people’ had te a g been ‘robbed’. Here, however,h the initial impulse was to recover an indigenous s .a 5 w lineage: a ‘progressive rationalist’w native English tradition. Characterised by an w unashamedly teleological,m anachronistic, anti-clerical and anti-imperialist thrust, o .c te these sympathetic accountsa with their unshakeable faith in class conflict driving g h s historical processes and.a unwarranted secularisation of their subjects bore the brunt w w of the so-called revisionistw backlash in all its varieties.

m o .c te a g h s .a w 4 w P. Collinson,w ‘Towards a broader understanding of the early dissenting tradition’,

m in P. Collinson,o Godly People. Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London, .c te a 1983), pp. g527–31. h 5 s r..a Samuel, ‘British Marxist Historians, 1880–1980: Part One’, New Left Review, 120 w w w (1980): pp. 26–8, 39–42, 50–52, 74; A. MacLachlan, The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary m o England..c An Essay on the Fabrication of Seventeenth-Century History (Basingstoke, 1996); te a A. g Hessayon, ‘Fabricating radical traditions’, in M. Caricchio and G. Tarantino (eds), h s Cromohs.a Virtual Seminars, 1, ,w 1–6. © Copyrighted Material 90 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Although the revisionist shift in emphasis from tension to consensus was m o accompanied by a welcome reincorporation of religious beliefs into a grand.c te a g h narrative that had gradually been transformed from a bourgeois revolutions into .a w the breakdown of royal and ecclesiastical authority in the three Stuart kingdoms,w w there were drawbacks. Not least of these was the marginalisation of radicalismm o .c te and a reluctance to take seriously the possibility that its mid-seventeenth-centurya g h s manifestation may, as Christopher Hill proposed, have had deep.a if largely w w underground roots. Reconceived as a series of moments in contextw rather than

m o a continuous tradition, it was nonetheless conceded that these .cwars of religion te a in the Atlantic Archipelago had ideological components and,g moreover, that h s .a certain contemporaries held beliefs stemming from the Magisterialw and Radical w 6 w Reformations as well as early Christianity. Thus Jonathan Scott identified m o .c practical Christianity, derived from the New Testament andte comprising the ‘core a g h social agenda of the European radical reformation’, ass the crucial element of a .a w shared vocabulary expressed in otherwise divergent ‘Lweveller’, ‘Digger’, ‘Ranter’ w

m and ‘Quaker’ publications. Consequently, he envisagedo the English Revolution as .c te 7 ‘the last and greatest triumph of the European radicala reformation’. g h s On their rediscovery in the nineteenth century.a – first by Liberal, Socialist and w w w Marxist historians, and then Protestant nonconformists – the Diggers were not just m o appropriated, their image successively refashioned.c in the service of new political te a g doctrines, but contextualised. Hence Eduardh Bernstein, regarded as the ‘first and s .a greatest of the heresiarchs of Marxism’, delineatedw the 1549 East Anglian revolts w w

(Kett’s rebellion), noting the ‘communisticm tendencies’ of one sixteenth-century o .c Anabaptist faction together with theirte influence on the Familists. In addition, a g h Bernstein connected the Quakers withs German Anabaptists and mystics such as .a w w Jacob Boehme, and suggested thatw Winstanley’s The Law of Freedom was a utopian

m 8 vision displaying unmistakable familiarityo with Thomas More’s Utopia. Similarly, .c te a the Quaker Lewis Berens, whog dedicated his work on the Digger movement to the h s .a Society of Friends, includedw chapters on the Reformation in Germany and England w w where he linked the common demands of the English peasantry in 1381 to those m o of the German peasantry.c in the Twelve Articles of 1525. Moreover, it seemed te a g h s .a w w w 6 C. Hill, ‘Fromm Lollards to Levellers’, in C. Hill, The Collected Essays of Christopher o .c Hill. Volume Two: Religionte and Politics in Seventeenth-Century England (Brighton, 1986), a g h pp. 89–116; G.E. sAylmer, ‘Collective Mentalities in mid Seventeenth-Century England. III. .a w Varieties of Radicalism’,w TRHS, 5th series, 37 (1988), pp. 2–3, 6–7; J.C. Davis, ‘Against w

Formality: Onem Aspect of the English Revolution’, TRHS, 6th series, 3 (1993): pp. 271–2. o 7 .c J. Scott,te England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-century English Political Instability in a g h European s Context (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 247–68; P. Baker, ‘Rhetoric, Reality and the .a w Varietiesw of Civil War Radicalism’, in J. Adamson (ed.), The English Civil War. Conflicts w and Contexts,m 1640–49 (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 208, 216–17. o 8 .c te a e. Bernstein, Cromwell and Communism. Socialism and Democracy in the Great g h Englishs Revolution (Stuttgart, 1895), trans. H.J. Stenning (1930; reprinted, Nottingham, .a w w 1980),w pp. 19–25, 52, 115, 186, 214, 230. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 91 © Copyrighted Material

9 to Berens that Winstanley had been ‘greatly influenced’ by Familist teaching.m o .c te Afterwards David Petegorsky completed a study of Winstanley’s philosophy whicha g h s was distributed through an anti-fascist organisation called the Left Book Club.a He . w w thought the ‘social roots’ of ideas held by Winstanley and the Interregnumw sects

m lay in the ‘religion of the common people’: politically immature, medievalo popular .c te a movements like the English Lollards and German Anabaptists. Nor g were these h s .a distinct ‘streams’ of mystical theology since German refugees fleeingw religious w w persecution in their homeland had brought the vivifying spirit of writings by m o .c Hans Denck, Sebastian Franck, Caspar Schwenckfeld and Boehmete to England. a g h Popularised as these were through translations in print and manuscript,s Petegorsky .a w considered it possible to detect Boehme’s and the Familists’ w‘particular influence’ w

m on Winstanley while simultaneously insisting that he owedo his religious doctrines .c te 10 more to the ‘environment of the age’ than to any individuala thinker. In the same g h s vein, Christopher Hill, then a member of the Communist.a party of Great Britain, w w w who had studied at Moscow and familiarised himself with Soviet interpretations m o of the Interregnum, grouped Winstanley’s writings.c with those ‘communist te a g theories which have appeared with increasing maturityh in all the great middle- s .a class revolutions’. That is to say, doctrines disseminatedw by Thomas Müntzer, the w w

Protestant reformer executed during the Germanm Peasants’ War, and Jan of Leiden, o .c 11 king of the Anabaptists that had seized the townte of Münster in Westphalia. a g h Another admirer of the pre-Stalinists Soviet Union, the journalist and .a w broadcaster Henry Brailsford, pronouncedw Winstanley’s The New Law of w

m Righteousnes ‘a Communist Manifestoo written in the dialect of its day’. He .c te a too compared Winstanley’s Law of gFreedom, an eloquent ‘sketch of a classless h s society’, with More’s Utopia, connecting.a Winstanley’s ideas with sixteenth- w w w century Communist thought – particularly the fraternal, ‘left-wing’ Anabaptist m o communities of Switzerland, .c the Rhineland and Moravia; a revolutionary te a g sermon by Müntzer (even if hit was ‘unlikely that Winstanley had ever heard of s .a w him’); the ‘heroic tragedy’ wthat ensued at Münster; and the ‘pacifist’, persecuted w 12 underground heretical sectm the Family of Love. Hill himself later underlined o .c te the role of Familists ina keeping alive Anabaptist theories in the ‘Elizabethan g h s underworld’ before they.a fused with native lower class agrarian communist ideas, w w 13 resurfacing in the ‘freedomw of the 1640s’. While Hill’s idealised depiction of

m o .c te a g 9 h l. Berens,s The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth as Revealed in .a w the Writings of Gerrardw Winstanley (London, 1906), pp. 1–22. w 10 m D. Petegorsky,o Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War: A Study of the .c te Social Philosophya of Gerrard Winstanley (1940; reprinted, Stroud, 1995), pp. 64, 68–9, g h 125–6, 150–51.s .a w 11 w wL. Hamilton (ed.), Gerrard Winstanley. Selections from his Works (London, 1944), p. 4.

12 m o h.N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution (1961; 2nd edn, ed. .c te a C. Hill,g Nottingham, 1983), pp. 31–3, 524, 659–60. h s 13 .a C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down. Radical Ideas during the English w w Revolutionw (1972; Harmondsworth, 1984 edn), pp. 114–15, 134. © Copyrighted Material 92 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Winstanley as a precursor of nineteenth- and twentieth-century socialism and m o author of the world’s ‘first communist political programme’ was attacked for.c its te a 14 g h political subtext, Winstanley remained an audacious rational utopian communists .a w for some literary critics, standing firmly within a radical Protestant traditionw that w went back by way of the Familists, General Baptists and Dutch Mennonitesm to o .c te Müntzer and Münster on the Continent, and John Wycliffe and the aLollards in g h 15 s England. Indeed, though Andrew Bradstock detected what he believed.a to be two w w ‘false assumptions’ weakening the argument that Winstanley was,w or became, a

m o secular thinker, he still situated Winstanley within a ‘small but.c vocal tradition’ te a on the fringes of the ‘professing Christian church’. These oppositionalg voices, h s .a echoing from Lollards to Hussites, through the radical Protestantw reformers w w and sects of the English Revolution down to Liberation Theologians today, m o .c 16 challenged ‘perceived conservative and reactionary interpretationste of the faith’. a g h More recently, John Gurney has argued that Winstanleys should be seen as .a w emerging from both a vibrant, fluid and heterogeneousw ‘puritan underground’, w

m and a ‘radical and heterodox tradition of religiouso mysticism’ embracing texts .c te by the Family of Love’s founder Hendrick Niclaes,a Boehme and the anonymous g h 17 s Theologia Germanica. .a w w w Despite differences in emphases, sophistication and quality of research, there is m o a common thread running through this assorted.c scholarship: it shares – and to some te a g extent is unavoidably shaped by – the same hconcerns that confronted contemporary s .a heresiographers and polemicists. Their outpourings,w which were often modelled w w upon and positioned within a long linem of anti-heretical writing, amply illustrate o .c the manifold difficulties with heresiographyte as a genre. Determined to extirpate a g h reported doctrinal errors compilers s could be alarmist and self-serving, attaching .a w w labels – even when inappropriatew – to facilitate categorisation, purposefully

m blurring or ignoring subtle doctrinalo distinctions, sometimes failing to recognise .c te a novel beliefs because of theirg tendency to compare what they saw with earlier h s .a w w w

m 14 o C. Hill (ed.), Winstanley:.c The Law of Freedom and Other Writings (Harmondsworth, te a g 1973), pp. 9–10, 34, 68 n.h 62; Hill, ‘The Religion of Gerrard Winstanley’, in Hill, Collected s .a Essays, 2, pp. 194–200;w cf. J.C. Davis, ‘Gerrard Winstanley and the Restoration of True w w Magistracy’, P&P, 70 (1976): pp. 76–93; L. Mulligan, J.K. Graham and J. Richards, m o ‘Winstanley: A Case.c for the Man as He Said He Was’, JEH, 28 (1977): pp. 57–75. te a 15 g h t. Wilsons Hayes, Winstanley the Digger. A Literary Analysis of Radical Ideas in .a w the English Revolutionw (Cambridge, MA, 1979), pp. 2, 48–50; R. Kenny (ed.), The Law of w

Freedom in a mPlatform or, True Magistracy Restored (New York, 1973), pp. 19–20, 22, 23. o 16 .c A. Bradstock,te ‘Sowing in Hope: the relevance of theology in Gerrard Winstanley’s a g h political programme’,s Seventeenth Century, 6 (1991): pp. 194–5; A. Bradstock, Faith in the .a w Revolution:w The Political Theologies of Müntzer and Winstanley (London, 1997). w 17 m o J. Gurney, Brave Community. The Digger Movement in the English Revolution .c te (Manchester,a 2007), pp. 90–91, 94–7; cf. N. Smith, ‘Gerrard Winstanley and the Literature g h of sRevolution’, in A. Bradstock (ed.), Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649–1999 (London, .a w w w2000), pp. 51–2. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 93 © Copyrighted Material

Christian heresies. Thus Anabaptist excesses, including the seizure of Münster,m o .c te were revived through print as cautionary atrocity stories. Published as warningsa g h s against introducing religious toleration in England, these pamphlets paralleleda the . w w infamous exploits of Thomas Müntzer and Jan of Leiden with contemporaryw events

m to highlight the threat to Church and State from Anabaptism, which waso likened .c te a to a contagion that had infected limbs of the body politic and was spreadingg to h s 18 .a its heart. In the same way, the Presbyterian minister Richard Baxterw linked the w w Quakers to their ‘German Brethren’ the Paracelsians and Behmenists, assuming m o .c that with their forerunners – ‘Seekers, Ranters, and Anabaptists’te – they were part a 19 g h of a Popish confederacy let loose by the Devil. The Cambridges Platonist Henry .a w More on the other hand looked to Holland, believing the Quakersw were ‘descended’ w

m from Niclaes and that Familists had entered England througho the wiles of Popish .c 20 te priests and their emissaries. a g h s Mindful of this historiographic legacy, and of the.a challenging nature of w w w Winstanley’s and his fellow Diggers’ texts, as well as the often brief and m o predominantly hostile nature of much of the remaining.c evidence, I have nonetheless te a g suggested elsewhere that it is fruitful to consider hthe Diggers as an offshoot from s .a the main branch of the General Baptists, with w roots going back to the Radical w w

Reformation. Furthermore, the outlines of Winstanley’sm spiritual journey can be o .c reconstructed with confidence. Beginningte in either childhood, adolescence or a g h some point in adulthood, he was a puritan;s then perhaps a separatist; then, it can .a w be inferred, a General Baptist; then he dispensedw with the outward observance of w

m gospel ordinances (like a ‘Seeker’), beforeo falling into a trance sometime between .c te a 16 October 1648 and 26 January 1649.g Though Winstanley’s puritan and Baptist h s phases can only be gleaned from reminiscences,.a they still provide a valuable insight w w w into the evolution of his thought. S o much so that the imprint of distinctive General m o Baptist tenets, especially in Winstanley’s.c first five publications, is both unmistakable te a g and crucial for understandingh the development of his ideas. The influence of s .a w Baptist precedents can be seen,w for example, in Winstanley’s implementation of w the doctrine of communitym of goods (Acts 4:32), with its striking resemblance to o .c te a g h s .a 18 w w Anon., A Warningw for England especially for London in the famous History of

m the Frantic Anabaptistso (1642); Anon., A Short History of the Anabaptists of High and .c te Low Germany (London:a Samuel Brown, 1642; reprinted, Robert Austin, 1647); Frederick g h s Spanheim, Englands.a Warning by Germanies Woe (London: John Bellamie, 1646); Christoffel w w van Sichem, Apocalypsis,w or the Revelation Of certain notorious Advancers of heresie,

m trans. John Davieso (London: John Saywell, 1658), pp. 1–29; cf. Hughes, Gangraena, .c te pp. 67, 72, 89.a g h 19 s r.aichard Baxter, The Vnreasonableness of Infidelity (London: Thomas Underhill, w w 1655), w pt. iii, p. 155; Richard Baxter, One Sheet against the Quakers (London, 1657),

m pp. 1–2.o .c te a20 g M. Nicolson and S. Hutton (eds), The Conway Letters: The Correspondence of h s Anne,.a Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and Their Friends: 1642–1684 (Oxford, 1992), w w pp.w 512–13. © Copyrighted Material 94 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material sixteenth-century Hutterite practice in Moravia, together with the Diggers’ use of m o emissaries to spread the good news that they had begun laying the foundations.c of te a 21 g h universal freedom (Matthew 28:19). Here I will examine Winstanley’s beliefss .a w about universal redemption and particular election, which must be viewedw in the w light of a serious schism among Baptists. For, though denominational alignmentsm o .c te did not harden arguably until autumn 1644, there were on the one handa followers g h s of Calvinist doctrine who believed in the ‘particular Election and .aReprobation’ w w of individuals (Particular Baptists), and on the other essentially w maintainers of

m o core Arminian or Remonstrant tenets who, while accepting particular.c election te a and denying free will, nevertheless taught the ‘Universal Love g of God to all’ and h s .a 22 therefore the possibility of universal redemption (General Baptists).w In addition, w w I will show how Winstanley’s attitudes towards the Saturday and Sunday Sabbath, m o .c tithes, ministers, magistrates and violence position his teachingste as on the whole a g h budding forth from fertile General Baptist soil. s .a w w w

m o .c te Particular Election and Universal Redemption a g h s .a w w w On the title-page of Winstanley’s The Mysterie of God, Concerning the whole m o Creation, Mankinde (1648) was a biblical .c verse that, when laid open like an te a g unsealed book, encapsulated his heterodoxh interpretation of accepted Calvinist s .a teaching on soteriology and eschatology:w ‘And so all Israel shall be saved, w w as it is written, There shall come outm of Sion, the Deliverer, that shall turne o .c away ungodlinesse from Jacob’ (Romanste 11:26). The mystery of God to a g h which Winstanley referred was tos be made known to every man and woman .a w w after seven dispensations (Revelationw 10:7), and had been revealed to God’s

23 m servants (Revelation 1:1). Winstanleyo explained that these seven dispensations .c te 24 a corresponded to the seven angelsg of the Apocalypse (Revelation 8:2). These h s .a dispensations, moreover, hadw been preordained by God before the foundation of w w 25 the world and demarcated periods of history. Five had already occurred. These m o were: first, the sentence.c of death as a consequence of Adam’s disobedience of te a g h the Law of God whens eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil .a w w w

m 21 o a. Hessayon,.c ‘Early Modern Communism: The Diggers and Community of Goods’, te a g Journal for the Studyh of Radicalism, 3, no. 2 (2009): pp. 1–49. s 22 .a thomasw Lambe, A Treatise of Particvlar Predestination (London, 1642); [Thomas w w

Lambe?], Them Fountaine of Free Grace Opened (London, 1645); Luke Howard, Love and o .c Truth in plainnesste Manifested (London: T. Sowle, 1704), p. 107; Thomas Crosby, The a g h History ofs the English Baptists, from the Reformation to the Beginning of the Reign of King .a w George wI (2 vols, London: the editor and author, 1738–39), 1, pp. 173–4. w 23 m gerrard Winstanley, The Mysterie of God (London: Giles Calvert, 1649), title-page, o .c pp. 11,te 20. a g h 24 s ibid., pp. 21, 39. .a w 25 w w ibid., pp. 27–8. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 95 © Copyrighted Material

in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:3, 2 Corinthians 3:6); second, the curse uponm o .c te the serpent (Genesis 3:15), interpreted as a promise of mercy and redemptiona g h s through Christ, who will deliver mankind from the bondage of death; third, aGod’s . w w covenant with Abraham, sealed by the token of circumcision (Genesis 17:9–10,w

m Luke 1:55); fourth, the Law of Moses, which foreshadowed the Gospel;o fifth, .c te a God’s manifestation in flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. The sixthg had begun h s .a with God’s appearance in the flesh of his Saints (Joel 2:28), and wouldw continue w w until the ‘perfect gathering up of the Elect’ at the Resurrection or D ay of Judgment m 26 o .c (Revelation 20:12–15). During this sixth great dispensationte Winstanley a g h counselled patience, informing those of God’s Saints waitings sorrowfully in a .a w sinful condition or spiritual wilderness that this was the ‘gatheringw time’ when w

m the elect out of ‘every nation, kindred, tongue & people’o would be numbered .c te 27 and taken to dwell in the City, Sion, with the Lamb (Revelationa 7:9, 21:23). g h s Only those whose names were written in the Lamb’s.a book of life (Revelation w w w 21:27), the ‘scattered sheep of the House of Israel’ (Matthew 10:6), would enter m o the City at this hour. Through the power of anointing.c these believers would te a g be united and knitted together with Christ, baptisedh into one mystical body (1 s .a Corinthians 12:13). Meanwhile, in these latterw days (Daniel 10:14) God had w w granted a time, time and a half time to the serpentm (Revelation 12:14) – which o .c Winstanley identified with the Beast or Whorete of Babylon (Revelation 17:4–6) a g h – to make war on the Saints. The Beast woulds tread the holy City underfoot for .a w 42 months (Revelation 11:2). Those whomw God had not chosen were being cast w

m into a lake of everlasting fire (Matthewo 18:8, Revelation 20:15) to endure not .c te a eternal but temporary punishment. Ag t the last hour God, who is the tree of life h s (Revelation 22:1–2), would send forth.a a healing virtue to the nations (Revelations w w w 21:24). Thus ‘all Israel’ would be saved (Romans 11:26), without exception, to m o 28 ‘partake of the glorious manifestation.c of the Sons of God’. Then, at the seventh te a g dispensation, which was yet h to come, the mystery of God would be absolutely s .a w finished. The Son would wdeliver up the Kingdom to the Father (1 Corinthians w

15:24) and all God’s workm – the whole Creation, Mankind – would be redeemed; o .c te liberated from corruption,a bondage, death and pain (Romans 8:21). Only the g h s serpent, that is the humane.a nature within flesh which had sprung up as a weed in w w the Garden of Eden wafter God made Adam, would perish; cast into the lake of fire

m 29 (Revelation 20:10,o 14). .c te a Situating theg ‘violence, wrath, reproach, oppression, provocations and h s .a murders’ sufferedw by the Saints within an apocalyptic framework, Winstanley was w w

m o 26 .c te ibid.,a pp. 13, 21–3, 29–32, 34. g h 27 s Ibid.,.a pp. 15, 18, 35–7, 43, 59; cf. Gerrard Winstanley, The Saints Paradise [1648], w w p. 24. w

28 m o Winstanley, Mysterie of God, pp. 14–15, 37–8, 43–4, 48; cf. Winstanley, Saints .c te a Paradiseg , pp. 128–9; G. Sabine (ed.), The Works of Gerrard Winstanley (Ithaca, NY, 1941), h s pp..a 445–6, 447, 454. w w 29 w Winstanley, Mysterie of God, pp. 6–7, 13–14, 27, 44. © Copyrighted Material 96 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material therefore able to account both for the presence of religious persecution in England m o and anticipate its increased intensity, because the serpent’s time was growing.c te a 30 g h short. His belief in universal redemption, however, was considered a doctrinals .a w error. According to the provisions of an Ordinance for suppressing blasphemiesw w and heresies, this offence was punishable by imprisonment if disseminatedm from o .c te 2 May 1648 and not renounced – which may explain why the firsta edition of g h s 31 The Mysterie of God has an undated preface and bears no publisher’s.a imprint. w w Furthermore, Winstanley’s heterodox marriage of universal redemptionw with

m o particular election appeared an irreconcilable combination. .c Acknowledging te a potential ‘contradictions’, he explained that, though God wouldg ‘save every one’, h s .a this did not give people liberty to take ‘pleasure in sin’, tow ‘eat, drink, and be w w merry’. On the contrary, sinners would ‘not escape punishment’ since they would m o .c be cast into the ‘everlasting fire’, which Winstanley took teto mean the dispensation a g h 32 of God’s wrath rather than the ‘materiall fire of purgatory’.s .a w The continued significance Winstanley attached tow Romans 11:26 can also be w

m seen on the title-page of The New Law of Righteousneso (1649), which contains .c te a partial reworking: ‘This is Sion out of whom wea are to expect the deliverer g h s 33 to come, that shall turn ungodlinesse from Jacob.a ’. Jacob, meaning following w w w after or supplanter, was the younger of Isaac’s twin sons by his wife Rebekah m o (Genesis 25:22–6). After wrestling with a man.c or angel, his name was changed to te a g 34 Israel, meaning ruling with God (Genesis h32:24–8, Hosea 12:4). As Jacob was s .a 35 sometimes taken to be a synonym of Israel,w Winstanley should therefore be read w w as using twofold imagery here. First, hem developed his belief in the salvation of all o .c Israel by addressing this work to ‘the tetwelve Tribes of Israel that are circumcised a g h in heart, and scattered through all thes Nations of the Earth’ (cf. Revelation 7:4, .a w 36 w Zechariah 7:14). Second, he reaffirmedw his conviction in particular election by

m expounding on the figure of Jacobo and the struggle between the twins in the womb .c te a (Romans 9:6–13). These motifsg were entwined in Winstanley’s ‘Epistle to the h s .a Reader’ and require explanation.w w w Protestant exegetes commonly accepted that the Jewish people’s misfortunes m o in the post-exilic period.c were attributable to their having crucified Christ and te a g h their rejection of the s Gospel message. Winstanley’s attitude was no different: .a w w w

m 30 o Ibid., pp. 40–41,.c 47; cf. Gerrard Winstanley, The Breaking of the day of God te a (London, 1649), pp.g 101, 102, 105, 111; Winstanley, Saints Paradise, pp. 21, 41, 42. h s 31 .a C. Firth wand R.S. Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 w w (3 vols, London: Stationery Office, 1911), 1, p. 1135. m 32 o Winstanley,.c Mysterie of God, pp. 14, 19–20, 50–53, 55. te a 33 g h gerrards Winstanley, The New Law of Righteousnes Budding forth, in restoring the .a w whole Creationw from the bondage of the curse (London, 1649), title-page; cf. Isaiah 59:20. w 34 m Cf. Winstanley, Saints Paradise, pp. 77–8. o 35.c te Cf. George Foster, The Pouring Forth of the Seventh and Last Viall upon all Flesh a g h (1650),s title-page, sig. a2v, p. 68. .a w 36 w w Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, p. 149. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 97 © Copyrighted Material

Jews could not behold God in Christ, calling Christ a deceiver, persecuting andm o .c te ultimately killing him. For their evil deeds God cast off ‘literal Israel’, that isa the g 37 h s descendants of Abraham who observed the Law of Moses. These ‘outward’a Jews . w w circumcised in the flesh were distinguished from ‘inward’ Jews circumcisedw in the

m heart (Romans 2:28–9). Inward Jews, whether of Jewish or Gentile ancestryo were .c te a the ‘Abrahamites’ in whom the ‘blessing of the most High’ remained (cf.g Romans h s .a 4:9), the promised seed (Galatians 3:29) of whom it was said ‘Salvationw is of the w w Jews’ (John 4:22). The blessing was the ‘King of righteousnesse’ and ‘Prince of m o .c peace’ (cf. Jeremiah 23:6, Isaiah 9:6) that ruled in the body of Abraham,te that is the a g h inward Abraham rather than the imperfect outward fleshy mans called Abraham. .a w Yet the blessing was also the ‘seed of Abraham’ (Galatiansw 3:16), the ‘Saviour’ w

m which lay hidden, ‘hated, persecuted and despised’ withino the twelve tribes of .c te Israel circumcised in heart. In other words, Winstanleya envisaged the blessing g h s as the indwelling Christ which was now ‘breaking forth.a ’ to liberate the righteous w w w from the ‘dark clouds of inward bondage, and outward persecution’ (cf. Romans m o 8:21), spreading forth from them to fill the earth and.c ‘restore all things’, thereby te a g freeing ‘the whole Creation from the curse’ under hwhich it groaned (Genesis 3:17, s 38 .a Romans 8:22). Doubtless it was identifying withw Jews in an inward Pauline sense w w as inheritors of the blessed promised seed thatm reportedly prompted Winstanley’s o .c 39 fellow Digger William Everard to declare thatte he was ‘of the Race of the Jewes’. a g h Similarly, Winstanley signed himself ‘a waiters for the consolation of Israel’ (Luke .a w 2:25) and expecting Israel’s imminent returnw from the mystery of Egyptian bondage w

m (Exodus 6:5–6), ‘self-seeking oppressingo government’ and outward observance of .c te a ordinances, he instructed the twelveg tribes to stand still in this ‘time of Iacobs h s trouble’ (Jeremiah 30:7). For the Lord.a himself, Reason, would deliver the Spirit w w w within Israel from the oppressive burden of cursed flesh by burning up the outward m o body, a compound made of the.c four elements – fire, water, earth, air – in which te a 40 g the curse rested. h s .a w Conceiving of the blessingw as the indwelling Christ hidden within inward Jews, w

Winstanley also regardedm it as synonymous with Jacob. For Winstanley, Jacob o .c te was Christ, the ‘elect ora chosen one’; Esau, his elder twin, the ‘rejected one, the g h s reprobate’ (cf. Romans.a 9:13). Jacob and Esau, moreover, represented the two w w Adams within mankindw striving to rule in the Kingdom of heaven, interpreted

m as Christ within (cf.o Luke 17:21). Esau, as the elder brother, was the disobedient .c te a Adam or ‘son of gbondage’ (Galatians 4:22) that filled every man with ‘sin and filth’ h s .a (Romans 5:19).w This Adam was within every man and woman, and was the first w w power to ‘act and rule in every man’. Hence Esau was associated with the ‘wisdom m o .c te a g 37 h Winstanley,s Mysterie of God, sig. A2v, p. 19; Winstanley, Breaking of the day of .a w w God, p.w 43; Winstanley, Saints Paradise, p. 13; Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 113, 160,

m 215. o .c 38te a ibid., pp. 149–54. g h s 39 .a Anon., The Declaration and Standard of the Levellers of England (1649), p. 2. w w 40 w Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 152–3, 154, 163, 189, 191, 195. © Copyrighted Material 98 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material and power of flesh’ that initially reigned over mankind, with beastly, ‘proud and m o covetous flesh’ that delighted in ‘unrighteous pleasures’ (cf. 2 Peter .c 2:12–13). te a g h Consequently he sold both his ‘birth-right and blessing’ to Jacob (Genesis 25:27–s .a w 34, Genesis 27:30–36, Hebrews 12:16–17), and his downfall was approaching.w w

Jacob, that is the second Adam or ‘son of the free-woman’ (Galatians 4:22),m had o .c te been downtrodden and in servitude a ‘long time’. Now, however, thea younger g h s brother was supplanting the elder (Isaiah 44:1), rising up in glory. a as the spirit w w within the hearts of inward Jews to rule in righteousness and ‘restorew all things’.

m o Jacob’s dominion would reach ‘from one end of heaven to the other’.c (Luke 17:24) te a and would be like a ‘spreading power of light’ dispersing darknessg and covering h s .a the earth with the ‘knowledge of himself’. Nor would this blessingw bring loss and w w misery to anyone (Genesis 18:18), for his law would be established in love and m o 41 .c bring peace to the whole Creation. te a g h Winstanley thus envisioned Jacob and Esau as types,s as figures in the Old .a w Testament that foreshadowed aspects of the Christianw dispensation. Esau – the w

m reprobate – corresponded to sinful flesh ruled by theo first Adam, whereas Jacob .c te – the elect – corresponded to the spirit within ruleda by the second Adam, Christ. g h s But in a bold step Winstanley went further still..a For he maintained that Esau’s w w w dominion was supported by university-trained clergymen and public preachers, m o ‘false Teachers’ and betrayers of Christ who,.c while deceitfully promising an te a g 42 outward heaven above the skies, picked theh purses of their unsuspecting flocks. s .a Conversely, Jacob would sweep away ‘allw the refuge of lies, and all oppressions’ w w

(Isaiah 28:17), and ‘make the earth am common treasury’. The ‘poor despised o .c people’ (cf. James 2:6) trodden upon likete dust and stones had begun to ‘receive the a g h Gospel’, so that not the meek but ‘Thes poor shal inherit the earth’ (cf. Matthew .a w 43 w 5:5). Eventually, Winstanley condemnedw monarchy as well for making the ‘elder

m brethren freemen in the Earth, ando the younger brethren slaves’. Indeed, in The .c te a Law of Freedom in a platformg (preface dated 5 November 1651) he considered h s .a ‘Kingly Government’ – equatedw with the ‘great Man of Sin’ (2 Thessalonians 2:3) w w – to be supported by the central pillar of Calvinist doctrine, the double decree m o which made: .c te a g h s .a w one brother a Lord,w and another a servant, while they are in their Mothers womb, w

before they havem done either good or evil: This is the mighty Ruler, that hath o .c te made the Electiona and Rejection of Brethren from their birth to their death, or g h s 44 from Eternity.a to Eternity. w w w

m o .c te a g h s 41 .a w wSabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 149, 150, 165, 173, 176–7, 178–80, 187, 189–90, 213, w

228, 237.m o 42.c te ibid., pp. 178–9, 226–7, 240. a g h 43 s Ibid., pp. 188–90, 209; cf. Winstanley, New Law of Righteousnes, title-page. .a w 44 w w Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 530, 381, 568. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 99 © Copyrighted Material

The Saturday and Sunday Sabbath m o .c te a g h s Winstanley’s use of types was widespread, extending to his understandinga of . w w Mosaic Law. Christians from Thomas Aquinas onwards conventionally w divided

m the Law of Moses into three categories – the moral, judicial and ceremonial.o .c te a This Law was believed to have been given by God to Moses, beginningg with the h s .a Decalogue on Mount Sinai (Exodus 20:1–17), then supplementedw and codified w w in the remainder of the Pentateuch. The moral law was derived from the Ten m o .c Commandments and all but a handful of Christians regardedte it as inviolate. a g h Judicial laws, according to Aquinas, ‘did not bind for ever, buts were annulled by .a w the coming of Christ’; a sentiment with which the majority wof Christians agreed. w

m Nevertheless, Aquinas thought that it was not prejudicial oto Christian faith for a .c te sovereign to enact legislation based on these judicial laws,a so long as they were g h s not observed as if ‘they derived their binding force .througha being institutions w w w of the Old Law’. Both Calvin’s advocacy of the death penalty for blasphemy m o and the Parliamentary Ordinance of May 1648 against.c the same offence can be te a g seen as instances of Protestant reformers turningh to judicial laws for exemplars. s .a Ceremonial laws such as dietary regulations andw restrictions governing specific w w kinds of clothing were regarded by Aquinasm as being both ‘dead’ and ‘deadly’ o .c – that is, of having been cancelled with the tecoming of Christ, making it a mortal a g h sin for Christians to observe them. The sevenths of the Thirty-nine Articles of the .a w Church of England essentially reaffirmedw this view: the Law given by Moses, as w

m touching ceremonies and rites did not o bind Christian men, but no Christian man .c te 45 a whatsoever was free from obeying theg moral commandments. h s As the fourth of God’s Ten Commandments,.a the Sabbath was taken by certain w w w English Protestant commentators from at least the mid-1590s to be ‘properly and m o perpetually’ a moral law, rather than.c a ceremonial or partly moral, partly ceremonial te a 46 g law. However, several notableh separatist and Baptist Judaisers – Christians s .a w who adopted selected Jewishw customs or religious rites – argued that following w

Jewish precedent the Sabbathm should be celebrated on the seventh day of the o .c 47 te week, Saturday, rather thana the first day, Sunday. Although Winstanley exhibited g h s .a w w w 45 m thomas Aquinas,o Summa Theologica, prima secundæ partis, question 101, ‘The .c te ceremonial preceptsa in themselves’, art. 1–4, question 104, ‘What is meant by the judicial g h s precepts’, art. 3; .aP.D.L. Avis, ‘Moses and the Magistrate: a Study in the rise of Protestant w w Legalism’, JEHw , 26 (1975): pp. 149–72.

46 m henryo Burton, A brief Answer to a late Treatise of the Sabbath Day (Amsterdam, .c te a 1635), p. 5;g Robert Cleaver, A Declaration of the Christian Sabbath (London, 1625), h s pp. 50–89;.a R.L. Greaves, ‘The origins of English Sabbatarian Thought’, SCJ, 12 (1981): w w pp. 26, w 31–2; P. Collinson, ‘The Beginnings of English Sabbatarianism’, in Collinson,

m Godlyo People, pp. 429–43. .c te a47 g d. Katz, Sabbath and Sectarianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Leiden, h s 1988);.a B. Ball, The Seventh-Day Men: Sabbatarians and Sabbatarianism in England and w w Wales,w 1600–1800 (Oxford, 1994). © Copyrighted Material 100 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Judaising tendencies, particularly his love of spiritual Israel and later borrowings m o from Mosaic Law when laying out the foundations of his ideal republic, he was.c te a g h no defender of the Saturday Sabbath. Indeed, he regarded the Jewish Sabbaths as a .a w type, as an outward observance practised one day in seven by Jews that prefiguredw w what ‘Gentile Christians’ would constantly ‘perform in the substance’.m For the o .c te ‘Sabbath Day’ denoted a ‘Day of a Christians rest’ (Hebrews 4:8, cf. aColossians g h s 2:16–17): that is, the daily ‘reign of Christ in and over the Saints’, or his.a ‘indwelling w 48 w in the soul, and the souls indwelling in him’. Consequently, Winstanleyw rebuked

m o ministers for enforcing observance of the Sunday Sabbath with.c the magistrates’ te a power, endeavouring to compel people ‘to keep that day after gthe manner of the h s 49 .a Jewish tipe’. Profanation of the Sabbath, it should be stressed,w was a serious w w matter during the English Revolution. So much so that the ‘Book of Sports’ – a m o .c royal initiative encouraging traditional Sunday pastimeste like Morris dancing, a g h bowls and football outside the hours of divine service s– was publicly burned by .a 50w the hangman on 10 May 1643 at Cheapside, London.w What is more, according w

m to the provisions of an Ordinance of 8 April 1644, travellingo and labouring on the .c te Sabbath were punishable by fines of 10 shillings aand 5 shillings respectively; less g h s severe penalties than the original laws for the M.a assachusetts Bay Colony which w w 51 w had made Sabbath-breaking a capital offence (cf. Exodus 35:2). m o Following the Golden Rule of doing to. c others as you would be done unto te a g (Matthew 7:12), Winstanley looked forwardh to turning the tables on the clergy. s .a Then the power of the risen Christ wouldw stone to death thoughts, studies and w w

‘imagination of flesh’, for these were mthe men ‘found gathering sticks upon this o .c sabbath day’ (Numbers 15:32–6). Denouncingte the clergy’s manipulation of the New a g h Testament to uphold their trade, Winstanleys insisted that keeping Sunday holy had .a w w not been a forced business but a ‘voluntaryw act of love’ among the Apostles who

m had tasted the ‘day of Christ’. Onceo this context is appreciated, the actions of five .c te a Diggers who began cultivatingg the earth on St George’s Hill one April Sunday in h s .a 1649 takes on extra significancew since this appears to have been a calculated, even w w confrontational gesture. Certainly this unashamed Sabbath breach echoes Jesus’ m o teaching that it was lawful.c to do good on Sabbath days (Luke 6:5–10), and chimes te a g h with Winstanley’s convictions that Saints filled with the indwelling Christ were not .a w bound by outmoded wforms of Jewish worship but liberated from weekly Sabbath w

m o .c te a 48 g Winstanley,h Mysterie of God, pp. 53–4; Winstanley, Breaking of the day of God, s .a p. 92. w w w 49 Sabinem (ed.), Winstanley, p. 143. o 50 .c CJ, teii, 847–8; LJ, vi, 32, LJ, vi, 504–10; Die Veneris 5 Maij 1643 (London, 1643), a g h brs.; John s Vicars, A Sight of ye Trans-actions of these latter yeares Emblemized (London, .a w 1646), p.w 21. w 51 m o Firth and Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1, pp. 420–22; .c te C. Da urston, ‘“Preaching and sitting still on Sundays”: the Lord’s Day during the English g h Revolution’,s in C. Durston and J. Maltby (eds), Religion in Revolutionary England .a w w w(Manchester, 2006), pp. 205–25. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 101 © Copyrighted Material

52 observance. This was reaffirmed in The Law of Freedom where Winstanleym o .c te thought it ‘very rational and good’ that his Commonwealth should have a ‘a Day g h s of Rest’ one day in seven. Drawing on Mosaic Law in a manner akin to approveda . w w Protestant usage of judicial laws, that is as non-binding exemplars, Winstanleyw

m proposed three reasons why an unspecified day of the week should beo set apart; .c te a first, it gave an opportunity for parishioners to mingle in g fellowship; second, h s .a ceasing from labour refreshed human bodies and livestock; and third,w it enabled w w ministers to communicate news and read the Law of the Commonwealth as well as m o 53 .c allowing people the chance to make speeches and engage in disputations.te a g h s .a w w w

m Tithes o .c te a g h s Tithes were a sign of homage and had been given by the.a children of Israel to the w w w Levites as tribute for their service in the tabernacle. Leviticus required that they m o 54 consist of the tenth portion of all agricultural produce,.c fruit and livestock. This te a g ancient Jewish custom, practised for centuries by theh Church, regulated in London s .a by statute of Henry VIII and claimed not by donationw but as of divine right, proved w w a source of bitter, protracted controversy. Shortlym before the German Peasants’ War, o .c for example, a renegade Carthusian monk namedte Otto Brunfels published Von dem a g h Pfaffen Zehenden (On Ecclesiastical Tithess ) (Strasbourg, 1524); a learned treatise .a w of 142 theses arguing that tithes lackedw any foundation in the New Testament. w

m Those who compelled the poor to pay otithes, he declared, were ‘viler betrayers of .c te a Christ than Judas, yes worse than theg godless priests of Baal’. In the summer of h s 55 1524 anti-tithe rebellions erupted all.a over southern Germany. Similarly, with the w w w outbreak of Civil War in England, removal of the church courts and sequestrations, m o resistance to the collection of .tithes,c hitherto sporadic, became widespread. On te a g 8 November 1644, Parliamenth issued an Ordinance authorising Justices of the s .a w Peace in certain circumstancesw to commit defaulters to gaol. Opposition to the w forced maintenance of ministers,m however, grew fiercer. The General Baptist and o .c te future Leveller Richarda Overton publicised the ‘abundance of Poore, Fatherlesse, g h s Widdowes, &c.’ starving.a in every parish and advocated voluntary contributions w 56 w as an alternative. Petitionsw were organised and presented to the Lord Mayor of

m London and Houseo of Commons urging the removal of the ‘tedious burthen’ of .c te a g h s .a 52 w Sabine w(ed.), Winstanley, pp. 125, 141, 143, 265. w 53 m ibid.,o pp. 562–3. .c 54 te Leviticusa 27:30–32; Numbers 18:20–24; cf. Genesis 14:18–20, 28:22, Deuteronomy g h s 14:22. .a w 55 w wJ. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal

m and Kingston,o 1991), pp. 36, 46–7; L.P. Buck, ‘Opposition to Tithes in the Peasants’ Revolt: .c te a A Caseg Study of Nuremberg in 1524’, SCJ, 4 (1973): pp. 11–22. h s 56 .a [Richard Overton], The Ordinance for Tythes Dismounted ([London], 1645), w w p.w 22. © Copyrighted Material 102 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material tithes, arguing that they were a Jewish ceremonial law and had been abrogated m 57 o with the coming of Christ. .c te a g h Winstanley, too, reproved the clergy for enforcing the collection of s tithes .a w through the magistrate’s power, despite lacking justification in either ‘Reason’w or w 58 ‘Scripture’. Condemning the ‘selfish tyth-taking’ preachers and all othersm that o .c 59 te preached for hire, he compared their covetousness to Judas, betrayer aof Christ. g h s In An appeal to the House of Commons (July 1649), Winstanley.a provided a w w historical explanation for the introduction of tithes to England, arguingw that they

m o had been brought in with the Norman Conquest so that William.c I could pay his te a debts to the Papacy and clergy, the latter having tried to persuadeg the people to h s .a embrace the Conqueror through their preaching. By includingw tithes among the w w burdensome Norman laws imposed upon the English, Winstanley was therefore m o .c able to suggest both that royal authority was buttressed byte the ‘Norman-Clergy’ a g h and that these mercenary ‘oppressing Tith-mungers’ weres available to the highest .a w 60 bidder, whether Catholic or Protestant, Royalist or Rwepublican. In The Law of w

m Freedom, Winstanley connected the Norman Conqueror’so oppressive power, .c te which stemmed from covetousness and pride, witha Samuel’s warning to the g h s Israelite elders against setting up a king. For it was.a here that the ‘burden of Tythes’ w w w placed upon the shoulders of the ‘Commoners of England’ – a tenth of ‘all profits’ m o 61 from their estates given to the clergy – had begun.c (1 Samuel 8:15). Interestingly, te a g the anonymous author of Light shining inh Buckinghamshire (1648) and More s .a Light shining in Buckinghamshire (1649)w cited the same scriptural verses when w w blaming kings for establishing tithes andm outlining the injustices of regal tyranny o .c from Nimrod (Genesis 10:8–10) to thete Israelite monarchy through to the ‘Norman a g 62 h Bastard William’. s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h 57 s .a Anon., The Inditementw of Tythes (London, 1646), p. 6; Thomas Edwards, Gangraena w w (3 vols, London, 1646), 1, p. 30; Anon., The Countreys Plea against Tythes (London, 1647), m o p. 5; Anon., The Husbandmans.c Plea against Tithes (London, 1647), pp. 8–9; Anon., To the te a g Right Honourableh the Commons of England in Parliament assembled. The humble Petition s .a of Thousands of wwel-affected persons inhabiting the City of London (1648), brs. w 58 w Winstanley, Breaking of the day of God, pp. 92, 117; Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, m o pp. 130, 143,.c 470. te a 59 g h Sabines (ed.), Winstanley,, pp. 194, 206, 233. .a 60 w wIbid., pp. 311–12, 333, 335, 357–8, 387, 429; G.E. Aylmer, ‘England’s Spirit w

Unfoulded,m or an Incouragement to take the Engagement. A Newly discovered pamphlet by o .c Gerrardte Winstanley’, P&P, 40 (1968): p. 11. a g h 61 s Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 504, 510, 522, 523, 532, 561. .a w 62 w w ibid., Winstanley, pp. 612–13, 630–31. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 103 © Copyrighted Material

Anticlericalism m o .c te a g 63 h s Winstanley’s anticlericalism pervades his writings. In The Breaking of thea Day . w w of God he regarded the various forms of Church government as branchesw of the

m beast that was waging war against God’s holy people. This ‘Bastardly’, oppressiveo .c te a human authority was hypocritically persecuting the Saints who worshippedg the h s .a Lamb, ‘God in Man’, enforcing religious conformity through observancew of w w outward fleshy forms. Nor was this done according to Scripture, but by imposition m o .c of the Canons of 1604 and then the Directory for Public Worshipte (4 January a g h 1645). Yet these ecclesiastical laws did not succeed in suppressings wickedness and .a 64 w ungodliness. Exercising a monopoly on preaching, proud learnedw scholars trained w

m in ‘humane letters’ were preventing humble fishermen, shepherds,o husbandmen and .c te tradesmen – latter-day Apostles – from speaking about theira spiritual experiences g h s and revealing ‘truths’ which they had ‘heard and seen.a from God’ (Acts 4:20). w w w Now, however, some clergymen would burn their books, forsake their comfortable m o quarters, and deny their ecclesiastical trade to join .cwith the Saints and wait upon te 65 a g God. Continuing in this vein, Winstanley subsequentlyh denounced preaching s .a as a trade, comparing preachers who did not speakw of God from experience to w w

‘clouds without rain’ (Proverbs 25:14). With theirm temporal livings, these hirelings o .c professing a ‘literal’ Gospel stood in oppositionte to the ‘ministry of the Gospel’ that a g h God had put into men’s hands (cf. John 10:12).s Indeed, they were ‘enemies’ to the .a w 66 ‘Spirit of truth’ that had inspired the Prophetsw and Apostles (John 14:17). w

m In Truth Lifting up its head above scandalso Winstanley adopted a catechetical .c te a format, telling his readers that, althoughg church attendance was voluntary, the h s state could not force people to either.a hear clerical interpretations of scripture or w w w maintain ministers by tithes. Furthermore, clergymen were not empowered to m o determine doctrinal errors. Winstanley.c concluded with a condemnation of ten te a g outward ordinances whose observationh he considered unwarranted; church services s .a w conducted on certain days w at particular times according to custom, rather than w when ministers were filledm with the power of prayer; preaching not from inward o .c te experience but knowledgea gained through hearing, reading and studying; praying g h s .a w w w 63 m f. Stripp, ‘To he Anti-Clericalism of Gerrard Winstanley’, Historical Magazine .c te of the Protestant aEpiscopal Church, 23 (1954): pp. 188–201; J.F. Maclear, ‘Popular g h Anticlericalism ins the Puritan Revolution’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 17 (1956): .a w pp. 457–61; Hillw (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 19, 42–4; G. Sanderson, ‘The Digger’s apprenticeship: w

m Winstanley’s oearly writings’, Political Studies, 22 (1974): p. 455; Hill, ‘Religion of Gerrard .c te Winstanley’,a pp. 188, 192; G. Shulman, Radicalism and Reverence. The Political Thought g h of Gerrards Winstanley (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 95–9, Gurney, Brave Community, p. 98. .a w 64 w wWinstanley, Breaking of the day of God, pp. 73, 84–5, 88, 128, 133–4.

65 m o Ibid., pp. 115, 124, 130; cf. The Confession of Faith, Of those Churches which are .c te a commonlyg (though falsly) called Anabaptists (London, 1644), title-page. h s 66 .a Winstanley, Saints Paradise, pp. 2, 11–12; cf. Winstanley, Mysterie of God, w w wpp. 33–4. © Copyrighted Material 104 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material with words spoken before and after sermons rather than in silence; expounding m o Scripture for financial gain; compelling people to attend church services.c by te a g h misusing the magistrates’ power; enforcing parish boundaries and the provisions .a w of tithes; keeping the Sunday Sabbath; administering communion – a merew ‘table w gesture’ – to a ‘mixed company’ of parishioners; infant baptism; preachingm the o .c te Gospel and persecuting the ‘Spirit within’ that had made Moses (a shepherd),a Amos g h s 67 (a fruit gatherer), the Apostles (fishermen) and Christ (a carpenter) .preachers.a w w Reiterating his invective against the clergy in The New Law ofw Righteousnes,

m o Winstanley also drew a comparison between the ‘bitter’ ‘zealous.c Scribes and te a Pharisees’ that had killed Christ (Matthew 23:14–15, 23–33) g and his latter-day h s .a betrayers – subtle, proud, fleshy preachers and teachers motivatedw by greed, that w w were hindering Christ from rising within the cloudy hearts of his Saints. These m o .c deceitful Pharisees of Winstanley’s own age, who despisedte poor men and women a g h that spoke of God from an ‘inward testimony’, callings them ‘Locusts, factious, .a w blasphemers, and what not’, would be stoned out of w their pulpits (cf. Leviticus w

m 24:16) and whipped out of God’s Temple in the o manner of Jesus driving the .c te moneychangers out of the temple at Jerusalem aand overthrowing their tables g h 68 s (John 2:15). For their ‘fine language’ was.a but ‘a husk without the kernall’, w w w ‘words without life’; their stinking outward religious services, preaching, praying m o 69 and public worship an ‘abomination to the .Lc ord’. In A New-yeers Gift for the te a g Parliament and Armie (January 1650), Winstanleyh envisaged ‘Tything-priests’ as a s 70 .a branch of ‘Tyrannical Kingly power’. Thoughw he came to identify clerical power w w 71 with one of the four beasts that Daniel msaw rising up out of the sea (Daniel 7:3), o .c Winstanley returned to the relationshipte between monarchical and clerical power in a g h The Law of Freedom. Singling out ‘olds formal ignorant Episcopal Priests’ as bitter .a w w enemies of the new Commonwealth,w he traced the origins of a ‘National Ministry’

72 m to the Norman Conquest. o .c te a g h s .a w w w Magistracy and Magistrates m o .c te a g h Although Scripture requireds Christians to render ‘unto Caesar the things which .a w are Caesar’s’ (Mattheww 22:21) and submit to ‘the powers that be’ (Romans 13:1), w

m Protestant reformerso had developed arguments concerning the duty of obedience .c te and concomitant rightsa of resistance. Calvin, for instance, suggested that ‘unwitting g h s agents’ or ‘manifest.a avengers’ were raised up by God to deliver the people from w w calamity, whilew ‘popular magistrates’ were appointed to curb regal tyranny. He also

m o .c te 67 a g Sabineh (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 130, 138–9, 142–5. s 68 .a iwbid., pp. 164, 187, 200, 206, 208, 213–14, 224, 240, 339, 409, 463, 466. w w 69 m ibid., p. 242. o 70.c te ibid., pp. 372, 381. a g h 71 s ibid., pp. 466, 469. .a w 72 w w ibid., pp. 504, 522–3. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 105 © Copyrighted Material

carefully mapped out separate spiritual and temporal jurisdictions, distinguishingm o .c te between complementary ecclesiastical and civil powers. According to Calvin,a g h s the Church was to refuse unrepentant sinners communion but had no right ato use . w w the sword to punish, restrain or fine lawbreakers, nor to imprison them. w Christian

m magistrates, on the other hand, were required ‘to purge the Church ofo offences .c te 73 a by corporal punishment and coercion’. Calvin’s attitude contrastedg with that h s .a maintained in Brüderliche vereynigung etzlicher kinder Gottes, sibenw Artickel w w betreffend (Brotherly Union of a number of children of God concerning Seven m o .c Articles) (1527), probably by the Anabaptist leader Michael Sattlerte and better a g h known as the Schleitheim Articles. The sixth of these declared that,s whereas secular .a w rulers had wielded the sword under Mosaic Law to punish wand kill the wicked, w

m the sword was now ‘outside the perfection of Christ’. Consequently,o magistrates .c te were forbidden from using it to enforce law and order.a Indeed, it did not befit g h s Christians, whose weapons and armour were spiritual – truth,.a righteousness, peace, w w w faith, holiness, and the Word of God – to serve as magistrates, because worldly m 74 o affairs were governed by the flesh. This controversial.c position was to be thrown te a g back in the Baptists’ faces as one of several politicalh errors attributed to them by s .a Daniel Featley in The Dippers dipt (London, 1645):w first, people may ‘depose their w w magistrates and chief rulers’; second, Christiansm with a good conscience could not o .c bear the office of magistrate; third, none werete permitted to administer oaths; and a g h 75 fourth, criminals should not be put to death.s Distancing themselves from some .a w of these charges as well as unfavourablew comparisons with the licentiousness of w

m the Anabaptists of Münster, seven Particularo Baptist churches in London issued .c te a The Confession of Faith (London, 1644).g Modelled on the Separatist Confession h s of 1596, a revised second edition consisting.a of fifty-two articles was distributed w w w outside the House of Commons in January 1646. The forty-eighth stated that civil m o magistracy was an ‘Ordinance .cof God’ set up by God for the punishment of evil te a g doers, while the fiftieth affirmedh that it was lawful for Christians to be magistrates s .a w or civil officers, and tow take oaths. The intervening article, however, asserted w that, in cases of religiousm persecution, Saints ought to obey God rather than o .c te a g h s .a 73 w w Jean Calvin, Institutesw of the Christian Religion, trans. F. L. Battles and ed.

m J. MacNeill (2 vols, 1559o edn), The Library of Christian Classics, vols 20–21 (Philadelphia, .c te 1960), Book 4, chaptera 11, sections 1–5; Book 4, chapter 20, sections 30–32. g h 74 s Brotherly.a Union of a number of children of God concerning Seven Articles, article w w 6, http://members.iquest.net/~jswartz/schleitheim/art6.html;w J. Stayer, Anabaptists and

m the Sword (1976;o Eugene, OR, 2002), pp. 117–22; H.-J. Goertz, The Anabaptists, trans. .c te a T. Johnson g(London and New York, 1996), pp. 98–9, 153–4; C.A. Snyder, ‘The Schleitheim h s Articles in.a Light of the Revolution of the Common Man: Continuation or Departure?’, SCJ, w w 16 (1985):w p. 427.

m 75 o .c daniel Featley, The Dippers dipt (London, 1645), pp. 29, 157–98; cf. Richard te a Byfield,g Temple defilers defiled (London, 1645), p. 20; Edwards, Gangraena, pt 2, h s p.. a161; Thomas Bakewell, Heresie detected: Or the grand sectaries of These times confuted w w (London,w 1649), pp. 40–46. © Copyrighted Material 106 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

76 magistrates. Similarly, the General Baptist Edward Barber gave out a pamphlet m o at the Commons’ door in September 1648 in which he argued for separation.c of te a g h ecclesiastical and civil powers. Magistrates were to punish disobedient sinnerss .a w – the ungodly murderers, pimps, thieves, liars and perjurers – but had no authorityw w 77 to meddle with a gathered church. m o .c te Winstanley initially regarded the institution of magistracy as ‘Gods aOrdinance’ g h s (1 Peter 2:14, Romans 13:1–2), a ‘higher power’ which God had.a established w w to preserve peace in the world by being ‘a terror to the wicked’ wand outwardly

m o punishing evil doers. Civil magistrates had been empowered with.c authority to te a 78 govern lawfully and individuals were commanded to be obedient.g Since the days h s .a of the Roman emperor Nero, however, which Winstanley calledw the ‘day of the w w Dragon’ (Revelation 12:17), identifying this period as the first of the three and a m o .c half ages during which the Beast or rather the Serpent (humanete nature) within flesh a g h ‘treads down the holy City’ under foot (Revelation 11:2–3),s there had been occasions .a 79w when both magistrates and people had been deceived. w Through the subtle, crafty w

m workings of the flesh, ‘beastly’ ecclesiastical power o had stolen authority, reversing .c te the progress of magistracy by making ecclesiasticala laws which, lacking divine g h s 80 authority, punished the Saints and protected the.a wicked. But now magistracy w w w would run its right course to help God’s Saints by putting Church government m o on Christ’s shoulders (Isaiah 9:6), for the prophecy.c that magistrates ‘shall love te a g 81 the people, and be nursing Fathers to themh ’ (Isaiah 49:23) was being fulfilled. s .a Afterwards, having censured the clergyw for enforcing the Sunday Sabbath, w w tithes, church attendance and doctrinalm conformity by abusing the magistrate’s o 82 .c power, Winstanley outlined how ‘Imaginaryte government’ would be overturned a g h (Ezekiel 21:27) and replaced with ‘Trues Government’. Ruled over by the Prince .a w w of darkness and power of Antichrist,w imaginary government was unworthy of the

m name magistracy since it gave theo gentry liberty to selfishly possess all land, to the .c te a detriment of poor commoners.g Conversely, true government would be established h s .a when God, the King of righteousness,w ruled over all with power and authority. w w Then pure magistracy – that is to say, the light of love, humility, reason, truth and m o 83 peace – would shine forth.c among the nations uniting them in universal love. te a g h s .a w w w

76 m CJ, iv, p. 420;o A Confession of Faith of seven Congregations or Churches of Christ .c te a in London (London,g 1646), articles 48–51; cf. CJ, vi, p. 178. h 77 s .a edward w Barber, An Answer to the Eight Quaeries propounded by the House of w w Commons (1648), pp. 13–16; cf. Edward Barber, An answer to the Essex watchmens watch- m o word (London,.c 1649), p. 13. te 78 a g Winstanley,h Breaking of the day of God, pp. 83, 88, 103, 132, 135. s 79 .a iwbid., pp. 60–63, 103. w w 80 m ibid., pp. 83–4, 88, 132–5. o 81.c te ibid., sig. A4, pp. 59, 135. a g h 82 s Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 102, 130, 143, 206, 241, 470. .a w 83 w w ibid., pp. 472–4. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 107 © Copyrighted Material

Hoping to see ‘True Magistracy Restored’, Winstanley dedicated to Cromwell hism o 84 .c te design for ‘Commonwealths Government’: The Law of Freedom. a g h s .a w w w

m Capital Punishment, Holy War, Military Service and Non-resistanceo .c te a g h s .a Just as the polygenetic and variegated nature of early Anabaptismw produced w w conflicting attitudes towards magistracy, so a number of Anabaptist leaders m o .c developed different positions regarding capital punishment, holyte war, military a g h service and non-resistance. Having separated themselves sfrom the ungodly .a w multitude by voluntarily joining a community of believers wbound in fellowship w

m by a second baptism, they wrestled, like Luther before them,o with the problem of .c te reconciling Mosaic Law with New Testament teachings a on the sword and peace g h s 85 (Matthew 5, Matthew 10:34, Luke 22:38, Romans 13:4)..a Thus, on the one hand, w w w Balthasar Hubmaier, echoing a view commonplace among Protestant reformers m o that wielding the sword was necessary to preserve order.c in a sinful post-lapsarian te a g world, argued that Christian government was a higherh power set up by God for s 86 .a the punishment of evil-doers. On the other, however,w following Conrad Grebel’s w w teachings and the sixth of the Schleitheim Articles,m some of the Swiss Brethren, o .c Stäbler (men of the staff) and Menno Simonste in his later writings rejected capital a g 87 h punishment (Exodus 20:13). Similarly,s influenced by Thomas Müntzer’s .a w apocalyptic call to resist tyranny and wreakw bloody vengeance upon the ungodly – w

m including priests and monks – in the lasto days before the coming of Christ’s earthly .c te a kingdom, Hans Hut counselled sheathingg the sword until God called upon the h s 88 Saints to draw it as the Day of Judgment.a approached. Again at Münster, Bernhard w w w Rothmann exhorted the Anabaptists to take up arms and prepare for battle against m o 89 the entire ‘Babylonian power’ .cand ‘godless establishment’. Conversely a few te a g Swiss Brethren refused militaryh service as did the Hutterites, who professing love s .a w for their enemies also kept wtheir consciences pure by repudiating payment of war w

m o .c te a 84 g h gerrard Winstanley,s The Law of Freedom in a platform: Or, True Magistracy .a w Restored (London, 1652),w title-page. w 85 Stayer, Anabaptistsm and Sword, pp. 36–40, 62–3, 77, 102–3, 123, 126–8, 147–8, o .c 169, 176. te a g 86 h H.S. Bender,s ‘The Pacifism of the Sixteenth Century Anabaptists’, CH, 24 (1955): .a w p. 124; C.-P. Clasen,w Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618. Switzerland, Austria, w

m Moravia, Southo and Central Germany (Ithaca and London, 1972), pp. 177–8; Stayer, .c te Anabaptistsa and Sword, pp. 34, 65, 75, 89–90, 99, 105–8, 141–5, 214, 313; Goertz, g h Anabaptistss , pp. 100–103. .a w 87 w wBender, ‘Pacifism of Sixteenth Century Anabaptists’, pp. 121–3; Stayer,Anabaptists

m and Swordo , pp. 102–3, 120–21, 129–30, 145, 169, 316–18; Goertz, Anabaptists, pp. 152–5. .c 88te a g Stayer, Anabaptists and Sword, pp. 73–90, 152–6, 190; cf. Clasen, Anabaptism, h s pp..a 160–66. w w 89 w Stayer, Anabaptists and Sword, pp. 227–52. © Copyrighted Material 108 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

90 taxes. Resonant of Erasmus’s condemnation of mercenary warfare in Querela m o Pacis (1517), which was subsequently translated into German, it is significant.c te a g h both that Erasmus’s pacifist writings effected Zwingli – at least before hiss death .a w on the battlefield – and that Grebel’s humanist education may have exposedw him w 91 to these same texts. Indeed, Michael Sattler, together with the separatistm Swiss o .c te Brethren, Hutterites and Menno, were all known for espousing the principlea of g h s non-resistance, advocating the use of spiritual weapons like God’s.a word rather w w than devilish instruments of brutality such as the gun, sword or halberd;w preferring

m o martyrdom like sheep among the wolves ready for slaughter to forcefully.c defying te 92 a tyrannical oppression. g h s .a Non-resistance was implicitly rejected by both the thirty-sixthw of the Forty-two w w Articles (1553) and the thirty-seventh of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of m o .c England (1563), which declared that Christian men couldte lawfully bear weapons a g h at the magistrate’s command and serve in wars. The Protestants preacher Hugh .a w Latimer also denounced it as a foolish Anabaptist misinterpretationw of scripture w

m (Ephesians 6:12), dismissing their contention that ‘noo Christian man maye fighte .c 93 te or goe to warrefare’. Furthermore, drawing ona Zwingli’s successor Heinrich g h s Bullinger and other sources, English heresiographers.a and controversialists w w w sustained the association between Anabaptism, pacifism and non-resistance, m o some attributing it to a peculiar sect within the.c movement called ‘Separatists’. It te a g must be emphasised, however, that these hsame critics gave far greater attention s 94 .a to Anabaptist acts of violence. Nor forw all their doctrinal disputes were the w w majority of English Baptists pacifists, ma number serving as soldiers and chaplains o .c 95 in Parliament’s armies during the Civilte Wars. Indeed Baptists were involved a g h s .a w 90 w w The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren. Volume I., trans. The Hutterian Brethren m o (Rifton, New York, 1987), pp. . 61–2,c 236; Bender, ‘Pacifism of Sixteenth Century te a Anabaptists’, pp. 122, 125–6; Clasen,g Anabaptism, pp. 174, 180–81; Stayer, Anabaptists h s .a and Sword, pp. 125, 176, 324; Goertz,w Anabaptists, p. 104. w 91 w Stayer, Anabaptists and Sword, pp. 52–5, 57–8, 93, 95–6, 312, 314; cf. Bender, m o ‘Pacifism of Sixteenth Century.c Anabaptists’, pp. 119, 128–30. te a 92 g Ibid., pp. 122–3, h124–5, 126, 128; Stayer, Anabaptists and Sword, pp. 4–5, 101–2, s .a 118–25, 161, 169, 173–5,w 269, 300, 310–11, 318–19. w w 93 hugh Latimer,m Certayn Godly Sermons (London, 1562), fols 79v–80v; I. Horst, o .c The Radical Brethren:te Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (Nieuwkoop, a g h 1972), pp. 107, 174–5.s .a 94 w Williamw Wilkinson, A Confutation of certaine Articles deliuered unto the Familye of w

Loue (London,m 1579), fol. 74v; Thomas Rogers, The Faith, Doctrine, and Religion professed o .c and protectedte in the Realm of England (Cambridge, 1607), pp. 213–14; Featley, Dippers a g h dipt, p. 32;s Thomas Bakewell, A Confutation of the Anabaptists (London, 1644), sigs. .a w C3v–C3r–2;w Byfield,Temple defilers, p. 20; Anon., The Anabaptists Catechisme ([London]: w

R.A., m 1645), p. 5; Spanheim, Englands Warning, p. 46; Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography o .c (London,te 1654), p. 29. a g h 95 s J.F. McGregor, ‘The Baptists: Fount of All Heresy’, in J.F. McGregor and B. Reay .a w w (eds),w Radical Religion in the English Revolution (Oxford, 1984), pp. 25, 31. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 109 © Copyrighted Material

in planning the abortive Fifth Monarchy rising of 1657 and, though they didm o .c te not participate – despite their eagerness – as an organised group in the bloodya g h s insurrection of 1661, an enterprising pamphleteer nonetheless paralleled Maünster . w 96 w with the ‘late massacres’ committed by the Fifth Monarchists. w

m Besides certain Anabaptist groups, the anti-Trinitarian Polish o Brethren .c te a and English adherents of the Family of Love were the other sixteenth-centuryg h s 97 .a Protestant denominations notorious for non-resistance. The latterw reportedly w w condemned all wars and, according to a 1561 ‘confession’ of two alleged Familists m o .c taken at Guildford, initially prohibited the bearing of weapons butte afterwards, to a 98 g h prevent identification as pacifists, permitted carrying staves. s Though Familists .a w were notoriously skilful at dissembling, this problematic evidencew can not be w

m discounted since it resembles aspects of Niclaes’s message.o Niclaes deplored .c te killing and bloodshed, contrasting a promised spiritual a land of peace where in g h s the last times God would miraculously transport his . holya people (the elect) to w w w dwell peaceably in love, with a land of ignorance whose inhabitants fashioned m o physical swords, halberds, spears, bows, arrows, ordnance,.c guns and armour to te a 99 g wage destructive outward battles one against another.h s .a Against this backdrop, Winstanley’s feelingsw about using violence – it is w w noteworthy that he did not fight in the Civilm War – stand out. Disapproving of o .c weapons which would destroy yet ‘never buildte up’ and peacefully expecting the a g h fulfilment of the prophecy that ‘swords shalls be beaten into plough irons’ and .a w ‘spears into pruning hooks’ (Micah 4:3),w he informed readers of The New Law of w

m Righteousnes that ‘all these wars’, ‘killingo one another’ and ‘destroying Armies’ were .c te a but ‘the rising up of the curse’ under gwhose burden the Creation groaned (Romans h 100 s 8:22). Then, in their first manifesto,.a The True Levellers Standard Advanced w w w (April 1649), the Diggers lamented the death and destruction wreaked to maintain m o tyrannical oppression, questioning.c the madness of violent self-destruction – which te a g h s .a 96 w CSPD 1660–61, p. 471;w Anon., Munster Paralleld In the Late Massacres Committed w by the Fifth Monarchists (London,m 1661); C. Burrage, ‘The Fifth Monarchy Insurrections’, o .c EHR, 25 (1910): pp. 724–5,te 728–9, 731, 736, 744. a g 97 h g. Williams, Thes Radical Reformation (3rd edn, Ann Arbor, MI, 2000), pp. 1136–9, .a w 1148, 1159–60, 1209–10;w P. Brock, ‘Conscientious Objectors in the Polish Brethren w

m Church, 1565–1605’,o Slavonic and East European Review, 70 (1992): pp. 670–87; .c te J.D. Moss, ‘“Goddeda with God”: Hendrik Niclaes and His Family of Love’, Transactions g h of the American Philosophicals Society, 71 (1981): pp. 15, 39, 52, 61. .a w 98 w Moss,w ‘“Godded with God”’, p. 71; John Rogers, The displaying of an horrible

m secte of grosseo and wicked heretiques, naming themselues the Family of loue (London, .c te 1578), sig. I.vv2–r3;a Rogers, Faith, Doctrine, and Religion, p. 214. g h 99 s Hendrick.a Niclaes, Euangelium regni ([Cologne, 1575?]), fol. 78v; Hendrick w w Niclaes,w Terra pacis ([Cologne, 1575?]), fols 6v, 14r, 56v; Hendrick Niclaes, Introdvctio.

m An introductiono to the holy understanding of the Glasse of Righteousnes ([Cologne, 1575?]), .c te a fol. g 21r [2nd pagination]. h s 100 .a Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 182, 204, 222, 247; cf. Winstanley, Breaking of the w w wday of God, pp. 136–7. © Copyrighted Material 110 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material they likened to the Midianites slaying one another in confusion (Judges 7:22). m o Instead they declared their willingness to accept martyrdom, to offer their blood.c te a g h and, unarmed, sacrifice their lives to promote ‘universal Liberty’, trusting thes Lord .a w of Hosts to deliver them from Egyptian bondage (Exodus 6:5–6); ‘not byw Sword w 101 or Weapon’ but by his ‘Spirit’ (cf. Zechariah 4:6). Accounts of their mactivities o .c te confirm that these were not hypocritical empty words, since the Diggersa would g h s 102 neither fight nor ‘defend themselves by arms’, submitting meekly to.a authority. w w Moreover, there were several instances when they responded to violencew with non-

m o resistance. Hence when a Digger was punched during an argument.c he responded te 103 a by turning the other cheek. Winstanley claimed that Diggersg imprisoned in h s .a Walton church were beaten by the ‘rude multitude’, and hew also accused some w w infantry quartered at Walton of assaulting a man and thrashing a boy, stealing and m o 104 .c setting fire to the Diggers’ house. On 11 June 1649, fourte Diggers were brutally a g h attacked by a group of local men wielding staves and clubs,s all ritually dressed in .a 105 w women’s apparel. Again, in April 1650, a poor man’sw house was pulled down w

m and his pregnant wife savagely kicked so that she o miscarried. Finally, after six .c te more of their houses were burned down, the Diggersa were threatened with murder g h 106 s unless they abandoned their plantation. .a w w w Despite enduring these ‘Remarkable Sufferings ’ brought about by the ‘great m o 107 red Dragons power’ (Revelation 12:3), Winstanley.c remained unbowed. Victories te a g obtained by the sword were victories of theh murderer, of the kind one slave got s .a over another. Dragon had fought against dragon,w beast against beast, covetousness w w and pride against covetousness and pride.m Now, however, there was striving in o .c England against ‘the Lamb, the Dove,te the meek Spirit’ and ‘the power of love’. a g h Though his enemies still fought withs ‘fleshly weapons’ – the ‘Sword of Iron’ and .a w w covetousness – Winstanley warnedw that they would perish with them. For, armed

m with the ‘Sword of the Spirit whicho is love’ (cf. Ephesians 6:17), he regarded .c te a g h s .a w 101 w w Sabine (ed.), Winstanley , pp. 247, 253, 256, 266. m 102 o Anon., Declaration.c and Standard of Levellers of England, p. 3; A Modest Narrative te a of Intelligence, no. 3 (14–21g April 1649), p. 23; A Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages in h s .a Parliament, no. 298 (16–23w April 1649), p. 2449; The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, no. w w 308, (17–24 April 1649), p. 1334; The Moderate, no. 41 (17–24 April 1649), sig. ff; The m o Perfect Weekly Account.c (18–25 April 1649), p. 455; The Kingdomes Faithfull and Impartial te a g Scout, no. 13 (20–27h April 1649), p. 98; cf. K.V. Thomas, ‘Another Digger Broadside’, s .a P&P, 42 (1969),w p. 63. w 103 w Kingdomes Faithfull and Impartiall Scout (20–27 April 1649), p. 101; cf. Anon., m o The Speeches.c of Lord Generall Fairfax and the Officers of the Armie to The Diggers at St te a g Georges Hillh in Surry (London, 1649), p. 40. s 104 .a w w Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 281–92, 380, 392; Gurney, Brave Community, w p. 153.m o 105.c te Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 295–8, 393; Gurney, Brave Community, pp. 153–4. a g h 106 s Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 433–6. .a w 107 w w ibid., p. 392. © Copyrighted Material Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer 111 © Copyrighted Material

himself as a soldier of Christ engaged in a spiritual battle: ‘Dragon against them o 108 .c te Lamb’, ‘the power of love against the power of covetousnesse’. What is strikinga g h s here is the resemblance with early Quaker apocalyptic thought. They too believeda . w w themselves called to fight the Lamb’s War in the last days. Nor was thew Lamb’s

m War to be a bloody struggle since, in the mind of the Quaker leader Georgeo Fox, it .c te a was an inward conflict between flesh and spirit; Fox’s refusal to bear garms echoing h s 109 .a Winstanley’s opposition to using weapons in self-defence. w w w All the same, Winstanley never remained entirely opposed to using violence. m o .c In The Law of Freedom, he envisaged an ideal republic establishedte on patriarchal a g h foundations with a Parliament protected by a standing army thats would preserve .a w 110 public order, quell insurrection and repel foreign invasion. Thisw was a necessity. w

m Partly modelled on pre-monarchical ancient Israel, his commonwealtho had a legal .c te system that punished transgressors not just with publica humiliation, whipping, g h s restricted diet, year-long servitude, an ‘eye for eye, .a tooth for tooth, limb for w w w limb’ (Exodus 21:24), but also execution. Among the capital crimes were taking m o legal fees, maintained preaching, buying and selling.c land or produce within the te a g Commonwealth, rape and murder. It was an executioner’sh job to decapitate, hang, s .a 111 shoot or whip the offender ‘according to the sentencew of Law’. w w

m o .c te a g h In December 1646, Robert Baillie, a Churchs of Scotland minister and supporter .a w of Presbyterianism concerned by the ‘greatw multitude’ of ‘seducing spirits’ that w

m in ‘these very miserable times’ were goingo forth into an evil world, penned the .c te a preface to his Anabaptism, the Trveg Fovntaine of Independency, Brownisme, h s Antinomy, Familisme, And the most.a of the other Errours, which ... doe trouble w w w 112 the Church of England (London, 1647). Despite the problematic nature of anti- m o heretical writing in general and.c its spectre in particular, which haunts scholarly te a g efforts to unearth the roots ofh Winstanley’s thought, there is much to be said for s .a w Baillie’s analysis. For distinctivew General Baptist tenets were, as we have seen, the w

m o .c te a g 108 h ibid., pp. 271, 272,s 286, 295, 297-8, 298, 329, 336, 346, 364, 379, 389–90, 437. .a 109 w J. Nickalls (ed.),w Journal of George Fox (Cambridge, 1952; reprinted, London, w

m 1986), pp. 65, 67, 384,o 459, 676, 693; George Fox, A declaration from the harmles & .c te innocent people of aGod, called Quakers (London, 1660); D. Gwyn, Apocalypse of the Word. g h The Life and Messages of George Fox (1624–1691) (Richmond, IN, 1986), pp. 179–207; .a w B. Reay, ‘Quakerismw and Society’, in McGregor and Reay (eds), Radical Religion in the w

m English Revolutiono , pp. 152–3; H. Barbour, ‘The “Lamb’s War” and the Origins of the .c te Quaker Peacea Testimony’, in H. Dyck (ed.), The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective g h (Toronto ands London, 1996), pp. 145–58. .a w 110 w w Sabine (ed.), Winstanley, pp. 286, 552–3, 561–2, 571–6.

111m o Ibid., pp. 192, 197–8, 536, 553–4, 591–2, 593, 594–5, 597–8, 599; R. Zaller, ‘The .c te a Debateg on Capital Punishment during the English Revolution’, American Journal of Legal h s History.a , 31 (1987): pp. 126–44. w w 112 w robert Baillie, Anabaptism, the Trve Fovntaine (1647), sig. *2. © Copyrighted Material 112 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material well-spring from which Winstanley imbibed ideas that informed his understanding m o – above all in the first five pre-Digger publications – of universal .credemption, te a g h particular election, the Saturday and Sunday Sabbath, tithes, ministers, magistratess .a w and violence. Furthermore, Winstanley’s antiscripturism together with hisw beliefs w about divine gifts (revelation, visions, and glossolalia), apostolic practicem and the o .c te soul’s fate after death, likewise requires examination in the context of thisa General g h s Baptist milieu. Then there is the question of Winstanley’s reading habits.a and the w w manner in which he appropriated and reworked his sources. Yet,w even if it can

m o be demonstrated that Winstanley, one of the finest English prose.c writers of his te a generation, was heir to a dissenting Protestant tradition that wentg back by way h s .a of the General Baptists and Familists to Müntzer and Münsterw on the Continent, w w and John Wycliffe and the Lollards in England, I suspect that historians sceptical m o .c of the existence of continuous multifaceted English radicalte traditions would a g h remain unconvinced. Doubtless the resonances and parallelss shown here between .a w Winstanley, his contemporaries and their predecessorsw will be regarded merely w

m as evidence of a genealogy of ideas influenced o by nonconformist notions of .c te suffering and martyrdom. All the same, it is worth aremembering that these beliefs, g h s the manner in which they were articulated and the.a actions they engendered were w w w indisputably radical at specific moments during both the Radical Reformation and m o the English Revolution – and that fact itself should.c give us pause for thought. te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 5 m o .c te a g h s The Poetics of Biblical Prophecy: Abiezer.a w w w

m o Coppe’s Late Converted Midrash .c te a g h s .a Noam Flinker w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m Abiezer Coppe has received a good deal of critical attentiono in recent decades, .c te despite the fact that contemporary culture is often at a a loss when dealing with g h s the strange biblical quotations and paraphrases that appear.a throughout his texts. w w w The significance of these references can help to shed light on Coppe’s discourse, m o especially for those who have lost touch with so much.c of what Christopher Hill te a 1 g refers to as the ‘Biblical Culture’ of the seventeenthh century. I would extend Hill’s s .a general comment to suggest that Coppe’s biblical rhetoricw can be usefully understood w w in terms of the rabbinic reading practice knownm as ‘midrash’. Seventeenth-century o .c Christian Hebraists understood this term to intimatete allegory and mysticism, both a g h aspects of Coppe’s unusual style which includeds his famous cryptic reference to .a w himself as ‘A late converted JEW’. At wleast one recent reader of rabbinic texts w

m accounts for midrash in terms of intertextualo readings of biblical passages. This .c te a practice is reminiscent of Coppe’s gquasi-mystical style which weaves together h s a rich tissue of biblical texts that .parallela and extend his ideological messages, w w w even when his allegories are deliberately ambiguous on the surface. His midrashic m o social critique becomes a hermeneutic.c journey with metaphors that take the reader te a g back and forth between sign andh signified. s .a w A.L. Morton provided wa most cogent introduction to Coppe and his fellow w

Ranters in 1970 and Christopherm Hill made this material more readily available o .c te in books such as The Worlda Turned Upside Down and Milton and the English g h s Revolution. Others such.a as Nigel Smith, J. Colin Davis, Jerome Friedman, w w James Holstun, Clementw Hawes and Nicholas McDowell have added to our

m understanding of Coppe’so role just as some editions of the Norton Anthology of .c te a English Literatureg have included passages from his works as one example of h s .a ‘Voices from thew War’. Andrew Hopton has even published a selection of Coppe’s w 2 w works. Coppe’s lyrical intensity has fascinated poets and scholars for many years. m o .c te a g h 1 s C..a Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (Harmondsworth, w w 1994), pp.w 3–44.

m 2 o .c a.L. Morton, The World of the Ranters: Religious Radicalism in the English te a Revolutiong (London, 1970); C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down. Radical Ideas during h s the.a English Revolution (1972; Harmondsworth, 1984 edn), pp. 19, 25, 35–36; C. Hill, Milton w w andw the English Revolution (London, 1977); N. Smith (ed.), A Collection of Ranter Writings © Copyrighted Material 114 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Major British and American poets may have known of him. Someone like Allen m o Ginsburg, for example, may have consciously echoed Coppe’s tirades. His Howl.c te a g h may owe something to lines from Coppe’s Fiery Flying Roll such as: ‘Once smore, .a w I say, own them [the poor, including beggars, prisoners, etc.]; they are yourself,w w make them one with you, or else go howling into hell; howle for the miseriesm that o 3 .c te are coming upon you, howle’. Barry MacSweeney’s volume of poemsa entitled g h 4 s Ranter implicitly owes something to Coppe. .a w w Some recent scholarship has focused on the unusual naturew of Coppe’s

m o discourse. James Turner goes into some detail about Coppe’s.c ‘rapturous and te 5 a intense Biblical rhetoric’. Tom Hayes claims that Coppe ‘deploysg the discourse h s .a of madness’ by ‘representing himself in his deliberate debasementw of himself, by w w providing images of himself consciously abjecting himself, by showing how his m o .c unified, coherent self was shattered so that he could bet e reborn as a fragmented, a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a from the 17th Century (London, 1983); N. Smith, Perfectiong Proclaimed. Language and h s .a Literature in English Radical Religion 1640–1660 (Oxford,w 1989); J.C. Davis, Fear, Myth, w w and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Cambridge, 1986); J. Friedman, Blasphemy, m o Immorality, and Anarchy: The Ranters and the English.c Revolution (Athens, OH, 1987); te a g J. Holstun, ‘Ranting at the New Historicism’, h English Literary Renaissance, 19 (1989): s .a pp. 189–225; C. Hawes, Mania and Literary wStyle: The Rhetoric of Enthusiasm from the w w Ranters to Christopher Smart (Cambridge, 1996); N. McDowell, The English Radical m o Imagination: Culture, Religion, and Revolution,.c 1630–1660 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 89–136; te a g The Norton Anthology of English Literatureh , ed. M.H. Abrams et al. (6th edn, 2 vols, s .a New York, 1993), 1, pp. 1744–8, and w(7th edn, 2 vols, New York, 2000), 1, pp. 1747–51; w w A. Hopton, Abiezer Coppe: Selected Writings (London, 1987). m 3 o Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings.c , p. 90. It is, however, quite possible that Coppe and te a g Ginsburg independently focusedh on the biblical uses of ‘howl’ in the prophetic works of s .a Isaiah (13:6, 14:31, 52:5, 65:14),w Jeremiah (4:8, 47:2, 48:31), Ezekiel (21:12), Micah (1:3), w w

Zephaniah (1:11), Zechariahm (11:2) and in the New Testament Epistle of James (5:1). o 4 .c B. MacSweeney, Ranterte (Nottingham, 1985). ‘Ranter’ is MacSweeney’s persona a g h in this slim volume of verses about his hero’s search for love and meaning in a dark world .a w peopled with ‘Lollards,w Levellers / Upside Down folk, Miltonic upstarts / heroes & heroines w

/ reading Shelley / takingm up Anarchy like a pen’ (p. 9). When Ranter cries ‘This is my o .c power: To peck andte roar’ (p. 11) or when his bride ‘disappeared / over every horizon / a g h praising civil disorders / singing for the sleepless’ (p. 21), Coppe’s presence is quite strong. .a w Likewise, whenw Ranter rants ‘Where is my bride / holy of holies … Ranter the wanderer w

/ Ranter’s bridem / walking the Weald: / Pilgrim’s Way’ (p. 9), he recalls Coppe’s use of the o .c Canticles (2:10ff.):te ‘WEll, once more; Where be you, ho? Are you within? Where be you? a g h What! sittings upon a Forme, without doors, (in the Gentiles Court,) as if you had neither life .a w nor soulw in you? Rise up, rise up, my Love, my fair one, and come away; for lo, the Winter w is past’m (Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 53). Cf. N. Flinker, The Song of Songs in English o .c Renaissancete Literature: Kisses of Their Mouths (Cambridge, 2000), p. 134. a g h 5 s J.G. Turner, One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of .a w w wMilton (Oxford, 1987), p. 89. © Copyrighted Material Abiezer Coppe’s Late Converted Midrash 115 © Copyrighted Material

6 decentered, subject, Coppe provides a model for his readers to do likewise’.m o .c te Kathryn Gucer extends consideration of the discourse to the ways in whicha the g h s enemies of the Ranters made use of the motif of madness. Their apparent amania . w w ‘was a deliberately crafted rhetorical weapon. In their fierce hostilityw toward

m Ranter madness, pamphleteers positioned themselves against a sectariano critique .c te a of social authority at a moment when that authority was particularlyg vulnerable h s 7 .a to attack’. Clement Hawes objects to a psychoanalytic approach tow the so-called w w madness. He relates to Coppe as practitioner of what he calls a ‘“manic” rhetoric’. m o .c Hawes explains that these ‘manic’ texts: te a g h s .a w all share the key element of enthusiasm: a claim, that is, to supernaturalw authority w

m ... Given that Biblical authority was the outermost horizon of seventeenth-centuryo .c te British thought – a shared master code, as it were, evena among the warring g h s factions – it is deeply unhistorical to read pathology back.a into such enthusiastic w 8 w w rhetorical strategies’. m o .c te a g Nicholas McDowell treats Coppe’s rhetoric by hfocusing on the parody that he s .a has detected beneath the surface of the discourse.w He shows how much of what w w

Coppe wrote anticipated the response of hism academic ‘cronies’ trained in the o .c Latin Grammar of William Lily which ‘cante be described as the foundation text a g h 9 of the intellectual culture of early modern s England’. McDowell’s account of the .a w many ways in which Coppe parodied hisw critics as well as Lily is fascinating and w

m brilliant, though it is unfortunate that o his discussion of Coppe’s use of Hebrew .c 10 te a contains typographic errors. g h s My presentation of Coppe’s midrashic.a technique is another approach to the w w w rhetorical concerns that are at the heart of Hawes’s project. Coppe’s discourse is m o generically different than the Cartesian.c ‘cogito’ that Tom Hayes treats. Neither te a g need the style be taken to intimateh something about the psychic state of the writer. s .a w Coppe is deliberately makingw use of what Jacques Derrida might have seen as a w non-logocentric manner form writing about his world. The biblical ‘master code’ o .c te that Hawes imagines was,a for Coppe, a way of presenting a world-view that he g h s was not ready or willing.a to expose fully. For both spiritual and practical reasons w w w

m o .c te a g 6 h t. Hayes,s ‘Diggers, Ranters, and Women Prophets: The Discourse of Madness and .a w the Cartesian Cogitow in Seventeenth-Century England’, CLIO: A Journal of Literature, w

History, and them Philosophy of History, 26 (1996): pp. 38–9. o 7 .c te K. Ga ucer, ‘“Not Heretofore Extant in Print”: Where the Mad Ranters Are’, Journal g h of the Historys of Ideas, 61 (2000): p. 78. .a w 8 w Hw awes, Mania and Literary Style, pp. 1–2.

9 m Mo cDowell, English Radical Imagination, p. 100. .c te a10 instead of מספריס g McDowell, English Radical Imagination, p. 112, has m’sapris h s and avitzezer ,אתה אלי instead of ata eli אההאלי On p. 120, he has ahaheli .מספרים m’saprim.a w w .אביעזר w instead of avi’ezerאביצזר © Copyrighted Material 116 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material he had to embrace ambiguity and what better way for doing so than to speak in m o riddles or parables? .c te a g h Coppe made use of Judaic materials in order to fashion and present his Rs anter .a w ideology that was a far cry from anything Jewish. He had his name printedw in w

Hebrew letters on the cover page of Some Sweet Sips, of Some Spirituallm Wine o 11 .c te (1649) and presented himself as ‘A late converted JEW’. He likewisea made g h s reference to the way in which Hebrew letters are read on a written page:.a ‘that can w w spell every word backwards, and then tell what it is: that can readew him from the

m o left hand to the right, as if they were reading English, or from the.c right to the left, te 12 a as if they were reading Hebrew’. All this was, however, partg of a strategy that h s .a encouraged English Protestants to go beyond the rigid assumptionsw of their creed w w and make the kinds of changes that ancient Christianity demanded of Judaism. So m o .c when he spoke of being ‘a late converted Jew’ Coppe meantte that he had recently a g h abandoned what Nigel Smith terms his early ‘Presbyterians leanings’ and later .a w 13 Baptist teachings, ‘on the road to his eventual Antinomianw stance’. So ‘Jew’ for w

m Coppe was a way to describe the Christianity that precededo the new Ranter truth. .c te Coppe’s familiarity with basic principles of Hebrewa orthography was probably g h s the result of his studies at Oxford where be began.a work on a BA but seems to have w 14 w w left without a degree. There he might have read the work of Thomas Godwin, m o a somewhat popular seventeenth-century Christian.c Hebraist, whose account of te a g midrash in 1625 could be taken as a generalh description of Coppe’s approach s .a to discourse a few decades later. Godwinw had pointed out that ‘The Disputer … w w insisted vpon allegories, and searchedm out mysticall interpretations of the Text. o .c Hence himselfe was termed Darschante , and his exposition, or homily, Midrasch. a g h And their schoole, Beth Hammidraschs . They were counted the profoundest .a w 15 w interpreters’. A consideration ofw Coppe’s work as ‘a late converted’ midrash is

m thus in accord with the Jewish metaphoro that he himself used to describe himself .c te a and his text. g h s .a It is Coppe’s weaving togetherw of various biblical texts that connects him to the w w methodologies of midrash. Daniel Boyarin has shown how this classical rabbinical m o genre is a kind of intertextual.c interpretation of biblical passages that produces te a g h a new version of the texts that purports to render an account of the tradition not .a w w w

m 11 o Smith (ed.), .cRanter Writings, p. 42. te a 12 g ibid., p. 61.h s 13 .a w ibid., p.w 11. w 14 althoughm most scholars agree about this, there has been some recent speculation o .c on the extentte and nature of Coppe’s work at Oxford. Nigel Smith is content to indicate a g h his havings left (Ranter Writings, p. 11). Robert Kenny refers to ‘the attention he gave .a w to learning’w (R. Kenny, ‘“In These Last Dayes”: The Strange Work of Abiezer Coppe’, w

Seventeenthm Century, 13 (1998): p. 159). For more biographical detail about Coppe, o .c cf. A.te Hessayon, ‘The Making of Abiezer Coppe’, JEH, 62, no. 1 (2011): pp. 38–58. a g h 15 s thomas Godwin, Moses and Aaron. Civil and Ecclesiastical Rites, Vsed by the .a w w ancientw Hebrewes (London, 1625), p. 34. © Copyrighted Material Abiezer Coppe’s Late Converted Midrash 117 © Copyrighted Material

previously articulated: ‘This perspective comprehends how later texts interpret andm o .c te rewrite the earlier ones to change the meaning of the entire canon … We have here,a g 16 h s then an almost classic intertextuality.’ Geoffrey Hartman and Sanford Budick’sa . w w pioneering work on midrash and literature has paved the way to understandingw early

m modern Christian appropriations of biblical texts as midrashic. Their introductiono .c te a refers to a ‘weaving together of prooftext and commentary [which] quickensg our h s .a understanding of textual production and suggests a symbiosis of interpretivew and w 17 w creative writing’. m o .c Here there is a compelling parallel in Coppe’s work. He spellste out his name in a g h Hebrew, translates Abiezer into Latin (auxilium patris or helps of the father) and .a w then appropriates for his own purposes the intertextuality wof biblical quotation w

m in the classical rabbis. He shapes his biblical style in ordero to add strength and .c te power to his views. He thus makes the genre of midrasha his own and intuitively g h s focuses on the poetic texture of social justice that is at the.a heart of so much of the w w w literary prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. He presents his message by means of some m o densely woven biblical passages that take on coherence.c in the poetic of his own te a g text. Coppe does this in such a way as to integrateh the language of biblical praise s .a of God into the prophetic mode of condemnationw of social injustice. w w

Coppe’s personal shifts in belief and practicem from Presbyterian beginnings o .c and Baptist preaching to Ranter ideologue andte spokesman, to prison, to an ironic a g h recanting of his previous beliefs, all make uses of biblical references and imagery to .a w articulate and develop his views. His Somew Sweet Sips makes constant reference to w

m a variety of traditional sources from botho the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. .c te a This is likewise true of both parts ofg his Fiery Flying Roll (1649). In 1651, when h s he published his Remonstrance of.a the Sincere and Zealous Protestation and w w w Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth from prison, he continued to cite scripture on m o nearly every page. My basic contention.c here is that Coppe moves back and forth te a g between a series of biblical contextsh in order to come up with his own version of s .a w spiritual truth. His use of biblicalw references marks him as midrashic, albeit in w his own ‘lately converted’m manner. His text is largely comprised of long strings o .c te of quotations that may aappear to be mere tokens of orthodox faith and authority g h s but these are anything.a but traditional! Coppe appropriates biblical texts in order w w to imply that his messagesw of spiritual awakening, of sexual desire and of social

m criticism are the realo truths of the Bible. .c te a The lyrical qualityg of Coppe’s prose is based to a large extent on references h s .a to biblical textsw that function as lyric in the Hebrew Bible. Coppe characterises w w his Some Sweets Sips as ‘One of the Songs of Sion’, and then shifts back and m o 18 .c forth betweente biblical metaphors and typological understandings of these texts. a g h s .a w 16 w w d. Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington, 1990),

m p. 16. o .c 17te a g G. Hartman and S. Budick, ‘Introduction’, in G. Hartman and S. Budick (eds), h s Midrash.a and Literature (New Haven and London, 1986), p. xii. w w 18 w Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 42. © Copyrighted Material 118 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

His types celebrate striking images such as ‘Late converted JEW’, ‘the Lords m o Lilly’ or ‘Land flowing with such wine, milke, and honey’, while their implicit.c te a g h significance calls for a movement to ‘Arise out of Flesh, into Spirit; out of Forms , .a w into Power; Out of Type, into Truth; out of the Shadow, into the Substancew ; out w 19 of the Signe, into the thing Signified, &c.’. All of this implicitly arguesm that he o .c te would apply readings of the Christian significance of the Hebrew Biblea to the new g h s Ranter doctrine which is to replace traditional theology the way early.a Christianity w w understood itself to have replaced or ‘fulfilled’ ancient Judaism. w

m o As Some Sweet Sips continues, the excitement of the narrator’s.c voice increases te a and the promise of mysterious enlightenment becomes more andg more alluring. h s .a Epistle II promises ‘the dawning of the day’ to those who willw awaken from their w 20 w spiritual lethargy. The language Coppe employs echoes the Song of Songs m o .c at the beginning of Chapter 1 and concludes with a paraphrasete of Psalm 24. A a g h careful reading of this tissue of intertextual echoes shoulds not miss the subtlety .a w of the connections. Coppe’s biblical culture takes the wmotif of consciousness and w

m awakening and charges it with sexual energy througho echoes of Canticles. .c te ‘The day star is up’ says Coppe: that is, the newa day is here and the sun (with g h s a pun on Son) is shining. He goes on: ‘rise up my.a love, my dove, my faire one, w w w and come away. The day star woeth you, it is the voice of my beloved that saith m o 21 open to me – I am risen indeed, rise up my.c love, open to me my faire one.’ te a g The biblical texture here is rich and complex.h The first part of this passage is a s .a quotation from Canticles 2:10: ‘My belovedw spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my w w love, my fair one, and come away’. In mCanticles the lover goes on to describe the o .c coming of spring as he urges her to jointe him in partaking of the sensuous pleasures a g h of nature for their lovemaking. The s flowers appeal to visual and olfactory senses, .a w w the voice of the turtledove incorporatesw sound while the green figs and tender

m grapes combine to appeal to sight,o taste and smell: .c te a g h s .a For lo, the Winter is past,w the raine is over and gone, the flowers appear on the w w earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the Turtle is heard m o in our land, And [let him.c that hath an eare to heare, heare what the Spirit saith] te a g h the figtree putteth forths her green figges, and the vines with the tender grape give .a w 22 a good smell: Arisew my love, my fair one and come away. w

m o .c te Coppe encompassesa all this in his quotation but then connects this passage to g h s another from Luke’s.a Gospel where the disciples realise that they have just seen w w the risen Jesusw and exclaim ‘The Lord is risen indeed’ (Luke 24:34). Thus, while

m o Coppe’s text.c is charged with sensuousness and implicit sexuality from Canticles, it te a g h s .a w w w 19 m Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, pp. 47–8. o 20.c te ibid., p. 51. a g h 21 s ibid., p. 52. .a w 22 w w ibid., pp. 53–4. © Copyrighted Material Abiezer Coppe’s Late Converted Midrash 119 © Copyrighted Material

23 likewise associates these experiences with Christian resurrection. For Coppe, them o .c te human being is the risen Christ and sexual experience is part of the consciousnessa g h s of this new understanding of traditional Christianity. a . w w Coppe then returns to awakening and the light of day which strugglesw against

m the darkness of night and death. He quotes Isaiah and now provides ano account .c te a of his biblical text. Even here, however, his reference (‘Isai. 60. 1,2,3,17,g &c.’) h s .a is slightly incomplete since the conclusion of his paragraph is a literalw quotation w 24 w from the continuation of the passages in Isaiah. Coppe the preacher is not content m o .c with this, however. He goes on to tie his previous themes to histe original interest a g h in consciousness raising or awakening. He quotes a well-knowns passage from .a w Psalm 24 in which the gates (of Heaven?) lift up their heads tow greet the coming of w

m God. For Coppe, however, the entry of ‘the King of glory’ carrieso with it necessary .c 25 te violence and destruction. What happens, he asks implicitly,a when doors lift up g h s their heads? .a w w w

m o O! Open ye doors, Hearts open; let the King of glory.c come in. Open dear hearts. te a g Dear hearts, I should be loath to be arraigned forh Burglary – The King himself s .a (whose houses you all are) who can, and will, andw well may break open his own w w

houses; throw the doors off the hinges with hism powerfull voyce, which rendeth o .c 26 the heavens, shatter these doors to shivers, andte break in upon his people. a g h s .a w The lifting up of the heads of the doors becomesw a reflection of the ravages of the w

m 1640s. The imagery of the Psalm takeso on new meaning as Coppe demands that .c te a his listeners understand the imagery g of the everlasting doors in terms of ordinary h s hinges that cannot accommodate the.a lifting of the heads of the doors. The chapter w w w thus concludes with the ambiguity of an exultant celebration of light that is m o followed by the disruptive aspect.c of consciousness-raising and the shattering of the te a g comfortable world. It can be understoodh as an unavoidable aspect and concomitant s .a w of the recent Civil Wars. w w

In later sections of Somem Sweet Sips, Coppe refers to a letter describing a dream o .c te ‘from Mrs. T.P. (anothera late Converted Jew)’, and then proceeds to make his g 27 h s own comments. These.a passages are of interest in terms of the biblical style of w w its presentation of mattersw of gender in addition to their significance in recent

m scholarship by Arielo Hessayon. The texture of Epistle IV is significantly different .c te a than that of Coppe’sg explanatory comments in Epistle V. Mrs. T.P. makes reference h s .a to various biblicalw phrases and images, yet these are less abundant than the midrash- w w like texts that Coppe uses to shape his response. Epistle V juxtaposes a great many m o .c te a g 23 h Fors more on Canticles in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, see Flinker, .a w Song of wSongs. w 24 m o Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 52; Isaiah 60:18–20. .c 25te a Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 52; Psalm 24:7–10. g h s 26 .a Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 52. w w 27 w ibid., p. 64 © Copyrighted Material 120 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material biblical passages as it incorporates one of Coppe’s lyrical prose pieces, ‘Songs of m 28 o Sion, the Lords song’. There are texts here from Judges (5:12), Canticles (2:8,.c te a g h 5:1–2), Psalms (137:3–4), Mark (1:6) and Luke (15) among others. These combines .a w to support Coppe’s views of gendered equality but they likewise constitutew a love w song. Coppe is careful here but the biblical texts help articulate his rhetoricm of o .c te terse, sexual excitement. He tells Mrs. T.P. ‘I know you are a Vessel ofa the Lords g h s House, filled with heavenly liquor, and I see your love’. ‘And it is.a the voice of w w 29 my Beloved, that saith, drinke oh friends! yea, drinke abundantly woh Beloved!’

m o Those last lines are from the opening of Canticles 5 in which the.c lovers speak of te a their desire but cannot manage to meet. Just after he has spokeng the verses asking h s .a the friends to drink abundantly, the beloved in Canticles tellsw of how ‘the voice w w of my beloved … knocketh, saying Open to me my sister, my love, my dove, my m o .c undefiled’. She hesitates for a moment but then opens hert e door, only to find that he a g h 30 is gone. She goes looking for him and is beaten by the watchmen.s Needless to say, .a w Canticles is a troublesome text. Its nearly explicit sexualityw is juxtaposed against w

m the agony of separation and frustration that the loverso experience. Traditionally .c te speaking, Jews and Christians alike have read this abiblical book as allegory rather g h s than relate to its literal level of carnal significance..a Coppe’s language entertains w w w both of these levels of meaning. m o It is at this point that Hessayon’s discovery.c is most suggestive. He has identified te a g Mrs. T.P.: ‘On 12 November 1648 Coppe receivedh a fraternal letter from Mistress s .a T.P., probably Thomasine Pendarves (bapw . 1618, d. in or after 1671), daughter w w of Thomas Newcomen of Dartmouth andm wife of John Pendarves, minister of St o 31 .c Helen’s, Abingdon’. Manfred Brod thase recently treated Coppe’s presentation of a g h 32 Mrs. T.P. as ‘an eloquent love-letters to Thomasine’. Coppe’s text abounds in .a w w sexual tension that remains unresolvedw as he makes his case for gender equality.

m He refers to Luke’s Prodigal Sono narrative (15:1–32) with women at home with .c te a their Father (like the elder brotherg of the parable) while the men are abroad like the h s .a younger son. The Epistle as wa whole calls up images of biblical poetry from Judges w w and Psalms to articulate the spirituality of the inner court of the ancient Temple at m o Jerusalem. All this helps .cto establish what Brod describes as ‘a powerful narrative te a g 33 h of cosmic redemptions and recovery from the Fall’, even as it establishes the .a w mode of midrashic reshapingw of biblical texts. w

m Beyond his messageo of prophetic anger at the evils of social injustice, Coppe .c te was suggesting anda implying more than he could say directly. His midrash is a g h s poetic statement.a that relies on hint and innuendo. The process of interpretation is w w w

m 28 o Smith.c (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 67. te a 29 g ibid.,h p. 66. s 30 .a w w song of Solomon 5:2–7. w 31 m a. Hessayon, ‘Abiezer Coppe’, ODNB. o 32.c te m. Brod, ‘Doctrinal Deviance in Abingdon: Thomasine Pendarves and her Circle’, a g h Baptists Quarterly, 41 (2005): p. 97. .a w 33 w w Ibid. © Copyrighted Material Abiezer Coppe’s Late Converted Midrash 121 © Copyrighted Material

somehow at the centre of his text. The reader is challenged to struggle to understandm o .c te while the speaker always stops short of revealing his message. The openinga of g h s Some Sweet Sips is typical: ‘HEer’s something (according to the wisdomea given . w w to us) written unto you, in all these ensuing Epistles. In which are somew things

m hard to be understood, which they that are Unlearned, and unstable, o wrest: as .c te 34 a they doe also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.’ The difficultyg the h s .a reader is faced with is basically one of interpretation, a process thatw carries with w w it a dire threat: destruction. As the Epistle goes on, it continues to offer hints at its m o .c meaning without ever revealing this. As such, the rhetoric demandste that readers a g h provide their own answers. Coppe’s language promises absolutes revelation but .a w never provides it. w w

m The methodology of the late converted midrash is seto out at the beginning: .c te ‘Here is Scripture language throughout these lines: yet Book,a Chapter, and Verse g h 35 s seldome quoted’. The biblical sources are not quoted.a because each reader w w w is expected to provide them. On another level, however, ‘Book, Chapter, and m o Verse’ would merely point in the right direction without.c revealing anything. The te a g lines that follow provide an example. Coppe quotesh from the Gospels which, in s .a turn, refer back to Isaiah. The Hebrew prophetw had been presenting a message w w of comfort and promise after earlier punishmentm (Isaiah 40:1). In the Gospels, o .c however, these words become part of the descriptionte of John the Baptist and his a g h demand for baptism and repentance. Implicits in the placement of Isaiah’s words .a w in the mouth of John is a shift in meaningw from the promise of redemption after w

m exile and destruction to a new kind ofo promise based on repentance. In Coppe’s .c te a text these lines from the Gospels introduceg the coming of the Bridegroom from h s Canticles (5:2), ‘the voice of my Beloved.a , that knocketh, saying, Open to me, and w w w let me come In’. This then leads directly into a key passage for Coppe: m o .c te a g Here is the voyce of one crying:h Arise out of Flesh, into Spirit; out of Form, into s .a w Power; Out of Type, into wTruth; out of the Shadow, into the Substance; out of the w 36 Signe, into the thing Signifiedm , &c. o .c te a g h s While Isaiah was speaking.a of comfort and the Gospels were hinting at the secret w w mission of Jesus, Coppe’sw midrash is about the struggle for the absolute. Flesh,

m form, type, shadowo and signs are all part of the lack of clarity in the human world, .c te a but spirit, power,g truth, substance and the thing signified are part of the world of h s .a absolutes that wlives within the ephemeral. Coppe, however, cannot and will not w w express himself so clearly. The best he can do is to allow his use of quotation and m o 37 .c language tote intimate that which cannot be expressed: ‘the thing Signified’. a g h s .a w w w 34 m o Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 47. .c 35te a Ibid. g h s 36 .a ibid., pp. 47–8. w w 37 w ibid., p. 48. © Copyrighted Material 122 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

A significant element in Coppe’s midrashic rhetoric concerns his development m o of the motif of the hermeneutic journey. He begins this in Some Sweet Sips as part.c te a g h of his general dichotomy between letter and spirit: ‘If thou shouldest arise intos the .a w Letter of these Letters, before the Spirit of life enter into thee, Thou wouldstw runne w 38 before the Lord, and out-runne thy selfe, and runne upon a rock’. The runningm here o .c te is part of the underlying conflicted metaphor that moves in different adirections at g h s the same time and thus demands that the reader interpret its significance..a Running w w before the Lord is probably a positive act yet it immediately shiftsw to ‘out-runne

m o thy selfe’ and thence to ‘runne upon a rock’. That is, what begins.c as apparently te 39 a pious turns out to be ‘a stumbling-stone to some’. The readerg is thus forced to h s .a reinterpret the meaning of the verb. The confusion about howw to interpret ‘run’ is w w part of the motif of inside and outside, within and without. The solution here is m o .c to be ‘Inside’ where ‘there is no occasion of stumbling’. tHe e soon returns to what a g h he calls ‘one string of this instrument’: ‘Some are at sHome, and within; Some .a w Abroad, and without. They that are at Home, are suchw as know their union in w 40 m God, and live upon, and in, and not upon any thingo below, or beside him’. The .c te distinction or tension between ‘Home’ and ‘Abroad’a is part of a larger metaphor g h s that gets more development later in the pamphlet..a The conceptual movement from w w w Abroad to Home is, in abbreviated form, the H omeric theme of nostos or return. m 41 o Despite his early study of Greek, Coppe makes.c no explicit reference to Homer te a g here but there is constant attention to the speaker’sh attempt at communicating his s .a meaning without literally doing so. The wreader must struggle to interpret and on w w that level must travel the infinite mentalm distance from sign to signified. This is the o .c beginning of the motif of the hermeneuticte journey for Coppe. a g h This path takes on a series of biblicals contexts as Some Sweet Sips continues. .a w w Coppe returns to Canticles and invitesw his reader to go on a journey: ‘Come with

m me from Lebanon, with me fromo Lebanon, from the top of Amana, look from .c te a the top of Shenir, and Hermong , from the Lyons dens, from the mountains of the h s 42 .a Leopards. Come with me, Risew , let us be going.’ The biblical text (Canticles 2:8) w w requires interpretation and this is surely part of the message. The invitation to m o travel is clearly more than.c a reference to a literal Middle Eastern journey whatever te a g 43 h the biblical passage originallys meant. For Coppe, then, the journey is first and .a w foremost one of a searchw for meaning in both the letter and spirit of the text. w

m o .c te 38 a g Smith (ed.),h Ranter Writings, p. 48. s 39 .a Isaiah’s wmetaphor for something difficult to accept or a trap in 8:14. Paul cited this w w in Romans 9:33. m o 40 .c Smithte (ed.), Ranter Writings, pp. 48–9. a 41 g h hessayons points out that ‘in his diary entry for 18 October 1634 he [Thomas .a w Dugard]w noted laconically that Coppe and two other boys had received tuition from a Greek w

New Testamentm and Homer’ (‘The Making of Abiezer Coppe’, p. 44). o 42.c te Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 54. a g h 43 s For more on Coppe’s use of this passage from Canticles, see Flinker, Song of Songs, .a w w pp.w 133–5. © Copyrighted Material Abiezer Coppe’s Late Converted Midrash 123 © Copyrighted Material

The language of the pamphlet takes on additional significance in terms of mthe o .c te journey motif. The title refers to ‘Grapes, brought … from Spiritual Canaan’a and g h s goes on at some length about the need to ‘hasten to Spirituall Canaan (the Livinga . w 44 w Lord,) which is a land of large Liberty’. The journey here is, of course, thatw of the

m biblical exodus from Egypt which Coppe takes as a central metaphor foro spiritual .c te a awakening. The biblical texts provide the earthly details of the journeyg while the h s .a contexts and implications Coppe uses to present his text require wthe reader to w w contemplate the literal journey at the same time as attempting to understand its m o .c significance. te a g h At the conclusion of the second Epistle in Some Sweet Sipss , Coppe implicitly .a w refers back to his title and to the journey motif. His speakerw expresses the hope w

m that men ‘may seeke Truth. (The truth as it is in Jesus)’,o and then goes on to .c te indicate that the very process of seeking must be qualified:a ‘That they may seek g h s Truth, and not Type, which was here below, while he was.a here in the Vaile, which w w w is his body. That they may awake, stand upon their legs and walke, and no longer m o seeke (The living among the dead.).’ The process of.c seeking must avoid the ‘type’ te a g – which takes us back to the act of interpretation.h Like the disciples who went s .a to the grave of Jesus only to be asked ‘Why seekw ye the living among the dead?’ w w

(Luke 24:5), Coppe would have his readers gom beyond the type and seek the risen o .c Christ, that is liberty or ‘the Land that is veryte far off – to some as yet, yet neere a g 45 h to others’. The seeking of the truth is thuss likened to the journey to ‘the Land .a w that is very far off’ or Spiritual Canaan. Tw he road to be followed leads from Egypt w

m to the Promised Land. o .c te a Although Coppe continues to makeg use of the Exodus from Egypt as a central h s metaphor, there are other biblical .atexts that articulate a similar message. Most w w w striking in this context is the citation from Psalm 23 in Epistle II of Some Sweet m o Sips. As the speaker distinguishes.c between flesh and spirit he suddenly introduces te a g the language of the psalm whichh implicitly insists upon the metaphoric significance s .a w of its own worldly references:w w

m o .c te And though I have knownea Men after the Flesh, Pastors, Shepheards after the g h s Flesh. Yet Now, Henceforth.a know I them so no more. I now know, that The Lord w w 46 is my Pastor, I shallw not want; He maketh me to lie downe in Green Pastures.

m o .c te a The imagery of gthe psalm requires that the reader or listener recognise that the h s .a message is notw about literal shepherds or green pastures. As he continues, Coppe’s w w speaker is apparently just quoting the psalm: ‘He Leadeth me beside the Still m o .c Waters, Hete Restoreth my soule, he leadeth me in the pathes of Righteousnesse, for a g h his namess sake: yea, though I walke through the valley of the Shadow of Death, .a w I will fearew no evill: for Thou art with Me, &c.’ Then follows a short explanation: w

m o .c 44te a Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 42. g h s 45 .a ibid., p. 57. w w 46 w ibid., p. 59. © Copyrighted Material 124 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

‘This hath been fulfilled in a more literall, externall way, formerly; Is Now m o fulfilling in a spirituall, glorious, and Inward way’. That is, the language requires.c te a g h the reader to recognise the breakdown between the two worlds. Coppe setss the .a w journey ‘Beside the Still Waters’, on ‘the pathes of Righteousnesse’ and ‘throughw w the valley of the Shadow of Death’ in the wilderness, even though them psalm o .c te makes no such association: ‘And that in the Wildernesse too. He hatha prepared g h s a Table in the wildernesse’. This eventually leads back to the Exodus.a when God w w ‘lighted his people by a pillar of fire’. The journey motif leads wdirectly to ‘this

m o glorie and guidance, this light and lustre’ through poetic association.c and midrashic te 47 a juxtaposition of disconnected biblical texts. g h s .a This blending of a series of biblical metaphors is likewise wpart of the texture of w w The Fiery Flying Roll. In both parts of this pamphlet, Coppe picks up the theme of m o .c prophetic destruction and articulates his views by means ofte biblical images that he a g h reshapes into a coherent whole. The ferocity of his languages of destruction is, of .a w course, dependent upon the biblical prophet’s condemnationw of his society for its w

m failures to pay proper attention to the suffering of theo poor. Coppe cites a variety .c te 48 of such passages but, as he promises in Some Sweeta Sips, he is not always explicit g h s about his sources. .a w w w The central hermeneutic journey metaphor in this pamphlet is one of flight m o to Heaven. On the level of imagery (what Coppe.c refers to as ‘history’) there are te a g references to travel through a gate, goingh up to London, going into holes and s .a caves, flight in ‘fiery Chariots’, departing,w following and creeping, but these are all w w connected to the central cultural vision mof seeking salvation. For Coppe this search o .c involves a struggle to present the difficultyte of articulating just what this means. a g h Thus, whatever the specific kinds of travel, Coppe’s point is always somehow .a w w beyond the metaphor. w

m The firstFiery Flying Roll openso with a preface in which Coppe tells the reader .c te a that he ‘will only point at the gate;g thorow which I was led into that new City, new h s .a Hierusalem’. This action, however,w is soon translated into images of illness, fire w w and destruction in which he tells of being ‘utterly plagued, consumed, damned, m o rammed, and sunke into .nothing’c only then to be promised: te a g h s .a w Fear not, I will takew thee up into mine everlasting Kingdom. But thou shalt (first) w

drink a bitter cup,m a bitter cup, a bitter cup; whereupon … I was throwne into the o .c te belly of hell (anda take what you can of it in these expressions, though the matter g h s 49 is beyond expression)..a w w w

m o The motif of.c entry into the New Jerusalem becomes a variety of other experiences te a g which culminateh with the command ‘Go up to London, to London, that great City, s .a w w w

m o 47.c te Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 59. a g h 48 s ibid., p. 47. .a w 49 w w ibid., pp. 81–2. © Copyrighted Material Abiezer Coppe’s Late Converted Midrash 125 © Copyrighted Material

50 write, write, write’. The journey through the gates of Jerusalem shifts into onem to o .c te London which, in turn, becomes a writing assignment. The travel is translateda into g h s writing which must then be interpreted by the reader. a . w w As the pamphlet continues, there is an implicit intertextual movementw back

m and forth between London and Jerusalem as talk of ‘the streets of the greato City’ .c te a leads to political references to the Levellers and the ‘late slaine or deadg Charles’, h s .a to long quotations from a prophecy of Isaiah. The mind-boggling shiftsw in time and w w space are part of the hermeneutic challenge to understanding that is at the centre m o .c of the pamphlet. Coppe is condemning the excesses of his own ttimee but doing so a g h in the language of biblical prophets such as Isaiah or Ezekiel.s As readers we are .a w encouraged to follow him as he moves into the heavenly Jerusalemw and then goes w

m to London to write, but these and the many other images areo meant to be read as .c te mystery rather than explicit history. a g h s Coppe’s hermeneutic journey thus involves both literal.a references to places and w w w travel, and mystical or spiritual approaches to these passages. On one level, the m o point of the juxtaposition of biblical and seventeenth-century.c time is the intimation te a g that England in 1649 is not unlike biblical Israel ash it faced destruction and exile. s .a Coppe’s text points to the similarities but leavesw the explicit interpretation to the w w reader as part of the reading experience. For example,m near the end of the first part o .c of his Fiery Flying Roll, Coppe refers to Isaiahte 10 in the context of a collection a g h of biblical passages about the destructions of trees. The headnote indicates that .a w the chapter is about ‘How the Judge of Heavenw and Earth, who judgeth righteous w

m judgement, passeth sentence against allo those Great Ones, who (like Oakes and .c 51 te a tall Cedars) will not bow’. The chapterg itself consists of a series of paraphrases h s and full quotations from Daniel (5).a and Isaiah (10). The passages from Isaiah all w w w deal with the destruction of trees and do so with a series of powerful images: m o .c te a g he shall kindle a burning, hlike the burning of a fire … and it shall burne and s .a w devoure his thornes, and hisw briers in one day. And shall consume the glory of his w

Forrest ... shall lop the mbough with terror … And he shall cut down the thickets o .c 52 te of the Forrest with iron.a g h s .a w w These are all direct wquotations from the King James Version of Isaiah 10:16–18,

m 33. The original contextso can be understood in terms of social justice (that is, the .c te a prophet’s anger gat its absence), but in Coppe’s text there is likewise more than h s .a a hint of the hermeneuticw journey. The speaker connects his biblical references w w in such a way as to suggest a hidden meaning that says more than the individual m o .c words seemte to articulate. a g h Coppes concludes that all this is the result of the way in which the ‘Great Ones’ .a w have oppressedw the needy: ‘For the cryes of the poore, for the oppression of the w

m o .c 50te a ibid., p. 83. g h s 51 .a ibid., p. 94. w w 52 w ibid., p. 95. © Copyrighted Material 126 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

53 needy. For the horrid insolency of proud man.’ He does not, however, mention m o that Isaiah’s chapter – like so many other passages in the Hebrew Bible – begins.c te a g h with an explicit condemnation of social injustice: ‘Woe unto them that decrees .a w unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed;w To w turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from them poor of o .c te my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the afatherless!’ g h s (Isaiah 10:1–2). That is, the entire passage about the destruction of .athe forests is w w introduced by Isaiah in a manner quite similar to Coppe’s conclusion.w Coppe’s

m o tirade is a paraphrase of the prophetic context in Isaiah. He writes.c as if he were re- te a enacting the social critique of the biblical prophets and his voice hereg is deliberately h s .a fashioned as an echo of the biblical context. w w w Coppe’s Second Fiery Flying Roule works out a further blending of the visions m o .c and metaphors it uses and examines. The title-page speakste of ‘the Day of the a g h Lords Recovery and Discovery’, and adds to this ‘narrations of various, strange, .a w yet true stories’ as well as an account of ‘how (most miraculously)w they (even base w

m things) have been, are, and shall be made fiery Chariots,o to mount up some into .c 54 te divine glory, and unspotted beauty and majesty’. a These elements come together g h s on the level of the biblical passages that take on.a new meaning in the context of w w w their appearance in Coppe’s text just as they complete the motif of the hermeneutic m o journey. When, for example, he refers to the.c words of Jesus about giving to the te a g poor, he shifts the point from literal followingh (to become a disciple) to following s .a (or paying attention to) a narration: w w w

m o .c Come! give all to the poore and followte me, and you shall have treasure in heaven. a g h Follow me, who was numbred amongs transgressors, and whose visage was more .a w w marr’d then any mans, follow mew ... Follow me, who, last Lords day Septem. 30.

55 m 1649. met him in open field. o .c te a g h s .a Following Coppe’s narrationw is thus compared to the injunction of the Gospels w 56 w to give all to the poor. Coppe’s narration of his own act of charity leads into an m o account of the connection.c between ‘base things’ and the ‘fiery Chariot to mount the te a g 57 h Author up into divine sglory’. This motif of the chariot is a traditional metaphor .a w for the soul’s ascent w into heaven. Coppe then explains that his sexual behaviour w

m is part of a mysteryo or riddle that is simultaneously about spiritual travel and .c te interpretation: ‘Anda then again, by wanton kisses, kissing hath been confounded; g h s and externall kisses,.a have been made the fiery chariots, to mount me swiftly into w w 58 the bosom of whim whom my soul loves’.

m o .c te 53 a g Smithh (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 95. s 54 .a iwbid., p. 98. w w 55 m ibid., p. 101. o 56.c te Matthew 19:21; Mark 10:21; John 8:31. a g h 57 s Smith (ed.), Ranter Writings, p. 105. .a w 58 w w ibid., p. 108. © Copyrighted Material Abiezer Coppe’s Late Converted Midrash 127 © Copyrighted Material

Coppe’s radical discourse is, then, a kind of collation of biblical texts carefullym o .c te rearranged to achieve specific poetic effects. As he focuses on the a imagery of g h s biblical poetry and on the moral condemnation of a biting social critic, he fashionsa . w w his language in such a way as to work out a pastiche of biblical referencesw that

m conforms to a new rhetorical structure that he has imposed on his materials.o This .c te a quasi-midrashic technique provides Coppe with a prophetic voice simultaneouslyg h s .a imitative and radically new. Coppe’s discourse is midrashic in itsw collation of w w biblical texts that combine to shape a new entity in the language of the old. It is m o .c converted since it has travelled far from its Judaic roots. The teambiguity of the a g h language is part of the point which is ordinarily somewhere betweens the letter and .a w the spirit. The signification of these midrashic texts is conflictedw and disturbing as w

m it makes great claims that ultimately remain couched in mysteryo and strangeness. .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 6 m o .c te a g h s Empire-Building: The English Republic,.a w w w

m o Scotland and Ireland .c te a g h s .a Jim Smyth w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m The Cromwellian subjugations of Ireland and Scotland mayo be construed, as they .c te so often are, as chapters in the political and military historya of the English republic. g h s Thus understood there seems little or no need to erect .conceptuala scaffolding for w w w a narrative driven by political vicissitude, military necessity and brute facts on m o the ground. Parliament merely confronted, and defeated,.c its Royalist enemies te a g at Drogheda, Wexford, Dunbar and Worcester. Ih n more recent years, however, s .a prompted by the ‘new’ British history, historiansw have been as likely to view w w

England’s relations with Ireland and Scotlandm during the Cromwellian era as an o .c – albeit dramatic – episode in the long, fluctuating,te processes of British State a g h formation. ‘Union’ is as significant from s that perspective as conquest. But there .a w is at least one other way of looking at thew interactions of the ‘three nations’ in this w

m 1 period: Cromwellian expansion as republicano imperialism. Of course, these are .c te a complementary not alternative approaches.g h s The conventional stress on immediate.a political and military contingencies as w w w the thrust behind English expansion in 1649–53 is also, of course, accurate, and m o one will search the Commonwealth.c prints, or the records of the Council of State, te a g in vain for explicit evidence thath ‘imperialist’ ideology, motivation or strategising s .a w shaped decision-making onw Ireland or Scotland. Providentialist and Protestant w apocalyptic rhetoric is muchm more comprehensible. An imperial stress, however, o .c te reveals much about the a Englishness of English republicanism, and the ‘imperial’ g h s logic of early modern.a republicans. National defence – as its officers of state saw w w it – impelled the Commonwealthw regime to crush Irish resistance and to launch

m a pre-emptive invasiono of Scotland. Yet what has been called in another context .c te a ‘the moral energyg of imperialism’ (or to be more prosaic, the varying senses of h s .a English superiority)w helps, at least partially, to account for English success on w w the battlefield. Retrospectively, republicans attributed the unbroken sequence of m o .c te a g h s .a w 1 w w In terms of jurisdiction, law and administration, sixteenth-century Wales was m o integrated.c into the English polity in ways in which Scotland and Ireland never were; te a B. Bradshaw,g ‘The Tudor Reformation and revolution in Wales and Ireland: the origins of h s the.a British problem’, in B. Bradshaw and J. Morrill (eds), The British Problem, c.1534– w w 1707:w State Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 39–65. © Copyrighted Material 130 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

English victories in these years, including over the Dutch, and in Scotland, ‘which m 2 o never any king could conquer’, to the martial vitality of a free state. .c te a g h Niall Ferguson’s plucky attempt to rehabilitate the British Empires .a 3 w notwithstanding, most historians would probably still agree with Aw nthony w

Pagden’s 2003 verdict that ‘today the word [‘empire’] is generally usedm as a o 4 .c te term of abuse’. And that ‘abhorrence’ of imperialism, as an earliera historian g h s terms it, has profoundly jaundiced twentieth-century accounts of .a seventeenth- w w5 century English expansion, especially where Ireland is concerned.w ‘The tide of

m o 6 English radicalism’ writes Norah Carlin, broke ‘on the rocks of.c Ireland’. But, te a as the chief celebrant of that radicalism, Christopher Hill, remindedg us, most h s .a radicals – Quakers, Fifth Monarchists, even some Levellers w– did not see it that w w 7 way. Rather ‘they were trapped in the assumptions of their age’, and as such for m o .c the most part they adhered to conquest theory and supportedte the Cromwellian a g h settlement as both just and necessary. Again there weres a number of reasons for .a w that support – the perceived immediate threat which Irelandw posed to the security w

m of the Commonwealth, anti-popery, revenge for the o1641 massacres and the need, .c te under the terms of the Adventurers Act (1642), to a pay off Parliament’s war debts g h s with confiscated Irish land. One group, however,. a did come to articulate an imperial w w w vision: the Commonwealthmen, or ‘classical republicans’ or ‘neo-Romans’, for m o whom the conquests of Ireland and Scotland,.c as well as victory over the Dutch, te a g were explained and applauded by an integratedh theory of war, republicanism and s .a empire-building. w w w

‘English republicans or Commonwealthmen’,m remarked Caroline Robbins, o .c ‘were more renowned than numerous.’te She further noted that ‘there cannot be a g h 8 discovered a typical republican imperials ideology’. And, while it is true that .a w w republican writers and politiciansw had their differences, the extent – with the

m exception of the regicide, Henryo Marten – to which they shared some sort of .c te a g h s .a w w w

2 m o the boast about Scotland.c is John Milton’s The Readie & Easie Way to establish a te a free commonwealth in R.W.g Ayers (ed.), The Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Volume h s 7. 1659–1660 (New Haven.a and London, 1980), p. 424. w w 3 w niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London, 2003). m 4 o a. Pagden, Peoples.c and Empires (London, 2003), p. xxi. te a 5 g r. Koebner,h Empire (Cambridge, 1961), p. 1. s 6 .a w n. Carlin,w ‘Extreme or Mainstream?: The English Independents and the Cromwellian w reconquest ofm Ireland, 1649–1651’, in B. Bradshaw, A. Hadfield and W. Maley (eds), o .c Representingte Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534–1660 (Cambridge, a g h 1993), p. 221.s .a 7 w C.w Hill, ‘Seventeenth-century English radicals and Ireland’, in C. Hill, A Nation w of Changem and Novelty: Radical Politics, Religion and Literature in Seventeenth-century o .c Englandte (London, 1990), p. 141. a g h 8 s C. Robbins (ed.), Two English Republican Tracts. Plato redivivus, or, A dialogue .a w w concerningw government (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 40, 43. © Copyrighted Material Empire-Building: The English Republic, Scotland and Ireland 131 © Copyrighted Material

9 ‘republican imperial ideology’, is perhaps more striking than the lack of typicality.m o .c te Modern republicanism, with its rhetorical commitment to popular sovereignty,a g h s and implication (long ignored by the French republic’s imperial practice)a of . w w national self-determination, seems logically inconsistent with empire. Forw all their

m insistence upon the excellence of free states, early-modern republicans recognisedo .c te a no necessary contradiction in such states subjugating others. The sheerg rootedness h s .a of imperial assumptions in republican thinking is illustrated by thew ‘poet against w 10 w empire’, John Milton’s History of Britain (1670), which identifies more readily m o .c with the Roman colonisers than with the native Britons, declaringte approvingly a 11 g h that the conquerors ‘beate us into some civilitie’. And if the descriptions of Walter .a w Moyle as ‘the last really authentic specimen of the tribe’ of classicalw republicans fits, w

m then it is notable that the last book by the tribe, Moyle’s Essayo on the constitution .c te and government of the Roman state, praises in particulara the military virility and g h 12 s restless expansion of the republic. .a w w w English republicans read their Livy, Sallust and other ancient authors. They m o also read Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, and it is. cthere, in the second discourse, te a g that their understanding of the dynamic relationshiph between republic and empire s .a is most cogently, matter-of-factly, and accessiblyw stated. Machiavelli distinguished w w between republics for preservation (or stability)m such as Venice, and republics for o .c increase, such as Rome, and clearly recommendedte the latter. ‘It is impossible’, he a g h argued, ‘for a republic to succeed in standings still while enjoying its liberty within .a w its narrow borders, because if the republicw does not trouble others, others will w

13 m trouble it.’ Territorial expansion thus ensuredo liberty at home and security against .c te a external aggression. Machiavelli, moreover,g attributed military success to political h s structure. Rome expanded not because.a of its wealth – the supposed sinews of w w w war – or, as Livy believed, because she was favoured by fortune, but because m o of the skill, discipline and martial.c vigour of its citizen armies and the prudence te a g h s .a w w w 9 See Marten’s commentsm on Ireland (unpublished at the time) in Sarah Barber, o .c A Revolutionary Rogue: Henryte Marten and the English Republic (Stroud, 2000), p. 41. a g 10 h This phrase referss to David Armitage’s thoughtful essay, ‘John Milton; poet .a w against empire’, in D. Armitage,w A. Himy and Q. Skinner (eds), Milton and Republicanism w

m (Cambridge, 1995), pp.o 206–25. .c 11 te l. Gregerson,a ‘Colonials write the margins, Spenser, Milton and England on the g h s margins’, in B. Rajan.a and E. Sauer (eds), Milton and the Imperial Vision (Pittsburgh, PA, w w 1999), p. 182. w Sellar and Yeatman later endorsed Milton’s view in 1066 and All That,

m concluding thato ‘The Roman Conquest was, however, a Good Thing, since Britons were .c te only nativesa at the time’. g h 12 s Z.S..a Fink, The Classical Republicans, an Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of w w Thoughtw in Seventeenth-century England (1945; 2nd edn, Evanston, IL, 1962), p. 174.

m The 1796o edition of Moyle’s Essay, which was first published posthumously in 1723, is .c te a reprintedg in Robbins (ed.), Two English Republican Tracts. h s 13 .a niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. J. Conaway Bondanella and w w wP. Bondanella (Oxford, 1997), p. 206. © Copyrighted Material 132 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material of its administration. Ultimately, however, empire endangered the republic. The m o luxuries and ‘bad habits’ encountered in outlying provinces were inimical.c to te a g h military discipline and public virtù. The prolongation of military commandss in .a w far-flung colonies nurtured Caesarism. Eventually, and almost ineluctably,w those w who maintained the empire would destroy the republic. m o .c te The Machiavellianism of a number of Commonwealthmen, sucha as James g h s Harrington, Henry Neville and Algernon Sidney, was pronounced. .aHarrington’s w w The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), for instance, can be read asw a theoretical

m o attempt to resolve the ‘imperial problem’: to reconcile the republic.c for increase te a with the republic for preservation and found an ‘immortal commonwealth’.g Like h s .a Machiavelli, and like most Englishmen at the time, he endorsedw the legitimacy w w and prerogatives of conquest. Ireland provided a text-book example, and the m o .c Cromwellian conquest and settlement of 1649–53 is bracketedte at either end of the a g h century by Sir John Davies’ Discoverie of the true causess why Ireland was never .a w entirely subdued (1612) and William Molyneux’s The casew of Ireland being bound w

m by acts of parliament in England, stated (1698); botho of which, in different ways .c te and for different reasons, advance arguments premiseda on the transparent legality g h s of conquest, and the absolute authority of the conqueror.a over the conquered. When w w w Marchamont Nedham wrote in 1650 ‘the power of the sword ever hath been the m o foundation of titles to government’, he is clearly.c representative of the political te a g thinking of the day which flourished, for obvioush reasons, in the immediate wake s .a of the regicide. When Nedham adds: w w w

m o .c those whose title is supposed unlawfulte and founded merely upon force, yet being a g h possessed of authority, may lawfullys be obeyed. Not may they only, but they .a w w must; else by the judgment of thew civilians such as refuse may be punished as

m seditious and traitorous, the victorso being allowed, jure gentium, to use all means .c te a for securing what they haveg gotten and to exercise a right of dominion over the h 14 s .a conquered party. w w w

m o Substitute ‘state’, ‘kingdom’.c or ‘country’ for ‘party’ and he is equally clearly te a g h aligned with conquests theory. The following year, the Independent and .a w Cromwellian propagandistw Thomas Waring drew on scripture to affirm ‘the w

m justness of conquest’,o concluding ‘that the mutations and revolutions of crowns .c te and kingdoms, governmentsa and governors, the breaking and casting out of g h s 15 nations, are the.a effect of divine ordination’. w w Sidney allowedw that issues of morality and justice obtained in respect of

m o conquest; he.c also understood, with Machiavelli, that unless properly executed te a g h s .a 14 w w marchamont Nedham, The case of the Commonwealth of England, stated (1650), w ed. P.A.m Knachel, (Charlottesville, 1969), pp. 27–8. o 15.c te a thomas Waring, An Answer to certain seditious and Jesuitical Queres, heretofore g h purposelys and maliciously cast out, to retard and hinder the English forces in their going .a w w overw into Ireland (London, 1651), pp. 45–6. © Copyrighted Material Empire-Building: The English Republic, Scotland and Ireland 133 © Copyrighted Material

and carefully managed the ‘enlargement of dominion’ could fatally underminem o .c te the commonwealth. But such caveats barely moderated the full force of Sidney’sa g h s authentic voice. ‘Whole nations’ he contended: a . w w w

m may forfeit their liberty by cruelty, perfidy, and injustice, giving right ofo war .c te a against themselves, and being conquered become slaves … this is rightg of h s .a conquest, which though generally rejected by some as unjust, groundedw only on w w force, I think is sometimes most just. For as there are just causes of war, he that m o 16 is conqueror in such a war does justly enjoy the fruits of his victory.c . te a g h s .a w The robustness of Sidney’s views on war and conquest matchedw his opinions on w

m race, and at bottom the imperial project is usually predicatedo upon ethno-cultural .c te (and religious) presuppositions. European assumptions ofa innate superiority, and g h s perceptions of ‘Asiatic’ barbarism, were deeply rooted.a in classical antiquity. w w w Sidney cites Aristotle on those brutish nations ‘absolutely incapable of science or m o 17 governing themselves … Some of Asia and Africa are.c said to be of this kind.’ The te a g political point, reiterated by Nedham, being that suchh nations ‘ever have lived and s .a 18 do for the most part continue in miserable slaveryw at the will of imperious tyrants’. w w

The rhetoric of eradicating barbarism reinforcedm the logic of extending empire. o .c Sidney’s modern biographer describeste his ‘written republicanism [as] a a g h retrospective creation, its focus sharpeneds by Cromwell’s tyranny’ in the mid- .a 19 w 1650s. By 1652, as a member of the Councilw of State, he was deeply involved in w

m Anglo-Irish, Anglo-Scottish and, indeed,o Anglo-Dutch affairs; drafting legislation .c te a for an Irish settlement and serving ong the parliamentary committee for ‘the Uniting h s 20 of Scotland into one Commonwealth.a with England’. Undoubtedly that experience w w w of rapid territorial aggrandisement helped confirm his later enthusiasm for m o republican military prowess. On.c the matter of Irish backwardness, however, no such te a g retrospective gloss was requiredh since, from 1649 onwards, Commonwealthmen s .a w – saints, soldiers and republicansw – recycled with gusto a readymade script, first w written in the twelfth century.m Milton said nothing new when he blasted the o .c te ‘absurd and savage customsa … the true barbarisme and obdurate wilfulness’ of g h s the Irish. Nor did Waring.a who itemised their ‘innate and Epidemicke laziness w w 21 … beastial lewdness,w and consummate impiety’. In 1653 another pamphleteer

m stigmatised the ‘eludingo and circumventing subtilties’, ‘cunning’ and perennial .c te a g h s .a w w w 16 algernonm Sidney, Court Maxims, ed. H.W. Blom, E.H. Mulier and R. Janse o .c (Cambridge,te 1996), p. 199. a g 17 h Sidney,s Court Maxims, p. 11. .a 18 w w Nw edham, Case of the Commonwealth of England, p. 113.

19 m o J. Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–1677 (Cambridge, 1988), .c te p. 105.a g h s 20 .a ibid., pp. 100–101. w w 21 w milton and Waring cited in Carlin, ‘Extreme or Mainstream?’, p. 216. © Copyrighted Material 134 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

22 sedition of ‘the imbogged Irish’. According to James Harrington, the inhabitants m 23 o of the neighbouring island were ‘a slothful and pusillanimous people’. And, if. cthe te a g h degenerate condition of the native Irish appeared obvious, so too did the remedys .a w for that condition: conquest and reform. w w

At the outset of the English parliamentary army’s expedition to Ireland,m one o .c te regime propagandist, John Dillingham, argued: a g h s .a w w Where people do not acknowledge an eternall being, nor live accordingw to laws

m o of nature and reason … others may goe and possesse those Countries.c and give te a them some … some are of opinion, that if by Laws intruded ong a rude people h s .a they be made … to know God and enrich themselves, they arew not wronged but w w righted, and this is not a doing of evill that good may come, no more then to take m o .c a wilde beast and make it tame and usefull to him that tookete it … if the Irish a g h be more brutish then Indians, why may it not be reasonables to tame such wilde .a w 24 beasts had they never been in any kinde so cruell and bloudyw to the English. w

m o .c te Dillingham, an Independent, spoke for England. Harrington,a a republican, spoke g h s for mankind (and England too). ‘To ask’, he declared.a in Oceana, ‘whether it bee w w w lawfull for a commonwealth to aspire unto the Empire of the world, is to ask whether m o it be lawfull for her to do her duty; or to put the.c world into a better condition than te a 25 g it was before.’ Harrington imagined that ‘betterh condition’ in essentially political s .a terms. Yet more than any other republicanw theorist he understood the economic w w foundations of power. He sought to limitm the accumulation and concentration of o .c land and wealth, and in the case of Irelandte and Scotland to break the grip of the a g h landowning elites on their tenantry. Ts he implications and potential of such policies .a w w were indeed ‘radical’, but that w did not make either Harrington or his fellow

m republican ideologues democratso or Levellers. On the contrary, English republicans .c te 26 a of the 1650s are sometimes depictedg as ‘aristocratic’ and ‘oligarchic’. Harrington h s .a and Sidney were certainly patricianw figures; early modern republican conceptions w w of liberty did not entail popular sovereignty, while republican definitions of ‘the m o people’ excluded the working.c poor (Milton, for example, openly scorned the te a 27 g h fickle ‘multitude’). Buts ‘radicalism’ may come in many forms, including social .a w w w

m o .c te 22 a g Anon., Theh Present Posture and Condition of Ireland (London, 1652), pp. 6, 9. s 23 .a James Hw arrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana and A system of politics, ed. w w J.G.A. Pocock (Cambridge, 1992), p. 6. m o 24 .c Carlin,te ‘Extreme or Mainstream?’, p. 215. a 25 g h Harrington,s Commonwealth of Oceana, p. 227. .a 26 w w s.D. Glover, ‘The Putney Debates: Popular versus Elitist Republicanism’, P&P, w

164 (1999):m pp. 47–80. o 27.c te a C. Hill, ‘James Harrington and the People’, in C. Hill, Puritanism and Revolution g h (1958;s London, 1990), pp. 289–302; Milton, Readie & Easie Way, in The Complete Prose .a w w wWorks, 7, p. 422. © Copyrighted Material Empire-Building: The English Republic, Scotland and Ireland 135 © Copyrighted Material

and economic reform agendas designed to better the condition of archaic andm o .c te inequitable colonial or ‘provincial’ societies. a g h s The high disdain for the low breeding of the English soldier-settlers – ‘churls’a . w w and ‘sullage’; ‘the dirty rump of loutish craftsmen’ – displayed by thew native

m Gaelic poets, clients of an ancient nobility, indicates that they too recognisedo that a .c te 28 a social as well as a political upheaval was under way. Unsurprisingly,g those more h s .a generally at the sharp end of massacre, transplantation, transportation,w confiscation, w w oppressive laws and foreign rule were more ambivalent (than Harrington or m o .c Dillingham) about the benefits bestowed upon them by te metropolitan largesse. a g h Nevertheless, the blood-drenched record of the Cromwellianss need not obscure .a w the genuine urge ‘to put the world into a better condition thanw it was before’. At w

m first sight that impulse appears to be primarily religious oand evangelical. Oliver .c te Cromwell himself exulted to ‘find the people’ in the provincea of Munster ‘very g h s 29 greedy after the Word and flocking to Christian .a meetings’. But, upon closer w w w scrutiny, popery, in Cromwellian analyses, was more a malignant symptom of m 30 o Irish barbarism, rather than its root cause. The Catholic.c clergy, they believed, te a g deliberately kept the laity in a state of ignorance,h and that once the power of s .a that clergy was broken true religion would triumph.w Cromwellian images of w w

Irish debasement, in fact, came closer to heathenismm than to popery. Along with o .c popery, therefore, the reformers planned to rootte out a parasitic and archaic social a g h structure. s .a w Recent historians of sixteenth-centuryw Ireland have modified the venerable w

m paradigm of the ‘Tudor reconquest’ witho a new emphasis on the imposition of .c 31 te a ‘reform’. Viewed from that perspective,g the Cromwellian episode represents h s not so much a radical new departure.a as a terrific intensification of an established w w w mentalité, and of processes already haltingly in train. It also anticipated, albeit m o more ruthlessly, nineteenth-century.c British conceptions of Ireland as a site for te a g wholesale social engineering.h Ireland thought the regicide and legal reformer s .a w John Cook ‘was like a whitew paper, apt to receive any good impression’. And, w indeed, as chief justice ofm the province of Munster in the 1650s, Cook attempted o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g 28 h C. O’Rahillys (ed.), Five Seventeenth-century Political Poems (Dublin, 1952), p. 37, .a w ll. 34–35, p. 45,w l. 212, p. 95, l. 293. w

29 m W.C. o Abbott (ed.), The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (4 vols, .c te Cambridge,a MA, 1937–47), 2, pp. 186–7. g h 30 s t.ahis case is made for Sir John Temple and English perceptions of the Irish in the w w 1640s byw K.M. Noonan, ‘“The Cruell Pressure of an Enraged, Barbarous People”: Irish

m and Eo nglish identity in seventeenth-century policy and propaganda’, HJ, 41 (1998): .c te a pp. g151–77. h s 31 .a C. Brady, The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor w w Ireland,w 1536–1588 (Cambridge, 1994). © Copyrighted Material 136 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material to reconstitute the legal system according to his precept that the administration of m 32 o justice should be ‘speedy, cheap and sure … morall, rationall and equitable’. .c te a g h In the first flush of total victory, and certified by providence, a great,s indeed .a w unique, opportunity now presented itself to God’s chosen instruments, forw ‘doing w justice amongst these poor people … who have been accustomed to as much minjustice, o .c 33 te tyranny and oppression from their landlords’ as any people in Christendom.a The g h s Irish nobility, wrote an anonymous pamphleteer in 1650, maintain their.a authority w w over the people ‘with cruelty, taxations, rites of their country, barbarousnessw in

m o their creations and installments into the successions of their predecessors’..c That te a nobility would now have to be broken and, ‘to destroy theirg petty dominion, h s .a the people may be taken under the immediate protection ofw the state, and what w w land they hold in their lords, may not be rented according to arbitrary uncertain m o .c 34 assessments, but certain rents and sums, as our farmers inte England’. And all this a g h would parallel the reign of justice soon to follow the crushings of the landed elites .a w 35 in Scotland and ‘be a good precedent to England it self’.w w

m Explanations and justifications of the conquesto of Ireland thus combined .c te assertions of providence, conventional political theory,a retribution for 1641, moral g h s obligation and strategic necessity. In light of the near.a consensus of English opinion w w w on the subjugation of Ireland, and of the deep antipathy towards popery, ‘it is m o remarkable’, observes Christopher Hill, ‘that.c any voices were raised on the other te a g side. But some were.’ The Leveller Williamh Walwyn, for example, condemned s .a ‘an unlawfull war, a cruel and bloody workw to go to destroy the Irish natives for w w their consciences … and to drive them fromm their proper natural and native rights’; o .c and argued that ‘the cause of the Irishte natives in seeking their just freedoms, a g h 36 immunities and liberties, was the verys same with our cause here’. The evidence .a w w for sentiments of this kind is scantw and uncertain, and those who held them were

m unquestionably a tiny minority,o yet the real-world political insignificance of the .c te a anti-imperialists need not detractg from their political courage, moral integrity, h s .a perspicuity or intellectual consistency.w The most vigorous articulation of their w w position is presented in Queries propounded to the consideration of those who are m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m 32 o John Cook,. c Monarchy no creature of Gods making, &c. wherein is proved by te a g scripture and reason,h that monarchical government is against the mind of God (Waterford, s .a 1652), pp. xii, xvii;w T.C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English Government and Reform w w in Ireland 1649–1660 (London, 1975), pp. 268–70. m o 33 .c Abbottte (ed.), Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 2, pp. 186–7. a 34 g h Anon.,s A discourse concerning the affaires of Ireland (London, 1650), p. 11. .a 35 w wBarnard, Cromwellian Ireland, pp. 255–6. w 36 m o Hill, ‘Seventeenth-century English radicals and Ireland’, p.142; Walwyn’s words .c te (whicha are reported second-hand) in John Price, Walwins Wiles (London: H[enry] C[ripps] g h ands L[odowick] L[loyd], 1649), reprinted in W. Haller and G. Davies (eds), The Leveller .a w w Tracts,w 1647–1653 (New York, 1944), pp. 288–9, 310. © Copyrighted Material Empire-Building: The English Republic, Scotland and Ireland 137 © Copyrighted Material

37 intended for the service of Ireland (1649). As in the ‘Sixth Quere’, the anonymousm o .c te author never equivocates, asking: a g h s .a w w Whether Julius Caesar, Alexander the great, William Duke of Normandie,w or

m anie other the great Conquerors of the world, were anie other then so mannieo .c te a great and lawless thievs; and whether it bee not altogether as unjust to takeg our h s .a neighbor Nations, Lands, and liberties from them, as our neighbor’sw goods of w w our own Nation? m o .c te a g h Or again, in the ‘Tenth Quere’: s .a w w w

m Whether those that contend for their freedom (as the Englisho now) shall not .c te make themselvs altogether unexcusable, if they shall intrencha upon other’s g h s freedoms: and whether it bee not an especial note, and .acharacterizing badge of w w w a true pattern of freedom, to indeavor the just freedom of all men, as well as his m 38 o own? .c te a g h s .a One critic of conquest whose name we do know isw the maverick MP Henry Marten, w w who cautioned in 1646 that: m o .c te a g h Hee that would state ye quarell in Irelands upon religion & thinkes this way to .a w make Christendome a protestant is descendedw sure from those gallant ancestors w

m that ly buryed in Palestine whither theyo were caryed with a fervent desire to .c te a recover ye holy land, & beat ye whollg world into Christianity. h s .a w w w 39 Marten later opposed post-conquest legislation for ‘settling’ Ireland. m o Based on their record of royalism.c and, as they saw it, treachery, staunch te a g republicans like Marten regardedh the Scots with open hostility. ‘Concerning the s .a 40 Scots’, wrote Nedham, ‘I amw sorry I must waste paper upon this nation.’ But w w before drawing parallels betweenm the Irish and Scottish experience in the 1650s o .c te it is worth pointing up thea differences. Generally, distinctions between Scots and g h s Irish, or Highlander .a and Lowlander, were recognised; prejudices were finely w w graded. In Cromwell’sw own words, ‘I had rather be overrun with a Cavalierish

m interest than a Scotcho interest; I had rather be overrun with a Scottish interest, .c te a 41 than an Irish interest;g and I think of all this is most dangerous’. That sentiment h s .a is borne out, moreover,w by his letters to Speaker Lenthall after Drogheda and w w Dunbar. The massacre at Drogheda Cromwell considered ‘a righteous judgment m o .c te a g 37 h agains it should be noted that this tract is not extant. It is reproduced in Thomas .a w Waring’sw query-by-query refutation, An Answer to certain seditious and Jesuitical Queres. w 38 m o Waring, An Answer to certain seditious and Jesuitical Queres, pp. 42–3, 52. .c 39te a Barber, Revolutionary rogue, p. 14; Scott, Algernon Sidney, p. 100. g h s 40 .a Nedham, Case of the Commonwealth of England, p. 71. w w 41 w Abbott (ed.), Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 2, p. 38. © Copyrighted Material 138 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material of God upon those barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much m o innocent blood’. After Dunbar he reflected that ‘since we came into Scotland,.c it te a g h hath been our desire and longing to have avoided blood in this business, by reasons .a 42 w that God hath a people here fearing his name, though deceived’. Scotlandw was w

Protestant and, in contrast to the Scotophobic Nedham, English sectariesm retained o .c te wary respect for the stiff-necked people of the northern kingdom. a From that g h s standpoint, religion: .a w w w

m o Binde[s] us to be more zealous in this quarrel against Ireland .c then against te a Scotland. For if we look backwards to the expiation that’s dueg to God for a h s .a whole land defiled with blood, or if we look forward to thew reformation of a w w whole stock and race of men as blinde as their Images, we must needs say the m o .c cause in Ireland is more Christian then the cause of Scotland.te In Scotland we a g h are to regulate matters of Discipline, in Ireland we are s to establish matters of .a 43 w faith. w w

m o .c te Scotland also differed from Ireland in that, while thea English occasionally referred g h s to it as a ‘province’, it was not, rhetorically or theoretically,.a treated as a colony, w w w and upon that distinction rested the principle of a supposedly ‘equal’ union. m o Scotland nonetheless cried out for reform..c Highlanders in particular exhibited te a g many of the characteristics of the unregenerateh Irish. In the Highlands, ‘the people s .a generally speak Irish, go only with plads aboutw their middle, both men and women. w w

There are scarce any houses of stone, butm only earth and Turfes.’ And, again like the o .c Irish, they were ‘very simple and ignorantte in the things of God, and some of them a g 44 h live even as brutish as heathens’. Ts he Lowlands, though more anglicised, did not .a w w obtain to English standards either.w Accordingly, in October 1651, the Declaration

m of the Parliament of the Commonwealtho of England, concerning the Settlement of .c te a Scotland announced that: g h s .a w w w the people of Scotland who were vassals, or Tenants to, and had dependency m o upon the Noble-men and.c Gentry … shall not only be pardoned for all acts past, te a g h but be set free from stheir former dependencies and bondage-services, and shall be .a w admitted as Tenants,w freeholders, and heritors, to farm, hold, inherite, and enjoy w

from and underm this Common-wealth, proportions of the said confiscated and o .c te forfeited lands,a under such easie rents, and reasonable conditions, as may enable g h s them, their .aheirs and posterity, to live with a more comfortable subsistence then w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a 42 w Abbottw (ed.), Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 2, pp.125–8, 321–5. w 43 Am non., Present Posture and Condition of Ireland, p. 12. o 44.c te a C. Firth (ed.), Scotland and the Commonwealth. Letters and Papers Relating to the g h Militarys Government of Scotland, from August 1651 to December 1653 (Edinburgh, 1895), .a w w pp.w 362–3. © Copyrighted Material Empire-Building: The English Republic, Scotland and Ireland 139 © Copyrighted Material

formerly, and like a free people, delivered (through Gods goodnesse) from their m o 45 .c te former slaveries, vassalage, and oppressions. a g h s .a w w Less than a year later Mercurius Politicus boasted of: w

m o .c te a the regall power of their Lairds of mannors being justly abolished. Weg have h s .a eased the people much in their fees, and from those extortions that havew been w w frequent here; and hope we have secured them from the like Abuses in the future. m o Justice was wont to be open and free for none formerly but great men;.c but now te a g h it flows equally to all; which will in a short time make them sensibles from what .a 46 w Bondage they are deliver’d. w w

m o .c te This is conquest as deliverance, and the transmission of reform,a justice, freedom, g h s improvement and modernity. .a w w w In James Harrington’s lightly fictionalised ‘utopia’ the grateful people of m o Marpesia (Scotland) ‘received their liberty, the yoke .cof the nobility being broken by te 47 a g the Commonwealth of Oceana’ (England). Later,h nodding to Cicero, and echoing s .a Nedham’s earlier vision of the English republicw delivering ‘the whole Creation w w

… into freedom’, he imagines Oceana undertakingm more ‘the patronage than the o .c empire of the world … A Commonwealth, I tesay, of this make is a minister of God a g h 48 upon earth, to the end that the world may sbe governed with righteousness.’ But .a w mindful of Machiavelli’s warning that now republic could risk standing still, and of w

m the dangers which empire then posed too the free state which made it, Harrington .c te a sets out in Oceana to reconcile the republicg for preservation with the republic for h s increase. Long-term, indeed perpetual,.a political stability rested, he believed, in w w w the tight regulation of property distribution: ‘equality of estates causeth equality m o of power, and equality of power.c is the liberty not only of the Commonwealth, te a 49 g but of every man’. This ‘balance’h would be achieved by the enforcement of an s .a w ‘Agrarian’ – a law fixing thew limits of individual property ownership. An ‘equality w of power’, both domesticm and foreign, would thus prevent the ‘overbalance’ on o .c te which mixed and absolutea monarchies were founded, and check the growth in g h s .a w w w 45 S. Terry (ed.),m The Cromwellian Union. Papers Relating to the Negotiations for o .c an Incorporating Unionte between England and Scotland, 1651–1652 (Edinburgh, 1902), a g h p. xxiii. s .a 46 w Mercuriusw Politicus, 5 June 1652, in Terry (ed.), Cromwellian Union, pp. 180–81. w

m Alas, the hopeo that the common people had been ‘secured … from the like Abuses in the .c te future’ is belieda by the striking similarity of the language used to describe the post-Culloden g h reforms ins 1746–47. .a w 47 w Hw arrington, Commonwealth of Oceana, p. 6.

48 m o nedham quoted in J. Scott, Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the .c te a Englishg Revolution (Cambridge, 2004), p. 221; Harrington, Commonwealth of Oceana, h s p.. a221. w w 49 w Harrington, Commonwealth of Oceana, p. 20. © Copyrighted Material 140 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material the provinces of the sort of over-mighty subjects who had overturned the Roman m o Republic. Interestingly, although Harrington proposes an ‘Agrarian’ [law].c of te a g h £2,000 for Oceana and Panopea (Ireland), Marpesia’s upper limit is set at s£500. .a w Whereas there is apparently little to be feared from a resurgent Irish nobility,w the w yoke of Scotland’s landed classes, it seems, had not been quite as brokenm as he o .c te earlier asserts. a g h s .a w w The people of that country are little better than the cattle of the nobilityw … and

m o in settling the agrarian, you give the people not only liberty, but .clands; which te a makes your protection necessary to their security, and their contributiong due h s 50 .a unto your protection, as to their own safety. w w w

m o .c And so, liberty and equality, the boon of Oceana’s empire,te would lock ‘the people’ a g h of Marpesia into a willing allegiance. s .a w In 1659, one of the chief architects of the unionw of 1652, Sir Henry Vane, w

m reminded the Scots of their debt to the English Commonwealth:o ‘we conquered .c te them, and gave them the fruit of our conquest in makinga them free denizens with g h s us’. Vane spoke in the debate on Scottish and.a Irish representation in Richard w w w Cromwell’s Parliament, and Anthony Ashley Cooper agreed with him that the Scots m o ‘are persons very fit to be united to us; of the .csame religion’. Henry Neville pointed te a g out that ‘they have a law which cannot be h applicable to our laws. They must not s .a have Englishmen imposed upon them by wletters to enslave them and us too … it is w w 51 absolutely to enslave and to reduce themm to a province.’ The image of the Scots o .c and Scotland which cumulatively emergeste from these protracted exchanges is one a g h of fellow Protestants, a nation of lawss and a free, if troublesome people. The ‘Irish’ .a w w – a designation repudiated by a numberw of the English MPs from Ireland – did

m 52 not fare so well. ‘They are still ino the state of a province’ said Vane. And he had .c te a a point. Crucially, whereas Scotlandg had been issued a tender of union and Scots h s .a representatives had gone throughw the motions of ‘negotiation’, Ireland, underlining w w its inferior and subordinate constitutional status, had been silently incorporated. m o Much later, Neville, who.c had opposed appointing Englishmen to positions of te a g h authority in Scotland, s recommended that practice for Ireland. ‘So in provincial .a w governments, if theyw be wisely ordered’, argues one of the interlocutors in Plato w

m Redivivus, ‘no mano must have any the least share in the managing affairs of state, .c te but strangers; or sucha as have no share or part in the possessions there; for else they g h s will have a very.a good opportunity of shaking off their yoke.’ ‘That is true’, replies w w the ‘English Gentleman’,w ‘and we are so wise here (I mean our ancestors were) as

m o 53 to have made.c a law, that no native in Ireland can be deputy there.’ te a g h s 50 .a w Hw arrington, Commonwealth of Oceana, pp. 101, 113. w 51 m J. Rutt (ed.), Diary of Thomas Burton, Esq. member in the Parliaments of Oliver o .c and Richardte Cromwell, from 1656 to 1659 (4 vols, London, 1828), 4, pp. 178, 188–9. a g h 52 s ibid., p. 229. .a w 53 w w Robbins (ed.), Two English Republican Tracts, p. 94. © Copyrighted Material Empire-Building: The English Republic, Scotland and Ireland 141 © Copyrighted Material

But, while the Commonwealthmen of 1659 were generally positive aboutm o .c te the Scots and their entitlements, the entire purpose of the debate was to debara g h s them and their Irish counterparts from taking their seats. The argumenta was . w w legal: the 1652 ‘act’ for Scotland had been designed for a commonwealth,w not a

m protectorate, and was therefore now defunct; whereas for Ireland’s representationo .c te a no legal footing existed at all. However, the true motive of the anti-Protectorateg h s .a republicans, only rarely alluded to, but understood by all, was to neutralisew a solid w w phalanx of hand-picked placemen. In fact, the ‘Scottish’ and ‘Irish’ MPs were m o .c mostly English ‘chosen at White-hall, whereof some had hardlyte been ever nearer a 54 g h Scotland then Grays-Inn’. And they could indeed be relied upons to vote for the .a w ‘court’. Political manoeuvre and legalistic wrangling thus dominatedw the debate, w

m but it sometimes ascended, nonetheless, into the rarefiedo altitudes of historical .c te analogy and contested national identities. As one contributora put it, invoking Pliny, g h s ‘let us not, in building another’s city, pull down our own..a The Romans did never w w w give jus civitatis, but to those that were naturalized by a long experienced union. I m 55 o would have them naturalized’. .c te a g It is possible that this debate inspired Michaelh Hawke’s celebration of empire, s .a The History of the Union of the four famous kingdomsw of England, Wales, Scotland w w 56 and Ireland published that same year. Hawkem does not have an entry in the Oxford o .c Dictionary of National Biography. He does,te however, make fleeting appearances a g h in a few modern studies of seventeenth-centurys political thought: in one account .a w as a ‘massively learned, eclectic … avowedlyw Hobbesian’ and ‘providentialist w

m 57 imperialis[t]’; in another as one whoseo ‘importance as a theorist [is] slight’. .c te a Before History of the Union Hawkeg had written at least three hefty pamphlets h s in support of the Cromwellian regime:.a The right of dominion, and property of w w w liberty (1656), The grounds of the lawes of England (1657) and, in reply to Killing m o Noe Murder – the anti-Protectoral.c pamphlet advocating tyrannicide – the crisply te a g entitled Killing is Murder (1657)h . Hawke was no republican then, providing s .a w not only de facto defencesw of the Protectorate but dedicating his second book, w

The right of dominion, tom Cromwell, ‘Magno, Magnae Britanniae etc Principi o .c te et Protectori, Patri Patriae,a et semper Augusto’, and elsewhere describing the g h s Lord Protector as ‘our.a Prince, a Caesar for valour, Augustus for fortune, and for w w w

m o .c te a g 54 h slingsby sBethel, A true and impartial narrative of the most material debates and .a w passages in the wlate parliament (London, 1659), p. 10. w

55 m Rutt (ed.),o Diary of Thomas Burton, 4, p. 190. .c 56 te a I attributeg this book to Michael Hawke because its author is given as ‘MH’. MH, h s otherwise.a identified as ‘Mich. Hawk’, is also the author of The grounds of the lawes of w w Englandw (1657). In addition, the endorsement of power hovering behind every page is

m consistento with Hawke’s earlier work. .c te a57 g d. Armitage, ‘The Cromwellian Protectorate and the languages of empire’, HJ, 35 h s (1992):.a pp. 545–6; Perez Zagorin, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution w w w(London, 1954), pp. 93–4. © Copyrighted Material 142 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

58 prowess and prudence second to neither’. His Machiavelli is the Machiavelli of m o frank Realpolitik and The Prince, and certainly not the ‘divine’ and ‘incomparable.c te a g h Machiavel’, ‘the best and most honest of all the modern politicians’ later invokeds .a 59 w by the Harringtonian republican Neville. If no republican, he nonethelessw cites w

Livy, while his précis of Roman imperial expansion bears striking resemblancem to o .c te that of the Florentine’s. The difference is not that, in Hawke’s view, dominiona and g h s empire – in a word, power – are achieved and maintained by force, but.a that valour w w and arms, not a free commonwealth, was the font of Roman greatness.w

m o History of the Union is prefaced by general observations on.c the nature of te a governments and unions. ‘All government is of God’, assertsg Hawke, ‘whether h s .a monarchical, aristocratical, or democratical.’ God ‘removeth wand seteth up kings’ w w hence the powers that be, whatever their configuration, are owed obedience. As m o .c with Nedham, the de facto defence of political authorityte rests easily alongside a g h standard conquest theory. ‘By the rule of war’, he notes, ‘thoses who have overcome .a w 60 have power to rule those whom they have overcome,w as they please.’ Union is w

m contextualised within the ‘two principles of all things,o Concord and Discord’; .c te and experience shows that ‘petty states are by concorda and union augmented, and g h s 61 grand ones by discord and disunion brought to confusion’..a Unions here fall into w w w three categories: ‘leagues’, dynastic amalgams, and union by conquest. The first m o are useful but temporary; the second are deficient,.c superficial andad hoc (although te a g some, as in Spain, survived, while others, likeh Britain, did not); the final category, s .a 62 conquest, is the ‘most general and more durable’w of the three. w w

In addition to Livy, Hawke draws onm Sir Edward Coke and Sir Francis Bacon. o .c His chief ‘source’, however, is the Romante imperial experience. In History of the a g h Union, the gaining and the holding ofs the Roman Empire serves as model, template, .a w w exemplar, precedent and inspiration.w Britain’s empire, he concedes, cannot be

m compared with Rome’s for sheero territorial reach, but does bear comparison in .c te a terms of ‘quality, and condition,’g for, after all, ‘our Orbe Britanne did follow the h s 63 .a tract and steps of the Romanw conquerours’. Successful emulation of the Roman w w achievement depended upon a judicious mix of armed force, clemency, and the m o transmission to the conquered.c nations of metropolitan laws and language. Sixteenth- te a g h century Wales had beens integrated with its larger neighbour by ‘a union of laws’, and .a w by representation in Parliament,w thereby admitting the Welsh gentry to ‘the highest w

m privileges and chiefesto dignities of England, according to the Roman precedent’. .c te During the 1650sa the Commonwealth and Protectorate garrisoned Wales – the seat g h s .a w w 58 w armitage, ‘Cromwellian Protectorate and languages of empire’, p. 546. m 59 o M[ichael].c H[awke], The History of the Union Of the four famous Kingdoms Of te a g England, Wales,h Scotland and Ireland (London, 1659), pp. 11–12; Robbins (ed.), Two s .a English Republicanw Tracts, pp. 81, 92, 97, 155, 168. w w 60 m Hawke, The History of the Union, ‘To the Reader’, p. 26. o 61.c te Ibid. a g h 62 s ibid., pp. 9–17. .a w 63 w w ibid., p. 45. © Copyrighted Material Empire-Building: The English Republic, Scotland and Ireland 143 © Copyrighted Material

64 of refractory royalism – again following Roman practice. Scotland, though alsom o .c te garrisoned ‘according to the Roman rule’, had been settled ‘in the way of aa free g 65 h s state’ and enjoyed ‘union by laws’ and consent. Finally, Ireland, styled Britanniaa . w w Minor by Ptolemy, and ‘another Brittain’ by Hawke, garrisoned and colonisedw on

m the ‘Roman model’, now participated in the benefits of peace, unity, ando English .c te 66 a privileges, laws and language. As the second-generation settler and gadvocate of h s .a ‘mixed plantation’ Vincent Goodkin put it earlier, the process of incorporatingw the w w native Irish ‘into ourselves’ would provide ‘opportunities of communicating better m 67 o .c things unto them’. te a g h The supposedly integrated union which Hawke pronounceds ‘completely .a w perfected’ and ‘settled’ in 1659 did not survive beyond the publicationw of a second w

m edition of his book and the restoration of monarchy the followingo year. Charles II, .c te 68 noted Clarendon, had no wish to ‘build according to Cromwelliana models’, and g h s in 1660 constitutional relationships between the English.a and the Scottish and Irish w w w kingdoms reverted to the status quo ante. m o .c te a g h s .a The champions of empire in the 1650s – Milton,w Sidney, Nedham, Harrington, w w

Waring, Dillingham, Hawke and others – m exhibited a variety of sometimes o .c overlapping political positions. They includedte Independents, classical republicans, a g h Protestant providentialists and de facto theorists.s What they shared besides their .a w imperialism was an ingrained and impregnablew sense of English superiority w

m – undergirded, more often than not, byo a belief in England’s destiny as an elect .c te a Nation. Hawke, for example, simplyg could not conceive of the possibility that the h s conquered peoples might not welcome.a the communication of English privileges, w w w laws and language with anything less than unmixed gratitude. Similarly, m o Commonwealth promises of social,.c legal and economic reform for Scotland and te a g Ireland were couched in termsh of rooting out archaic and inequitable practices and s .a w dragging those backward nationsw into line with English standards. The national w cultural confidence is palpable:m ‘future generations, we hope, shall acknowledge o .c te that the English laws anda government introduced into Ireland, shall be as new life g h s to the natives, and yet .athe incorporation that is intended of both nations, shall make w w 69 the Irish great gainersw by al their losses’. Nor, in the 1659 parliamentary debates,

m were the ‘Scottish’ oand ‘Irish’ members willing to cede an inch of their Englishness. .c te a Some had ‘neverg saw Scotland, but in a map’, while Sir Thomas Stanley stated h s .a w w w 64 ibid., mpp. 66–74, 80–81. o 65 .c te ibid.,a pp. 101, 109–10. g 66 h ibid.,s pp. 129–30, 136–7. .a w 67 w wQuoted by T. Barnard, ‘Crises of Identity among Irish Protestants 1641–1685’,

m P&P, o127 (1990): p. 68. .c 68te a g Cited in W. Ferguson, Scotland’s Relations with England: A Survey to 1707 h s (Edinburgh,.a 1977), p. 141. w w 69 w Anon., Present Posture and Condition of Ireland, p. 34. © Copyrighted Material 144 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

‘I am not to speak for Ireland, but for the English in Ireland … The members for m o Ireland, and the electors, are all Englishmen.’ But perhaps this pride of race is best.c te a g h caught in one Colonel Parsons’ happy formula that the House, ‘deal no less kindlys .a 70 w with the Irish than with the Scotch. They are all English.’ As ethnographyw this is w flat nonsense. As a statement of imperial policy and legal doctrine, any m citizen of o .c te the Roman Empire would have understood and applauded. a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w 70 w w Rutt (ed.), Diary of Thomas Burton, 4, pp. 129, 225, 239. © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 7 m o .c te a g h s Seventeenth-Century Italy and .a w w w

m o English Radical Movements .c te a g h s .a Stefano Villani w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m Seventeenth-century Italian Historiography on the Englisho Revolution .c te a g h s On 3 July 1680, the Inquisitor of Pisa, while questioning.a in San Gimignano one w w w Sister Francesca Fabbroni – a nun charged and convicted by the Holy Office m o with feigned holiness – compared her alleged inability.c to commit sin with that te a g of some English heretics who asserted to be guidedh by God immediately to such s .a a perfection that made them entirely free fromw sin that they had been divinely w w appointed and that they had reached such a degreem of perfection that they were o 1 .c entirely free from sin. The Inquisitor’s commentte is unfortunately too brief to a g h ascertain precisely whom he was thinking of,s but it is almost certain that his words .a w contained a distant echo of the religious w debates that had taken place in England w

m thirty years earlier, when the Quakers ando Ranters, in their search on earth for the .c te a perfection of Adam before the Fall, gwere accused by their enemies of licentious h s and blasphemous behaviour. It is, of.a course, possible that the Inquisitor – who had w w w never visited England – saw these religious groups and the Puritans as one and the m o same thing, since the name of .thec latter might well have seemed to him to refer te a g to their supposed purity and h sanctity. The contrast between what these heretics s .a w proclaimed and the name thatw they had given themselves was, at that time, almost w a commonplace in Catholicm writings. To give but one example, in 1677 the Sicilian o .c te scholar Antonio Lupis apublished a romanticised hagiographic biography of the g h s Scottish-born Capuchin.a friar John Forbes (1570/71–1606) in which he sharply w w criticised the Puritansw who, notwithstanding their ‘purest name’, were actually

m 2 ‘more guilty becauseo of their execrable behaviour’. .c te a The Inquisitor’sg comment (many similar examples could be given) demonstrates h s .a that in seventeenth-centuryw Italy even people such as the Inquisitor of Pisa who, so w w

m o .c 1 te a ‘In Ag nglia sunt haeretici, qui asserunt ipsos duci immediate a Deo, pervenisse ad talem h s perfectionem.a ut ominino peccare non possint’. A transcript of this document, preserved in w w the Archiviow Arcivescovile of Pisa, is printed in Adelisa Malena, ‘Suor Francesca Fabbroni:

m un casoo di “affettata santità” nella Toscana degli ultimi Medici’ (unpublished dissertation, .c te a Universityg of Pisa, 1992–93), p. 229. h s 2 .a antonio Lupis, La Marchesa d’Hunsleij, overo l’Amazone Scozzese (Venice, 1677), w w pp.w 145–6: ‘maggiormente macchiati nei loro esecrandi costumi’. © Copyrighted Material 146 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material far as can be surmised, had no specific interest in English history, knew something m o about English radical movements. When investigating what Italians made of .cthe te a g h contemporary political and religious debates in England, the first issue thats needs .a w to be established is what information actually arrived in Italy and throughw which w channels. It is important to bear in mind that seventeenth-century Englandm was o .c te culturally and politically very distant from Italy. It was uncommon to afind Italian g h s intellectuals who spoke English, at least until the last decades of the.a century, and w w only Italian merchants who lived in England for commercial reasonsw or, more

m o rarely, diplomats had some knowledge of the language. The .c wealthy English te a merchant communities residing in Livorno, Venice, Genoa and gother parts of Italy h s .a led separate lives from the local population and there appearsw to be no grounds w w for speaking of a real cultural exchange between British and Irish merchants and m o .c Italian urban elites. Similarly, British and Irish travellers,te who increasingly took a g h their Grand Tour in Italy, were more curious to acquires information about Italy .a w than to provide their hosts with news and commentaryw about the political and w

m cultural situation in their homeland. o .c te Nonetheless, this did not prevent the vicissitudesa of the English Revolution g h s receiving a remarkable amount of attention in contemporary.a Italian historiography. w w w The exceptional events that resulted in the English Civil Wars and Charles I’s trial m o and public execution made a considerable impact.c on Italian imaginations to the te a g 3 extent that many Italian authors dealt specificallyh with these events. Vittorio Siri s .a wrote a complete account of English historyw in the fifteen volumes of Mercurio w w

(1644–82), making available for the firstm time in Italian translation many documents o .c produced during the Civil War from bothte sides of the conflict. Maiolino Bisaccioni a g h also broadly narrated the events ins England (together with those of Catalonia, .a w w Portugal, Palermo, Naples, Bogdanw Chmielnicki’s Poland, the Fronde in France,

m unrest in Turkey and the war ofo Fermo) in the Historia delle guerre civili de’ .c 4 te a nostri tempi (1652). Galeazzog Gualdo Priorato examined events in England in the h s .a second, third and fourth partw of his Historie (1641, 1648 and 1651), and in many of w 5 w his other works. Girolamo Brusoni summarised the English revolutionary phase m o .c te a g h s 3 .a w s. Villani, ‘Thew English Civil Wars and the Interregnum in Italian Historiography w in the 17th century’, ;m I. Rachum, o .c ‘The Meaning of “Revolution”te in the English Revolution (1648–1660)’, Journal of the a g h History of Ideas, s 56 (1995): pp. 195–216; I. Rachum, ‘Italian Historians and Emergence .a w of the Term “Revolution”,w 1644–1659’, History, 80 (1995): pp. 191–206; P. Messina, ‘La w rivoluzione inglesem e la storiografia italiana del seicento’, Studi storici, 25 (1984): pp. o .c 725–46; N. teRecupero, Storia provvidenza utopia. Forme ideologiche nel Seicento inglese a g h (Catania, 1994);s M. Barducci, Oliver Cromwell: negli scritti italiani del Seicento (Florence, .a w 2005). w w 4 m maiolino Bisaccioni, Historia delle Guerre Civili di questi ultimi tempi (Venice, o .c 1652).te a g h 5 s galeazzo Gualdo Priorato, L’Historia universale … nella quale si tratta di tutte le .a w w wguerre occorse in Europa in dieci anni parte prima e seconda (1652); Galeazzo Gualdo © Copyrighted Material 17th-Century Italy and English Radical Movements 147 © Copyrighted Material

in the Istorie universali d’Europa (1657), in which he charted European eventsm in o .c te the thirty-year period between 1627 and 1656, as well as in the Osservationi sopraa g 6 h s le relationi universali del Botero (1659). Between 1642 and 1656 the Historiea . w w memorabili de’ nostri tempi appeared in five parts, edited by Alessandrow Zilioli,

m Maiolino Bisaccioni, Giovan Battista Birago Avogadro and Girolamoo Brusoni. .c te a The fifth part, entitled Delle Historie Memorabili che contiene le gsollevationi h s .a di Stato de nostri tempi, was edited by Birago Avogadro. Publishedw in 1653, it w w dealt extensively with events in England and included an Italian translation of the m o .c Royalist physician George Bate’s Elenchus Motuum Nuperorumte in Anglia (this a g h was a complete reprint of the translation that had been publisheds the previous .a w year by Birago Avogadro). Significantly, the translator w considered Bate’s work w 7 m ‘the most substantial, short and faithful account ever to comeo to light’. .c te 8 In 1675, the Cassinese monk Pajoli published a biographya of Cromwell. g h s Afterwards Gregorio Leti published the two volumes.a of Teatro Britannico for w w w Robert Scott at London (December 1682) and then, ten years later, the two volumes m 9 o of the Vita di Cromwell (1692). Beside these historical.c works there was also a te a g novel and a tragedy set during the English Civil Warsh and their aftermath: Bernardo s .a 10 Morando’s Rosalinda (1650) and Girolamo Graziani’sw Cromuele (1671). w w

What is noteworthy here is both the widespreadm interest that the English o .c Revolution generated in Italy, and that all Italiante historians writing about England a g h during the 1640s and 1650s were unambiguouslys sympathetic towards the defeated .a w Royalists. Italian historians interpreted Ew nglish events from the perspective of a w

m shared ideological bias. For them the Civilo War had occurred because of Charles’s .c te a inability to face parliamentary opposition.g What was perceived to be Charles’s h s naivety and over-generosity had benefited.a Oliver Cromwell whose hypocrisy, w w w

m o Priorato, Dell’Historia (Venice, 1648);.c Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato, Dell’Historie … Parte te a g quarta nella quale si contengonoh tutte le cose universalmente occorse dall’anno 1645 sino s .a all’anno 1649 (Venice, 1651); Galeazzow Gualdo Priorato, Dell’Istorie … Parte quarta dove w w si tratta di tutte le guerre occorse cio Europa dal 1646 fin al 1650 (1652). m 6 o A second edition of. cthis work was issued in 1671. te a 7 g h Birago Avogaro,s Delle Historie Memorabili che contiene le sollevationi di Stato .a w de nostri tempi (Venice,w 1653): ‘Il più sostantioso, breve e fedele racconto che sia venuto w in luce’. m o .c 8 te Alfonso Pajoli,a Vite del Cardinale Giulio Mazarini, e di Oliviero Cromvele (Venice g h s and Bologna, 1675)..a w 9 w for Leti,w see G. Spini, Ricerca dei libertini. La teoria dell’impostura nel Seicento

m italiano (Rome,o 1950; revised and expanded edition, Florence, 1983); F. Barcia, Un .c te a politico dell’etàg barocca: Gregorio Leti (Milan, 1983); F. Barcia, Bibliografia delle opere h s di Gregorio.a Leti (Milan, 1981), pp. 388–408; N. Krivatsy, Bibliography of the Works of w w Gregoriow Leti (New Castle, DE, 1982), pp. 33–7.

m 10 o .c e. Arata, ‘La resistibile ascesa di un narratore secentista: “La Rosalinda” di te a Bernardog Morando’ (unpublished dissertation, University of Parma, 1999–2000); M. Fasce, h s ‘Il.a “Cromuele” di Girolamo Graziani’ (unpublished dissertation, University of Genoa, w w w1988–89). © Copyrighted Material 148 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material cunning and good fortune astonished Italian observers. The reasons for the conflict m o were therefore to be located solely in the political and social sphere: the Civil Wars.c te a g h were perceived essentially as a conflict between the nobility and aristocracy s on the .a w one hand, and the vile mob on the other. This political and social interpretationw w overshadowed more specific theological issues which lay behindm the religious o .c te divisions in England. The religious debate, in other words, was reada from an g h s explicitly and exclusively ‘socio-political’ perspective. .a w w w

m o Heresy is the enemy of the good Principality, because if the former.c requests te a freedom, the latter expects strict obedience; one wishes conscienceg to be h s .a dominated by the Prince, the other wishes the Prince to bew dominated by w w conscience; one searches for a multiplicity of opinions in divine things without m o .c punishment, the other cannot enjoy the sceptre if the vassalste do not have unity a g 11 h in beliefs. s .a w w w

m Thus wrote Maiolino Bisaccioni in the opening pageso of his history of the English .c te Civil War (1652), aptly summarising the attitude Italiana intellectuals held towards g h s the religious debate that characterised the English.a Revolution. In a similar vein, w w w Siri wrote: m o .c te a g what principally emerged from the diversityh of belief was the discord that has s .a ignited the whole kingdom, threatening thew king’s power with a cruel death. This w w

tragic outcome must be a lesson to allm princes that loosening the bonds of true o .c religion paves the way for the weakeningte the bond between princes and their a g h vassals, because being separated froms God is a divorce between obedience and .a w 12 w the Prince. w

m o .c te a The same interpretative schemeg also underpinned the Venetian, Tuscan and h s .a Genoese diplomatic representatives’w reading of these events. Resident in England w w during these critical years, their weekly reports provided the principal source m o of information for seventeenth-century.c Italian historians writing about the te a g h s .a w w w 11 Bisaccioni, Historiam delle Guerre Civili, part I, p. 3: ‘L’heresia è nimica del o .c buon Principato, perchéte se quella vuole la libertà, questo desidera un’essatta obbedienza, a g h l’una vuole la conscienzas dominata dal Prencipe, l’altro vuole il Prencipe dominato dalla .a w conscienza, l’unaw ricerca moltiplicità de’ pareri nelle cose divine senza punitione, l’altro w non può goderem lo scettro, se non ha la unità del credere de i Vassalli’. o 12 .c te Vittorioa Siri, Il Mercurio, overo historia de’correnti tempi (15 vols, Casale, Lyons, g h Paris and s Florence: 1644–82), 2, p. 247: ‘dalla diversità delle credenza principalmente .a w n’è ridondataw quella discordia, che ha causato una combustione generale del Regno, e w

m minacciatao un’aspra morte alla potenza del Re; il cui tragico successo deve documentar .c te i Principia tutti, che ’l sciogliere i legami di vera fede, apre la strada per distacare anco g h queis del vassallaggio; il separarsi da Dio, essendo un far divortio dall’ubbedienza del .a w w wPrencipe’. © Copyrighted Material 17th-Century Italy and English Radical Movements 149 © Copyrighted Material

Revolution. Direct religious motivations are rarely alluded to in their dispatchesm o .c te and even then they tended to be regarded as a smokescreen for real politicala and g h s social motivations. This was true even for clerics such as Gilles Chaissy, chaplaina . w w of the Tuscan resident in London, who sent a series of interesting weeklyw reports

m to Rome between 1647 and 1650; Carlo Rossetti, the papal envoy in Englando from .c te a 1639 to 1641; and Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, nuncio in Ireland fromg 1645 to h s 13 .a 1649. w w w Many seventeenth-century history books published in Italy referred to the m o .c English debate about the institutional order which developed betweente the end of a g h the first Civil War and the immediate aftermath of the regicide.s It is possible to find .a w references here to English debates on universal suffrage, the wright to property and w

m representation. Indeed, it is noteworthy that Henry Ireton’s elaborateo constitutional .c te plan, the ‘Heads of Proposals’ (drawn up in 1647), circulateda in several manuscript g h s copies and was published by the historian Vittorio S.a iri in his bestselling and w w w widely-circulated Mercurio (1668). This demonstrates that there was no real fear m o that the ‘democratic’ ideas which led to the foundation.c of the English Republic te 14 a g would find supporters in Italy as well. The Frondeh demonstrated that the English s .a example could be emulated on the Continent, wbut Italian commentators did not w w believe that a ‘Parliamentarian’ movement couldm find support in any of the Italian o .c15 States, much less a movement of ‘Levellers’.te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g 13 h s. Villani, ‘Per la progettatas edizione della corrispondenza dei rappresentanti toscani .a w a Londra: Amerigo Salvetti e wGiovanni Salvetti Antelminelli durante il Commonwealth e w

m il Protettorato (1649–1660)’,o Archivio storico italiano, 162 (2004): pp. 109–25; S. Villani, .c te ‘La prima rivoluzione inglesea nel giudizio delle diplomazie veneziana e genovese’, in g h Elena Fasano Guarini, Renzos Sabbatini and Marco Natalizi (eds), Repubblicanesimo e .a w w Repubbliche nell'Europaw di Antico Regime (Milan, 2007), pp. 105–32. On Rinuccini, see

m Giuseppe Aiazzi, Nunziaturao in Irlanda di Monsignore Gio. Battista Rinuccini arcivescovo .c te di Fermo negli annia 1645 a 1649 (Florence, 1844), translated into English by Annie g h s Hutton as The Embassy.a in Ireland of Monsignor G.B. Rinuccini Archbishop of Fermo in w w the Years 1645–1649w (Dublin, 1873); T. Ó hÁnnracháin, Catholic Reformation in Ireland.

m The Mission ofo Rinuccini 1645–1649 (Oxford, 2002). .c 14 te a s. gVillani, ‘La prima rivoluzione inglese nelle pagine del “Mercurio” di Vittorio h s Siri’, in E..a Fasano Guarini and M. Rosa (eds), L’Informazione politica in Italia (secoli w w XVI–XVIII).w Atti del seminario organizzato dalla Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa e dal

m Dipartimentoo di Storia moderna e contemporanea dell’Università di Pisa. Pisa, 23 e 24 .c te a giugnog 1997 (Pisa, 2001), pp. 137–72. h s 15 .a P. Knachel, England and the Fronde: The Impact of the English Civil War and w w wRevolution on France (Ithaca, NY, 1967). © Copyrighted Material 150 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

The Italian View of the English Sects m o .c te a g h Seventeenth-century Italians were astounded by the proliferation of sects in Englands .a w in the second half of the 1640s, yet this topic was rarely treated in contemporaryw w historical narratives of the Civil War and Interregnum. Equally significantm is that o .c te surviving accounts of these religious debates are almost exclusively preserveda in g h s travellers’ reports of England in which historical matters are treated.a peripherally w w – for example, Gregorio Leti’s Teatro Brittannico (1682). Similarly,w in the official

m o manuscript account of Cosimo de’ Medici’s travels in 1669 there is.c an entire chapter te a on the state of religion in England, from which emerges Catholicg astonishment at h s .a the most outlandish and radical sects. The compiler of the reportw wrote that it was w w possible then to find in London: m o .c te a g h Protestants or Legals, Puritans, Presbyterians, Atheists,s Brownists, Adamites, .a w Familists or members of the Family of Love, wAnabaptists, Libertines, w

m Independents, Fanatics, Arianes, Antiscripturists,o Chiliasts, Antinomians, .c te Arminians, Quintinists, Mennonits, Enthusiasts,a Seekers, Sabbatarians, g h s Antisabbatarians, Perfettists, Fotinians, Antitrinitarians,.a Sceptics, Tremblers or w w w Quakers, Monarchists or Fifth Monarchy, Latitudinarians, Origenistis, Deists, m 16 o Ranters, or Levellers. .c te a g h s .a For every one of these religious groups w– including, significantly, the Levellers w w

– there was an accompanying list mof their dogmas and principal beliefs. o .c This report, contained in a lavish manuscriptte richly illustrated by a series of a g h watercolours and now housed in thes Laurentian Library, Florence, was intended .a w w from the outset to remain in a manuscriptw as a ‘literary monument’. It was to

m be shown to guests of Cosimoo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany from May 1670, .c te a and is well known to Anglophoneg scholars from a printed English translation of h 17 s .a 1821. Its author has beenw often identified as Lorenzo Magalotti, secretary of w w the Accademia del Cimento and one of the first Italian intellectuals to appreciate m o English literary culture (having.c some familiarity with the language, he had been te a g h the first to attempt an sItalian translation ofParadise Lost, book I). This intriguing .a w attribution is probablyw erroneous, even though it is likely that Magalotti was w

m a member of the oscholarly team charged with preparing the official report of .c18 te Cosimo’s journey.a g h s .a w w w 16 A.M. m Crinò (ed.), Un principe di Toscana in Inghilterra e in Irlanda nel 1669. o .c Relazione ufficialete del viaggio di Cosimo de’ Medici tratta dal “Giornale” di L. Magalotti a g h con gli acquerellis palatini (Rome, 1968), pp. 214–15. .a 17 w w‘Relazione del viaggio di Spagna’. Travels of Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany w throughm England during the reign of King Charles the Second (1669) (London, 1821). o 18.c te a s. Villani, ‘La religione degli inglesi e il viaggio del principe. Note sulla Relazione g h Ufficiales del viaggio di Cosimo de’ Medici in Inghilterra (1669)’, Studi Secenteschi, 45 .a w w (2004):w pp. 175–94. © Copyrighted Material 17th-Century Italy and English Radical Movements 151 © Copyrighted Material

The official report’s long digression on the ‘State of the religion’ in Englandm o .c te has often been cited as a first-hand account. It is, however, based entirely on a a book g h s published in Latin at Prague: the Irish friar Anthony Bruodin’s Propugnaculuma . w w Catholicae Veritatis (1669), which describes the religious panorama of thew 1640s

m and 1650s in a malevolent but informed manner. Indeed, the digression iso a literal .c te a translation of large portions of this extremely interesting Latin text.g Bruodin’s h s .a polemical work would reward a more sustained analysis. The sectionw on the w w Quakers is particularly interesting since one of the sources cited by Bruodin is the m o .c text of another Irish Franciscan who had been James Nayler’s fellowte prisoner in a g h a Bristol gaol. This Irish Franciscan, moreover, was subsequentlys involved in the .a w trial of John Perrot and John Luffe trial at Rome – probablyw as a translator (the w

m two Quakers appear to have gone to Rome intending to converto the Pope, of which .c 19 te more will be said below). Two sources cited in Bruodin’sa Propugnaculum are g h s worth highlighting: De Statu Ecclesiæ Britannicæ Hodierno.a (1647), published by w w w the Presbyterian historian Georg Horn under the pseudonym Honorius Reggius, m o and the anonymous De hodierno statu ecclesiarum.c in Anglia, Wallia, Scotia, & te a g Hibernia, probably published in Germany in 1654h (and issued in a number of s .a editions and translations that year). Both thesew texts, which ultimately derived w w from Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena (1646),m were used extensively by the o .c Polish Protestant historian Lucas de Linda te in his description of the geography, a g h institutions, religion, habits and customs ofs the countries of the world, Descriptio .a w Orbis & omnium eius rerumpublicarum w(1655). Indeed, in de Linda’s Descriptio, w

m the section on England practically incorporatedo the De hodierno statu ecclesiarum .c te a and is significant in this context becauseg Linda’s work was translated into Italian h s by Maiolino Bisaccioni in 1660, with.a further editions issued in 1664 and 1672. The w w w part dealing with England, however, was abbreviated since Bisaccioni omitted ‘the m o things related by the author about.c various churches, because ultimately they had te a 20 g a Calvinistic flavour’. Nevertheless,h it was through such books that the majority s .a w of information on English religiousw sects circulated in seventeenth-century Italy. w

Moreover, Edward Chamberlayne’sm Angliae Notitia or the Present State of England o .c te (1669) was translated intoa French at Amsterdam as L’Etat présent de l’Angleterre g h s (1671–72). With regards.a to the world of radical sectarians, the sources of all these w w texts were mostly worksw by English heresiographers. Consequently, the image of

m this milieu that reachedo Italy was one of madness and meaningless extravagances .c te a 21 dangerous to civilg life and political order. h s .a w w w

19 m s. Villani,o ‘Conscience and Convention: the Young Furly and the “Hat .c te Controversy”’,a in S. Hutton (ed.), Benjamin Furly 1646–1714: A Quaker Merchant and His g h s Milieu (Florence,.a 2007), pp. 87–109. w 20 w w maiolino Bisaccioni, Le Relationi et Descrittioni universali et particolari del Mondo

m di Lucao di Linda (Venice, 1664), pp. 298–9: ‘le cose di varie Chiese dette dall’authore, .c te a perchég tutte vanno a finire ad un segno Calvinistico’. h s 21 .a Cf. De hodierno statu ecclesiarum in Anglia, Wallia, Scotia, & Hibernia, w w wNarratiuncula (1654), p. 16. The British Library suggests that it was published in the Low © Copyrighted Material 152 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Returning to the Florentine manuscript of Cosimo de’ Medici’s journey m o through England, what is interesting with regard to the Italian view of English.c te a g h radical movements is that it was felt necessary to insert a long chapter ons the .a w religious affairs of a Protestant country. This official report wasw evidently w destined to celebrate the intellectual curiosity of a prince who, before ascendingm o .c te to power, had decided to travel throughout Europe, crossing political,a linguistic g h s and religious frontiers on the way. Equally significant is that the long.a digression w w does not tally with what Cosimo and his retinue witnessed in Englandw since there

m o was little trace in 1669 of the sectarian milieu that had turned the.c world upside te a down during the Revolution. That the report’s compiler relied ong a printed account h s .a rather than information he could have obtained from intellectualsw accompanying w w Cosimo, suggests that he wanted to give a conventional, stereotypical image of m o .c the English religious scene. Grand Prince Cosimo’s companionste on his journey a g h – Magalotti, Filippo Corsini and Giovan Battista Gornias – had written notes or .a w diaries about their travels in England. Religious issues,w however, were treated w

m not only expeditiously but at times also very impreciselyo – demonstrating the .c te scant interest provoked by these aspects of Englisha society for Italian audiences. g h s When, after many years, they compiled the .a official report, they described w w w the religious scene using the negative cliché that from the beginning of the m o Revolution had defined England in continental.c Europe: a country swarming te a g with bizarre and manifold heresies. The hofficial report’s chapter on the ‘State s .a of religion’ in England is therefore a kindw of homage to the exotic, in which a w w constructed baroque bestiary of the spiritm was preferred to analytic description o .c and serious understanding. In these te pages reality is replaced by an imaginary a g h England populated by dozens of mutuallys hostile sects, meticulously classified .a w w 22 according to their partisan dogmas.w

m Italian heresiographers also maintainedo this approach. Thus the didactic value .c te a of English events was cited gby both Domenico Bernini and Alfonso Maria de h s .a Liguori in their eighteenth-centuryw treatments of English sects. Writing about w w the divisions between Protestants in Istoria dell’eresie colle loro confutazioni m o (History of Heresies and.c of their Confutations, 1772), Liguori referred to the te a g h Quakers, Ranters and sLevellers as instances of the insanity to which abandoning .a w the Catholic Churchw could lead, submitting evidence of their theological and w

m political radicalism:o .c te a g h s .a w w w

Countries [shelfm mark 489.g.23. (17.)]. Cf. Catalogue of Books Printed in the German- o .c Speaking Countrieste … from 1601 to 1700 (London, 1994), D230, D231, D232. a g 22 h msagalotti’s report on Cosimo’s travels in 1669 is held at the Biblioteca Nazionale .a w Centralew di Firenze, Conventi soppressi, G.9. 1863. Magalotti fell ill in England and so w

m did noto write anything concerning his stay there. There are some notes by him among .c te his manuscripts,a see S. Villani, ‘Tre filze di documenti magalottiani presso la Beinecke g h Rares Book and Manuscript Library dell’Università di Yale’, Studi Secenteschi, 48 (2007): .a w w wpp. 386–90. © Copyrighted Material 17th-Century Italy and English Radical Movements 153 © Copyrighted Material

there are Quacheri, or Tremolanti [Quakers or Tremblers], who regard m o .c te themselves as being perfect in everything in this life … reject all the Religious a g h ceremonies, and also the civilian ones … They hold that after this life there iss .a w w neither Paradise, nor Hell for souls ... the Randeri [Ranters] say that nothing thatw

m nature hungers for is filthy and illicit ... the Revelleri [Levellers] are enemieso of .c te a political order, and they want all men to be equal in goods and in honours;g and h s 23 .a therefore they very often instigate seditious acts against Magistrates. w w w

m o .c In these Italian reports about English religious debates it is possiblete to discern a a g h certain irony in dealing with the beliefs of Interregnum radicals,s and more space is .a w devoted to expressions of astonishment than indignation – thew latter being reserved w

m for the treatment of Catholics in England. In their eyes, the sectso are the paradoxical .c te fruit of an intolerable religious tolerance which had excludeda the true Church. This g h s proliferation of outlandish religious opinions was a consequence.a of the refusal of w w w the tradition and mediation of the Church in reading the Holy Scriptures; and as m o a result of the religious politics of tolerance towards.c all religious opinions except te a g Catholicism. These are the two principal accusationsh with which the English s .a were charged. The English example demonstratedw that religious tolerance and w w the rejection of tradition inevitably resulted inm the most extraordinary variety of o .c opinions and, eventually, atheism. te a g h In Italian literature – even in more strictlys theological works like Domenico .a w Bernini’s Historia di tutte l’heresie (Historyw of all the Heresies, 1711) – English w

m sects are not even considered worthy oof refutation; typically the lists of English .c te a heresies limit themselves to ironicg descriptions of a sort of phenomenology h 24 s of the peculiarities of the spirit. .a There is more sarcasm than hatred in these w w w descriptions. Polemic is reserved for Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth, all of m o whom are declared guilty of separating.c England from the Catholic Church – the te a g proliferation of sects during theh Civil Wars and Interregnum being regarded as the s .a w bitter fruit of this first wickedw act. In contrast to the divisions among Protestants w they emphasise the Catholicm world’s unity – a topic that was resumed, with quite o .c te different theoretical efficaciousness,a by Bossuet in his Histoire des Variations des g h s églises protestantes. I.an his novel Rosalinda (1650), Bernardo Morando narrated w w a troubled love storyw set against the backdrop of turbulent events in England and

m the War of Candia.o Significantly, he allows a Catholic to voice these thoughts to .c te a an English Protestant:g h s .a w w w

23 m alfonsoo Maria de’ Liguori, Historia di tutte l’heresie descritta da Domenico .c te a Bernino (Rome,g 1705–09): ‘Vi sono i Quacheri, o sieno Tremolanti, che si stimano in tutto h s perfetti in.a questa vita … Tengono che dopo questa vita non vi è né Paradiso, né Inferno per w w le animew … Vi sono poi I Randeri facilmente della stessa Sett ache dicono niuna cosa esser

m turpe edo illecita che la natura appetisce … I Revelleri [sic] son nemici dell’ordine politico, e .c te a questig vogliono, che tutti gli uomini debbano esser eguali nelle robe, e negli onori; e perciò h s costoro.a sono frequenti a muover sedizioni contra i Magistrati.’ w w 24 w domenico Bernini, Historia di tutte l’heresie (4 vols, Venice, 1711), 4, p. 612. © Copyrighted Material 154 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

But outside of the womb of the Roman Church where does the unity of the m o Faith lodge? In your England perhaps, all divided into Protestants, Puritans, .c te a g h Presbyterians, Politicians, Independents, Egalitarians and many other Sects ins .a 25 w disagreement with one another? w w

m o .c te These views were quite uniform in Italy. In Marchesa d’Hunsleij (1677),a Antonio g h s Lupis after having criticized the Puritans, condemned Presbyterians .asa ‘fathers of w w confusions, originators of schisms’ and denounced Independents, ‘whow recognize

m o neither the authority of the Church of Rome, nor that of the Anglican..c Rebels not te a 26 only to the Catholic truths, but also to those of the Heresies themselves’.g h s .a w w w

m o .c Quaker Missions to Italy te a g h s .a w The only direct relationship that the English sectarianw world had with Italy was w

m the Quaker missions to the peninsula, with which mosto scholars of seventeenth- .c 27 te century English radicalism are familiar. In 1657,a a group of Quakers set out for g h s the Levant, their goal being to reach Jerusalem. Two.a Irish members of this mission, w w w John Luffe and John Perrot, separated from their companions and, after stopping m o off at Venice, arrived at Rome in June 1658.c – perhaps intending to convert the te a g Pope to Quakerism. Arrested and tried by hthe Inquisition, Perrot, having initially s .a being held in the Carceri Nuove and thenw in the Inquisition prisons, was locked w w up in the madhouse of Santa Maria dellam Pietà (or Ospedale dei Pazzerelli). His o .c companion Luffe died, probably in Novemberte 1658, and almost certainly after what a g h we would today call a ‘hunger strike’.s In April 1661, two other Quakers, Charles .a w w Bayly and Jane Stokes, who had comew to Rome to meet Perrot, were arrested. But

m shortly afterwards, in June thato year, all three were released, perhaps following .c te a informal English diplomatic intervention.g Among the other Quakers who stayed h s .a in Italy during this period, mentionw must also be made of George Robinson, who w w stopped in Livorno on his way to Jerusalem in the winter of 1657; Samuel Fisher m o and John Stubbs, who reached.c Venice in April 1658 – where they were reported te a g h to the Inquisition – ands then went on to Rome, where they remained undisturbed .a w for several weeks; andw Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers, who, en route for w

m Alexandria by sea,o disembarked at Livorno towards the end of 1658. These two .c te a g h s 25 .a w Bernardow Morando, La Rosalinda ... Spiegata in diece libri (Piacenza, 1650): ‘Ma w fuori del grembom della Chiesa Romana dove alberga l’unità della Fede? Forse nella vostra o .c Inghilterra, tuttate divisa in Protestanti, Puritani, Presbiterani, Politici, Independenti, Egualisti a g h e in tante altres Sette tra sé discordi?’ .a 26 w Lw upis, La Marchesa d’Hunsleij, p. 145: ‘padri di confusioni, novellisti di scismi w

… independenti,m che non conoscono né la Chiesa Romana, né l’Anglicana nella loro o .c ubbidienza.te Ribelli non solo della verità Cattolica, che delle medeme Eresie’. a g h 27 s K.L. Carroll, ‘John Perrot early Quaker schismatic’, Journal of Friends’ Historical .a w w wSociety, supplement no. 33 (1971). © Copyrighted Material 17th-Century Italy and English Radical Movements 155 © Copyrighted Material

women were subsequently arrested by the Holy Office in Malta when their shipm o .c te called in there. Tried by the Inquisitor Girolamo Casanate for distributing Quakera g h s propaganda, they were imprisoned for more than three and a half years, during awhich . w 28 w time they received a visit from their co-religionist Daniel Baker. It is possiblew that

m other Quakers also stopped in Italy briefly during this period, remaining unobservedo .c te a by the religious authorities and thus leaving no evidence of their presence.g h s .a The Quakers caught the imagination of the Italians who came inw contact with w w them. Referring to Perrot and his companions, the governor of Livorno, Antonio m o .c Serristori, described them, in a letter of 26 August 1657 to Ferdinandte Bardi the a g h Secretary of War, as ‘people who speak very little and only abouts spiritual things’ .a w and as ‘very much versed in Sacred Scripture, that they alwaysw carry with them in w

m English’. At the same time, however, he emphasised that aparto from that they were .c te ‘ignorant, not even knowing how to speak Latin, other thana a very little’, and not g h 29 s accepting ‘other books or studies but the Bible’. He .aalso pointed out that they w w w addressed everyone with ‘thou’ and ‘thee’, and that they did not salute ‘anyone, m o 30 even a Prince, saying that to salute men was an act.c of idolatry’. Serristori also te a g mentioned that Quakers arriving at Livorno did noth look directly at anyone’s face s .a and that women particularly did ‘great penances,w generally condemning all vices’, w w 31 being convinced that the Holy Spirit spoke ‘withinm them’. The governor’s letter o .c concluded by observing that their apostolic teattitude might convince some people a g h of the validity of their opinions, thereby simplicitly suggesting that it would be .a w 32 appropriate to get rid of them as soon as possible.w The governor, however, seems w

m to have worried unduly since there is noo evidence of any Italian being converted to .c te a Quakerism thanks to the Quaker missionaryg effort in Italy (efforts which included h s the distribution of propaganda material.a in Latin and French, and the translation of w w w a text by Isaac Penington into Italian). m o .c te a g h s .a w w w 28 S. Villani (ed.), A Truem Account of the Great Tryals and Cruel Sufferings Undergone o .c by Those Two Faithful Servantste of God Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers. La vicenda di a g h due quacchere prigionieres dell’inquisizione di Malta (Pisa, 2003). .a 29 w Archivio di Statow di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato, 2180 (Governatore), Antonio w

m Serristori to Ferdinandoo Bardi (26 August 1657), printed in Stefano Villani, Tremolanti e .c te Papisti. Missioni quaccherea nell’Italia del Seicento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, g h 1996), pp. 38–9;s ‘Son gente che parlano pochissimo, e solo di cose spirituali … sono .a w versatissimi dellaw Scrittura Sacra, che portan sempre con loro in lingua inglese, nel resto w

m sono ignoranti,o non sapendo neanco parlar latino, se non pochissimo, e non ammettono altri .c te libri, né altria studij che della bibbia.’ g h 30 s ‘danno.a del tu a ognuno, e non salutano alcuno quando fussi anco un Principe, w w dicendow essere il saluto agl’huomini un principio d’Idolatria’

31 m o ‘non guardano in viso nessuno e particolarmente le donne fanno gran penitenze, .c te a riprendonog generalmente tutti i vizji, e dicono parlare in loro lo Spirito Santo’ h s 32 .a ‘insomma fanno da Apostoli, e se si trattenessino qui troppo non ci mancherebbe w w chiw approvassi, e gustassi questa novità’ © Copyrighted Material 156 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

In the governor’s statement, which was written after his first meeting with the m o Quakers, one finds the complete range of characteristics that would subsequently.c te a g h appear in all seventeenth-century descriptions of Quakers who travelled to s Italy; .a w though it is noteworthy that there is no allusion to the tremor of their bodiesw as such w episodes clearly did not occur in Livorno. Thus Quakers were described mas bigots o .c te (‘bacchettoni’) and greater emphasis was placed on their behaviour arather than g h s their ideas (there was little effort to understand their religious views). Their.a claim to w w ‘correct the mistakes of the World’, to quote the Tuscan diplomaticw representative

m o 33 at Rome in 1658, was considered as an extravagance, if not downright.c folly. te a When Perrot and Luffe were arrested by the Inquisition everyoneg expected that h s .a they would be sent to the stake. Yet, following their examinationw by the Holy w w Office they avoided the death sentence. Instead, their examiners concluded that the m o .c most appropriate place for them was Rome’s madhouse; te‘their dogmas being the a g h result of mere madness’, as Cardinal Francesco Barberinis informed the Inquisitor .a 34 w of Malta in 1659. w w

m The history of Quaker missions to Italy is thereforeo the story of a missed .c te opportunity. The Quakers, whose missionary activitiesa in Protestant countries g h s had some success, considered the Catholics as.a wicked idolaters and made no w w w corresponding effort to adapt their preaching to a context substantially different m o to the English one (even – or perhaps especially.c – Perrot, who came from te a g predominantly Catholic Ireland). On the otherh hand, the Catholics considered the s .a Quakers’ theological positions as the naivew fantasies of ignorant people which w w were unworthy of being taken seriously.m In contemporary Italian documents o .c when Quakers are mentioned the dominantte theme is always bemusement at their a g h eccentricities, which never turns intos indignation at their ideas. Regarded as the .a w w frenzies of weak-minded people,w Quaker beliefs were once again held up as an

m 35 example of the dangerous consequenceso of separation from Rome. .c te a g h s .a w w w Concluding Remarks m o .c te a g h After the Restoration,s Henry Neville lived for long periods of time in Italy. A .a w friend of the Grand w Duke of Tuscany Cosimo III as well as numerous Italian w

m intellectuals, no oneo apparently ever objected to his Republican views. Evidently .c te his Italian hosts thoughta those political doctrines pertained to the British Isles and g h s were not exportable..a It is also likely that Neville himself did not consider the w w Italians maturew enough to govern themselves as free men. As with the Quakers,

m o Neville’s case.c clearly shows how the cultural distance between Italy and England te a g h s .a 33 w w‘correggere gli errori del mondo’ w 34 m ‘essendo effetto di mera pazzia li lor dogmi’ o 35.c te a inquisition Archives of Malta, Mdina, Sezione Processi Criminali, 70A, printed in g h S. sVillani, Tremolanti e Papisti. Missioni quacchere nell’Italia del Seicento (Rome, 1996), .a w w pp.w 201–24. © Copyrighted Material 17th-Century Italy and English Radical Movements 157 © Copyrighted Material

did not facilitate the transmission of radical ideas that sprung forth out of fertilem o 36 .c te British soil. a g h s All this clearly raises the question of whether the terms ‘radical’a and . w w ‘radicalism’ can be used in a seventeenth-century Italian context. It is knownw that

m many Italians who participated in the sixteenth-century Reformation characterisedo .c te a themselves as heretics to all the Churches. Critical and unquiet consciences,g they h s .a were persecuted for the audacity of their thoughts by both Catholics wand orthodox w w Protestants. Among them were many anti-Trinitarians, supporters of universal m o .c salvation, theorists of religious toleration, Latitudinarians and Mte ortalists, whose a 37 g h works circulated widely in Europe. s .a w In the seventeenth century, however, all this concerned aw bygone era. In July w

m 1542, Pope Paul III, with the Constitution Licet ab initio, hado founded the Sacred .c te Congregation of the Universal Inquisition to exercise thea holy office of defending g h s the Church from heresy. The repression that followed .completelya swept away in w w w forty years any form of manifest and conscious heresy, forcing those who did m o not want to adapt into exile or Nicodemism, hiding.c their ideas behind a veil of te a g outward obedience. In the years that followed, theh Church took care to prevent any s .a challenge to post-Tridentine social discipline. Twhe burning of Giordano Bruno on w w

17 February 1600 showed the whole of Italy howm those who openly challenged the o .c Catholic orthodoxy were punished. te a g h Around the 1650s, however, cracks weres beginning to appear in the edifice .a w of post-Tridentine Catholic orthodoxy inw Italy. Positions of cultured libertinism w

m emerged informed by the conceptual toolso of heterodox Aristotelianism. These led .c te a to openly anticlerical and anti-religiousg outcomes and it was increasingly common, h s even among uneducated people, .a to openly discuss political and theological w w w questions. These were important heterodox currents of thought that have recently m o been the focus of studies of particular.c interest – for example, Federico Barbierato’s te a g fascinating book about the ‘pathsh of disbelief’ in seventeenth- and eighteenth- s 38 .a w century Venice. Yet it is clearw that, at least for the central years of the seventeenth w century, the Italian religiousm and political landscape was, from the perspective of o .c te the circulation of radicala ideas, markedly different from the English. So much so, g h s that they are incomparable..a For this reason the study of how English radicalism w w was perceived in Italyw is of particular interest.

m To conclude, ito seems reasonable to accept the following points: the Italian .c te a diplomats presentg in London during the Civil Wars and Interregnum – the resident h s .a of Tuscany Awmerigo Salvetti and, after his death, his son Giovanni Salvetti w w Antelminelli, together with the Genoese resident Francisco Bernardi, and the m o .c te a g h 36 s o.a. Nicastro, Henry Neville e l’isola di Pines: con testo inglese e la traduzione w w italianaw di The isle of Pines (Pisa, 1988). Gaby Mahlberg, Henry Neville and English

m Republicano culture in the seventeenth century (Manchester, 2010). .c 37te a g d. Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento e altri scritti (Turin, 1992), p. 486. h s 38 .a f. Barbierato, Politici e ateisti: percorsi della miscredenza a Venezia fra Sei e w w Settecentow (Milan, 2006). © Copyrighted Material 158 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Venetian and Papal representatives – were provided detailed information about m o events in England. This included the turbulent religious scene and radical sects,.c te a g h which were analysed from a strictly political viewpoint. Hence James Naylers was .a 39 w explicitly defined by Bernardi as a Quaker Masaniello. The same interpretativew w system characterises the works of the Italian historians of the seventeenthm century, o .c te all of whom had Royalist sympathies. Because their interest in English a events was g h s completely political, theological issues remain in the background of .atheir works. w w English radical sects are treated a little more extensively inw travel reports

m o and heresiographies, though these works deliberately emphasised.c their more te a outlandish aspects. Their opinions are taken to be so manifestlyg bizarre as to h s .a provoke astonishment rather than genuine interest, and veryw often they are only w w described in order to give an ‘exotic’ touch to the travel narratives. From a m o .c theological perspective, for Italians writing about religiouste debates in England, the a g h sects represented more or less only the perverse effects s of separation from Rome .a w and of freedom of conscience. w w

m It can therefore be assumed that the attitude ofo Italian intellectuals towards .c te English radicalism in this period offers evidence aof the inability of seventeenth- g h s century Italian culture to fully engage with the reality.a of that world. As has already w w w been noted, in seventeenth-century Italian historical works one can also find m o extremely accurate accounts of the Levellers’.c political activity and their ideas. Yet te a g the very fact that these reports were publishedh without running the risk of being s .a censored is in itself proof that they were wperceived as extraneous, and not in any w w way dangerous. m o .c Finally, I should point out that thete concept of ‘radical’, both in the theological a g h and political sphere, has a very differents meaning for Italian culture in the late .a w w seventeenth century than it has forw an English one. It can perhaps be said that, for

m Italian intellectuals of the period,o the only ‘possible’ form of political radicalism .c te a was internal to the theorisationg of the Raison d’état (Ragion di Stato), and was h s .a thus reduced to a sort of outdatedw Machiavellianism, while the only ‘possible’ w w religious radicalism was a libertinism with anticlerical shades. After Paolo Sarpi it m o was not until the eighteenth.c century that there was any debates on Jurisdictionalism te a g h that there was any Italians reflection of some theoretical value on the relationship .a w 40 between State and Church.w w

m For an Italian cultureo that was already uneasy when it came to defining the .c te Church of Englanda – a Church theologically close to Calvinism but with an g h s Episcopal structure.a – the sectarian world of seventeenth-century English radicalism w w was substantiallyw incomprehensible. I would like to finish with a revealing

m o anecdote: when.c an obscure Somascan father reported to the Venetian Holy Office te a g h s .a 39 w wLetter by Bernardi (London, 5 January 1657), printed in C. Prayer (ed.), Oliviero w

Cromwellm dalla battaglia di Worcester alla sua morte. Corrispondenza dai rappresentanti o .c genovesite a Londra, in Atti della Società ligure di storia patria, 16 (1882), p. 393. a g h 40 s see A.C. Jemolo, Stato e Chiesa negli scrittori politici italiani del Seicento e del .a w w Settecentow (Naples, 1971). © Copyrighted Material 17th-Century Italy and English Radical Movements 159 © Copyrighted Material

his encounter with the Quakers John Stubbs and Samuel Fisher – the latter beingm o .c te an Oxford graduate and one of the most interesting radical intellectuals ofa the g h s seventeenth century – he said that they did not have ‘deep knowledge of mattersa . w w of controversy’, and that ‘for this’ they seemed more ‘to be deceived thanw able

41 m to deceive others with doctrine’. This contemptuous judgement perhapso gives .c te a a measure of the enormous distance that separated Revolutionary Englandg from h s .a Counter-Reformation Italy. w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a41 g Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Sant’Uffizio, busta 108, fols 1v–2r: ‘notitia profonda h s delle.a materie di controversia’, ‘più tosto ingannati, che valevoli di ingannar altri con la w w dottrina’;w cf. Villani, Tremolanti e Papisti. © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 8 m o .c te a g h s A Radical Review of the .a w w w

m o Cambridge Platonists .c te a g h s .a Sarah Hutton w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m Introduction o .c te a g h s In 1644, during the English Civil War, the Earl of Manchester.a set about purging w 1 w w the University of Cambridge of Royalist support. H is action was described by m o the future Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft,.c as the beheading of the te a g university and its colleges. In the years that followed,h the fellows of Sancroft’s s .a own college, Emmanuel, benefited significantlyw from the Parliamentary confidence w w it enjoyed. Seven of the ten college headshipsm made vacant by Manchester’s o .c purge, and many other college posts, were filledte from the Emmanuel fellowship. a g h Among them, Thomas Hill was appointeds Master of the college in 1644 in place .a w of the deprived Richard Holdsworth. In w1645, he was intruded Master of Trinity. w

m Anthony Tuckney, appointed to replaceo Hill at Emmanuel, was subsequently, .c te a in 1653, appointed Master of St John’s.g In 1649, William Dell was intruded h s Master of Gonville and Caius College..a In 1650, John Sadler was appointed w w w 2 Master of Magdalene College in place of the deprived Edward Rainbow. The m o Emmanuel fellows intruded into.c other colleges also included men of a rather te a g different theological temper fromh Tuckney. Foremost among these was Benjamin s .a w Whichcote who was appointedw Provost of King’s College in 1651. Whichcote’s w

Emmanuel associates includedm John Worthington who was appointed Master o .c 3 te of Jesus College in 1650,a and Ralph Cudworth who was appointed Master of g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h 1 s J. Twigg,. a The University of Cambridge and the English Revolution, 1625–1688 w w (Woodbridge, 1990),w p. 97.

2 m the relationshipo of John Sadler to the Cambridge Platonists has never been explored. .c te a He certainlyg shared millenarian views, and a deep commitment to religious toleration, which h s extended .ato the Jews. He supported the readmission of the Jews to England in 1656 and the w w constructionw of a synagogue in 1657. He was also active in the Hartlib circle.

m 3 o .c Worthington had been installed as a fellow of Emmanuel in 1641 as a result of an te a appealg for Parliamentary intervention to overturn the vote against his election. See The h s Diary.a and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington, (ed.) J. Crossley and R.C. Christie, w w Chethamw Society, 13, 36, 114 (2 parts in 3 vols, Manchester, 1847–86), 1, pp. 12–17. © Copyrighted Material 162 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

4 Clare College in 1645, moving on to become Master of Christ’s College in 1650. m o Other fellows of Emmanuel College linked to Whichcote were John Smith, who.c te a g h became mathematics lecturer at Queens’ College in 1644, and Nathaniel Ingelo,s .a w who had been a fellow of Emmanuel only briefly before moving to Queens’.w A w friend of John Worthington, Ingelo subsequently served as chaplain to Bulstrodem o .c te Whitelocke, Cromwell’s sometime ambassador to Sweden. Two Emmanuela fellows g h s associated with Whichcote who had the distinction of not being intruded.a into other w w colleges, were Nathaniel Culverwell, who died in 1651, and Peterw Sterry, who

m o served successively as chaplain to Lord Brooke, the Council of .cState (1649) and te a Oliver Cromwell. The group of Emmanuel men linked to Whichcoteg have been h s .a called the ‘Emmanuel Platonists’ on account of the Christianw Platonist stamp of w 5 w their thinking. The designation now in use is the more inclusive term ‘Cambridge m o .c Platonists’, which embraces other like-minded figureste at the university, most a g h6 famous of whom was Henry More of Christ’s College,s where Ralph Cudworth .a w was appointed Master in 1650. w w

m The Cambridge Platonists are a loosely definedo group, chiefly because their .c te 7 group identity has been conferred retrospectively.a Although there is general g h s consensus as to the core group (Whichcote, Cudworth,.a More, Sterry and Smith) w w w there is disagreement about their number. Culverwell is sometimes excluded on the m o mistaken view that he was not a Platonist. Even.c Whichcote’s Cambridge Platonism te a 8 g has been disavowed. Sadler and Ingelo h are normally overlooked. There were s .a certainly other members of the university inw sympathy with them – for example, John w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w 4 w for a discussion of the Cambridge Platonists’ role, see B. Carter, ‘Politics, Theology m o and Cambridge Platonism: the Trinity.c and Ethical Community in the Thought of Ralph te a g Cudworth’ (unpublished PhD, Middlesexh University, 2004), ch. II. 3. s 5 .a J. Tulloch, Rational Theologyw and Christian Philosophy in England in the w w Seventeenth Century (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1874). m o 6 .c more entered Christ’ste College in 1631, graduating BA in 1636 and MA in 1639. a g h He was elected fellow ofs the college in 1641 in place of his erstwhile tutor Robert Gell. .a w On More, see S. Huttonw (ed.), Henry More (1614–1687) Tercentenary Studies: With a w

Biography and Bibliographym (Dordrecht, 1990); R. Crocker, Henry More, the Biography of o .c a Cambridge Platonistte (The Hague, 2003). a g 7 h for discussions of the membership of the group and an overview of their writings, see .a w C.A. Patrides (ed.),w The Cambridge Platonists (Cambridge, 1969); G.R. Cragg (ed.), The w

Cambridge Platonistsm (Oxford, 1968). o 8 .c te Notablya by J. Parkin, Science, Religion and Politics in Restoration England. Richard g h Cumberland’ss ‘De legibus naturae’ (Woodbridge, 1999). Parkin tries to make a separation .a w betweenw Culverwell and Whichcote on the one hand and the Cambridge Platonists on the w

m other, oby arguing, in my view implausibly, that Culverwell exhibits a ‘naturalism’ not found .c te in thea others, and that Whichcote was more of an Aristotelian than a Platonist – a judgement g h which,s in my view, is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of early modern Christian .a w w Platonism,w and the compatibility of Cambridge Platonism with the new science. © Copyrighted Material A Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 163 © Copyrighted Material

9 Sherman and Hezekiah Burton. There is also a question as to whether Cambridgem o .c te Latitudinarians like Simon Patrick should be included in their number – after,a as g h s Gilbert Burnet affirms, the contemporary nickname ‘Latitudinarian’, applieda to . w w the figures now called Cambridge Platonists. The nearest contemporary accountw of

m the Cambridge Platonists occurs in Joseph Glanvill’s Baconian utopia ‘Bensalem’,o .c te a where several of them figure as ‘Cupri-Cosmits’, under pseudonymsg which are h s 10 .a formed from scrambled versions of their names. Writing after thew Restoration, w w Glanvill emphasises their latitudinarianism. In the 1640s and 1650s, however, they m o .c stand out by virtue of their repudiation of predestinarian Calvinism.te a g h Perhaps the best summary of the ideals and theological positions which they .a w shared is Benjamin Whichcote’s defence of his position againstw the criticisms w 11 m levelled by the intruded master of his own college, Anthonyo Tuckney. Whichcote .c te defends a tolerant Christianity emphasising God’s grace anda love, and the freedom g h s of man’s will. Whichcote’s theology is underpinned.a by a deep sense of the w w w compatibility of philosophy and faith, which allowed him to see the good even in m o a pagan philosopher, like Plato. Tuckney worried about.c the heterodox implications te a g of Whichcote’s position. From a modern perspective,h his mildness and eirenic s .a disposition appear to us now divorced from the wpolitical sphere, and anything but w w radical. However, moderation does not necessarilym mean a compromise position. o .c Within the context of their time, it was certainlyte not seen as such, for all the ‘sweet a g h reasonableness’ of their conduct. As opponentss of the stern Calvinism which .a w dominated academic Puritanism at that w time, the Cambridge Platonists form a w

m separate group among Cambridge Puritans.o And, as the roll-call of parliamentary .c te a intrusions in the university makes clear,g they were from the beginning associated h s with the parliamentary cause. .a w w w The Cambridge Platonists rarely figure in histories of the English Revolution. m o They receive brief but somewhat.c contradictory mention in Christopher Hill’s te a g 12 work, where Cudworth is theh only one associated with radicalism. Instead, s .a w w w 9 J. Levine, ‘Latitudinarians,m Neoplatonists, and the Ancient Wisdom’, in R. Kroll, o .c te R. Ashcraft and P. Zagorina (eds), Philosophy, Science and Religion in England, 1640–1700 g h (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 85–101.s .a 10 w w glanvill publishedw a version of ‘Bensalem’ in his Essays (1676). Part of the original

m MS (now held in Chicagoo University Library) was printed in J.I. Cope, ‘The Cupri-Cosmits: .c te Glanvill on Latitudinariana Anti-Enthusiasm’, HLQ, 17 (1954): pp. 69–86. See Crocker, g h s Henry More, pp. .a80–81. w 11 w ‘Eight wLetters of Dr. Anthony Tuckney, and Dr. Benjamin Whichcote’, printed in

m Benjamin Whichcote,o Moral and Religious Aphorisms (London, 1753). .c 12 te a Cudworthg is mentioned in a footnote, where he is classified as a radical largely h s by association.a (with John Stoughton and Samuel Hartlib), and not in terms of his ideas w w w (C. Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford, 1965), p. 101 n. 4). Hill’s m o assessment.c of the Cambridge Platonists is contradictory. On the one hand he credits them te a withg being at the vanguard of the new science, and with subscribing to heterodox beliefs. But h s he.a overlooks their links to others he sees as radical (in particular John Goodwin and Robert w w Gell).w He also differentiates More from radicalism by calling him ‘respectable enough’ © Copyrighted Material 164 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material the Cambridge student most likely to feature in histories of this period is their m o Cambridge contemporary John Milton. Thanks largely to the efforts of Christopher.c te a g h Hill, Milton the political activist has been rescued from his posthumous fate,s first .a w as the orthodox genius and politically neutral stylist of the literary canon,w and w then as the target of the revisionary iconoclasm of F.R. Leavis. Once consignedm o .c te to Ozymandias-like literary perdition by Leavis, Milton was recovereda by Hill g h 13 s and installed at the centre of his Century of Revolution. The radical.a credentials w w of Hill’s Milton are measured in terms of his republican politicalw activism and

m o his religious heterodoxy, as well as the political allegiances of .cthe company he te a kept, and his following among the political dissidents of succeedingg times. Hill’s h s .a recovery of the radical Milton from the image that prevailed inw the nineteenth and w w much of the twentieth centuries involved a fundamental reassessment of the poet m o .c as a politically engaged republican. The term ‘Cambridget ePlatonism’ originates in a g h roughly the same period when the respectable image of s Milton was formed. And, .a w as with Milton the moderate man of letters, the Cambridgew Platonists were claimed w

m by orthodox, liberal Anglicanism. This was largelyo as a result of the labours of .c te John Tulloch who set the mould for treating thema as primarily theological g h s thinkers, unconcerned with worldly affairs – an interpretation.a which has survived w 14 w w to this day, and which was reinforced by a tendency, deriving from Coleridge, to m o emphasise the transcendental aspects of their.c Platonism. The result has been the te a g widespread perception that the Cambridge Platonistsh were mild, mystical, moderate s .a 15 theologians, unconcerned with secular lifew and, at most, politically neutral. This w w image is overdue for the kind of reviewm to which Milton has been subjected. o .c In this essay I aim to recover a tmoree controversial and politically engaged a g h image of Cambridge Platonism, ands to make a case for their inclusion more .a w w centrally in the history of the Englishw Revolution and its aftermath. In so doing,

m I aim to open the question of o their possible radicalism, in the context of the .c te a interrogation of radicalism withg which this volume is concerned. In considering h s .a whether, and, if so, in what wrespects they might be considered radical, I shall, for w w

m o (C. Hill, Milton and the English.c Revolution (London, 1977), p. 493), and dismissing him as te a g a mystic. Cudworth is the honly Cambridge Platonist to be given an entry in the Biographical s .a Dictionary of British Radicalsw in the Seventeenth Century, ed. R. Greaves and R. Zaller w w (3 vols, Brighton, 1982–84). m o 13 .c Hill, Miltonte and the English Revolution. a g 14 h Tulloch, Rationals Theology. Cf. F. Powicke, The Cambridge Platonists: A Study .a w (London, 1926).w For a discussion of this interpretation of the Cambridge Platonism, see w

Carter, ‘Ralphm Cudworth’. o 15 .c te notwithstandinga the fact that the mysticism of some sectarian leaders of the g h period hass been taken as a sign of their radicalism, a double standard seems to apply .a w to the Cambridgew Platonists. When they are identified as mystics, the identification is w

m used pejoratively.o Jon Parkin, for example, writes of the ‘esoteric pre-occupations’ and .c te ‘mysticisma and eclecticism’ of Cudworth, More and Smith. He compares this unfavourably g h withs what he sees as ‘the common sense empirical intellectual tradition’ that he associates .a w w withw Whichcote (Parkin, Science, Religion and Politics, pp. 77–8). © Copyrighted Material A Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 165 © Copyrighted Material

the purposes of this paper, confine myself largely to the criteria by which Miltonm o .c te has been reclassified as a radical. This, I freely admit, is somewhat problematic,a g h s not least because Christopher Hill’s conception of radicalism is not immunea from . w 16 w criticism. There are, of course, other ways of assessing Cambridge Platonistw

m radicalism, depending on how radicalism is defined. An alternative routeo might .c te a be by applying the criteria by which John Locke has been associatedg with the h s .a political radicals of the 1680s – namely by way of their politicalw connections w w (I shall return to the Locke connection). One of the difficulties in assessing the m o .c position of the Cambridge Platonists is the silence which has engulfedte their early a g h history and later fortune. This silence is both a symptom ands a consequence of .a w their political fortunes after the Restoration. In this essay Iw argue that there are w

m aspects of Cambridge Platonism which deserve to be termedo ‘radical’ in the same .c te sense as Milton, even if one might want to set a limit to atheir radicalism in other g h s respects. Whether or not the evidence I shall present .ais sufficient to re-classify w w w them as radicals, the resulting picture will bring the Cambridge Platonists rather m o closer to John Milton than Milton scholars today are.c prepared to countenance. te a g h s .a w w w

Problematic Inheritance m o .c te a g h Before proceeding, a word on the Cambridges Platonists’ ‘Platonism’ is in order. .a w The first point to make is that the designationw ‘Platonist’ is misleading. While it w

m is true that, after the manner of the earlyo Fathers, they drew on Platonist sources .c te a in their writings, they were not a schoolg of philosophers in the sense that they h s organised themselves as one, or in.a the sense that they all subscribed to a fixed w w w set of doctrines. They certainly did not call themselves Platonists, never mind m o Cambridge Platonists – the designation.c itself was adopted in the nineteenth te a g century. Nor were they Platonistsh in the modern sense of an exclusive adherence s .a w to the teachings of Plato. Rw ather, in the tradition of their Renaissance forebears, w they interpreted Plato alongsidem Plotinus, and drew on other ancient philosophies o .c te including Stoicism and aGreek atomism and Aristotelianism. While there is much g h s about the label ‘Platonist’.a that is entirely appropriate, a disadvantage of the term w w is that it encouragesw the assumption made by many that their philosophy was

m unworldly, even mystical,o and out of touch with the realities of the time. Worse, .c te a Platonism is nowadaysg often mistakenly viewed as a sign of theological, if not h s .a political conservatism.w Its take-up by the likes of Dean W.R. Inge, would seem w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w 16 w w see, for example, J. Morrill, ‘The Nature of Christopher Hill’s Revolution’, in m o J. Morrill,.c The Nature of the English Revolution (London, 1993), pp. 273–84. For a broader te a discussion,g see ‘Rethinking the English Revolution’, Introduction by Lyndal Roper and h s Laura.a Gowing, articles contributed by Quentin Skinner, John Walter, Rachel Weil and Ann w w wHughes, History Workshop Journal, 61 (2006): pp. 153–204. © Copyrighted Material 166 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

17 to confirm this view. Consequently, the Cambridge Platonists have come to be m 18 o misunderstood as theologically and politically conservative. .c te a g h Modern interest in the Cambridge Platonists is patchy and often ambivalent.s It .a w is largely historians of religion and of philosophy who accord them any attention,w w 19 though historians of science do take an interest. Although they were strenuousm o .c te opponents of Thomas Hobbes, they have been largely ignored by thea Hobbes g h s industry – perhaps because of the reluctance of historians of English.a political w w thought to deal with religious thinkers. In philosophy, the Platonist labelw has resulted

m o in the Cambridge Platonists being seen as representing a philosophical.c dead end te 20 a – a judgement notoriously promoted by Ernst Cassirer. The Cambridgeg Platonist h s .a contribution to modernity tends to be downplayed or overlooked:w not withstanding w w his role in propagating Cartesianism in England, Henry More commonly figures m o 21 .c as a minor Cartesian and bumbling scientist, while hist e religious writings have a g h 22 been largely ignored. He is treated as a minor poet ands poor philosopher. In .a w the history of ethics, Cudworth has fared somewhat better,w especially in the work w 23 m of Passmore, Raphael, Schneewind and Darwall. Buto Cudworth’s philosophical .c te reputation rests largely on his posthumous writings,a ignoring his magnum opus, g h s The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678)..a Even where the modernity of w w w the Cambridge Platonists is acknowledged, it is at the expense of their thought as m o a whole. The classic case is Koyré’s study of.c More’s conception of infinite space, te a g in which he emphasises the importance ofh More’s contribution on the subject, s .a 24 but only by excising it from its origins win More’s Platonism. In the ‘story’ of w w modern philosophy More and Cudworthm appear backward-looking, on account of o .c their humanistic respect for ancient philosophy,te and (especially in More’s case) a g h s .a w w w

17 m Whichcote’s Moral and Religiouso Aphorisms were edited by Inge in 1930. .c 18 te a J.G.A. Pocock, The Varietiesg of British Political Thought, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, h s 1993), p. 310. .a w 19 w w C. Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626–1660 m o (London, 1975). .c te 20 a g e. Cassirer, Die Platonischeh Renaissance in England und die Schule von Cambridge s .a (Leipzig, 1932). Cassirerw was unaware of the continuing influence of Cudworth, More and w w Whichcote in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. m 21 o r. Hall, Henry.c More: Magic, Religion and Experiment (Oxford, 1990). te a 22 g h see, for example,s Peter Loptson’s Introduction to Anne Conway, The Principles of .a w the Most Ancientw and Modern Philosophy, ed. P. Loptson (Dordrecht, 1982). w 23 J. Passmore,m Ralph Cudworth, an Interpretation (Cambridge, 1951); D.D. Raphael, o .c British Moralists,te 1650–1800 (Oxford, 1969); J.B. Schneewind, The Invention of a g h Autonomy:s A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, 1998); S. Darwall, The .a w British Moralistsw and the Internal ‘Ought’, 1640–1740 (Cambridge, 1995). w 24 m o a. Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore, MD, 1968), .c te pp. a125–6. S. Hutton, ‘Henry More, Ficino and Plotinus: the Continuity of Renaissance g h Platonism’,s in L. Simonutti (ed.), Forme del Neoplatonismo: dall’ eredità ficiniana ai .a w w platoniciw di Cambridge (Florence, 2007), pp. 81–95. © Copyrighted Material A Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 167 © Copyrighted Material

adherence to beliefs that are considered alien to a modern mind-set (millenarianism,m o .c te belief in witchcraft and ghosts). Whichcote, Smith, Sterry and Worthingtona are g h s normally overlooked. Ernst Cassirer and Alexandre Koyré went so far as toa claim . w 25 w that the Cambridge Platonists were without influence. w

m In theology, the Cambridge Platonists’ erudition sets them apart fromo the kind .c te a of autodidactic element that characterises the grass-roots wing of radicalg theology h s 26 .a of the Civil War period. Their opposition to Calvinism, their liberalw theology w w of grace and their emphasis on reason in religion have led to them being linked m o .c to the Laudians – though more usually with the moderates ofte Lord Falkland’s a g 27 h circle at Great Tew, especially Jeremy Taylor and William sChillingworth. If .a w this classification separates them from ecclesiastical traditionalists,w it connotes a w

m ‘middle of the road’ position that can hardly be called ‘radical’.o Furthermore, their .c te public denunciation of ‘enthusiasts’, Fifth Monarchists,a Familists and Quakers g h s (this is actually only true of Henry More), their submission.a to the restored Church w w w of England at the Restoration and the fact More and Cudworth retained their m o college posts apparently unscathed, all set them apart.c from the radicals of ‘the te a g good old cause’. It is easy, on the basis of thish kind of evidence, to conclude s .a that the Cambridge Platonists were an isolated, unworldlyw group; traditionalists in w w theology and neutral in politics. m o .c te a g h s .a w Counter-image w w

m o .c te a There are, however, other aspects gof the Cambridge Platonists of which this h s conclusion takes no account. Firstly,.a they were not isolated figures. Their surviving w w w letters show that they had a wide circle of connections with the world beyond m o Cambridge, both in England and.c throughout Europe. Indeed, their letters preserved te a g 28 in the correspondence of Samuelh Hartlib and Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, s .a 29 30 w as well as letters between Morew and René Descartes; More and Robert Boyle; w

m o .c te a 25 g h This view is takens by Mark Goldie in his article on ‘The Cambridge Platonists’ .a w for the ODNB – thoughw he does distinguish between ‘overt’ and indirect influence: http:// w www.oxforddnb.com/view/theme/94274.m Likewise, Sarah Bendall, Christopher Brooke o .c and Patrick Collinson,te in their A History of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (Woodbridge, a g h 2000), make the unfoundeds claim that they had no influence. .a 26 w n. Smith,w Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical w

Religion, 1640–1660m (Oxford, 1989). o 27 .c te Pocock,a Varieties of British Political Thought, p. 310. g h 28 s SUL,.a HP, 18/1; Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Cod. Guelph. Extrav. w w 30.4. w

29 m o Descartes. Correspondance avec Arnauld et Morus, with a French translation by .c te a G. Lewisg (Paris, 1953). h s 30 .a The Correspondence of Robert Boyle, (eds) M. Hunter, A. Clericuzio and L.M. w w wPrincipe (6 vols, London, 2001). © Copyrighted Material 168 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

31 More and Philip van Limborch, Cudworth and van Limborch; and Cudworth and m 32 o Sancroft, show that they were at the hub of intellectual networks extending. c far te a g h beyond Cambridge. The earliest letters relating to the Cambridge Platonists s is the .a w exchange between Benjamin Whichcote and Anthony Tuckney dating fromw 1651 w 33 (but not published until 1703). The most extensive correspondence, bothm in time o .c te and in number, is More’s. This comprises some 342 letters and spans aa period of g h s nearly forty years, 1648 to 1686. Besides those figures already named,.a More’s w w correspondents include Anne Conway’s brother John Finch, Josephw Glanvill, John

m o Davies, Simon Patrick, William Penn, Edward Fowler, John Covel,.c Henry Hyrne, te a John Sharp, George Keith, Sir George Rawdon, John Norris, Edmundg Elys, Henry h s 34 .a Hallywell and Jeremy Taylor. In addition to these, the largew number of scholia w w which More added to his writings in his Opera omnia (1675–79) indicates a wide m o .c network, since they largely consist of responses to points twhiche he had, evidently, a g h received from readers – though he does not normally names those with whom he .a w is debating, the exceptions being Christopher Sturmw and Francis Glisson. The w

m correspondents of John Worthington included his goodo friends Cudworth and More, .c te and other associates of the Cambridge Platonists,a such as Nathaniel Ingelo and g h s Edward Fowler. Moreover, the earlier part of Worthington’s.a correspondence links w w w him – and by extension his Cambridge Platonist colleagues – with the pansophic m o circle of Samuel Hartlib, among whom his correspondents.c include Hartlib himself te a g 35 as well as John Dury, Theodore Haak and h Seth Ward. The letters contain news s .a of people such as Whichcote, Jan Amos Comenius,w William Petty, Simon Patrick w w 36 and Adam Boreel. Worthington also hadm links with Robert Boyle’s sister, Lady o .c Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh.te a g h Secondly, the judgement that thes Cambridge Platonists had no impact on .a w w intellectual developments after theirw day ignores, at the very least, the evidence

m from their publication record. oIn his lifetime More’s writings sold widely. An .c te a admirer paid for his works to g be translated into Latin, while his English writings h s 37 .a were republished in the earlyw eighteenth century. Benjamin Whichcote’s sermons w w

m o .c te a g h 31 s Amsterdam Universiteits.a Bibliotheek, MS III.D.17, Philip van Limborch, Epistolae w w w ad Anglos. m 32 o Bodl., MS Tanner,.c 39, fol. 115; 44 fol. 115; 290, fol. 154. te 33 a g ‘Eight Lettersh of Tuckney, and Whichcote’, in Benjamin Whichcote, Moral and s .a Religious Aphorismsw , ed. Samuel Salter (London, 1753). w 34 w

For a mfull list, see Crocker, Henry More, appendix. o 35 .c for tethe Hartlib circle, see Webster, Great Instauration. The Cambridge Platonists a g h occupy a marginals position in Webster’s classic study. .a 36 w w for example, letters for 26 June 1659, 10, 22 and 26 August 1661, 18 November w

1664, m19 February 1669, 22 April 1669, in Diary and Correspondence of Dr Worthington, o .c 1, pp.te 135–40, 350–75, 2, pt i, pp. 143–9; pt ii, pp. 307–8, 1–17. a g h 37 s henry More’s A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings (London, 1662) was .a w w republishedw between 1712 and 1713. His Theological Works were printed in 1708. © Copyrighted Material A Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 169 © Copyrighted Material

38 were edited by Shaftesbury and published in 1698, and other collections mof o 39 .c te writings were published in the eighteenth century. Although Cudworth’s magnuma g h s opus was never fully completed, the part he published in 1678 was reprinteda by . w 40 w Thomas Birch in 1743, translated into Latin by Johan Lorenz Mosheim win 1733

41 m 42 (reprinted 1773), and rendered into Italian by Luigi Benedetti in 1823.o It was .c te 43 a also abridged by Thomas Wise in 1706 (reprinted 1732). Although gCudworth’s h s 44 .a ethical writings were published posthumously (1731), and then onlyw partially, w w they had an enduring influence. E.M. Austin recognised the Cambridge Platonists m 45 o .c as founders of a school of English ethics. Moreover, Robin Attfieldte has claimed a g h that ‘the only school of British Moralists uninfluenced bys Cudworth seems to .a 46 w have been that of the Utilitarians’. John Smith’s Select Discoursesw (1660) was w

m reprinted at Cambridge in 1673, at Edinburgh in 1756 and, oin an abridged version, .c te at London in 1820. Culverwell’s Elegant and Learned Discoursea of the Light of g h s Nature (1652) was reprinted in 1654, 1659, 1661, 1669.a and 1752. Contrary to the w w w

m o .c 38 te a Benjamin Whichcote, Select Sermons, with a prefaceg by Anthony Ashley Cooper, h s third Earl of Shaftesbury (London, 1698). .a w 39 w w Benjamin Whichcote, Some Select Notions (London, 1685); The Works of the m o Learned Benjamin Whichcote (4 vols, Aberdeen, .c1751); Moral and Religious Aphorisms, te a ed.John Jeffrey (London, 1703; enlarged edition gby S. Salter, 1753); Several Discourses, ed. h s .a John Jeffrey (4 vols, London 1701–07). Whichcote’sw sermons were influential even before w w publication: in his funeral sermon for Whichcote, Thomas Tillotson makes the comment m o that Whichcote’s Cambridge preaching prior.c to the Restoration ‘contributed more to the te a g forming of students … to a sober sense hof religion than any man in that age’ (Whichcote, s .a Works, 2, p. 154). w w 40 w ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, (ed.) Thomas Birch m o (2 vols, London: J. Walthoe, 1743; .creprinted 1820 and 1829). te a 41 g h ralph Cudworth, Radulphis Cudworthi ... systema intellectuale huius universi, trans. .a w J.L. Mosheim (Jena, 1733; reprintedw Leiden, 1773). w 42 ralph Cudworth, Sistemam intellettuale del’ universo, trans. Luigi Benedetti (5 vols, o .c Pavia, 1823–24). There waste also an American edition (Andover, MA, 1837–8). a g 43 h thomas Wise, As Confutation of the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism being an .a w Abridgement of or an Improvementw of what Dr Cudworth Offered in his ‘True Intellectual w

m System’ (London, 1706;o reprinted 1732). .c 44 te ralph Cudworth,a A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (London, g h s 1731). A further .threea manuscripts on ‘Liberty and Necessity’ are in the British Library, of w w which only the wshortest has been printed: Of Freewill, (ed.) John Allen (London, 1838) and,

m more recently,o together with the modern edition of A Treatise, (ed.) S. Hutton (Cambridge, .c te 1996). a g h 45 s e.a.M. Austin, The Ethics of the Cambridge Platonists (Philadelphia, 1935), p. 70. w w Passmorew includes a list of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century references to Cudworth in

m Ralpho Cudworth, pp. 115–16. .c te a46 g R. Attfield, ‘Cudworth, Prior and Passmore’, in D. Hedley and S. Hutton (eds), h s Platonism.a at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy w w (Dordrecht,w 2008). © Copyrighted Material 170 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material judgement of Koyré and Cassirer, the Cambridge Platonists also had an impact m o on later scientific theory: to name only a couple of instances, the botanist John.c te a g h Ray drew on Henry More, while Cudworth’s theory of Plastic Nature influenceds .a w eighteenth-century physiological theory. The charge that the Cambridge Platonistsw w were without influence does not withstand even basic analysis. Extra m work has o .c te still to be done on their fortunes in the eighteenth century. I shall asay a little g h s more about the immediate take-up of their thought below. Suffice. ato say at this w w point that, in theology, they were the key figures among the w group nicknamed

m 47 o as Latitudinarians, whose importance in late seventeenth-century.c ecclesiastical te a history is unquestioned. g h s .a w w w

m o .c Traditionalism versus Modernity te a g h s .a w As their eighteenth-century legacy implies, far fromw being backward-looking, w

m the Cambridge Platonists were at the forefront of developmentso in contemporary .c te thought in their time. They responded positively toa the reformist views of Francis g h s Bacon. They shared the pansophic vision of the .aHartlib circle where religion and w w w philosophy, in the words of John Worthington, united to discover ‘truths that are m o 48 most essential and fundamental to the happiness.c of mankind’. More, Smith and te a g Cudworth were among the first to take up hthe new philosophy of Descartes. More s .a was one of the first to propose adding thew study of Cartesianism to the university w w curriculum. He also played a part in popularisingm the new astronomy of Copernicus o .c 49 and Galileo through his philosophicalte poetry. Both he and Cudworth were a g h proposed as fellows of the Royal Society.s John Worthington was at the forefront of .a w w intellectual developments of the interregnum:w he places himself firmly within the

m Hartlib circle’s aspiration for godlyo educational reform, inspired by the legacy of .c te a Francis Bacon. ‘The true Instaurationg Magna’, he tells Hartlib, is ‘infinitely above h s .a the knowledge of external Naturew or unheard curiosities’. Practitioners of the new w w learning will, he hopes: m o .c te a g h engage in such discoursess as tend to clear and confirm those truths that are .a w most essential andw fundamental to the happiness of mankind, such as tend to w

vindicate the attributesm of God and solve the phenomena of Providence, and o .c te a g h s .a w w w 47 gilbertm Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s History of his Own Time, (ed.) O. Airy (3 vols, o .c Oxford, 1897–1902),te 1, pp. 331–4. a g 48 h Diarys and Correspondence of Dr. Worthington, 2, pt i, p. 89. Both groups received .a w vital inputw from outsiders (Hartlib and Van Helmont). The main difference in the case of w

Lady Conwaym and her circle was their interest in Kabbalah as the vehicle of those truths. o 49.c te a see, for example, Henry More’s Psychathanasia and The Philosopher’s Devotion, g h boths printed in his Philosophical Poems (Cambridge, 1647). This also reprints his Democritus .a w w Platonissans,w or an Essay upon the Infinity of Worlds (first published Cambridge, 1646). © Copyrighted Material A Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 171 © Copyrighted Material

rescue Christian religion from what hath hindered its growth and stained its m o 50 .c te native excellencies and done it so much disservice in the world. a g h s .a w w Worthington had hopes that Henry More might supply this lack of a w suitable

51 m natural philosophy. Without substantiating his claim, Christopher Hillo himself .c te a acknowledges that ‘the Cambridge Platonists … neatly illustrate theg fusion of h s 52 .a Puritanism, parliamentarianism and science’, while, in the vieww of Charles w w Webster, ‘The Platonists were one of the most important formative influences on m o 53 .c English natural philosophy in the second half of the seventeentht e century’. a g h Modernity and radicalism are, of course, not synonymous.s But in the context .a w of the time to espouse new ideas, particularly those whichw are associated with w

m ‘revolution’ in science and philosophy, might reasonably beo seen as radical. As far .c te as we know, the Cambridge Platonists’ intellectual modernitya did not translate into g h 54 s political radicalism. Their connection with the Hartlib circle,.a however, links them w w w to social visionaries of the Interregnum. Indeed, though no ideal commonwealths m o were proposed by them, their associate John Sadler authored.c Olbia. The New Iland te a g lately Discovered (1660) and their admirer Josephh Glanvill penned ‘Bensalem’. s .a Unlike Milton, they accepted women as the intellectualw equals of men: the notable w w 55 example is Anne Conway, whom More tutoredm in philosophy. Cudworth’s o .c 56 daughter, Damaris, was later to become the teintellectual intimate of John Locke. a g h Their tolerationist principles were at leasts as inclusive as Milton’s and extended .a w to toleration of Jews: Whichcote, Sterryw and Cudworth supported Cromwell’s w

m 57 endeavours to readmit Jews to England.o .c te a g h s .a w w w Radical Religion m o .c te a g For the period of the Englishh Revolution, an important measure of radicalism s .a w is religious heterodoxy. Inw his presentation of Milton as a radical in religion, w

Christopher Hill singled outm what he calls his ‘radical Arminianism’ and his anti- o .c te Trinitarianism. On botha these counts, the Cambridge Platonists bear comparison g h s .a w w 50 w Diary and Correspondence of Dr. Worthington, 2, pt i, p. 89. m o 51 .c ibid., pt ii, p.te 254. a 52 g h Hill, Intellectuals Origins, p. 312. .a 53 w Webster,w Great Instauration, p. 145. w 54 m yet thereo are examples of more explicitly political writing among their associates .c te like John Sadler’sa Rights of the Kingdom (London, 1649). g h 55 s s..a Hutton, Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher (Cambridge, 2004); J. Broad, w w Women wPhilosophers of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 2002).

56 m o s. Hutton, ‘Between Platonism and Enlightenment: Damaris Cudworth, Lady .c te a Masham’,g British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 1 (1993): pp. 29–54. h s 57 .a d. Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1603–1655 w w w(Oxford, 1982), pp. 205–9. © Copyrighted Material 172 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material with Milton. Indeed Hill himself aligns them with Milton as radical Arminians, or m o what he chooses to call ‘Arminians of the left’ – that is to say a ‘third force’ who.c te a g h rejected both the Calvinist doctrine of reprobation and Laudian sacramentalism,s .a 58 w to emphasise human free will as the basis of moral conduct. Leaving asidew Hill’s w contentious explanation of the grass-roots origins of this type of Arminianism,m his o .c te differentiation of Milton from the Cambridge Platonists in terms of theira sources g h s (the claim that Milton’s sources were radical sectaries, while theirs.a were not) w w is wholly unsustainable. The Cambridge Platonists were every bitw as radical as

m o Milton in their emphasis on free will, and Milton every bit as learned.c as they in his te a theology. Among indicators of religious radicalism, heterodox Tg rinitarianism and, h s .a especially, denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, are hugely important.w Hill makes w w reference to Cudworth’s unorthodox account of the Trinity; he might have gone m o .c further and shown the importance of Cudworth’s Platonismte for his account of the a g 59 h Trinity. Cudworth, after all, devoted his entire True Intellectuals System of the .a w Universe to demonstrating a positive link between Platonismw and Christian doctrine, w 60 m including, especially, the doctrine of the Trinity. Noo less a figure than John Locke .c te (whose Trinitarian orthodoxy was put under scrutinya by Bishop Stillingfleet), g h s noted in his ‘Adversaria theologica’ that Cudworth’s.a True Intellectual System was w w w a source for ‘the Original of the Trinitarian doctrines, from whom they are derived m o … by whom they were invented’. Cudworth’s.c True Intellectual System fuelled the te a g 61 Unitarian/Trinitarian controversy of the laterh seventeenth century. He himself s .a made the claim that the Church of Englandw accommodated Socinians within its w w 62 ranks. Cudworth seems to have takenm a relatively agnostic line on many matters o .c of doctrine. He told the House of Commonste in 1647, ‘I perswade my self, that no a g h man shall ever be kept out of heaven,s for not comprehending mysteries that were .a w w w

m 58 o Hill, Milton and English Revolution.c , pp. 268–78. te 59 a g s. Hutton, ‘The Neoplatonich Roots of Arianism: Ralph Cudworth and Theophilus s .a Gale’, in L. Szczucki (ed.), Socinianismw and its Role in the Culture of the XVIth to XVIIth w w Centuries (Warsaw and Lodz, 1979), pp. 139-45. m o 60 .c Book III of A Truete Intellectual System includes ‘The Platonick Christian’s a g h Apology’, which defendss the view that Plato and some of his followers subscribed to a .a w form of Trinitarianism thatw came very close to Christian doctrine. See D. Hedley, Coleridge, w

Philosophy and Religion:m Aids to Reflection and the Mirror of the Spirit (Cambridge, 2000), o .c pp. 60–63. te a g 61 h see J. Marshall,s John Locke, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge, .a w 1994), pp. 389–95;w D. Hedley, ‘Persons of Substance and the Cambridge Connections. Some w

Roots and Ramificationsm of the Trinitarian Controversy in Seventeenth-century England’, in o .c M. Mulsow teand J. Rohls (eds), Socinianism and Arminianism: Antitrinitarians, Calvinists a g h and Culturals Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Leiden, 2005), pp. 225–40. For .a w an informedw corrective to Marshall, see V. Nuovo, ‘Locke’s Theology, 1694–1794’, in w

M.A. Stewartm (ed.), English Philosophy in the Age of Locke (Oxford, 2000), pp. 183–215. o .c Cudworth’ste views on the Trinity were central to the Salem Controversy in 1834. a g h 62 s Amsterdam Universiteits Bibliotheek, MS M.21.c, Ralph Cudworth to Philip van .a w w wLimborch (16 March 1675). © Copyrighted Material A Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 173 © Copyrighted Material

63 beyond the reach of his shallow understanding.’ His tolerant attitude did not earnm o .c te him friends, least of all among those of ‘shallow understanding’: in 1658 Johna g h s Beale reported to Samuel Hartlib that ‘Dr Cudworth hath been affronted bya many . w 64 w discouragements. Vulgar spirits are too narrow to understand him.’ Aw fter the

m Restoration, doubts about his orthodoxy were such that, according to Birch,o it was .c te a 65 put about by court wits that his attack on atheism was a covert defenceg of it. h s .a In addition to the Arian drift in Cambridge Platonist views of thew Trinity, we w w might also point to their espousal of deeply unorthodox doctrines such as the pre- m o .c existence of the soul (More), and universal salvation (Sterry). Theyte also accorded a g h human reason an important role in religion and downplayed thes role of revelation. .a w Reason, according to Whichcote, is that which makes manw ‘capable of God’. w 66 m ‘Reason discovers what is natural and receives what is supernatural.’o A major .c te inspiration for their theology was the heterodox church afather Origen. So strong g h s was Henry More’s adherence to the teachings of Origen.a that he was dubbed the w 67 w w ‘English Origen’. More’s attack on the sectaries (or ‘enthusiasts’ as he called m o them) in his Enthusiasmus triumphatus is well known..c But, in assessing More’s te a g position, we should be mindful of what polemicsh tell us about the vulnerability s .a of attackers to the very charges they make. w More’s letters to Anne Conway w w testify to his profound interest in all sorts of heterodoxies,m including Behmenism, o .c millenarianism and Kabbalism. In view ofte his own heterodoxy, his attacks on a g h Hendrick Niclaes, David George, Thomas sVaughan and others should be seen less .a w as the mark of a traditionally-minded ecclesiasticw and more as a struggle to set a w

m boundary between notions espoused byo and ascribed to other unorthodox thinkers .c te a and his own beliefs. Thus More’s controversyg with Vaughan is an example of a h s dispute where the common ground.a between the protagonists seems greater than w w 68 w their distance. m o .c te a g h s 63 .a w ralph Cudworth, A Sermonw Preached before the Honourable House of Commons w

(Cambridge, 1647), p. 14. m o 64 .c SUL, HP, 52/59A, teJohn Beale to Samuel Hartlib (15 May 1658). a g 65 h Cudworth, True Intellectuals System, (ed.) Birch, preface. .a 66 w w Cragg (ed.), Cambridgew Platonists, pp. 63, 424.

67 m The best accounto of More’s theology is by Crocker, in his Henry More. Joseph .c te Glanvill, who subscribeda to the doctrine of pre-existence of the soul, celebrates More’s g h s Origenism in his. aunpublished utopian manuscript ‘Bensalem’ (Chicago University Library w w MS). His admirationw is replicated in another unpublished manuscript, dated 1687 and

m addressed to oRobert Southwell, with the title ‘A kinde tho’ vaine attempt in speaking out .c te a the Ineffableg Doctor Harry More’ (Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica). See h s Robert Crocker’s.a introduction to Richard Ward, The Life of Henry More, ed. S. Hutton et w w al. (Dordrecht,w 2000); R. Lewis, ‘Of “Origenian Platonisme”: Joseph Glanvill on the Pre-

m existenceo of Souls’, HLQ, 69 (2006): pp. 297–300. .c te a68 g On More and ‘enthusiasm’, see D. Fouke, The Enthusiastical Concerns of Henry h s More:.a Religious Meaning and the Psychology of Delusion (Leiden, 1997), and the literature w w thereinw cited. © Copyrighted Material 174 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Politics m o .c te a g h As concerns politics, the extent to which the Cambridge Platonists had republicans .a w 69 sympathies is hard to tell. Unlike Milton, none of them defended the regicide.w w

But the circles to which they were linked suggest a good deal of commonm ground o .c te with Parliamentarians and republicans. The interregnum record of their aactivities is g h s limited, but the evidence certainly indicates active involvement with the.a Parliament w w and with Cromwell. We have already noted the fact that they were beneficiariesw of

m o the Earl of Manchester’s purge of Royalists in 1644. Their co-operation.c suggests te a more than passive collaboration with the Parliamentary take-overg of the university. h s .a From the mid-1640s onwards, the career of Ralph Cudworth wtook off and he rose w w rapidly to become Regius Professor of Hebrew. He was invited to preach to the m o .c House of Commons in 1647. Later he became adviser to Tte hurloe and Cromwell’s a g h government, advising on matters such as the readmissions of the Jews and the .a w statutes for the proposed college at Durham. He contributedw a congratulatory poem w

m to the collection Oliva Pacis (Cambridge, 1654) sento by the university to Oliver .c te Cromwell, and a message of loyalty to his son, Richarda Cromwell, following his g h s father’s death. He also considered dedicating a work.a to the younger Cromwell in w 70 w w 1659. Peter Sterry too had Cromwell connections: after serving as chaplain to the m o Parliamentary leader, Lord Brooke, he became.c one of Cromwell’s chaplains, in te a g 71 which capacity he exercised much influence.h Is it just a coincidence, one would s .a like to know, that More and Milton were wfellows of the same College? Or that the w w patron who tried to save John Worthingtonm at the Restoration was also the patron o .c of John Milton – Lady Ranelagh? te a g h The strength of the Cambridges Platonists’ collaboration with the English .a w w Revolution is borne out by the troublew it caused them at the Restoration. Although

m he was inclined to regard them oas ‘conservative’, Christopher Hill observed that .c te a people like More and Cudworthg had reason to be worried lest their compliance h s 72 .a with the republican regimes wbe an impediment in the 1660s. The downturn in the w w fortunes of the Cambridge Platonists at the Restoration can be accounted for in m o terms of guilt by association.c with the English Republic. It is also to be explained in te a g h terms of their theologicals stance. These factors are of course not unconnected. Of .a w those who held seniorw posts at Cambridge, two (Worthington and Whichcote) were w

m o .c te a 69 g support forh the regicide is not, in the Hill canon of revolutionaries, the sine qua s .a non of radicalism.w w w 70 d.A. Pailin,m ‘Ralph Cudworth’, ODNB. o 71 .c B. Worden,te ‘Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate’, Studies in Church a g h History, 21s (1984): p. 208. .a 72 w wC. Hill, Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1974), w

m p. 265.o The impact of the Restoration was as dramatic for incumbent college heads as the .c te Earla of Manchester’s purge had been. All but five of them were ejected, as were many g h fellows.s See John Gascoigne, Cambridge in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1989), .a w w wpp. 7–14. © Copyrighted Material A Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 175 © Copyrighted Material

deprived of their college headships and two (More and Cudworth) were subjectedm o .c te to a concerted attempt to remove them, only retaining their posts after a strugglea g h s (and probably thanks to the patronage of the influential Finch-Conwaya clan). . w 73 w Neither felt secure in his post after 1660. Their surviving colleagues, meanwhile,w

m were forced into retirement at the Restoration: Benjamin Whichcote retiredo to his .c te a family base in the City of London – where he moved in the same circlesg that Locke h s .a was later to frequent. Peter Sterry lived out his religious illuminismw in retirement w 74 w at East Sheen. John Worthington never found a post that suited his scholarly bent. m o .c His attempts to find an alternative position came to nothing, teand he was saved a g h from destitution only by the intervention of his friend Henry Msore, who conferred .a w on him his living at Ingoldsby near Grantham. w w

m The two ‘survivors’ at Cambridge, Cudworth and Moore, were pilloried as .c te ‘gentlemen of wide swallow’ for their tolerance of non-conformity,a and accused g h s of heresy – ‘I am rail’d and blustered against for an Heretick’,.a More told Anne w 75 w w Conway when reporting the hostility he endured. R alph Cudworth was deemed m o 76 to be too sympathetic to the Nonconformists by the Church.c establishment, and he te a g appears to have survived the Restoration by keepingh his head down, but not at the s .a price of acquiescence. Although he was accused wof being a time-server by his High w w

Church enemies, he was principled in his managementm of his college, resisting o .c attempts to circumvent college statutes by royalte mandate. The delay in publishing a g h his True Intellectual System may well haves been the result of prudence on his .a w part, especially in view of its Platonisingw account of the Trinity. Henry More’s w

m theology was not well received by Restorationo Anglicans. Despite the fact that .c te a he managed to retain his fellowship g at Christ’s College, the whiff of heterodoxy h s clung to his name. To coincide with.a the Restoration he published his major work w w w 77 of theology: An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness. Here, among m o .c te a 73 g h D.W. Dockrill and J.M.s Lee, ‘Reflections of an Episode in Cambridge .a w Latitudinarianism: Henry More’sw Epistle Dedicatory to Gilbert Sheldon of his Enchiridion w

Metaphysicum’, Prudentia, supplementm (1976): pp. 207–23. o 74 .c te Peter Sterry: Selecteda Writings, (ed.) N. Matar (Kansas, 1995). g 75 h M. Nicolson ands S. Hutton (eds), The Conway Letters: The Correspondence of .a w w Anne, Viscountess Conway,w Henry More, and Their Friends: 1642–1684 (Oxford, 1992),

m pp. 220–21. The classico study is M. Nicolson, ‘Christ’s College and the Latitude Men’, .c te Modern Philology,a 29 (1929–30): pp. 39–53. The vicious hostility of the campaign against g h s Cudworth, More.a and their Cambridge allies is toned down in the historiography, where w w it is covered asw part of the history of Latitudinarianism. For a less varnished account, see

m Crocker, Henryo More, ch. 6. .c 76 te a gilbertg Burnet, A Supplement to Burnet’s History of my Own Time, (ed.) H.C. h s Foxcroft .(Oxford,a 1902), p. 464. w 77 w w henry More, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (London, 1660). m o This .workc tends to be ignored today, but was widely read in More’s lifetime. It proved to te a be hisg most popular publication, which ‘ruled the booksellers in London’ until his death in h s 1679..a Although More claimed that he wrote An Explanation as an act of pious gratitude w w forw his recovery from dire illness (Mystery of Godliness, preface, p. viii), the timing of its © Copyrighted Material 176 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material other things, he defended episcopacy and distanced himself from the sectarian m o excesses of the revolutionary period. But the book is not a trimmer’s charter. .Hisc te a g h defence of episcopacy was not calculated to please High Church traditionalists,s .a w since he rejected its de jure claims, basing his defence on the rationalityw of the w 78 institution. Furthermore, his book constituted an important bid for m religious o .c te peace by making a bold plea for religious toleration on the grounds thata religion is g h s a matter of individual conscience. In Book X, More defends freedom.a of worship w w and speech in terms of rights: w

m o .c te a It is clear … liberty of religion is the common and natural rightg of all nations h s .a and persons, that is to say, that they have a power … to examinew what is the best w w way to serve him [God], and not to be tied up to that religion [which] is first m o .c proposed to them. Indeed they have a right to suspect, especiallyte if they do not a g h like it, that there is some better, and therefore that they s may confer with those .a w of other religions, send for them out of one nation intow another, entertain them w

m diligently, and, if they are convinced, openly professo it. Or if they come of their .c te own accord, they are to be entertained with the samea security that an agent of g h s state is, and may freely converse with them of .athe nation that have a mind to w w w hear them. For this is a piece of their right of liberty to speak as well as others m 79 o to hear. .c te a g h s .a More’s book bears the stamp of Christianw beliefs and spirituality which are w w associated more with interregnum pietym than with the new Anglican order. He does o .c not disguise his own rational, latitudinariante theology, or retract his subscription a g h 80 to heterodox beliefs such as the pre-existences of the soul. On the contrary, he .a w w reaffirmed his position with a courageous,w if diplomatic,Apology , issued in 1664.

m In spite of his declared oppositiono to sectarian ‘enthusiasts’ and his defence of .c te a episcopacy, More’s theology g did not meet with approval in the new Anglican h s .a establishment. There were mutteringsw against him in Episcopal circles – in 1669, w w for example, Edmund Elys reported to More that Seth Ward, Bishop of Exeter, m o disapproved of More’s theology..c Four years earlier, Francis Beaumont had attacked te a g h An Explanation of thes Grand Mystery of Godliness because it ‘swarm’d with .a w dangerous errours’, andw it ‘would open the door to Presbyterians, Independents, w

m Quakers, Latitudinarians’o and other ‘sincere and hearty enemies to our Church- .c 81 te government, or prouda despisers of it’. Without referring to More by name, Samuel g h s .a w w w publication could not have been better from the point of view of establishing his theological m o credentials at.c a moment of political change and ecclesiastical retrenchment. te a 78 g h Sees Crocker, Henry More, chs. 6 and 7. .a 79 w Mw ore, An Explanation, in Cambridge Platonist Spirituality, ed. C. Taliaferro and A. w

Tepleym (New York and Mahwah, NJ, 2004), p. 174. o 80.c te See Crocker, Henry More, chs. 7 and 8. a g h 81 s francis Beaumont, Observations upon Dr More’s Apologie (London, 1665), .a w w wpp. 4, 162. © Copyrighted Material A Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 177 © Copyrighted Material

Parker, censor to the Archbishop of Canterbury, attacked More’s Origenism andm o .c te Platonism in his A Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonick Philosophy (1666)a g h s and An Account of the Nature and Extent of the Divine Dominion and Goodnessea . w w (1666). The Anglican establishment had good reason to be concerned becausew An

m Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness was only one of a group ofo Origenist .c te a texts to be published at this time. The others were William Spencer’sg edition of h s .a Contra Celsus (1658), the anonymous A Letter of Resolution Concerningw Origen w w (1661, attributed to George Rust), and Joseph Glanvill’s Lux orientalis (1662). m o .c In the same year, More nailed his Origenist colours to the mastte by including a a g h strong defence of Origen as ‘the Miracle of the Christian World’s in the ‘Preface .a w 82 General’ to his A Collection of Several Philosophical Writingsw . Altogether, these w

m suggested the alarming prospect that a revival of the heterodox,o Ante-Nicene .c te father Origen was being spearheaded by Henry More. Thisa explains why, in 1668, g h s More had trouble obtaining approval to publish his Divine.a Dialogues: the first w w w volume was held up until he agreed to treat the doctrine of the pre-existence of m o souls as merely a hypothesis. The unrepentant More.c reaffirmed his subscription to te a g Origen by publishing an annotated edition of Glanvill’sh Lux orientalis and Letter s .a of Resolution Concerning Origen in 1682 underw the title Two Choice and Useful w w

Treatises. As far as the Anglican establishmentm was concerned, where heterodoxy o .c was the issue, the theorists of heterodoxy te (learned divines like Cudworth and a g h More) were arguably more dangerous thans the self-taught inspiration of unlearned .a w radical prophets – certainly in the eyes ofw their detractors. w

m o .c te a g h s Silence and Self-image .a w w w

m o If, as I have been arguing, it was.c the case that Cambridge Platonists were deeply te a g coloured by the political eventsh of their time it is fair to ask why they were s .a w not better advocates for theirw position, and why their heterodoxy and political w engagement is so singularlym lacking from their reputation. Part of the answer is the o .c te truncated nature of theira published output. Although they are known through their g h s published writings these.a constitute an uneven record of their achievement. Only w w two of them publishedw much: Henry More and Ralph Cudworth. But one of these

m never finished hismagnum o opus: Cudworth’s dauntingly entitled True Intellectual .c te a System of the Universeg which was published in the year he died (1678), is only the h s .a first of four projectedw volumes. Furthermore, Cudworth is most famous today for a w w book published half a century after his death, his Treatise Concerning the Eternal m o .c and Immutablete Morality (1731). In three cases (Smith, Culverwell and Anne a g h Conway)s their books were published posthumously, as was Sterry’s main work, .a w A Discoursew on the freedom of the will. Two of these (Conway’s and Sterry’s) are w

m o .c te a82 g henry More, A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings (London, 1662), h s preface,.a p. xxi. On More’s Origenism, see D. Dockrill, ‘The Fathers and the Theology of w w thew Cambridge Platonists’, Studia Patristica, 18 (1982): pp. 427–39. © Copyrighted Material 178 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

83 incomplete, and one (Conway’s) appeared anonymously. Two others (Whichcote m o and Worthington) never published anything philosophical, because they were.c te a g h ousted from their university positions at the Restoration. s .a w Another reason for the moderate image of the Cambridge Platonistsw is the w success of their own efforts at respectable self-presentation after the Restoration,m as o .c te a result of which they have come to be regarded as mild, ivory-tower intellectuals.a g h s The apologetic prefaces Henry More wrote for the various editions of.a his writings w w are instructive. In his Collection of Several Philosophical Writingsw , he makes

m o explicit his admiration for Origen as a ‘miracle of the Christian world’,.c but allows te a that pre-existence of the soul be treated as a hypothesis and notg as a doctrine of h s .a the Church. More’s post-Restoration attacks on other denominationsw are directed w w against Roman Catholicism on the one hand and Familists and Fifth Monarchists m o .c on the other – a strategy for signalling his acceptance ofte the new church order. a g h Significantly, his attack on Fifth Monarchists occurs ins his writings on biblical .a w prophecy, an area where he might be charged with occupyingw the same ground as w

m sectarians. The peaceable, learned image projected oby More in his Opera omnia .c te is encapsulated by William Faithorne’s portrait commissioneda for inclusion in the g h s work. This presents him as a melancholic scholar.a resting under a tree in front of w w w a pastoral backdrop. More’s changing self-image was an important exercise in m o self-preservation by projecting an image of learned.c harmlessness. The success of te a g this self-image is the reputation for mildness,h moderation and mysticism which s .a has obscured the view of Cambridge Platonismw in succeeding generations. The w w image is one successfully wrought by Mm ore who was, after all, one of those who o .c retained a position from which he couldte publish. Others, less fortunate, were a g h simply silenced by their disempowerment;s most vividly epitomised in the fate of .a w w John Worthington. w

m o .c te a g h s .a John Worthington w w w

m o An academic star of the Interregnum,.c appointed Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, te a g h in 1650 and then vice-chancellors of the university (1657–58), Worthington was .a w ejected from Cambridgew at the Restoration. One of the most erudite and cultured w

m of Benjamin Whichcote’so Emmanuel College associates, he is usually treated .c te a g h s .a 83 w nathanielw Culverwell’s An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature w

m was posthumouslyo published in 1654. Sterry’s A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will .c te (London, 1675)a was probably compiled by someone from his papers. Many of Sterry’s g h MSS, nows held at Emmanuel College, remain unpublished to this day. A manuscript of .a w Anne Conway’sw treatise was found among her effects after she died and first published in w

m Latin owith the title Principia Philosophiae Antiquissimae & recentissimae de Deo, Christo .c te & Creatura,a id est de Spiritu & materia in genere, printed in Opuscula philosophica g h (Amsterdam,s 1690), and translated as The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern .a w w Philosophy,w concerning God, Christ, and the Creature (London, 1692). © Copyrighted Material A Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 179 © Copyrighted Material

as peripheral to Cambridge Platonism, largely because there is little mentionm o .c te of Platonism in what he published – his major achievement being an editiona of g h 84 s The Works of the Pious and Profoundly Learned Joseph Mede (London, 1665).a . w w Worthington’s Diary and Correspondence testify to his immense learning.w The

m letters are also a valuable resource for the history of reading and book publication.o .c te a Though his reputation was as a scholar, Worthington’s correspondenceg takes h s .a us to the very heart of the intellectual world which the Cambridgew Platonists w w inhabited. He shared Cudworth’s and More’s high valuation of both Platonism and m o .c Pythagoreanism, which he regarded as more godly than Judaismte itself on account a g h of their ‘more inward apprehension and hearty relish of whats was virtuous and .a w divine’. As he explains: w w

m o .c te their conceptions were more generous, and more expressivea of what is worthy g h s and perfective of the soul. Whereas there is a great silence.a in the Jew’s writings w w 85 w about what is practical, and refers to a life exemplary in goodness. m o .c te a g He also shared with Cudworth and More the idealsh of Samuel Hartlib’s universal s .a reformation. Worthington was linked to that remarkablew Interregnum activist, w w

Lady Katherine Ranelagh, sister of Robert Boylem and friend of John Milton. At o .c the Restoration he was engaged upon his editionte of the millenarian bible-scholar, a g h 86 Joseph Mede, doyen of so many of the sectarians millenarians. Mede was also held .a w in highest esteem by More and others, andw Worthington seems to have packaged w

m 87 his edition of Mede for consumption byo the restored Anglican Church. .c te a Worthington’s Diary and Correspondenceg records important biographical h s events: his marriage to Mary Whichcote.a (niece of Benjamin Whichcote); his w w w dignified departure from Jesus College; his journey north in the expectation m o 88 of finding suitable employment;.c his daughter’s birth and wife’s death. It also te a g h s .a w w w 84 Worthington also editedm John Smith’s Select Discourses (London, 1660). Had o .c circumstances been differentte he may, of course, like Cudworth and More, have published a g h books of his own. At a laters date his son collected and edited his sermons: Select Discourses .a w (London, 1725). w w 85 m Diary and Correspondenceo of Dr Worthington, 2, pt i, p. 112. This passage has .c te particular resonancea in view of More’s interest in Kabbalism, and his neo-Pythagorean g h construction of a sChristian Kabbalah, in his Conjectura Cabbalistica (1653). .a w 86 w on Mede,w see J. Jue, Heaven upon Earth. Joseph Mede (1586–1638) and the

m Legacy of Millenarianismo (Dordrecht, 2006); S. Hutton, ‘More, Newton and the Language .c te of Biblical aProphecy’, in J.E. Force and R.H. Popkin (eds), The Books of Scripture and g h s Nature (Dordrecht,.a 1994), pp. 39–54. w 87 w w s. Hutton, ‘The Appropriation of Joseph Mede: Millenarianism in the 1640’s’,

m in J.E.o Force and R.H. Popkin (eds), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern .c te a Europeang Culture (Dordrecht, 2001), pp. 1–14. h s 88 .a Diary and Correspondence of Dr Worthington, 1, pp. 88, 89, 204, 2, pt. i, pp. 209, w w 221,w 228, 234–5. © Copyrighted Material 180 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material registers the impact on intellectual life of the uncertainties of political change m o in the 1650s and 1660s. One of the most important insights that Worthington’s.c te a g h correspondence provides about the context in which the Cambridge Platonistss .a w lived and wrote is that ideas are not divorced from their political and economicw w context. In view of the Cambridge Platonists’ reputation for being unworldlym o .c te mystics, this is a point that has a special resonance. For Worthington’sa letters g h s help us to see the impact of political change on English intellectual life.a in general w w and their position in particular. Deprivation from his position at Cambridgew was

m o a major personal crisis for Worthington. Cut loose from his academic.c moorings, te a he found himself in middle age without the means or resourcesg to continue the h s .a scholarly career for which he had been educated, and to whichw he was accustomed. w w The self-same letters which record his increasingly desperate bids to make a new m o .c beginning without sacrificing his scholarly interests givete us a window into the a g h very structure of intellectual life; a structure normally takens for granted, but which .a w is here laid bare by crisis. w w

m Worthington’s search for a livelihood sufficient oto support his wife and young .c te family, for new patronage, for books to enable hima carry on with his scholarly g h s labours, and even for news of new publications,.a are an indirect reminder of how w w w much the academic life provided, and what those secure in their college posts m o could take for granted. In the end it was his .cfriend Henry More who came to his te a g (material) rescue by installing him in his ownh living in Ingoldsby, Lincolnshire. s .a But Worthington’s material gain was alsow his loss: one of the most poignant w w letters in his correspondence was writtenm after the death of his wife, Mary. In o .c it he conveys a vivid image of the scholarte bereft of domestic support, without a g h local contacts to supply his domestics needs. It is a poignant image of a man, and .a w w a scholar, at a complete loss as w to how to look after his baby son and toddler

89 m daughter. We can only speculateo what Worthington might have achieved had .c te a his career not been so fatally g interrupted. Our modern sense of his affiliation to h s .a the Cambridge Platonists wouldw certainly have been stronger. Irrespective of that, w w his impact on radical theology has, arguably, been greater than any of the others m o through his edition of Joseph.c Mede who is a source of inspiration to fuel Christian te a g 90 h fundamentalism to thiss day. The disrupted career of John Worthington may be .a w viewed as a negativew measure of what Cambridge Platonism might have been in w

m different political circumstances.o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a 89 w w ibid., 2, pt. ii, pp. 253–7, 290–97, 274. By comparison, Worthington’s friend w

Benjaminm Whichcote, who had private means, fared somewhat better when he was ejected o .c fromte his post as Provost of King’s College, Cambridge. a g h 90 s Jue, Heaven upon Earth, ch. 11; R. Popkin, The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century .a w w wThought (Leiden, 1992). © Copyrighted Material A Radical Review of the Cambridge Platonists 181 © Copyrighted Material

Legacy m o .c te a g h s While the Cambridge legacy within the Anglican tradition must not be forgotten,a . w w neither should the more heterodox and politically radical aspect to theirw legacy

91 m outside it. One strand of the heterodoxies deriving from their theologyo could .c te a almost be an appendix to Thomas Edwards’ catalogue of erroneous beliefsg published h s .a as Gangraena. Cambridge Platonists (More and Sterry) and theirw followers w w (Daniel Whitby and Anne Conway) also figure prominently in D.P. Walker’s The m 92 o .c Decline of Hell. Mention has already been made of Cudworth’ste involvement a g h with controversies surrounding the doctrine of the Trinity. Amongs the immediate .a w followers of the Cambridge Platonists, Henry More’s mostw famous pupil, Lady w

m Anne Conway, espoused deeply heterodox views. Her correspondenceo with More .c te shows her deep interest in radical religion – Quakerism,a Familism, Behmenism. g h s A topic which dominates Anne Conway’s later correspondence.a and spills over w w w into the printed sources is George Keith’s extremely heterodox, if not heretical, m o 93 theory that the soul of Christ is extended throughout.c the universe. Besides te a g More, prominent among the members of Lady Conway’sh circle at Ragley Hall, s .a Warwickshire were the colourful and heterodoxw Francis Mercury van Helmont, w w the Quaker leader (and schismatic) George Keithm and (at a distance) the Christian o .c Kabbalist, Knorr von Rosenroth who was thente working on his Kabbala Denudata a g h 94 (published Sulzbach and Frankfurt, 1677–84).s Anne Conway’s posthumously .a w published treatise bears the imprint of w her dialogues with heterodoxy. In her w

m Principia Philosophiae Antiquissimaeo & recentissimae (Amsterdam, 1690), she .c te a denies that body and soul are distinctg entities, rewrites the doctrine of the Trinity h s and proposes universal salvation achieved.a by a form of radical perfectionism. w w w Even without its Keith dimension, her Quakerism was a bridge too far for More, m o though he shared her other interests..c Indeed, it was he who set her in the heterodox te a 95 g direction she took. She was subsequentlyh taken up by another radical group in the s .a 96 w late seventeenth century, thew Philadelphians. w

Finally, the political afterlifem of Cambridge Platonism, where it can be traced, o .c te is on the side of radical aWhigs and republicans. Whichcote was linked to the same g h s .a w w w 91 their followersm within the Church of England, particularly Tillotson and Tenison, o .c were considered dangerouslyte heterodox by their own church. a g 92 h D.P. Walker,s The Decline of Hell. Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal .a w Torment (London,w 1964). w 93 m thereo is no space here to go into all the implications of this debate, which are .c te also registereda in More’s Opera omnia, particularly in the scholia he added to his Opera g h philosophicas . For a fuller discussion, see S. Hutton, Anne Conway. .a w 94 w w on this group and Anne Conway’s interest in Kabbalism, see A. Coudert, The

m Impacto of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis .c te Mercurya van Helmont (1614–1698) (Leiden, 1998). g h s 95 .a Hutton, Anne Conway, p. 63. w w 96 w ibid., pp. 228–30. © Copyrighted Material 182 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material circles as Locke, and his sermons were edited by Shaftesbury. A century later, m o at the time of the American and French Revolutions, their ideas were taken.c up te a g h by the so-called rational dissenters. The Unitarian leader Theophilus Lindseys .a w claimed Whichcote as a forefather of Unitarianism. Cudworth, too, foundw an w admirer in Shaftesbury, and also a following among the dissenting radicals.m In his o .c te An Historical View of the State of the Protestant Dissenters in Englanda (1814), g h s Joshua Toulmin places Cudworth at the centre of debates surrounding.a the doctrine w w of the Trinity. Cudworth was also a major authority for Richard Price,w defender of

m o both the American and French Revolutions, whose Review of the.c Present State of te a Morals (1758) was heavily indebted to Cudworth’s ethical philosophy.g h s .a w w w

m o .c Conclusion te a g h s .a w In presenting a case for a radical review of Cambridge Platonism,w I make no claims w

m to comprehensive coverage or methodological perfection.o But, when they are .c te measured by the same criteria by which their contemporarya John Milton has been g h s reassessed, it is hard to sustain the view that the Cambridge.a Platonists were other- w w w worldly mystics, detached from all political engagement, who transcended the m o divisions of their time and faded out with the .dawnc of the eighteenth century. Their te a g close ties to the Commonwealth, the originsh of so much of their thinking in the s .a religious and intellectual ferment of the 1640sw and 1650s, their uneasy relationship w w with both the so-called radicals of thatm period and the restored Anglican regime, o .c all show that they belong to the politicalte history of the period, every bit as much a g h as they have a place in the historys of seventeenth-century science, philosophy .a w w and religion. If novelty in philosophicalw thinking and heterodoxy in theology

m are criteria for radicalism, then othey have just claims for attention in any revised .c te a history of English radicalism.g And their fortunes fluctuated in the same way as h s .a that of their radical contemporaries.w Their world too was turned upside down. w w Born in the crisis of the 1640s and blighted by the impact of the Restoration, m o Cambridge Platonism was,.c arguably – albeit briefly – the finest achievement of te a g h mid-seventeenth-centurys Protestant intellectual culture. Its truncated legacy was .a w sustained visibly by w Cudworth and More; less visibly by Benjamin Whichcote, w

m through whom it contributedo to the radicalism of the next generation. .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 9 m o .c te a g h s Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in.a w w w

*m o Late Seventeenth-Century England.c te a g h s .a Warren Johnston w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m It is difficult for the historian of the early modern period too not think of radicalism .c te at the mention of apocalyptic thought. Perhaps the first thinga that springs to mind g h s is the German town of Münster and John of Leyden’s.a millenarian Anabaptist w w w experiment there in the mid-1530s, one of the most radical social and political m 1 o events of the early Reformation. While there was.c no similar achievement of te a 2 g militant millenarianism in England in the sixteenthh century, the apocalyptic s .a interpretations of Thomas Brightman and Josephw Mede, though not necessarily w w radical in themselves, laid the groundwork m for millenarian expectations in the o .c 1640s and 1650s. As historians such as Paulte Christianson, William Lamont, a g h Bernard Capp, and Christopher Hill, amongs others, have shown, these apocalyptic .a w w w

m o * .c te I would like to thank Ariel Hessayona and Mark Goldie for their careful reading and g h comments on this essay. Their suggestionss for revision have been incorporated into the final .a w version. Audiences at the ‘Rediscoveringw Radicalism’ conference at Goldsmiths, University w

m of London in June 2006, and at the oMidwest Conference on British Studies at Wright State .c te University in September 2007, provideda helpful responses to preliminary papers on this g h topic. All seventeenth- and earlys eighteenth-century sources were published in London .a w unless otherwise noted. w w

1 m For an account and oanalysis of the events in Münster in 1534–35, see: J. Horsch, .c te ‘The Rise and Fall of the Aanabaptists of Muenster’, Mennonite Quarterly Review, 9 (1935): g h s pp. 92–103, 129–43; Norman.a Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London, 1957), pp. w w 283–306; R. Po-chia Hsia,w ‘Münster and the Anabaptists’, in R. Po-chia Hsia (ed.), The

m German People ando the German Reformation (Ithaca, 1988), pp. 51–70; J. Stayer, The .c te German Peasants’a War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal and Kingston, g h s 1991), pp. 123–38;.a A. Arthur, The Tailor-King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist w w Kingdom of Münsterw (New York, 1999).

2 m o The .c only event in sixteenth-century England that bears any similarities to the te a enthusiasticg fervour and activism found in Münster was William Hacket’s conspiracy to h s overthrow.a episcopacy and the queen in the early 1590s. However, Hacket’s movement did w w w not attain anything close to the initial ‘success’ the events in Münster had in the 1530s. m o For a.c discussion of Hacket’s movement, see A. Walsham, ‘“Frantick Hacket”: Prophecy, te a Sorcery,g Insanity, and the Elizabethan Puritan Movement’, HJ, 41 (1998): pp. 27–66; A. h s Walsham,.a ‘Hacket, William’, ODNB. I thank Ariel Hessayon for drawing my attention to w w Hacket’sw conspiracy. © Copyrighted Material 184 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material convictions would be used to justify and instigate political militancy during the m 3 o Civil Wars and Interregnum. Even after the restoration of monarchy in 1660,.c te a g h radical millenarianism did not simply disappear, as Thomas Venner’s ill-fateds .a w Fifth-Monarchist uprising in London in January 1661 demonstrated. Venner’sw w speculations, based on the expiration of the 1,290 prophetic days of Danielm (12:11) o .c te and the resurrection of the two witnesses after their three and a half yearsa of lying g h s dead predicted in Revelation (11:7–11), led to his efforts to initiate.a a millennial w w kingdom. For this rebellion against the newly restored governmentw of Charles II,

m o Venner and a group of his followers were executed in front of their.c meeting-house te 4 a in Coleman Street. Such radical efforts lived on in seventeenth-centuryg English h s .a consciousness, long after their ability to pose any real threat wto existing civil and w w ecclesiastical authorities. m o .c This essay takes us three decades beyond these eventste from the early days a g h of the restored Stuart monarchy, exploring the nature sof apocalyptic thought in .a w England in the last years of the seventeenth century. Iwn doing so, it demonstrates w

m a number of things. First, that all of the elements ofo apocalyptic thought of the .c te early and mid seventeenth century were still present,a including concern with g h s dating and attaching prophetic time periods to.a historical events and eras, the w w w belief in imminent millenarian fulfilment, and finding apocalyptic significance in m o contemporary political and religious circumstances..c There was also still a wide te a g array of literature and authors concerned withh advancing apocalyptic beliefs and s .a applying them to contemporary politicalw and religious conditions in the 1690s, w w demonstrating that this thought had developedm within the Protestant mainstream of o .c more moderate commentary on Churchte and State. Finally, despite this moderation, a g h it is apparent that disagreement overs existing ecclesiastical policies continued, and .a w w even that embers from the fire of wradical apocalyptic ideas of the past persisted into

m the last decade of the seventeentho century, though – as we shall see – the menace .c te a of enthusiasm and sedition wasg blunted by time and circumstance. h s .a In all of this, the essay arguesw against common historiographical perceptions, w w instead contending that apocalyptic thought remained pertinent beyond the mid m o seventeenth-century crises.c and that it was not solely a medium to articulate political te a g h s .a w w w 3 See, for example,m W. Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603–1660 o .c (London, 1969); C.te Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1971); B. a g h Capp, The Fifth Monarchys Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism .a w (London, 1972);w P. Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from w the Reformationm to the Eve of the Civil War (Toronto, 1978). o 4 .c te A Doora of Hope: Or, A Call and Declaration for the Gathering Together of the First g h Fruits untos the Standard of Our Lord Jesus (n.p., [1660]), pp. 12–13, 14, 16. See also C. .a w Burrage,w ‘The Fifth Monarchy Insurrections’, EHR, 25 (1910): pp. 722–47; R. Greaves, w

m Delivero Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660-1663 (Oxford, 1986), .c te pp. a49–57; Capp, Fifth Monarchy Men, pp. 199–200; P.G. Rogers, The Fifth Monarchy g h Mens (London, 1966), pp. 110–20; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series 1660–61, pp. .a w w 470–71,w 475, 476. © Copyrighted Material Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late 17th-Century England 185 © Copyrighted Material

and religious revolt. So, the conditions in the last decade of the seventeenthm o .c te century continued to inspire Anglican and dissenting apocalyptic writers,a and g h s provided an anchor for prophetic fulfilment that satisfied – at least to somea extent . w w – representatives of both groups. w

m For those accustomed to hearing that apocalyptic ideas and applicationso .c te a disappeared after 1660, the number and variety of such tracts published gin the 1690s h s .a might be surprising. Evidence of the persistence and extent of latew seventeenth- w w century Protestant apocalypticism can initially be found in the momentous m o .c developments that ushered in the decade: the ‘deliverance’ oft e England (to use a g h the common contemporary appraisal) from James II and his Catholics beliefs, his .a w replacement on the throne by William and Mary, and the Rwevolution in English w

m government that followed. o .c te a g h s .a w w w Apocalyptic literature supporting the transformation of political circumstances in m o 1688 began to appear in the autumn of that year and.c continued in the immediate te 5 a g aftermath of the Revolution that followed. Anglicanh and nonconforming authors s .a joined together to extol the prophetic significancew of those events. In 1691, the w w

Congregational minister Thomas Beverley remindedm Parliament of the recent o .c defeat of popery in Britain and the ‘stupendous’te Revolution in England, followed a g h up by William’s subsequent victories in Ireland.s Four years on, Beverley would .a w note Queen Mary’s important role in thesew achievements and characterise her w

m death as a rebuke to the nation for noto properly building on their successes, with .c te 6 a the consolation, however, that Christ’sg kingdom was not ‘far off’. John Butler, h s a Church of England rector to the parish.a of Wallington in Hertfordshire, saw the w w w events of the late 1680s as an assurance that the millenarian kingdom would be m o ushered in imminently by the .c English monarchy, and Walter Garrett, vicar of te a g Titchfield, Hampshire, dedicatedh to William and Mary his work demonstrating the s .a 7 w place of the Church of Englandw in the fulfilment of Revelation’s prophecies. The w

Whig author John Tutchinm celebrated William and Mary’s new reign as a defeat of o .c te ‘Tyrant Monsters’ and thea beginning of a ‘Golden Age’. Similarly, the dissenting g h s .a w w w 5 m For a completeo analysis of the apocalyptic ideas surrounding the Revolution, see .c te W. Johnston, ‘Revelationa and the Revolution of 1688–1689’, HJ, 48 (2005): pp. 351–89. g h 6 s Thomas .aBeverley, To the High Court of Parliament (n.p., 1690), brs.; Thomas w w Beverley, A Solemnw Perswasion to Most Earnest Prayer for the Revival of the Work of

m God (1695), pp.o 16, 21. Thomas Beverley’s expansive apocalyptic oeuvre from the 1680s .c te a and 1690s gis discussed in detail in W. Johnston, ‘Thomas Beverley and the “Late Great h s Revolution”:.a English Apocalyptic Expectation in the Late Seventeenth Century’, in w w A. Hessayonw and N. Keene (eds), Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England

m (Aldershot,o 2006), pp. 158–75. .c te a7 g John Butler, Bellua Marina: of the Monstrous Beast which Arose Out of the Sea h s (1690),.a pp. 414–15; Walter Garrett, An Essay upon the Fourth and Fifth Chapters of the w w wRevelation (1690). © Copyrighted Material 186 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material author of the Enquiry into the Vision of the Slaying and Rising of the Witnesses m o (1692) found the Revolution and the new monarchs together initiating both .cthe te a g h resurrection of the witnesses (Revelation 11:12) and the pouring of the fifths vial .a w on the seat of the beast (Revelation 16:10) – accomplishments that wouldw lead to w the sounding of the seventh trumpet and the founding of the New Jerusalemm in o 8 .c te England. a g h s Comment upon the Revolution continued to influence apocalyptic.a thinking to w w a variety of purposes throughout the decade. Thomas Ward and Valentinew Evans,

m o the self-proclaimed ‘two witnesses’ for John Mason’s apocalyptic.c movement te a in Buckinghamshire in the early 1690s, cited the Revolution asg a sign of God’s h s .a favour towards England. Likewise, the enigmatic author M. Marsinw credited God w w for giving England William, ‘who hath continued to us our liberty & opportunities m o .c of seeking God ... So that thereby many might be awakened,te and come out of their a g 9 h gross darkness.’ Thomas Brookhouse, while assertings that millennial authority .a w would be found in priestly rather than monarchical forms,w stressed the importance w

m of William’s coming to the throne in a not-so-subtleo allusion to the king’s House .c te of Orange lineage. Old Testament prophecy (Jeremiaha 23:5 and Zechariah 6:12) g h s spoke of a branch emerging to build the temple and.a rule in peace and justice, which w w w Brookhouse interpreted as an orange tree ‘whose leaves’ of civil and ecclesiastical m o10 government provided ‘Shade and Protection’..c Comparing Charles II to Saul, and te a g describing James’s rule as only a brief disruption,h Brookhouse labelled William s .a 11 ‘our David’ who would lay the foundationw of the New Jerusalem. w w

Even as late as 1699 the author of the Shortm Survey of the Kingdom of Christ, while o .c not wholly flattering to civil powers te and ecclesiastical authorities, recognised the a g h witnesses’ rise from the dead at the ends of James’s reign and grudgingly conceded .a w w that ‘the Hierarchy and interested wMen in the Nation’ had helped to swallow up the

m ‘Flood of Popery ... in the late Ro evolution, lest they drown with her’ (an allusion .c 12 te a to Revelation 12:16). Expressingg similar mixed feelings, the Mysteries of God h s .a Finished attached great chronologicalw significance to the years between 1685 and w w

m o .c te 8 a g John Tutchin, Ah Poem upon Their Majesties Speeches to the Nonconformist s .a Ministers (n.p., n.d. [1690?]),w brs.; An Enquiry into the Vision of the Slaying and Rising w w of the Witnesses, and the Falling of the Tenth Part of the City (1692), sig. A3r, pp. 9, 14, m o 15, 37. Tutchin had .cparticipated in Monmouth’s Rebellion in 1685, and was captured and te a g punished horriblyh for his involvement; he would later also run afoul of first William III’s s .a and then Queen wAnne’s administrations: J.A. Downie, ‘Tutchin, John’, ODNB. w 9 w

Thomasm Ward and Valentine Evans, Two Witnesses to the Midnight Cry (1691), p. o .c 4; M. Marsin,te The Near Aproach [sic] of Christ’s Kingdom, Clearly Proved by Scripture a g h (1696), p. s18. .a 10 w w Thomas Brookhouse, The Temple Opened: or, the Great Mystery of the Millennium, w and them First Resurrection Revealed (1696), pp. 50–51; sig. A2v. o 11.c te Brookhouse, Temple Opened, p. 49. a g h 12 s A Short Survey of the Kingdom of Christ Here on Earth with His Saints (1699), p. .a w w w55. © Copyrighted Material Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late 17th-Century England 187 © Copyrighted Material

1689. This work found the witnesses’ call from heaven coinciding with the end mof o .c te James II’s reign, and argued that the ‘Debauchery ... Oppression and Persecution’a g h s of Charles II’s reign were such ‘Antichristian Abominations, that nothing lessa than . w w Popery it self was indulged and propagated in the midst of us, and prevail’dw to be

13 m enthroned’, causing the two witnesses’ death in the first place. The authoro was .c te a further aghast that it had actually been a popish king, using dispensing gpower, who h s .a had provided toleration for Protestant nonconformity: this was ‘Libertyw ... upon w w the Tenure Antichrist saw meet to give for a present Expedient’, rather than proper m o 14 .c recognition of the correctness of the dissenting stance ‘upon Christ’ste Authority’. a g h Thomas Brookhouse explained toleration as the only significants purpose of James’s .a w reign, to make the witnesses call to heaven (Revelation 11:12)w ‘more conspicuous’ w

m by compelling ‘their greatest Enemies to do it: And when heo had done this ... flies .c te away ... For though the Lion and the Lamb may, the Whorea and the Bride must not g h 15 s lie down together’. .a w w w The conviction, shared by nonconformists and supporters of the Church of m o England, that the achievements of the Revolution .cof 1688–89 marked a crucial te a g prophetic development belies the opinion thath a belief in the apocalyptic s .a significance of contemporary events was onlyw the domain of radicals and those w w committed to overthrowing monarchical government.m Nor did apocalyptic and o .c millenarian speculation simply fade away afterte these extraordinary circumstances. a g h While the events of the late 1680s ands early 1690s inspired an immediate .a w outpouring of millenarian speculation, writersw continued to publish apocalyptic w

m works throughout the last decade of theo century, showing a durable and continuing .c te a base of apocalyptic belief. g h s Although specific details varied.a in application, the fundamental interpretive w w w framework of apocalyptic thought at the end of the seventeenth century differed m o little from the earlier, mid-century.c variety. It is useful to first describe the te a g conventions of understandingh apocalyptic prophecy generally accepted by English s .a w expositors in the later seventeenthw century, and then turn to examine how such w interpretations were adaptedm and moulded to fit with the specific events and o .c te circumstances of the 1690s.a Although there is not enough space here for a complete g h s examination of the intricacies.a of apocalyptic scriptural exegesis, it is important to w w state that, by the 1690s,w Joseph Mede’s historicist method of interpretation had

m won out. First set oout in his Clavis apocalyptica (1627) and later translated and .c te a published by orderg of the House of Commons as Key of the Revelation in the early h s .a 1640s, Mede’sw explanation of Revelation’s prophecies documented the progress w w of the Christian Church through human history from its inception in apostolic m o .c times to itste eventual, future triumph in a literal 1,000-year reign of Christ and a g h the saintss on earth. As Samuel Petto, a Congregational minister from Sudbury in .a w w w

13 m o The Mysteries of God Finished: or an Essay Toward the Opening of the Mystery of .c te the Mysticala Numbers in Scriptures (1699), pp. 17–18, 33, 42, 43. g h s 14 .a Mysteries of God Finished, p. 42. w w 15 w Brookhouse, Temple Opened, p. 26. © Copyrighted Material 188 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material

Suffolk, described it in his tract Revelation Unvailed (1693), here ‘we may discern m o what an answerableness there have been in Events in the several Ages to what.c is te a g h contained in the Prophesies ... Here we may see how Prophesies have turneds into .a w History’. Similarly, Edward Waple, vicar of St Sepulchre’s in London andw canon w of Winchester, noted that Revelation allowed ‘Those who have skill in Historym and o 16 .c te Chronology ... [to] exercise it, with great Delight and Satisfaction’. a g h s Historical dates became essential elements of apocalyptic interpretations.a w w because of the importance of matching prophetic episodes and intervalsw to actual

m o events. The book of Revelation itself suggested time periods.c attached to its te a significant imagery, such as the 1,260 days of the two witnesses g prophesying (11:3) h s .a and the woman in the wilderness (12:6), as well as the 42 monthsw of the beast’s reign w w (13:5). The historicist interpretation depended upon the understanding of these m o .c ‘prophetic days’ as actual years (based on Numbers 14:34te and Ezekiel 4:6, which a g h equated a day to a year), which allowed them to coincides with longer historical .a w eras. Special attention was paid to the beginning of suchw periods, linking them to w

m particular incidents or circumstances suitable to reinforceo general doctrinal and .c te polemical purposes. Walter Cross located the start aof the 1,260 years of the beast’s g h s reign in the decade between ad 450 and 460, when.a he perceived papal government w 17 w w over Rome emerged. In 1692, the Enquiry into the Vision of the Slaying and m o Rising of the Witnesses placed the date of the.c woman fleeing to the wilderness te a g closer to the year 400 when the Roman Eh mpire’s power in the West began to s .a decline at the death of Theodosius, and thew beginning of the beast’s reign at 476 w w 18 when the western empire collapsed afterm Augustulus fled Rome. While variations o .c occurred within this dating, the significancete was the association between the a g h beast and papal power, which confirmeds the predominantly anti-Catholic nature .a w w of early modern English apocalypticw thought. Thomas Brookhouse characterised

m o .c te a 16 g Samuel Petto, The Revelationh Unvailed (1693), sig A2v; Edward Waple, The Book s .a of Revelation Paraphrased; withw Annotations on Each Chapter (1693), sig. a4v. See also, w w for example, Walter Garrett, mTheorems; Evincing, That the Subject of the Fourth and Fifth o .c Chapters of the Revelation,t eis the Church of England, B.L.E. (n.d.), p. 6; Eclectical Chiliasm; a g h or, a Discourse Concernings the State of Things from the Beginning of the Millennium to .a w the End of the World (1700),w sig. A5v, pp. 1, 2. Petto’s Congregational association is noted w in A.G. Matthews, Calamym Revised: Being a Revision of Edmund Calamy’s Account of the o .c Ministers and Otherste Ejected and Silenced, 1660–2 (1933; Oxford, 1988) [hereafter cited a g h as Calamy Reviseds ], p. 388. For a summary of Waple’s biographical details, see J. Venn and .a w J.A. Venn, Alumniw Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates w and Holders ofm Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900, o .c Part 1 – Fromte the Earliest Times to 1751 (Cambridge, 1922–27) [hereafter cited as Alumni a g h Cantab.], s4, p. 329. .a 17 w w Walter Cross, The Summ of Two Sermons on the Witnesses, and the Earthquake w that Accompaniesm Their Resurrection (1692), pp. 4–5. o 18.c te a Enquiry into the Vision, pp. 3–4. See also Petto, Revelation Unvailed, pp. 39, 50, g h 58–9;s Waple, Revelation Paraphrased, pp, 178–9, 209–10, 291, 395–7; Mysteries of God, .a w w p.w 31. © Copyrighted Material Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late 17th-Century England 189 © Copyrighted Material

the corruption of the early Christian Church as a fall ‘into the Baudy House mof o .c te Rome; and so She that was at First a Pure Virgin, became a Prostitute, and is anow g 19 h s that Great Whore of Babylon’. The London Particular Baptist Benjamin Keacha . w w identified all of the persecutions by the Roman Church throughout its historyw as

20 m the image and mark of the beast. o .c te a Beyond the ubiquitous anti-papal connotation, the location andg timing of h s .a other prophetic events were also important. The climactic periodw described w w in Revelation is the 1,000-year kingdom of Christ (20:3; see also Daniel 7:14, m o .c 18, 27). Although the specific belief in a millennial kingdomt e of Christ and the a g h saints on earth is often associated with early modern radicalism,s by the end of the .a w seventeenth century it is apparent that this conviction was wless threatening and w

m part of a moderate apocalyptic mainstream shared by authorso with varied religious .c te and political perspectives. Walter Cross described seven ‘revolutions’,a coinciding g h s with the pouring of the seven vials (Revelation 15–16),.a including a destruction w w w of papal officials, the fall of the Turkish Empire, and the conversion of the Jews, m o 21 that would usher in ‘that long look’d for 1000 years’..c Samuel Petto predicted te a g the millennium would be ‘a glorious time ... a stateh of Blessedness’ on earth that s .a would see ‘great Changes for the better in the Civilw and Ecclesiastical State, great w w 22 Purity of Administrations and Ordinances, andm glorious Divine Presence’. The o .c author of Great Signs of the Times (1699) assertedte that this kingdom would be ‘a a g h 23 time wherein Truth and Righteousness, Unitys and Peace shall fill the Earth’. The .a w Presbyterian divine Robert Fleming notedw the nature of the millennial kingdom w

m ‘lyes, in a visible surrender, and subjectingo of the collective body of Nations, .c te a to the Scepter of his [Christ’s] Government,g when the Princes and Kings of the h s 24 earth should subject, their Regal Authority.a to his Rule and Empire’. For Thomas w w w

m o 19 .c Brookhouse, Temple Openedte , p. 32. Along with this identification of the ‘whore a g h of Babylon’, other circumstancess deemed significant in the condemnation of papal actions .a w included the correspondence betweenw descriptions of the little horn in Daniel (7:8, 20, 24– w

6) and the various beasts of mRevelation with various characteristics of the papacy, as well o .c as papal efforts to claim universalte authority. See, for example, Petto, Revelation Unvailed, a g h pp. 37–9; The Roman Papals Empire, Proved to be the Image of the Roman Pagan Empire, .a w from Revelation. Chap.w xiii, Vers. xiv (1700), pp. 3–4, 5, 6–8, 14–15; Waple, Revelation w

Paraphrased, p. 136;m Walter Garrett, OIDA SOU TA ERGA. Or, the Divine Foreknowledge o .c of Our Blessed Lordte and Saviour Jesus Christ, Display’d in His Epistles to the Churches a g h (1700), p. 10; Johns Mason, The Midnight-Cry. A Sermon Preached on the Parable of the .a w Ten Virgins (2ndw edn, 1691), pp. 17–18. w 20 Benjaminm Keach, Sion in Distress: or, the Groans of the Protestant Church for o .c te Many Ages aPast (1692), pp. 4, 51–2 and n. 15. g 21 h Cross,s Summ of Two Sermons, pp. 36, 35. .a w 22 w w Petto, Revelation Unvailed, p. 144.

23 m o The Great Signs of the Times (1699), p. 3. .c te a24 g Robert Fleming, An Epistolary Discourse on the Great Assistances to a Christians h s Faith.a (1692), p. 164. The author here is the elder Robert Fleming (1630–94) who was w w pastorw to the Scots church in Rotterdam; see D.G. Mullan, ‘Fleming, Robert’, ODNB. © Copyrighted Material 190 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material

Brookhouse the 1000-year kingdom of the saints would come at ‘the Expiration m o of the Whores Lease, when all the Kingdoms of the World devolve on Christ’..c It te a g h would begin in Britain, marked by new civil and ecclesiastical administrations,s .a w and those who had suffered for the true Church would bear their experiencesw as ‘a w 25 Passo-porto to enter into the Millennium’. m o .c te These convictions anticipated a number of other events and circumstancesa that g h s would signal the millennial advent. Expectation of the downfall of the.a papacy and w w the Church of Rome was almost universal in conventional Protestantw apocalyptic

m o thought. But many also believed that there would be a gathering. c and resurrection te a of the saints, the founding of the New Jerusalem, a conversiong of the Jews to h s .a Christianity, their restoration to their biblical homeland, an wend to the Ottoman w w Empire, a curbing of Satan’s actions in the world, and some type of extraordinary m o 26 .c divine manifestation. Although there was disagreementte over the nature of a g h Christ’s presence in His millennial kingdom, most authorss advocated a continual .a w spiritual, rather than personal, attendance. Most alsow agreed, however, that it w 27 m would be established by some kind of glorious earthlyo appearance. The author .c te of The Glorious Kingdom of Our Blessed Lord Jesusa Christ on Earth (1693) was g h s concerned to refute the Fifth Monarchist conceit.a that the millennium would be w w w inaugurated through human endeavour before Christ’s return. The anonymous m o author insisted that the ‘conquering fighting.c Work’ to establish the millenarian te a g h s .a w w 25 w Brookhouse, Temple Opened, sig. A 4r, pp. 21, 22–3, 2, 3–4. Although holding a m o dissenting position, Brookhouse never clearly.c identifies his exact denominational affiliation. te a g Little is known about the details of his life.h s 26 .a w For further examples of particularw millennial beliefs and associated events, see w

Mason, Midnight-Cry, pp. 12, 15; Wardm and Evans, Two Witnesses, pp. 20–21; Enquiry into o .c the Vision, pp. 6, 32; Edward Paye,te Antichrist in Spirit Unmasked: or, Quakerism a Great a g h Delusion (1692), pp. 73–4, 85–6;s Fleming, Epistolary Discourse, pp. 165, 26 (separately .a w paginated); W.S., The Gloriousw Kingdom of Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ on Earth, Rightly w

Timed (1693), pp. 2, 6; Petto,m Revelation Unvailed, pp. 127–45, 156–61; Waple, Revelation o .c Paraphrased, sig. d3r, pp. 433,te 443, 493; Jane Lead, The Enochian Walks with God (1694), a g h pp. 15, 31–2, 33; Williams Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth (1696), pp. 376–8; Digby .a w Bull, A Letter of a Protestantw Clergy-man to the Reverend Clergy of the Church of England w

(1695), p. 52; Samuelm Cradock, A Brief and Plain Exposition and Paraphrase of the Whole o .c Book of the Revelationte (1696), pp. 116, 217–18; Brookhouse, Temple Opened, pp. 1, 7, 14, a g h 15, 39–40; Short sSurvey, pp. 19, 20–23, 31; Great Signs, pp. 1–2; Mysteries of God, p. 47; .a w Eclectical Chiliasmw , sig. A6r, pp. 5, 20, 32–3; Roman Papal Empire, p. 31; Marsin, Near w

Aproach, pp. m6–7, 8–9, 28–9; M. Marsin, Truth Vindicated, Against All Heresies, Shewing o .c How the Seedte of the Woman, and the Seed of the Serpent is Distinguished (1698), pp. 81, 91; a g h M. Marsin,s Two Sorts of Latter Days, Proved from Scripture (1699), pp. 11, 14. .a 27 w w For some example of the variety of opinions on the characteristics of Christ’s w

m presenceo in the millennium, see Eclectical Chiliasm, p. 20; Mason, Midnight-Cry, pp. 12– .c te 14; aLead, Enochian, p. 32; Short Survey, pp. 12–13, 14; Waple, Revelation Paraphrased, g h pp.s 443, 493; Brookhouse, Temple Opened, pp. 4–6, 46, 48; Petto, Revelation Unvailed, .a w w p.w 144; Fleming, Epistolary Discourse, pp. 32–4; Evans and Ward, Two Witnesses, p. 21. © Copyrighted Material Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late 17th-Century England 191 © Copyrighted Material

reign could not be done prior to Christ’s appearance, yet he was also concernedm to o .c te avow that he was ‘not in the least denying’ the doctrine of the 1,000-year kingdoma g 28 h s on earth. Opinion did vary on the government and characteristics of the millenniala . w w kingdom: predictions ranged from an ecclesiastical administration with a circuitw of

m itinerant preachers going out at regular intervals to convert the world, to ao time of a .c te a great prosperity in which ‘there will no longer be need of Ships for Warg or Foreign h s .a Commerce and Traffick’ and where ‘Christian Princes [would] pour wtheir treasures w 29 w into the Holy Land’. John Mason, who inspired a popular millenarian movement m o .c in Buckinghamshire in the early 1690s, hoped for circumstanceste ‘which no other a g h Kings have been able to accomplish ... Unity without Division,s Verity without .a w 30 Errour, spirituality without Formality, Hypocrisy, or Censure’.w w

m Such millenarian anticipation and speculation was not oprojected into a distant .c te and indefinite future. Authors with diverse religiousa and political perspectives g h s expected and expressed impending apocalyptic accomplishment.a in a variety of w w w ways. M. Marsin dedicated her 1696 tract on The Near Approach of Christ’s m o Kingdom to Parliament and the king in the hope ‘That.c they may know what God te a g is going about to do, so as to prepare for the comingh of Christ’, and she warned s .a that putting ‘the day far off’ would result in Christ’sw return taking people ‘as a w w 31 snare’. Thomas Brookhouse described the presentm civil and ecclesiastical state o .c as a ‘Crucible’ within which ‘the Fire of Godste Wrath will quickly melt it down, a g h and make it ready for a New Impression’,s while the Quaker Henry Mollineux .a w 32 counselled his readers to be vigilant becausew the wrath of lamb was at hand. w

m Although the nonjuror Digby Bull advisedo the clergy of the Church of England to .c te a strengthen themselves against an imminentg resurgence of Catholicism in England h s for a short period, symbolised by the.a two witnesses’ death (Revelation 11:7–10), w w w he also chastened them because ‘our blessed Lord is coming and at hand’ but m o 33 their ‘works ... are not found perfect.c before God’. In a sermon inspired by an te a g actual earthquake on 8 Septemberh 1692, Walter Cross noted that this literal event s .a w w w

m o 28 .c Glorious Kingdomte, pp. 5–6, 1–2. a g 29 h Brookhouse, Temples Opened, sig. A2v, pp. 11, 21, 33, 35–6, 42–3, 46; Eclectical .a w Chiliasm, pp. 31, 39. w w 30 m Mason, Midnight-Cryo , p. 12. .c 31 te Marsin, Neara Approach, sigs. A2r, A3v. In his entry on her for the ODNB Tim g h s Hitchcock notes .athat little is known about Marsin other than a scattering of details in her w w published works.w He describes her theological position as ‘unique’, given that she does not

m provide any evidenceo of denominational attachment – Hitchcock concludes that she is ‘the .c te first and onlya “Marsinite”’ (T. Hitchcock, ‘Marsin, [Mersin, Mercin], M.’,ODNB ). g h 32 s Brookhouse,.a Temple Opened, p. 56; Henry Mollineux, Antichrist Unvailed, by the w w Finger wof Gods Power; and His Visage Discovered by the Light of Christ Jesus (1695), pp.

m 63–4. o .c te a33 g Bull, Letter, p. 1, quote at p. 35. See also Digby Bull, The Watch-man’s Voice, h s Giving.a Warning to All Men of the Dreadful Day of the Lord, which He Apprehends to be at w w Handw (1695), p. 5 [recte, p. 3 (sig. A2r) – the first page of text is erroneously paginated]; © Copyrighted Material 192 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material portended an approaching mystical one that would signal the rising of the witnesses m o (Revelation 11:13), and Benjamin Keach associated the recent earthquakes in .cthe te a 34 g h world with the pouring of the vials of God’s wrath. Church of England ministers .a w Walter Garrett also notified his readers that they were living duringw ‘the latter w end’ of the pouring of the vials, while the Great Signs of the Times suggestedm o .c35 te its eponymous incidents indicated coming apocalyptic fulfilment.a Again, g h s conforming and dissenting voices could agree in the pertinence and.a immediate w w importance of prophetic belief, if not always concurring on the precisew meaning of

m o its application to present events and circumstances. .c te a The chronological placement of prophetic periods and erasg often had the h s .a purpose of locating millennial accomplishment, and the eventsw that would precede w w it, within immediate reach. Based on his interpretation of the trampling of the m o .c temple (Revelation 11:2) and the death of the two witnesses,te Digby Bull gloomily a g h predicted the return of popery to England in 1717 (preciselys on the significant date .a w of 5 November, the anniversary of the foiling of the w Gunpowder Plot in 1605). w

m Even so, Bull reassured his readers that this Catholico resurgence would be brief .c te and would end with the witnesses’ resurrection (Revelationa 11:11–12) and the g h s expiration of the 1260 years in about 1721. In addition,.a Bull’s calculation for the w w w start of the millennium in 1826 was based on his explanation of the number 666 m o as a period of years after the papal beast began.c to persecute the proto-Protestant te a 36 g Albigensians and Waldensians in 1160. Thereh were other specific chronological s .a applications as well. The author of Enquiryw into the Vision of the Slaying and w w

Rising of the Witnesses, having placedm the beginning of the 1,260 years in the o .c very early fifth century ad, asserted thatte they had expired around 1660 and were a g h followed by the death of the witnesses.s The millennium itself, through adding .a w w periods of 30 and 45 more years fromw the book of Daniel (12:11–12), would start

37 m in 1735. Similarly, the author oof a tract entitled The Mysteries of God Finished .c te a (1699) calculated 1,260 yearsg from the onset of the papacy’s temporal power in h s .a w w w Digby Bull, The Church’s Request to All Her Faithful Sons and Children (1695), pp. 19–20, m o 23. .c te a 34 g Cross, Summ of hTwo Sermons, p. 2; Benjamin Keach, A Trumpet Blown in Zion, s .a or an Allarm in God’s Holyw Mountain (1694), pp. 35–6. For other similar predictions of the w w imminent fulfilment of pre-millennial prophecies, see, for example, Ward and Evans, Two m o Witnesses, p. 10; Marsin,.c Two Sorts, p. 16; Fleming, Epistolary Discourse, pp. 185, 193; te a g Glorious Kingdomh , pp. 34–5; Elizabeth Redford, A Warning From the Lord to the City and s .a Nation (1695), pp.w 1, 2. w w 35 Walterm Garrett, A Paraphrase Upon Rev. I (1699), p. 1; Walter Garrett, A Persuasive o .c to the Study teof the Revelation: or, an Exposition of the Three First Verses of That Prophecy a g h (1699), p. s8; Great Signs, pp. 2, 7. .a 36 w w Bull, Letter, pp. 1, 15–17, 29-30, 34, 39, 52; Bull, Church’s Request, pp. 19, 20, 23. w

The predictionm of the exact day for Catholic resurgence in England comes in Digby Bull, o .c A Fartherte Warning of Popery, and of the Second Dreadful Wo That are Now Certainly at a g h Hands (1710), p. 42. .a w 37 w w Enquiry into the Vision, pp. 3, 5, 6, 7–8. © Copyrighted Material Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late 17th-Century England 193 © Copyrighted Material

425 to the death of the witnesses in 1685; their rise in 1688 initiated the pouring mof o .c te the vials, ending with the inauguration of the millennium 45 years later, in abouta g 38 h s 1733. Less exactly, but no less purposefully, Walter Cross placed the initiationa of . w w temporal power in the papacy between the years 450 and 460, with the destructionw

39 m of the papal beast 1,260 years later, between 1710 and 1720. Other variationso .c te a existed as well: the Presbyterian Samuel Cradock, who had been ejectedg from the h s .a living of North Cadbury in Somerset in 1662, argued the millenniumw had begun w w already in the early Reformation, about 1530, while Edward Waple asserted it m 40 o .c would start after 1772. te a g h While the imminent fulfilment of such millenarian predictionss is noteworthy .a w enough in its own right, even more significant is the w pertinence of recent or w

m contemporaneous events and circumstances to unfoldingo apocalyptic design. .c te Edward Waple asserted that the prophecies of Revelationa ‘afford satisfaction ... g h s For from hence men may learn not to be too much disquieted.a at great Changes, and w w w Revolutions in Churches, and States ... because they are from God ... [and] all such m o 41 great Events are in some way ... conducive to Christ’s.c Kingdom’. John Mason te a g affirmed that certain of Revelation’s prophecies wereh meant for his contemporaries: s .a ‘Not our Fore-fathers, nor them that come after wus ... [but] It’s spoken of England w w 42 and this Country, and this Town and Congregation’.m Calculation of prophetic o .c chronology and application of apocalyptic imageryte took on even more immediate a g h political and religious significance in this s way. .a w The demonstration of the use of apocalypticw meaning to validate the results w

m of the Revolution of 1688–89 has alreadyo shown how Revelation’s prophecies .c te a could be interpreted as unfolding in contemporaryg events. Changing international h s motives and conditions after 1689 .a also played out in apocalyptic literature, and w w w the understanding of prophetic fulfilment was not limited to circumstances in m o England but took on wider connotations..c According to John Mason, the effects of te a g the seventh vial would be felth in the Catholic territories of Germany as well as in s 43 .a w France and Italy. The authorw of The Roman Papal Empire (1700) asked readers to w consider the continued oppressionm of European Protestants by the beast. Similarly, o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a 38 g h Mysteriess of God, pp. 26, 29–30, 31, 33, 47. This author also included calculations .a w of the beginning,w and the similarly dated millenarian end, of the 2,300 prophetic days of w

Daniel 8:14. Smee Mysteries of God, pp. 17–18, 29, 33, 47. o 39 .c te Cross,a Summ of Two Sermons, pp. 4–5. g 40 h Cradock,s Brief and Plain Exposition, pp. 116, 217–18; Waple, Revelation .a w w Paraphrasedw , pp. 212–13; Stuart Handley, ‘Cradock, Samuel’, ODNB; Calamy Revised, p.

m 140; Alumnio Cantab., 1, p. 411. .c 41te a Waple, Revelation Paraphrased, sig. b3r. g h s 42 .a Mason, Midnight-Cry, p. 19. w w 43 w Ibid., p. 11. © Copyrighted Material 194 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material

Samuel Petto and Walter Cross found the death of the witnesses caused by the m 44 o continued power of the beast in France, Poland, Germany and Hungary. .c te a g h There had always been the universal component to English apocalypticisms .a w – that the battle against the beast in England would also lead to the victoryw of w

Protestantism and the final downfall of Catholicism in the world – but in mthe 1690s o .c te this international context took on further importance. Especially significanta was g h s the fact that England was now engaged in a major European war. Thomas.a Beverley w w identified the new monarchs’ significance, this time asw a military sign ofthe

m o imminent return of Christ. In 1691, after noting the ‘Surprizing’ .cand ‘Wonderful’ te a victory in Ireland, Beverley went on to explain that even Catholicg powers could h s .a be used to fulfil God’s purpose. He asserted that Catholic rulersw would become w w the ten kings who hated the whore (Revelation 17:16), and William’s role was as m o .c ‘so Great a Protestant Prince ... at the Head of a Confederatete Army’, a reference a g h 45 to England joining the League of Augsburg against Louiss XIV and France. .a w The next year, Beverley viewed William’s lack of successw against the French as w

m merely a ‘suspension of action by Providence’ that wouldo delay final victory until .c te closer to 1697, the date Beverley predicted for thea final destruction of the papal g h s Church (he later identified the Treaty of Ryswick.a with France in 1697 as a partial w 46 w w accomplishment of this impending climax). m o Other authors found similar apocalyptic .crepresentation in England’s military te a g affairs. Walter Cross interpreted the multinationalh alliance against France as the s .a nations and tongues of Revelation 11:9, whilew the author of The Glorious Kingdom w w predicted that the ‘great Wars and Rumoursm of Wars in the World’ were signs o .c 47 that Christ’s reign was close at hand.te Echoing this prophetic tone, England’s a g h Alarum (1693) justified the raisings of ‘Armies and navies against the enemies of .a w w our government and Religion andw all that is dear to us’ and stressed the need to

m 48 raise ‘the Militia, or Posse of Ho eaven’ through prayer. The author of this tract, .c te a the bookseller John Dunton, hintedg at domestic discord over the cost of the war h s .a by acknowledging the burdenw of taxes but also affirmed their necessity to defend w w

m o .c te 44 a g Roman Papal Empireh , pp. 25–7; Petto, Revelation Unvailed, p. 163; Cross, Summ s .a of Two Sermons, p. 5. Swee also Enquiry into the Vision, pp. 7–8. w 45 w Beverley, To the High Court of Parliament, brs.; Thomas Beverley, A Scheme of m o Prophecy Now To Be.c Fulfilled (n.p., 1691), pp. 3–4. te a 46 g h Thomas s Beverley, The Scripture-Line of Time: From the First Sabbath to the .a w Great Sabbatismw of the Kingdom of Christ (1692), pp. 7–8 [this is from the version of this w 7 pamphlet foundm in the Cambridge University Library, shelf mark Bb*.9.29 ; an alternate o .c version is foundte in the Early English Books collection B2174]; Thomas Beverley, A Review a g h of What Gods Hath Been Pleased to Do This Year (1698), p. 18; Thomas Beverley, The Good .a w Hope Throughw Grace ([1700]), p. 62. See also Thomas Beverley, The Grand Apocalyptical w

Question;m When the Reign of Antichristianism, or the Papacy, Began? (1701), p. 46. o 47.c te Cross, Summ of Two Sermons, p. 6; Glorious Kingdom, pp. 34–5. a g h 48 s [John Dunton], England’s Alarum: Being an Account of God’s Most Considerable .a w w Dispensationsw of Mercy and Judgment Towards These Kingdoms (1693), sig. A3r, A3v. © Copyrighted Material Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late 17th-Century England 195 © Copyrighted Material

the nation; Dunton argued that blame for this increased taxation could more aptlym o .c 49 te be laid at the feet of Charles II and James II for failing to keep France in check.a g h s In addition to war, the recent rescinding of toleration for French Protestantsa . w w also figured prominently in apocalyptic comment on international circumstances.w

m Drue Cressener, vicar of Soham in Cambridgeshire, found the prophecyo of the .c te a death of the two witnesses fulfilled in the revocation of the Edict gof Nantes in h s .a 1685 by the French king and the persecution of the Huguenots thatw followed, w w while Edward Waple placed the period of the witnesses’ death and resurrection as m o .c fitting precisely between the rescinding of French toleration andte the coronation of a 50 g h William and Mary. In a more poetic vein, John Mason’s ‘Hymns for the Coming .a w of Christ’ lamented: w w

m o .c te French Saints begin the Cup, a g h s Who seek their Home abroad; .a w w w Their Synagogues burnt up, m o their Vineyards left for God. .c te a g h s .a Benjamin Keach, moreover, had the character ofw ‘France’ relate how: w w

m o .c Prodigious numbers of my natives have, te a g h By this Whores means, found an untimelys Grave. .a w The Barbarous Harlot would not be content,w w

m51 To kill or drive them into Banishment.o .c te a g h s For Thomas Beverley, the war against.a France would initiate the dawn of the w w w morning star (Revelation 2:28) on Protestants in France, brought about by the m 52 o defeat of Louis XIV. Even at.c the end of the 1690s, M. Marsin continued to te a g identify French Protestants ash the two witnesses. Likewise, in its explanation of s .a w the meaning of Revelation w13:14, the pamphlet The Roman Papal Empire (1700) w 53 called for its readers’ sympathym for ‘our afflicted Brethren in France’. o .c te Louis XIV naturallya played a prominent role in the apocalyptic significance g h s of these international.a events. In a new section in the 1692 edition of Sion in w w Distress Benjamin Keachw noted a ‘new-born Sorrow’ in France, characterising

m Louis in verse as a o‘proud Insulter whom no Oaths can bind, / An Arbitrary Tyrant .c te a g h s .a w w w 49 Ibid.,m sig. A3r, p. 19. See also pp. 17–18. o 50 .c te Druea Cressener, A Demonstration of the First Principles of the Protestant g h Applicationss of the Apocalypse (1690), sig. A3v–A4r, p. xviii; Waple, Book of Revelation .a w w Paraphrasedw , p. 241.

51 m o Mason, Midnight-Cry, p. 33; Keach, Sion in Distress, p. 79. .c 52te a g Thomas Beverley, The Universal Doctrine of the Day of Judgment (1691), sig. a2v; h s Beverley,.a Scheme of Prophecy, p. 1. w w 53 w Marsin, Truth Vindicated, pp. 39–44; Roman Papal Empire, p. 27. © Copyrighted Material 196 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material

54 unconfin’d’. As it had during the Restoration (earlier editions in 1666, 1681 and m o 1689, as Distressed Sion Relieved), Keach’s verse allegory continued to adapt.c to te a g h address contemporary concerns, this time the perceived threat to Englands from .a w France and international Catholicism. Drue Cressener explained Louis’s distractionw w with affairs in Germany in 1688 as a sign of God’s intervention, allowingm William o 55 .c te to land in England. John Whittel, a chaplain in William’s army, describeda the g h s French king as the ‘gallick Tyrant’ and the ‘Dragon in the Apocalypse’.a to whom w w William would respond as ‘another Michael’ (Revelation 12:7), whilew John Dunton

m o compared Louis to the Assyrian king Sennacherib, who was defeated.c by God for te 56 a invading Judah (2 Kings 18:13; 19:32–37). Thomas Beverleyg rounded out the h s .a French king’s cast of characters, asserting that God had usedw various, less-than- w w godly individuals in the past to carry out His design for the world. Beverley likened m o .c 57 Louis to Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Herod and the Romante emperor Diocletian. a g h In addition, Louis XIV’s agreement to the Treaty of Ryswicks was significant for .a w his acceptance of William’s claim to the English thronew and as an abandonment w

m of the French king’s attempt at universal monarchy,o though Beverley noted that .c te 58 these benefits could hardly have been conscious ona Louis’s part. Though not all g h s of these representations were directly apocalyptic,.a they certainly were used in the w w w context of the prophetic significance of the circumstances of the 1690s. m o .c te a g h s .a There was, then, a shared belief amongw Anglican and dissenting apocalyptic w w interpreters in the impending fulfilmentm of apocalyptic prophecy, acceptance that o .c the events of the late 1680s marked tea significant prophetic turning point, and a a g h general consensus that such apocalyptics accomplishment would result in Protestant .a w w England’s rise to effect the downfallw of Catholic power and the papacy in Europe.

m However, such concurrence did onot mean that there was unanimous agreement on .c te a the ecclesiastical course beingg taken by the English Church. A number of purposes h s .a are apparent in the literaturew from the 1690s and, again, authors from widely w w varying political and religious positions used Revelation’s prophecies, this time m o .c te a g h s 54 .a Keach, Sion in wDistress, p. 79. w 55 w Cressener, Demonstration of the First Principles, p. xix. m o 56 .c John Whittel,te Constantinus Redivivus: or, A Full Account of the Wonderful a g h Providences and s Unparallell’d Successes That have All Along Attended the Glorious .a w enterprises of thew Heroical Prince, William the 3d (1693), p. 72; Dunton, England’s Alarum, w sig. A3v. m o 57 .c Thomaste Beverley, The Faith By Which We Are Justified, In a Scripture-Sense a g h (1695), pp.s 22–3 (Wing [B4673] attributes this work to George Bright, but Beverley’s .a w authorshipw is acknowledged twice in catalogues of his books appended to works in 1696 w and 1698);m Thomas Beverley, Indiction; or, Accounting By Fifteens, the Great Style of o .c Propheticte Time (1699), pp. 40–41. a g h 58 s Beverley, Review, p. 6; Thomas Beverley, A Most Humble Representation on a .a w w Furtherw Review (1698), p. 2. © Copyrighted Material Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late 17th-Century England 197 © Copyrighted Material

to present their particular interpretations of the meaning of existing conditions m in o .c te Church and State. a g h s For Anglican authors, apocalyptic significance was found in the endorsementa of . w w the Church of England and the monarchy that upheld it. William Lloyd, then bishopw of

m St Asaph, preached a sermon before Queen Mary on 30 January 1691 (the anniversaryo .c te a of the ‘martyrdom’ of Charles I) which styled the restoration of monarchyg and the h s .a more recent re-establishment of Protestant monarchy as a ‘Resurrectionw from the w w dead’ ‘a reference to the prophecy of the witnesses’ and a sign of God’s providence. m o .c Lloyd added his hope for God’s ‘absolute Promises that he hath givente to his Church a 59 g h to be fulfilled in this Age’. The most productive voice of Anglicans apocalyptic .a w interpretation in the 1690s was Walter Garrett. His explanationsw of Revelation were w

m ‘offered to the Serious Consideration of All Enemies of the Churcho of England’ – in .c te other words ‘Dissenters and Separatists’ – so that in provinga the Church of England g h s was the perfectly reformed Church indicated in apocalyptic.a prophecy, they might w w 60 w ‘Persist not in their Dividing Practices and Unchristian Strifes and Emulations’. m o Garrett posited English monarchs from Elizabeth to .Charlesc II as those who passed te a g the sealed book to the lamb in Revelation 5:6–7, andh he further argued that Charles s .a II, along with James II, and now William were w the kings of the East whose way w w 61 was prepared by the sixth vial in Revelation m16:12. While he did acknowledge o .c the faults of Charles II, Garrett maintainedte that the restored king had been ‘in a g h the Hands of Christ, a Noble Instrument s of our Political Redemption’. Garrett .a w suggested that even if the king’s ‘Privatew Conversation’ was ‘hardly Suitable to w

m that High Character ... God sometimes,o in the Unsearchable Depths of his Wisdom .c te a and Justice, is Found to have made, g of the Chief Stones in his Edifice, Stones of h s Stumbling’ at which ‘it Becomes not.a us (nay, it is very Dangerous for us) to be w w 62 w Offended’. Thus God’s prophetic purpose was not limited by the very human m o failings of the former English .c monarch. For Garrett, Christ’s honouring of the te a g clergy and laity of the kingdom,h ‘with great Power, and Large Revenues ... and s .a w now no more, after the Restaurationw of the Church of England, to be taken from w 63 us,’ confirmed the prominencem of England in the apocalyptic plan. o .c te Even the nonjuror Digbya Bull identified Jerusalem as a type for ‘our own Land g h 64 s and Nation ... and especially.a our own Church’. However, as might be expected, w w Bull’s endorsement wwas not total. Bull quoted Revelation’s condemnation of liars

m to the lake of fire oand brimstone (21:8) as a warning to those who ‘have no regard .c te a to all these solemng Engagements which we call God to attest and bear Witness to’. h s .a w w w 59 Williamm Lloyd, A Sermon Preached before the Queen at Whitehall, January 30th o .c (1691), pp. 27,te 29, 31. a g 60 h Gs arrett, Theorems, pp. 1, 7. .a 61 w w w Ibid., pp. 5, 6; Garrett, Foreknowledge, p. 11. See also: Garrett, Foreknowledge, p.

m 19; Garrett,o Paraphrase upon Rev. I, p. 6. .c 62te a Garrett, Theorems, pp. 6–7. g h s 63 .a Garrett, Paraphrase, p. 2. w w 64 w Bull, Church’s Request, p. 12. © Copyrighted Material 198 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material

Equating this to popery, he chastised ‘Many of you, Reverend Brethren’ for ‘late m 65 o Miscarriages in taking New Oaths’. More explicitly, Bull identified Revelation’s.c te a g h two witnesses as ‘the eminent men of the Non jurors of this Kingdom ... sbeing .a 66 w now suspended purely for a Point of Conscience’. He further warned ofw God’s w 67 impending wrath to descend upon the nation if England did not reform itsm ways. o .c te In contrast to supporters of the Church of England, however, dissentinga authors g h s demonstrated that a lot was still left to be desired in regard to the policies.a of the w w Established Church and dissenters’ place within it. This critique ofw the Anglican

m o establishment is more reminiscent of mid-century apocalypticism,.c with the te a remnants of a godly minority continuing to stand in the face of gthe earthly powers h s .a that opposed them. This oppositional stance to authorities in wthe closing years of w w the seventeenth century also demonstrated that certain aspects of the radicalism of m o .c the apocalyptic ideas from the earlier period remained. te a g h As noted above, An Enquiry into the Vision of the sSlaying and Rising of the .a w Witnesses located the death these two prophetic figuresw as occurring in about 1660. w

m The position of the author is readily apparent in theo identification of this date as .c te the symbolic killing of ‘the Party that was then prevaileda against, and here since g h 68 s continued Dissenters’. The witnesses’ three and.a a half years of lying dead in the w w w street began with the St Bartholomew’s Day expulsions of nonconforming clergy m o in August 1662; their resurrection commenced.c with nonconformist ministers te a g filling London pulpits vacated due h to the plague in 1665, and continued to s .a 69 February 1666 when deaths from the pestilencew ceased. Advancing his dissenting w w argument, the author contended that ‘Em xcesses in Government ... were perilous o .c and Ruinous to True Religion and thete Rights and Priviledges of the Subject’, as a g h well as ‘Obstructive to the Advancements of Christ’s Kingdom’. He added that .a w w England would remain under the w beast’s power as long as ‘the National Church’

m continued as ‘a politick Body’ usingo ‘humane [human] Laws supported by worldly .c te 70 a Power’ to exclude ‘those who gseparate from her for Conscience sake’. Similarly, h s .a Thomas Brookhouse locatedw the rise of the witnesses as the end of persecution w w 71 of nonconformists, placing this event in the late 1680s. The Quaker Henry m o Mollineux described the .papacyc as the whore and chief persecutor of the saints but te a g h went on to implicate Es nglish Protestantism as well. Adherents to the Established .a w Church were among wthose who ‘look upon themselves as reformed from Popery’, w

m yet continue to useo ‘idolatrous Ceremonies ... [and] pernicious Practices, and .c te Inventions to get aMoney by’, while the Church of England’s persecutions placed it g h s .a w w w

m 65 o Bull,.c Letter, pp. 5–6. te 66 a g Ibid.,h pp. 18, 19–20. s 67 .a wIbid., p. 29; Bull, Watch-man’s Voice, p. 25. w w 68 m Enquiry into the Vision, sig. A2r. See also sigs. A2v–A3r, pp. 7–8, 10, 11, 12 o 69.c te Ibid., pp. 8–9. a g h 70 s Enquiry into the Vision, pp. 13, 12. See also pp. 10–11, 14–15. .a w 71 w w Brookhouse, Temple Opened, p. 25. © Copyrighted Material Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late 17th-Century England 199 © Copyrighted Material

72 ‘within the compass of the false Church, Mystery Babylon’. Mollineux includedm o .c te among the ‘Children of Babylon’ those who depended on an educated ministry,a g h s and he described those who were baptised or took communion in the Churcha of . w 73 w England as receiving the mark of the beast. w

m In his Discourse of Christ’s Second Coming (1695), the Presbyteriano Samuel .c te a Tomlyns, ejected in 1662 and a minister in Marlborough during g the 1690s, h s .a criticised the continued persecution of ‘the Sincere People of God w... as Puritans w w 74 ... [and] Fanaticks ... those of the same Nation, City, Neighbourhood’. The m o .c author of the Mysteries of God Finished characterised the witnesses’te testimony as a g h asserting ‘the Kingly Office of Christ’, which in recent years hads found ‘the Beast .a w taking it upon himself to persecute them as Rebels, and notw as Hereticks only’, w

m further criticising ‘the Darkness that over-spread these Nationso by Superstition .c te 75 and Human Institutions received by Tradition, that gendreda to Popery’. The tract g h s Eclectical Chiliasm (1700) contended that the beast .a symbolised ‘Christian or w w 76 w rather Antichristian’ persecution of the ‘sincere professors of the Gospel’. m o Concerns that the religious and political circumstances.c of England had not te a g yet been satisfactorily resolved by the latter yearsh of the seventeenth century s .a caused some apocalyptic writers to look back tow the Civil Wars and Interregnum w w for signs of previous positive apocalyptic accomplishment.m The Enquiry into the o .c Vision Slaying and Rising of the Witnesses identifiedte the year 1648 as ‘disastrous a g h to Crowned Heads’, further noting that thes fourth vial began at Charles I’s death .a w 77 and ended with his younger son relinquishingw the throne in 1688. According w

m to this author, England had left the beasto in power in civil government after the .c te a Reformation, hindering further godlyg reform and causing the Civil Wars; Charles h s I himself had been ‘swayed to such.a Excesses in Government as were perilous w w w and Ruinous to True Religion, and the Rights and Priviledges of the Subject, m o 78 and therein obstructive to the .cAdvancement of Christ’s Kingdom’. The tract, te a g however, stopped short of justifyingh the execution of the king, instead suggesting s .a w that overzealous retributionw had caused the Interregnum to fail, although also w remarking that religious m ‘back sliding’ continued from the Restoration to the o 79 .c te Revolution. a g h s Thomas Brookhouse.a had a different assessment of the Interregnum, though w w not altogether dissimilarw in its implications. Brookhouse’s work opens with the

m pronouncement ofo ‘a Bold Herald’ being sent ‘to Claim his Right’ to destroy .c te a g h s 72 .a Mollineux,w Antichrist Unvailed, pp. 72, 81–2. See also pp. 10–11. w w 73 Ibid.,m pp. 78, 200–201. o 74 .c Samuelte Tomlyns, A Discourse of Christ’s Second Coming, and the Purging of His a g h Kingdom (1695),s pp. 10–11. Calamy Revised, p. 488; Alumni Cantab. vol. 4, p. 248. .a 75 w w Mysteries of God, pp. 28, 40. See also pp. 41–2. w 76 m o Eclectical Chiliasm, p. 9. .c 77te a Enquiry into the Vision, pp. 13, 15–16. g h s 78 .a Ibid., pp. 10–11, 13. w w 79 w Ibid., pp. 13, 14. © Copyrighted Material 200 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material existing temporal and spiritual powers – the author’s marginal note identifies this m 80 o ‘Herald’ as ‘O.C.’, a clear reference to Oliver Cromwell. Brookhouse further.c te a g h endorsed Cromwell’s actions by approvingly pronouncing that ‘the heads of .a w Monarchy was Cut off, and the Head of Episcopacy too; and the Headw of the w

Republick and Presbytery (had they any) would have been cut off too’,m insisting o .c te that such drastic actions were necessary to set up a new millennial administrationa g h 81 s of the world. Though not quite so blatant, the author of the Short Survey.a of the w w Kingdom of Christ asserted that the Civil Wars had seen ‘Popery wand Hierarchy

m o ... give way to the Gospel-light’, with ‘the Blood of the Lamb’.c being shed for te a 82 this cause and the witnesses risking ‘their Lives in the high placesg of the Field’. h s .a Another anonymous tract agreed that the Civil Wars had wseen the witnesses’ w w testimony ‘to the Kingly Office of Christ ... confirmed in the Martyrdom of Many m o .c of those concerned in the finishing of this Testimony’, aste well as in ‘stupendous a g 83 h and wonderful’ successes. s .a w The survival and articulation of this sanctioning wof the motives and results w

m of the Civil Wars suggests that the link with radicalo ideas from the past – such .c te as justification of armed resistance to the king,a the abolition of monarchy and g h s episcopacy, and the endorsement of the Interregnum.a government – was not w w w completely severed by the end of the seventeenth century, with some authors in m o the 1690s placing mid-century events in a .cpositive apocalyptic context. There te a g was also language itself that hearkened backh to that more radical rhetoric. John s .a Mason’s devotees Thomas Ward and Valentinew Evans predicted a worldly pre- w w millennial activism reminiscent of Fifthm Monarchist ideas in the 1650s, in which o .c ‘God will have an Army of Saints to cutte down Babylon, then Christ will appear in a g h 84 the Clouds’ and the saints would inherits the kingdoms of the earth. The Quaker .a w w Sebastian Ellythorp denounced thew ‘Antichristian Oppression of Tythes’ and the

m ‘Imposition of Oaths’, and he railedo against the powers that imprisoned him as .c te a ‘Babylon, the false Spirit, theg Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth, h s 85 .a in whose Skirts is found thew Blood of the Saints and Martyrs of Jesus’. Another w w Quaker, Henry Mollineux, noted how English monarchs combined their power m o with the persecuting beast,.c but predicted that God would destroy the kings of the te a g 86 h earth who had thus beens seduced by the whore of Babylon. Jane Lead, a founding .a w member of the Philadelphianw Society, awaited the infusion of God’s spirit into the w

m o .c te a g h 80 s .a Brookhouse,w Temple Opened, sig. A2r. w 81 w Ibid., pp. 23, 27, 41, sig. A2v. m 82 o Short.c Survey, p. 52. te a 83 g h Mysteriess of God, pp. 28, 39–40. .a 84 w w Ward and Evans, Two Witnesses, pp. 23, 21. w 85 m Sebastian Ellythorp, A Testimony Wherein is Shewed Certain Weighty Reasons o .c Whyt e the National Ministers, their Way and Practice is Conscientiously disowned (1692), a g h title-page,s p. 11. .a w 86 w w Mollineux, Antichrist Unvailed, pp. 200–201, 78–9. © Copyrighted Material Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late 17th-Century England 201 © Copyrighted Material

faithful that ‘will turn the World upside down’, further noting that ‘each one [shall]m o 87 .c te become a Christ’. a g h s Combining its opinions on the Civil Wars and the events of 1688–89,a the . w w Enquiry into the Vision of the Slaying and Rising of the Witnesses refuted wWilliam

m Sherlock’s condemnation of the results of the 1640s. Sherlock’s Case of Allegianceo .c te a Due to Soveraign Powers, first published in the autumn of 1690, hadg defended h s .a William and Mary’s right to the throne based on arguments of providencew and w 88 w divine endorsement. The author of the Enquiry argued that Sherlock, in justifying m o .c William and Mary’s taking the throne, must similarly recognisete the defeat and a g h overthrow of Charles I as a comparable work of providence and divines intercession: .a w ‘Cromwel[l] and the other powers that prevailed in those timesw ... were set up w

m by the immediate interposition of providence, for preservingo and promoting the .c te interest of Christs Kingdom, against those Antichristian designsa driven on, which g h 89 s involved the Nation in war’. Carrying on the critique .ofa the continued exclusion w w w of dissenters from civil government, the author argued that millennial progress m o would only be achieved through godly government:.c ‘the despotick dominion of te a g worldly Rulers, is but the Empire of the devil ... thoseh bands of corruption which s .a linkt sinful Man to the Thraldom of his power ...w [and make] Men ... unmeet for, w w

Liberty ... and ... there’s no true Freedom butm that wherewith Christ does make o 90 .c them free’. te a g h Sharing a similar regard for the resultss of the 1640s and 1650s, Thomas .a w Brookhouse suggested that, to achieve thew millennial kingdom, nations ‘must first w

m 91 help to kill the Bear, and then they mayo share the Skin of his Power’. England’s .c te a own effort in this regard had been achievedg in the destruction of monarchy and h s episcopacy in the 1640s and 1650s,.a and Brookhouse, rather clumsily, argued that w w w those years had seen the establishment of millennial priestly rule. Maintaining that m o old civil and ecclesiastical government.c forms had been rejected and made ‘extinct’ te a g at the end of the Civil Wars, Brookhouseh explained their restoration in the 1660s and s .a w continued existence afterwardsw as a ‘suffrance; They are but Trespassers upon the w

Premises; The Premises, them Power and Government belongs to the new Birth, the o .c te a g h s .a w w w 87 Lead, Enochianm , pp. 32, 33. o 88 .c te William Sherlock,a The Case of the Allegiance Due to Soveraign Powers, Stated g h and Resolved, Accordings to Scripture and Reason (1691), pp. 2–3 and passim. Sherlock’s .a w pamphlet was w the most popular work published in the allegiance controversy of the w

m early 1690s, oreaching at least eight editions and over 30,000 copies published, as well as .c te engenderinga more than 40 printed responses to its arguments: M. Goldie, ‘The Revolution g h of 1689 ands the Structure of Political Argument: An Essay and an Annotated Bibliography .a w w of Pamphletsw on the Allegiance Controversy’, Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, 83

m (1980):o pp. 480, 557. .c 89te a Enquiry into the Vision, pp. 30, 29. g h s 90 .a Ibid., p. 31. w w 91 w Brookhouse, Temple Opened, p. 12. © Copyrighted Material 202 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material

92 heiress, of which they are at present but Guardians’. Christ’s kingdom would be m o 93 a spiritual ‘Empire’, advanced by an evangelical army of prophets and preachers..c te a g h While it is apparent that these apocalyptic assertions echoed sentimentss and .a w endorsed achievements that would have been deemed radical in the middlew of the w seventeenth century, it is necessary to consider whether they were purposefullym o .c te expressed with radical intentions in the 1690s. There are several reasonsa to suggest g h s they were not. First, caution about the potential danger of apocalyptic.a beliefs – w w due to the threat of them inspiring radical movements as they hadw in the past

m o – was clearly articulated, even by those who explicitly believed.c and advanced te a millenarian ideas. Also, those elements of apocalyptic discourseg that might have h s .a been termed radical during an earlier period seem to have beenw mitigated at the w w end of the seventeenth century by the political and ecclesiastical achievements and m o .c the concessions of the Revolution of 1688–89. te a g h The repeated warnings against human efforts to brings about the millennium .a w demonstrate a continued concern over the potentialw of apocalyptic thought to w

m inspire radical action. For example, as Thomas Brookhouse’so millenarian theories .c te showed, while an author could more safely suggesta that the actions against g h s monarchy in the middle of the century had achieved.a apocalyptic fulfilment, it was w w w also still prudent to acknowledge, and incorporate, the person currently in power as m o part of the millennial plan. As shown above,. c Brookhouse tried hard to rationalise te a g William III’s role, and he also explicitly deniedh his tract’s radical potential: its first s .a line acknowledged that ‘This Address at wfirst may seem an Enthusiastical Strain’ w w but concludes ‘it will be found otherwise’.m Brookhouse unambiguously stated that o .c Christ’s kingdom would be establishedte by Christ’s ‘Word’ and not by ‘Fire and a g 94 h Sword’. Again and again, other apocalyptics writers took similar precautions. .a w w The initial purpose in writing Thew Glorious Kingdom in 1693 was to refute the

m 1672 treatise Theopolis (one ofo the most suggestively radical millenarian works .c te a written after the mid-1660s in g England) and its assertions that Christ would return h s 95 .a only after the millennial kingdomw was established by the godly on earth. The w w Glorious Kingdom countered that such ideas in the earlier work would tend ‘to m o prompt Christians to the.c unchristian and unbecoming Service the Gospel in no te a g h s .a w w 92 w Ibid., p. 23. S ee also sig. A2v, pp. 13, 28, 41–42 m o 93 .c Ibid., pp. 35–6.te See also p. 13. a g 94 h Ibid., sigs.s A2r, A4r. .a 95 w The anonymousw author of Theopolis maintained that the war to inaugurate the w

m millennial kingdomo would be fought by the godly, and Christ would not be present at the .c te ‘smiting’ ofa temporal powers because he had to remain at the right hand of God, thus g h implying thats the saints alone would take action against earthly monarchs: Theopolis, or .a w the Cityw of God New Jerusalem, in Opposition to the City of the Nations Great Babylon w

m (1672),o pp. 25, 27, 28–9, 30–31, 32, 33, 78, 83–4. Richard Greaves attributed authorship .c te of thisa 1672 work to Henry Danvers: R.L. Greaves, ‘The Tangled Careers of Two Stuart g h Radicals:s Henry and Robert Danvers’, Baptist Quarterly 29 (1981), p. 36; R.L. Greaves, .a w w ‘w Henry Danvers’, ODNB. © Copyrighted Material Radical Revelation? Apocalyptic Ideas in Late 17th-Century England 203 © Copyrighted Material

ways injoins them, and to exasperate the Government against them’. In additionm o .c te to this defence of political powers on earth, the author of The Glorious Kingdoma g h s further asserted that any ‘conquering work’ in the world would be done solelya by . w w Christ, and that the destruction of the whore would not be carried out by wChrist’s

96 m followers. John Mason blamed the fear of the doctrine of Christ’s earthlyo kingdom .c te a on those who used it ‘to establish seditious Principles and Practices g against the h s .a Powers that be’. In the same vein, the author of Great Signs of the Timesw affirmed w w that Christ’s kingdom would not ‘be begun or continued by the Sword, or any m 97 o .c Instrument of War’. The nonjuror Digby Bull was also careful teto state his intent a g h not ‘to blow up any sparks of Rebellion, or to give any encouragements to rise .a w up against the Government’, and he declared that he had ‘alwaysw born a Loyal w

m Mind, and never entertained any Rebellious Thoughts ... and,o thro’ Divine help, .c 98 te Loyal I intend to be in the blackest of Times’. Finally, Tahomas Beverley assured g h s his readers that the inauguration of Christ’s kingdom.a would ‘not Lessen but w w w Aggrandize both Royal and Magistratical Honour and Authority ... and will not in m o the least give Countenance to Anarchy, Confusion, or.c Resistance to that Ordinance te 99 a g of God by either Levellism [sic] or Rebellion’. h s .a As a last consideration concerning the perceivedw radical implications of w w apocalyptic ideas, it is important to recognise thatm the events of 1688–89 had made o .c arguments affirming God’s providential, andte prophetic, actions against reigning a g h monarchs – or, at least against some monarchss – part of the case in support of the .a w post-1689 regime. Thus the tracts and authorsw that acknowledged the benefits of w

m the achievements of the 1640s and 1650so were not advocating further rebellion .c te a against monarchical government but,g rather, confirming the events of those years h s as steps in the right apocalyptic direction..a In this, it seems that comment upon the w w w mid-century disruption of monarchical rule after 1689 was less provocative than m o it had been to the sons of Charles.c I, to whom, understandably, those actions were te a g more immediately and recentlyh pertinent. Thus, positive apocalyptic reference s .a w to the Civil Wars’ consequencesw was no longer an instigation to radicalism but, w instead, a recognition of changedm political and ecclesiastical circumstances of the o .c te late seventeenth century.a g h s .a w w w

m This essay originatedo out of a consideration of movements and ideas that .c te a ‘challenged fundamentalg political, religious or social axioms’ of their day, h s .a and an examinationw of the usefulness of the term ‘radical’, the existence of a w w radical tradition, and the nature of radicalism across geographical, cultural, and m o .c te a g h s .a w w w 96 m o Glorious Kingdom, pp. iv, 5–6. .c 97te a Mason, Midnight-Cry, p. 4; Great Signs, p. 3. g h s 98 .a Bull, Watch-man’s Voice, p. 6. w w 99 w Beverley, Review, sig. a–1v. © Copyrighted Material 204 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism in Context © Copyrighted Material

100 temporal spaces. In its final form, though, it has gone further, demonstrating the m o continuation of apocalyptic convictions from the earlier to the later seventeenth.c te a g h century and showing that this continuity was not found in radicalism alone,s but .a w in more moderate expressions of Anglicanism and dissent as well. Whilew not w presuming to have commented upon radicalism’s usefulness as an avenuem of o .c te historical enquiry, nor to have brought us any closer to defining the term,a it does g h s show that a belief can be either radical or not depending on the purpose.a to and the w w circumstances within which it is used. In the context of the 1690s in wEngland, then,

m o apocalyptic ideas were neither necessarily radical nor moderate in.c themselves, but te a only in their application. g h s .a It should also be said that the close of the seventeenth centuryw was chosen as w w an endpoint for this study only for convenience: this does not in any way imply m o .c a terminal date in the examination of apocalyptic ideas.te As other works have a g h shown, apocalypticism continued to influence, and be sinfluenced by, perceptions .a w 101 of the prophetic import of events in the centuries that followedw 1700. However, w

m in this larger context, it is instructive to see that apocalypticismo in seventeenth- .c te century England was neither one-dimensional nora static, adapting to encompass g h s the century’s upheavals and to suit various needs..a In this, the ability of apocalyptic w w w thought to adjust and continue into the eighteenth century and beyond should not m o be surprising. .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o 100 .c ‘Rediscoveringte radicalism in the British Isles and Ireland, c.1550–c.1700: a g h movements of people,s texts and ideas’ Conference held 21–23 June 2006 (call for conference .a w papers circulatedw April 2005). w 101 m Foro several more recent examples of the continuation of apocalyptic thought .c te after 1700, asee K.G.C. Newport, Apocalypse and Millennium: Studies in Biblical Eisegesis g h (Cambridge,s 2000); C. Burdon, The Apocalypse in England: Revelation Unravelling, 1700– .a w 1834 (Basingstoke,w 1997); A. Amanat and M. Bernhardsson (eds), Imagining the End: w

m Visionso of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America (London, 2001); .c te S. Hunta (ed.), Christian Millenarianism: From the Early Church to Waco (Bloomington, g h 2001);s Arthur H. Williamson, Apocalypse Then: Prophecy and the Making of the Modern .a w w wWorld (London, 2008). © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 10 m o .c te a g h s Mapping Friendship and Dissent: The .a w w w

m o Letters from Joseph Boyse to Ralph.c te a g h * s .a 1 Thoresby, 1680–1710 w w w

m o .c Sandra Hynes e t a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s In their introduction to Radicalism in British Literary Culture,.a 1650–1830, Timothy w w w Morton and Nigel Smith remarked that ‘the period in English history between 1640 m o and 1832 was marked by some common conditions .cand characteristics, bestowing te a g a consistency upon those who pursued a politicalh or religious vision different s 1 .a from that required by the state’. During this period,w they argued, different beliefs w w and church systems were accommodated withinm or without the established State o .c Church so that a sense of religious continuityte was achieved. The term radicalism a g h implies the transformation of a system and sin terms of religion radicalism suggests .a w 2 a move from mainstream belief to alternativew beliefs. Those who dissented from w

m the beliefs expounded by the State Churcho therefore had to find ways to ensure that .c te a their belief system survived. g h s Interaction between Dissenters .ain different countries helped to sustain belief w w w systems that were considered radical by any particular State Church. Presbyterianism m o rejected the Episcopal system .c of church government and favoured beliefs that te a g were Calvinist, but was itselfh on the verge of becoming the State Church in s .a w England in the early 1640s.w By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, w its radicalism had been bothm tempered and confirmed. It moved away from its o .c te eschatological connections,a and finally became the established faith in Scotland in g h s 1690. Beyond Scotland,.a however, Presbyterians continued to struggle as believers w w who were outside thew State Church – they were still defined as Dissenters – and

m were viewed by Ao nglicans as a persistent threat. This radical condition can be .c te a illustrated throughg the lived experience of Dublin Presbyterian minister Joseph h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h * s

* I would.a like to acknowledge the support of the Irish Research Council for the w w Humanitiesw and Social Sciences and would also like to thank the Yorkshire Archaeological

m Societyo for permission to quote from the Thoresby correspondence. .c 1te a g T. Morton and N. Smith (eds), Radicalism in British Literary Culture, 1650–1830 h s (Cambridge,.a 2002), pp. 1–2. w w 2 w ibid., p. 2. © Copyrighted Material 206 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

3 4 Boyse (1660–1728), who corresponded with Ralph Thoresby (1658–1725), an m o antiquarian who lived for most of his life in Leeds. .c te a g h Boyse was the most important Presbyterian pamphleteer in Ireland in thes late .a w seventeenth and early eighteenth century. His works petitioned for the Anglicanw w

State and Church to tolerate the Protestant dissenting communities in am context o .c te where Catholicism, and not radical Protestantism, was the real threat. Ian so doing, g h s he engaged in an extended controversy with William King, then the.a Dean of St w w Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin and later Archbishop of Dublin, overw the extent to

m o which an accommodation between Anglicanism and Presbyterianism.c could be te 5 a reached. King, who was a convert to Anglicanism from Presbyterianism,g rejected h s .a Boyse’s pleas highlighting how it was the State and the Establishedw Church that w w defined what was radical and not Dissenters. m o .c te a g h s 3 .a Joseph Boyse was born in Leeds in 1660. His father,w Matthew, had been a Puritan w w minister in New England. Having been educated in Dissenting academies, Boyse moved m o to Holland to preach in the early 1680s. His removal to.c Dublin came in 1683 where he te a g replaced the recently deceased minister Timothy Hallidayh at the wealthy Wood Street s .a congregation. He played a major role in Irish religiousw life as a defender of Presbyterian w w principles, engaging in lengthy pamphlet debates. His Sacramental Hymns (1693) was a m o major addition to the devotional life of his congregation.c and his reputation was forged in te a g his attempts to draw together the strands of Presbyterianismh in Ireland. He died in 1728. See s .a R. Gillespie, ‘“A good and godly exercise”: singingw the Word in Irish Dissent, 1660–1701’, w w in K. Herlihy (ed.), Propagating the Word of Irish Dissent, 1650–1800 (Dublin, 1998), m o pp. 24–45; A.W.G. Brown, The Great Mr..c Boyse: A Study of the Reverend Joseph Boyse te a g Minister of Wood Street Church, Dublin h1683–1728 (Belfast, 1988). s 4 .a w ralph Thoresby was born in Lw eeds in 1658. His father, John, collected coins and w medals and he bequeathed his collectionm to his son in 1679. Thoresby’s business concerns in o .c rapeseed oil production were not successfulte and he devoted much of his energies to enlarging a g h his antiquarian collection. This wass facilitated by his wide circle of friends and correspondents .a w who willingly transcribed inscriptionsw and sent rare finds. He founded a museum to show w his collection in Leeds and, bym the end of the seventeenth century, his research interests and o .c publications centred on the tehistory of Leeds, including the history of the Established Church a g h in Leeds. He was electeds Fellow of the Royal Society in 1697 and had conformed to the .a w Established Church by wthe turn of the eighteenth century. He died in 1725. w 5 William Kingm was born in Antrim in 1650. In 1658, his family settled in Tyrone. o .c He was a Scots Presbyteriante who converted to Anglicanism and attended Trinity College a g h Dublin in 1667. Hiss spiritual awakening was prompted by a tutor at Trinity and he entered .a w the Anglican ministry.w King became Bishop of Derry in 1691 and Archbishop of Dublin w

m in 1703. He odied in 1729. See P. O’Regan, Archbishop William King of Dublin (1650– .c te 1729) and thea Constitution in Church and State (Dublin, 2000); J. Richardson, ‘William g h King: “mans of faith and reason”’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, National University of .a w Ireland, wMaynooth, 1998). For a discussion of King’s career as a polemical pamphleteer, see w

m R. Gillespie,o ‘Irish print and Protestant identity: William King’s pamphlet wars, 1687– .c te 1697’,a in V.P. Carey and U. Lotz-Heumann (eds), Taking Sides?: Colonial and Confessional g h Mentalitéss in Early Modern Ireland: Essays in Honour of Karl. S. Bottigheimer (Dublin, .a w w 2003),w pp. 231–50. © Copyrighted Material Letters from Joseph Boyse to Ralph Thoresby, 1680–1710 207 © Copyrighted Material

Boyse’s letters to Thoresby are an important record of dissenter life inm a o .c te transnational context. Both men were English Presbyterians, but, while Thoresbya g h s remained for much of his life in England, Boyse travelled abroad as a minister.a . w w In their correspondence, Boyse describes his faith and his work as a ministerw in

m Dublin and in Amsterdam and the conditions for Dissenters there, whileo seeking .c te a 6 to maintain his links with the wider non-conformist community g abroad. In h s .a analysing Boyse’s correspondence with Ralph Thoresby three pointsw can be made w w in relation to radical religion. First, Boyse’s sensitivity to the State’s reaction to m o .c Dissenters suggests that it was often the State and its Establishedte Church as much a g h as the Dissenters that defined the limits of radicalism and orthodoxy.s Second, and .a w underlining this point, Boyse saw himself as a moderate in religiousw terms. Third, w

m just as Boyse used his writings to draw his friendships ando family connections .c te together, so in turn these emotional and familial communitiesa helped to sustain g h s religious dissent transnationally – across geographical and.a political boundaries. w w w Besides their faith, the other common denominator for both Boyse and Thoresby m o was their shared hometown, Leeds. It was a dissenting.c hub in the late seventeenth te a g century because between one-quarter and one-thirdh of all worshippers living there s .a were non-conformists. Boyse’s family backgroundw had elements of dissent; he w w was born in Leeds on 14 January 1660, one ofm the sixteen children of the Puritan o .c Matthew Boyse and his wife Elizabeth Jackson.te His father was a clothier who had a g h spent the best part of two decades in Americas where he had been an elder of the .a w church at Rowley in New England beforew returning again to Leeds. w

m Boyse was educated at Richard o Frankland’s academy at Kendal in 1675 .c te a and Edward Veal’s academy in Stepneyg in 1678. Later, in 1681, he became the h s domestic chaplain of the Dowager Countess.a of Donegal and this was followed by w w w six months preaching in Amsterdam in 1682. The following year, he was invited m o to replace Timothy Halliday at .Woodc Street congregation in Dublin, an invitation te a g which he gratefully accepted.h s .a w His correspondent, Thoresby,w was also born in Leeds on 16 August 1658, one w of fifteen children. His fatherm was John Thoresby, a Leeds merchant and Dissenter o .c te who had fought for Parliamenta at Marston Moor and who was a leading member g h s of Mill Hill congregation.a in Leeds since its foundation in 1672. Thoresby, after a w w brief period living inw London and the Netherlands and frequenting non-conformist

m meetings there, becameo involved in the Mill Hill congregation from 1679. He took .c te a an active role andg collected many of the dues for the church. He was particularly h s .a close to the secondw minister at Mill Hill, Thomas Sharpe, who was minister from w w 1678. Although he conformed occasionally to the Church of England, Thoresby m o .c was prosecutedte as a non-conformist in 1683. Inheriting his father’s collection of a g h antiquities,s Thoresby became known as an antiquarian and topographer as well .a w w w

m 6 o .c These letters are part of the Thoresby MSS at the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, te a Leeds.g They are characterised by Boyse’s seal depicting an arrowhead and were sent h s between.a 1680 and 1710. Unfortunately no reciprocal letters from Thoresby to Boyse are w w extant.w © Copyrighted Material 208 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material as a collector of coins, medals, early printed books and other artefacts which m o supplemented the main part of the collection. The letters from Boyse and others.c te a g h to Thoresby show that he sought to increase his collection through his networks of .a w contacts. w w

These letters show that the two men were extremely close friends in adulthoodm o .c te and Boyse was often humorous and engaging in his letters to his friend.a In 1679 g h s – a year before Boyse’s first extant letter to Thoresby – both.a men were atan w w important point in their lives. Boyse was about to become a dissentingw minister;

m o Thoresby was becoming more involved in his local dissenting congregation,.c was te a in mourning for his father who died that year, and was beginningg his career as a h s .a businessman and as a prominent figure in provincial scholarship.w In a later letter to w w Thoresby in 1697, Boyse looked back over this early period of his life. He reveals m o .c his early education as a dissenting minister at various academies,te including one a g h run by Richard Frankland in Kendal: s .a w w w

m You know I had never the honour of any residenceo at our public Universities, .c te having been only three years under Mr Frankland’sa care, and about two under g h s Mr Veal’s at London. My first essays in preaching.a were for three quarters of a w w w year with the worthy Mr French, at Sir Thomas Roberts’s in Kent. I then spent m o 7 three quarters of a year more in the Countess.c of Donegal’s family in London. te a g h s .a It was the post in Kent which prompted Boysew to ask Thoresby for financial help w w in 1680. Boyse explained that he had beenm chosen to be an assistant to a minister o .c there: te a g h s .a w w I am daily expecting to be somewherew disposed of. I am desired to be an assistant

m to a worthy minister in Kent, othat is now unfit to preach twice a day; which if .c te a I comply with, I shall haveg need to have some furniture of books, and being h s .a altogether unwilling to putw my father to any further charges, and my brother w w being not in a capacity at present, I made bold to request you, if you could m o conveniently, to entrust.c me with a small sum for that purpose, till I am (by what te a g h encouragement I shalls have) in a capacity to discharge it … You may possibly .a w wonder I make thisw request, particularly to yourself; but that I have done, as w

for several otherm reasons, so especially from a peculiar confidence in your o 8 .c te goodness. a g h s .a w w The close friendshipw between both men is displayed here and it was with

m o Thoresby’s .c help that Boyse was able to purchase books to pursue his life as a te a g preacher. hThoresby records at the bottom of the letter that he gave £10 to Boyse s .a and wasw repaid. w w

m o 7 .c te Joseph Boyse to Ralph Thoresby (Dublin, June 1697), Yorkshire Archaeological a g h Societys [hereafter YAS], Thoresby MSS, MS 12. .a w 8 w w Boyse to Thoresby, c. 1680 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 11). © Copyrighted Material Letters from Joseph Boyse to Ralph Thoresby, 1680–1710 209 © Copyrighted Material

During his travels as a Presbyterian minister, Boyse kept Thoresby informedm of o .c te pressing concerns for Dissenters wherever he was situated. While at the residencea g h s of the Countess of Donegal in London, in September 1681, Boyse wrote abouta the . w w conditions for Dissenters in the city. Boyse told Thoresby that six Commissionersw

m had been appointed to safeguard the status of the Church of England and,o while it .c te a was not understood what their plans were, it was suspected that the suppressiong h s 9 .a of Dissenters was intended. The background to this was the Exclusionw Crisis – w w the attempt to exclude the future James II from the throne. There had been some m o .c relief for Dissenters between 1679 and 1681. Indeed, up to Marchte 1681, it was a g h the Catholics who were targeted. But with more Dissenter MPss elected they threw .a w their weight behind the Earl of Shaftesbury’s campaign of exclusion.w The failure of w

m this movement in 1681 brought Tory revenge. The period fromo 1681 to 1686 was .c te particularly harsh for Dissenters: their ministers and the laitya were fined, and there g h s was also the possibility of imprisonment. Between 1682.a and 1686, 3800 people w w 10 w were brought before the courts for attending conventicles in London alone. m o Throughout late 1681 Boyse kept Thoresby up to.c date with events in London. te a g In a letter written in October 1681, Boyse reportedh that Dissenters were relatively s .a free from harassment at that time, though it was notw known how long this lull would w w last. He also remarked that his former teacherm Mr Veal, among other dissenting o .c ministers, had been called to a Court of Justiceste to take the oath of allegiance a g h 11 and the oath of supremacy and was warneds not to preach again. By November .a w 1681 Boyse was reporting from the Sessionsw on Lord Shaftesbury’s indictment for w

m treason, which was thrown out by a Whigo jury. Boyse noted that ‘great was the .c 12 te a applause on their verdict’. g h s Despite these events in London.a and the possibility of a crackdown on w w w dissenting Protestants, Boyse stayed in London. This may have been due to m o limited opportunities more than.c to a confident feeling of safety, because, when te a g the opportunity arose to moveh to Amsterdam the following year, Boyse decided s .a w to relocate. In March 1682,w Boyse wrote to Thoresby from London telling him of w his decision to go to Amsterdamm to replace a minister, asking him to pass on this o .c te message to his father ina Leeds. He explained: g h s .a w w I was willing to wcomply with an invitation to go into Holland, to reside there,

m only for a quartero of a year. The occasion is, one Mr Gouge desiring to see .c te a his friends here,g proposed to any that would supply his place during that time, h s .a the defray wof the charges of passage, and their board in Amsterdam … it is the w w

m o .c te a g 9 h Boyses to Thoresby, 1 Sept. 1681 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 11). .a w 10 w w on the Exclusion crisis, see T. Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms,

m 1660–1685o (London, 2005), pp. 136–202. .c 11te a g Boyse to Thoresby, Aug/1 Oct. 1681 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 11). Both months h s listed.a on MS. w w 12 w Boyse to Thoresby, 24 Nov. 1681 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 11). © Copyrighted Material 210 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

gratifying my curiosity, rather than any other advantage, that is my greatest m 13 o inducement to undertake the journey. .c te a g h s .a w Further letters from Boyse tell of his first impressions of the place: w w

m o .c te I have been at Amsterdam these two months or more, and see no occasiona to g h s repent my coming hither, either for want of courteous reception as to myself,.a nor w w I hope of some success to my endeavours in my Master’s service; andw though

m o my undertaking sits heavy on my week [sic] shoulders, I hope it will.c only be an te 14 a occasion to harden me in the service. g h s .a w w w Boyse felt that his own mission as a minister was enhanced by his visit to the m o .c city, though he did have reservations about the liberalte atmosphere there. By a g h 1680 Amsterdam was one of the largest urban centres ins Europe with upwards of .a w 200,000 inhabitants. As he observed: w w

m o .c te For their church affairs, that one unhappy principlea of the Lord’s-day being no g h s divine institution, does occasion great liberty as.a to the observation of it, and w w w it is easy to conjecture what the consequences of that will always be. And the m o ministers that are of that opinion, being chiefly.c encouraged in the cities by the te a g magistrates, does more spread the ill influenceh it has upon the licentiousness of s 15 .a the people. w w w

m o .c While Boyse had reservations about thete attitudes towards religious observance in a g h Amsterdam, he was reminded, too, abouts the suffering of Protestants who lived in .a w w less tolerant areas. News of the sufferingsw of the Huguenots in France was filtering

m through to Amsterdam by June 1682.o In the region of Poitou, soldiers were being .c te a quartered on the Protestant populationg unless they conformed, and the emigration h s .a of many Protestant families wwas a result of continuing oppression. Of the situation w w Boyse commented: m o .c te a g h We hear continuals complaints of the great severity used against the poor .a w Protestants, thosew especially Poictou, where the Intendant Marillac a mercenary w

wretch the priestsm employ, does use great barbarity. The last Declaration was to o .c 16 te forbid going outa of the kingdom, or selling their lands. g h s .a w w In later years wBoyse reminisced in his letters to Thoresby about that period of his

m o life in Europe..c Boyse said of his time in Amsterdam in the early 1680s that he te a g had acceptedh a post amongst the adherents of Robert Browne, a sixteenth-century s .a w w w 13 m Boyse to Thoresby, 21 Mar. 1682 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 11). o 14.c te Boyse to Thoresby, 29 June 1682 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 11). a g h 15 s Ibid. .a w 16 w w Ibid. © Copyrighted Material Letters from Joseph Boyse to Ralph Thoresby, 1680–1710 211 © Copyrighted Material

English separatist whose followers, led by Robert Harrison, had settled in them o .c te Netherlands in the early 1580s. He regarded this posting as demonstratinga the g h s generosity of spirit between Dissenters of differing beliefs: a . w w w

m I preached in what they call the Brownist Church, and had the unusualo hap, .c te a though a known Presbyterian, to be kindly treated by a congregation of veryg sour h s .a Independents. I thence came into Yorkshire, and was thence frighted (youw know w w how) into a compliance with an unexpected invitation to Ireland, September m o a d .c . . 1683, where I was ordained to Wood-Street congregation te the February a g h following, 83–84, and have since continued my ministry there nows these twelve .a 17 w years. w w

m o .c te After Amsterdam, Boyse found his mission took him to Dublin.a This decision was g h s likely to have been influenced by the increasing problems.a Dissenters experienced w w w in England between 1681 and 1686. Another factor was that Boyse had family m o connections in Dublin. His sister Hannah had married.c in Leeds but then had moved te a g with her husband to Ireland; Boyse christened herh son, Edward, in St Catherine’s s .a Church on Thomas Street on 17 October 1680. wBoyse wrote to his father shortly w w after coming to Ireland acknowledging that hem was fortunate that providence had o .c directed him towards Ireland and stated thatte it provided him with ‘the capacity a g h and freedom’ of serving the Lord which hes would have had little hope of if he .a w 18 had stayed in England. He hoped to findw refuge from the storm in Ireland. The w

m transnational nature of dissent was evidento to both men in this letter, for Boyse .c te a told his father: g h s .a w w w If I hear not shortly from Mr Thoresby, I think to give him the trouble of a letter m o and, if I can, get him one or .ctwo of the inscriptions he desired. My respect to te a g Joseph Milner but tell him hI miss my Psalm book. Here is one Mary Briggham, s .a w an ancient widow that enquiredw out my lodgings to ask of you. She says she was w 19 one of the members at Rowley;m she gives her respects. o .c te a g h s One of Matthew Boyse’s.a congregation members at Rowley in New England had w w sought out his son inw Dublin to send her greetings.

m Despite some o structural similarities, Ireland created a new challenge for .c te a Boyse. During Woodg Street’s early history the Independent preacher John Owen h s .a had preached therew in the 1640s. By the 1650s, Boyse’s religious educator Edward w w Veal had joined the congregation and, in the 1660s, Independency gave way to m o .c English Presbyterianism.te In 1683, Boyse was appointed to work alongside another a g h minister sat Wood Street, Daniel Williams. He was replacing Timothy Halliday .a w who hadw died in August 1682. w

m o .c 17te a Boyse to Thoresby, June 1697 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 12). g h s 18 .a Joseph Boyse to Matthew Boyse, 2 Feb. 1684 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 6). w w 19 w Ibid. © Copyrighted Material 212 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

On his arrival to Dublin, Boyse took lodgings at Mr Francis Wooley’s at m o the ‘Leg’ in Essex Street and it was from there that he sent a letter to Thoresby.c te a g h concerning the disposal of Halliday’s goods and effects. Boyse knew thats his .a w father would have contact with Halliday’s mother who lived in Leeds andw that w arrangements could be put in place through him. This highlights the emotionalm o .c te connections that underpinned Presbyterian affiliation. Boyse wrote to aThoresby on g h s 8 October 1683 asking him to inform his father about his situation, and.a he debated w w whether to send for the rest of his belongings: w

m o .c te a I must further request you (for you see what you must expect gby keeping so h s .a troublesome correspondence) to give my duty to father, and tellw him, that if I w w continue here, I shall have occasion to send for that box of books that I have m o .c left in my chamber at Leeds … I have not yet seen Mr Williams,te though I have a g h once or twice heard from him. If I resolve to fix, as I sees nothing yet to dissuade .a w me, I shall send for the box. I have met with more ofw respect and civility that w

m I could expect among strangers, and such as will beo an encouragement to stay, .c te if our present circumstances continue, which, thougha not so good as they have g h s formerly been, yet are much more safe and desirable.a than your’s. I expect Mr w w 20 w Williams next week and shall then soon be able to determine. m o .c te a g Boyse did elect to stay in Dublin, although thish letter was written late in 1683 during s .a a period of Dissenter suppression after thew Rye House Plot – the Whig plot to kill w w the King and the Duke of York as theym returned to London after the Newmarket o .c races. In August 1683 in Ireland, the Lte ord Chancellor (the Archbishop of Armagh, a g h Michael Boyle) had noted that the government’ss efforts to repress conventicles there .a w 21 w had been successful. Boyse acquaintedw Thoresby with the likely consequences for

m Dissenters in Dublin, powerfullyo capturing the mood in the city: .c te a g h s .a A considerable case of hisw [Mr Williams], relating to our liberties, will be tried w w this next sessions, upon which much will depend for the future … I perceive m o my Lord Arran is here.c deputy, and the Archbishop (who is also Chancellor) said te a g h to have the chief hands in the management of affairs. For pictures of the Irish .a w 22 Bishops I have hadw no leisure yet to inquire but shall in a little time. w

m o .c te In another letter froma Dublin, dated 10 May 1684, Boyse informed Thoresby about g h s the continuing .issuea of dealing with Timothy Halliday’s personal effects: w w w

m o I suppose.c Mrs Halliday sometimes calls at my father’s: desire him to tell her, ‘I te a g have hdone what I can for her son’s books’. Mr Williams and I have bought some s .a w w w 20 m Boyse to Thoresby, 8 Oct. 1683 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 6). o 21.c te r.L. Greaves, God’s Other Children: Protestant Nonconformists and the Emergence a g h of sDenominational Churches in Ireland, 1660–1700 (Stanford, CA, 1997), pp. 129–30. .a w 22 w w Boyse to Thoresby, 8 Oct. 1683 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 6). © Copyrighted Material Letters from Joseph Boyse to Ralph Thoresby, 1680–1710 213 © Copyrighted Material

part of them, but the most of them being old, and not very considerable, I fear m o .c te will stick long on my hands; there has been 25.l disbursed for the charges of his a g h funeral etc. … his clothes will, I suppose, be sent home, for I scarce think we cans .a w 23 w sell them here for any purpose. w

m o .c te a In addition to tying up the loose ends involved with his replacement ofg Halliday, h s .a Boyse noted in this letter that he was being kept informed of eventsw affecting w w Dissenters in England by an acquaintance there who was also a member of the m o .c Established Church: te a g h s .a w By Mr Ashurst I hear you are transplanted into Dublin andw become an Irish w

m apostle. But how happy soever you are there your friendso here seem to be .c te in another condition; schism and Whiggism are no a longer rampant; the g h s conventicling houses are no more in use but as empty as.a the heads or sermons w w w of those that formerly preached in them. There are at most but a few sucking m o meetings of about thirty or forty and it is odd but one.c or two of them is taken te a g every Sunday and the offenders prosecuted for routsh or riots. Some have had s .a their understandings opened by the breaking ofw their doors and seizing their w w

goods hath wrought more convictions than mall our priests. Our churches are o .c thronged and crowded and there is hardly anyte of them but where you may find a g 24 h Dissenters and organs. s .a w w w

m Boyse reacted to this comment by notingo that the relative peace towards Catholics .c te a and Dissenters in Ireland meant thatg both groups had more time and energy for h s internal disputes than their more harried.a English counterparts. He added: w w w

m o since none here are so severe.c either to the Catholics or Dissenters they find it te a g hard to agree among themselves;h for a bill in Chancery was lately preferred s .a w against a Scotch ministerw in town by some not long since his hearers about some w 25 money collected for a widowm which they pretend he never paid her. o .c te a g h s The lack of extreme antagonism.a towards Dissenters externally in Ireland meant w w that there was less cohesionw within dissenting religious groups such as the English

m Presbyterians. As wello as reporting on dissenter issues, Boyse compared social and .c te a economic conditionsg in Ireland in the 1680s with those in England: h s .a w w w I have not travelled far enough into the country to give you any account of it. Of m o .c the townste here in Leinster (excepting those that are cittys or county-towns which a g h are nots equall to most of our country markett towns) I can give you no better .a w descriptionw than that they are made up of a castle with a few cabins surrounding w

m o .c 23te a Boyse to Thoresby, 10 May 1684 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 6). g h s 24 .a Ibid. w w 25 w Ibid. © Copyrighted Material 214 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

it. The master of the former almost everywhere an English gent; the inhabitants m o of the latter most Irish whose liveliyhood do’s almost wholly depend on a cowe .c te a g h and potato-bed. The castles (mostly ruin’d) are so numerous that one woulds .a w think the people formerly liv’d in Hobb’s state of warr no man of estate thinkingw w 26 himself secure that had not a castle over his head. m o .c te a g h s Thoresby was keen to gain information of monuments and Boyse tried.a to oblige w w on this matter, even though he had to admit that his eyesight was failingw and that

m 27 o he found it hard to read the inscriptions Thoresby so coveted. .c te a By 1693 Boyse received an invitation to return permanentlyg to Leeds, for h s .a Thoresby wrote asking him to consider becoming minister wat Mill Hill Chapel; w w the previous minister, Reverend Thomas Sharp, had died in A ugust 1692. Boyse’s m o .c humorous and self-deprecating reply gives an indicationte of how much he had a g h come to enjoy his Irish ministry and reveals a marked reluctances to leave his post .a w in Dublin: w w

m o .c te I heartily thank you for your good opinion of mee,a which must be farr above g h s what I deserve, when you propose such a thing to.a mee as succeeding so excellent w w w a person as Mr Sharp: but I must peremptorily desire you to suppress any further m o mention of it, for the reasons I shall now subjoyn..c I am here fix’t with a people te a g to whom I am link’t by affection and obligation,h – I could not so much as come s .a over without acquainting ’em with the designw of it, and this would be downright w w

murder. Besides, here I am sure my laboursm have found undeserved acceptance o .c and some success … I have no groundte to expect it elsewhere. My way of a g h preaching was never yet lik’t by anys till they were habituated to it, and if I should .a w w 28 come over to be rejected I shouldw buy the experiment of a change very dear.

m o .c te a It was not just the possibility gof being rejected in Leeds, however, which caused h s .a him to demur. Boyse was adamantw that his work at Wood Street allowed him to w w best use his skills as a minister in the care of that community and he jokingly m o admitted that they would.c resist his disappearance: te a g h s .a w But to tell you thew main reason, I have no prospect of doing that service w

anywhere else mthat I have here. My generall acquaintance and conversation, o .c te the joynt carea of our young candidates with the rest of the ministers here, and g h s many other.a circumstances give me that opportunity of usefullness here which I w w cannot proposew elsewhere. And indeed, should I attempt a removall, I must resist

m o 29 downright.c force and violence, for little less would be used by my friends here. te a g h s .a w w w 26 m Boyse to Thoresby, 20 Sept. 1684 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 6). o 27.c te Ibid. a g h 28 s Boyse to Thoresby, 11 Jan. 1694 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 6). .a w 29 w w Ibid. © Copyrighted Material Letters from Joseph Boyse to Ralph Thoresby, 1680–1710 215 © Copyrighted Material

This sense of mission was not just played out within the Presbyterian communitym o .c te of Dublin, for Boyse was soon to avail himself of the burgeoning Irish print-culturea g h s after the Glorious Revolution to express his sense of faith to a wider audience.a In . w w particular, Boyse composed a series of works which petitioned for the Anglicanw

m State to tolerate the Protestant dissenting communities in a context owhere he .c te a thought Quakerism and Catholicism rather than dissenting Protestantismg were the h s .a key threats. The legal situation for Dissenters was ambiguous. Sincew 1660, with w w the failure of the Presbyterians to accommodate to the Church of Ireland, they m o .c had become an illegal sect. There was de facto toleration and,t e compared to the a g h situation in England with the Conventicle acts, little persecution.s Yet it was not .a w all plain sailing and Boyse, through his writings, hoped tow negotiate relief for w

m Presbyterians in Ireland and England. In the letter in whicho he rejected Thoresby’s .c te invitation to succeed Sharp, Boyse further remarked ona his ongoing battle with g h s William King: .a w w w

m o I fear I am like to have some new and unpleasant work.c cutt out, for Dr. King, te a g now Bishop of Derry, has newly publish’t a Discourseh concerning the Inventions s .a of Men in the worship of God, from the charg[e]w whereof he endeavours to w w

clear the Establish’t Church, retorting it withm great severity on the Dissenters, o .c especially those of his own Diocese, to whomte in the conclusion hee particularly a g h addresses himself, both ministers and people:s and in that address he advises ’em .a w 30 to warn the people against the Independentw principles layd down. w

m o .c te a Boyse then lists prominent dissentingg ministers – including himself – named by h s King, adding that ‘The answering the.a book belongs to the Ministers in the North w w w 31 but I reckon a postscript will be expected from mee, so farr as I am concern’d’. m o Boyse’s importance within Presbyterianism,.c both north and south, is evident te a g from this letter as his theologicalh experience and sense of Presbyterianism’s place s .a w within the wider frameworkw of Protestantism unified the different Presbyterian w traditions. m o .c te In pursuit of this accommodationa with the State and the State Church, Boyse g h s was willing to collaborate.a with Church of Ireland ministers. He joined forces w w against Catholicismw by writing a preface to Archdeacon Moore’s three treatises

m against transubstantiation,o the invocation of saints and image worship – a task .c te a 32 completed at Moore’sg request. This preface was based on a sermon preached by h s .a Boyse on 23 Owctober 1706 (the anniversary of the massacre of Protestants during w w the Ulster uprising of 1641), and the text centred on ‘the pretended Infallibility m o 33 .c of the Catholicte Church’. Boyse sent a copy to Thoresby, but lamented that the a g h s .a w w w 30 m o Boyse to Thoresby, 11 Jan. 1694 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 6). .c 31te a Ibid. g h s 32 .a Boyse to Thoresby, 22 Sept. 1707 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 12). w w 33 w Ibid. © Copyrighted Material 216 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material publication of the preface was taking up too much of his time thereby delaying the m 34 o publication of his two volumes of collected sermons. .c te a g h Again, with more sympathetic counterparts in Anglicanism, Boyse sfound .a w support for his criticism of the one dissenting group that he did not find wcommon w ground with – the Quakers. In one letter dated 27 March 1707, Boyse enclosedm for o .c te Thoresby a small tract against the Quakers which comprised of queriesa drawn up g h s by a Church of Ireland clergyman. Boyse was then helping the clergyman.a to edit w w the tract, remarking: w

m o .c te a he having left me an absolute power to model them as I pleased,g I have almost h s .a entirely new moulded them, and they lay open, I think, a true schemew of the most w w refined Quakerism. The Quakers are alarmed by it, but have not yet answered m o 35 .c them. te a g h s .a w Boyse saw himself as a religious moderate: ready to defendw Presbyterian principles w

m in print against blows from members of the Establishedo Church yet also ready to .c te join forces with sympathetic Anglicans against Catholicism.a His moderation is g h s also shown in his refusal to accept Quakers as .apart of the dissenting spectrum: w w w their religious views were too extreme for him. This would be later evinced in his m o dealings with Thomas Emlyn, a colleague at.c Wood Street who had also been a te a g minister with the Countess of Donegall. h s .a Boyse’s nephew, Thomas Jackson, hadw sent sermons by Emlyn to Thoresby w w with the intention of keeping Thoresbym in touch with dissenting religious life o 36 .c in Dublin. However, at one of Emlyn’ste sermons in Dublin a member of Wood a g h Street congregation noted that he wass omitting certain doctrinal orthodoxies such .a w w as the divinity of Christ, which calledw into question his belief in the Trinity. When

m questioned on this by Boyse, Emlyno admitted that this was his position. This started .c te a the process of his case beingg brought before a group of Dublin ministers from h s .a Independent and Presbyterianw traditions. Though Emlyn was dismissed and left for w w 37 London the incident showed Boyse’s moderation in theological matters. These m o .c te a g h s 34 .a Boyse to Thoresby,w 22 Sept. 1707 (YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 12). w w 35 ‘Letter from Josephm Boyse to Ralph Thoresby, Dublin 27 March 1707’, in Letters of o .c Eminent Men Addressedte to Ralph Thoresby (2 vols, London, 1832), 2, p. 50. a g 36 h ‘Letter froms Thomas Jackson to Ralph Thoresby, March 1698/99’, in W.T. Lancaster .a w (ed.), ‘Letters tow Ralph Thoresby’, in Publications of the Thoresby Society, 21 (1912), w p. 72. Thomasm Jackson was Boyse’s nephew and a divinity student. He corresponded with o .c Thoresby, oftente including research on artefacts and inscriptions about which Thoresby had a g h enquired. s .a 37 w w on Joseph Boyse and Thomas Emlyn, see M. Brown, Francis Hutcheson in w

m Dublin,o 1719–1730 (Dublin, 2002), pp. 81–3. Boyse’s moderation was also evident in his .c te contributionsa to the Non-Subscription controversy within Presbyterianism. The debate, g h whichs focused around the doctrine of free will, saw a split within the ranks of the church .a w w w– the subscribers insisting that ministers sign up to the Westminster Confession of Faith, © Copyrighted Material Letters from Joseph Boyse to Ralph Thoresby, 1680–1710 217 © Copyrighted Material

letters flesh out our knowledge of Boyse’s dealings as a moderate Presbyterianm o .c te seeking to maintain connections with other religious groups as well as his aown g h s brotherhood over geographical distance – a dissenting diaspora. a . w w Thoresby’s failure to snare Boyse for the post of minister at Mill Hill win 1693

m may have contributed to him returning to the Established Church. Aftero Boyse’s .c te a refusal, Thoresby persuaded Timothy Manlove to take the post instead.g Even h s .a so, Manlove soon complained that the stipend was not large enoughw and he also w w objected to Thoresby’s practice of sometimes attending the parish church – that is, m o .c conforming. It was Thoresby’s disagreement with Manlove whichte edged Thoresby a g h towards becoming completely conformist. Boyse wrote to sThoresby in 1697 .a w saying that he was ‘very sorry to perceive there is any misunderstandingw between w 38 m him [Manlove] and you’. By 1699, Thoresby had abandonedo his connection with .c te Dissenters, transferring to the Church of England, largelya due to the ministry of a g h s gifted Church of England minister, John Killingbeck. .a w w w As with Boyse’s brief connection with the Brownists in Amsterdam, this episode m o of Ralph Thoresby’s falling out with Timothy Manlove.c and his conformity to the te a g Established Church highlights how permeable definitionsh of dissent were; they s .a often depended on circumstance and personal friendships.w Thoresby clearly felt a w w theological connection with the ministry of Johnm Killingbeck, but his friendship o .c with Boyse did not falter during this period. tNe or did his concern for the welfare of a g h Dissenters, for Thoresby recorded in his diarys in the spring of 1699 that: .a w w w

m The Learned Mr Boyse being come fromo Dublin to this his native place, lodged .c te a at my house till his marriage with Mg rs Rachel Ibbetson. The sermon he preached h s relating to the sufferings of the French.a Protestants was very moving there being w w w once about eight hundred churches in which the true worship of God was m o constantly celebrated which .c are now demolished one thousand five hundred te a g pastors banished, their flocksh scattered and many thousand families forced into s .a 39 w exile etc for whose reliefw public collections are being made. w

m o .c te Indeed, their correspondencea continued into the early eighteenth century with g h s Boyse keeping Thoresby.a up to date with the position and experiences of Dissenters w w in Ireland. Thoresby’sw will, drawn up in December 1700, confirms his acceptance

m of the Church of Englando together with his desire for his children to remain within .c te a its fold – especiallyg under the guidance of John Killingbeck, whose ministry he h s .a w w w

m o .c te which asserteda dual predestination. While Boyse avoided taking a stand on the issue itself, g h s he worked.a hard to ease tempers and create an open dialogue and compromise between w w the twow factions. See I.R. McBride, Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish

m Radicalismo in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), pp. 41–61. .c 38te a g Boyse to Thoresby (Dublin, 29 May 1697), YAS, Thoresby MSS, MS 7. h s 39 .a J. Hunter (ed.), The Diary of Ralph Thoresby, FRS. (2 vols, London, 1830), 1, w w wpp. 328–9. © Copyrighted Material 218 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material urged them to attend. Nonetheless, the will also stated that Thoresby expected his m o children to share his concern for nonconformist groups: .c te a g h s .a w I would have them always to express a tender regard of and charity to otherw w

reformed churches beyond sea and particular societys nearer hand as partm of o .c te Christ’s Catholick Church yet as to their own practises it is my expressa will g h s and desire that they be conformable to the National Church of which .aI profess w 40 w myself a sincere member. w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w What these letters show first is the international nature of non-conformity in the m o .c seventeenth century: the travels of Boyse from Englandt e to the Netherlands and a g h Ireland. The United Provinces was noted for its religiouss toleration and had long .a w attracted radical believers from England. Hence Boyse’sw interaction with the w

m Brownists in Amsterdam demonstrated that strandso of separatism from England .c te could be tolerated in a foreign land. While the toleranta milieu permitted radical g h s religious groups to flourish Boyse’s letters show .a his unease with the spiritual laxity w w w in the city. Religious radicalism needs tolerance to prosper but, when tolerance is m o found, it usually implies a variety of opposing.c belief systems. te a g The religious context in Ireland was differenth – the massacre of Protestants s .a in 1641 during the rebellion of the Romanw Catholics, under both native Irish and w w

Old English leaders, had left deep politicalm and religious scars. Unlike the United o .c Provinces, there was no easy tolerationte of religious belief systems that stood apart a g h from the Established Church, eithers Catholic or Dissenter. Boyse’s letters show .a w w that Presbyterians sought to gain wground in Ireland, a place where he believed the

m countryside could be described aso being close to Hobbes’s state of war. .c te a Secondly, the letters displayg the interaction of friends, information and h s .a ministries because both Josephw Boyse and Ralph Thoresby informed one another w w about family members, their personal lives and their environments. The letters m o intimately show the personal.c relationship between two Dissenters who had te a g h religious, family and personals interests in common – a relationship which survived .a w despite transnationalw migration and Thoresby’s change of religious affiliation. w

m Personal ties, forgedo in the midst of religious radicalism, could endure even when .c te one party becamea orthodox. g h s Thirdly, these.a letters, in terms of Boyse’s life, illuminate some of the practical w w and political wconcerns of being a Presbyterian minister in this context. Having

m o once asserted.c themselves as an alternative to the Church of England, Presbyterians te a g in Boyse’sh day had to argue for toleration for those who dissented from orthodoxy. s .a However,w this toleration was not intended to be universal and could be quite w w limited: hence Boyse’s pamphlets set out his opposition to Roman Catholics and m o .c te a g h 40 s Will of Ralph Thoresby, 3 Dec. 1700 (YAS, Letters and papers of the Thoresby .a w w family,w MS SD9). © Copyrighted Material Letters from Joseph Boyse to Ralph Thoresby, 1680–1710 219 © Copyrighted Material

other Dissenters like the Quakers. In addition, Boyse’s letters to Thoresby show hism o .c te commitment to educating his congregation and his ministers, even declininga the g h s opportunity to take up a ministry at his birthplace Leeds because of his dedicationa . w w to his post in Ireland. w

m In these letters and throughout his long friendship with Thoresby, Boyseo showed .c te a himself to be a religious moderate – albeit one whose dissent from the principlesg and h s .a practices of the Established Church ensured that his status was firmlyw outside what w w was considered to be orthodox in religious terms. His ministry and correspondence m o .c raise the question of defining dissent and radicalism in the late seventeenthte century. a g h According to Timothy Morton and Nigel Smith, the period froms 1689 to 1770 .a w was ‘not distinguished by widespread “radical” activity’, thoughw it can be argued w

m that people during this period referred to radicalism in botho politics and religion .c 41 te from the past. Boyse’s enthusiastic sermons commemoratinga the events of 1641, g h s a time of suffering for both denominations, served to.a ally Presbyterians more w w w closely to their fellow Protestants and recalled a time when political radicalism m o moved against Protestant religion and rule – the sense.c of ‘a continuity of national te a 42 g religious experience’ to which Morton and Smithh refer. The letters from Boyse s .a to Thoresby, however, show how two Dissentersw share a continuity of religious w w experience (both were Dissenters until Thoresby’sm conversion to the State Church o .c in 1699) in both national context and internationalte contexts. Their shared familial a g h connections, mutual support and friendships helped to further their roles as agents .a w of dissent and were strong enough to survivew even when Thoresby joined the fold w

m of the Established Church. o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s 41 .a Morton and Smith (eds), Radicalism in British Literary Culture, p. 2. w w 42 w Ibid. © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 11 m o .c te a g h s The Books and Times of Anthony Collins.a w w w

m o (1676–1729), Free-thinker, Radical Reader.c te a g h s .a and Independent Whig w w w

m o .c Giovanni Tarantino e t a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s The Radical Enlightenment and Book-collecting: Case.a Study w w w

m o ‘The warning ... against drawing too many inferences.c from a library catalogue te a g bears repeating’, Richard Ashcraft wrote in a noteh about the publication of the s .a Locke catalogue, ‘but the fact remains that whatw a man buys for his edification w w 1 cannot be dismissed out of hand as being munimportant.’ Whilst working on o .c my edition of Anthony Collins’ manuscriptte library catalogue and following a g 2 h a thorough rereading of his works, I haves become convinced that the radical .a w seeds of his philosophical thought and wpolitical leanings, in so far as they can w

m be identified, lie in his strenuouso anti-authoritarianism, his use of satire, the .c te a political corollaries of his moral determinism,g his insistence on the primacy of h s Law and the importance of grassroots.a control of political power, and – to use an w w w old, even controversial category coined by Arthur Lovejoy – in his ‘intellectual m 3 o equalitarianism’. Shaftesbury, .andc before him Richard Overton (and even further te a g back, the authors of the Marprelateh Tracts), had resorted to satire in order to express s .a w their criticism of the clericalw presumption of infallibility, ‘the method eventually w 4 becoming the principal weaponm employed to discredit Christian miracles’. In A o .c te Discourse concerning Ridiculea and Irony (1729), Collins argues that the use of g h s .a w w w 1 m R. Ashcraft, ‘Johno Locke’s Library: Portrait of an Intellectual’, in J.S. Yolton (ed.), .c te A Locke Miscellany:a Locke Biography and Criticism for All (Bristol, 1990), p. 245. g h 2 s g. Tarantino,.a Lo scrittoio di Anthony Collins (1676–1729): i libri e i tempi di un w w libero pensatorew (Milan, 2007). It should be pointed out that my edition makes no attempt

m to offer a philologicalo reconstruction of the manuscript text. The main aim was to arrive at .c te a definitivea identification of titles and authors. g h 3 s A.O..a Lovejoy, ‘The Parallel of Deism and Classicism’, Modern Philology, 29 w w (1932): wp. 287.

m 4 o .c J. Herrick, The Radical Rhetoric of the English Deists: The Discourse of Scepticism, te a 1680–1750g (Columbia, SC, 1997), p. 54. See also Sammy Basu, ‘“Woe into you that laugh h s now!”:.a Humour and Toleration in Overton and Shaftesbury’, in J.C. Laursen (ed.), Religious w w Toleration:w ‘The Variety of Rites’ from Cyrus to Defoe (Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 147–72. © Copyrighted Material 222 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material debunking irony, which wisely presupposes the fallibility of any opinion, is a m o healthy antidote to the long-faced seriousness of the many custodians of the truth..c te a g h The free thinker will only ‘sacrifice the privilege of irony’ when he is guaranteeds .a 5 w freedom of expression. w w

According to Jonathan Israel, ‘the Radical Enlightenment, whetherm on an o .c te atheistic or deistic basis, rejected all compromise with the past anda sought to g h s sweep away existing structures entirely, ... refusing to accept that there.a is any God- w w ordained social hierarchy, concentration of privilege or land-ownershipw in noble

m 6 o hands, or religious sanction for monarchy’. Anthony Collins (1676–1729).c was a te a 7 leading exponent of the ‘Radical Enlightenment’, a philosophicalg necessitarian, h s .a and a renowned bibliophile. When he died his library – the wthird largest private w w library in Britain – contained more than 10,000 titles. By identifying and analysing m o .c the significant connections between Collins the prolificte writer and Collins the a g h untiring reader, it is possible to chart his brilliant and irreverents use of the weighty .a w traditions of ‘orthodox’ thought, his direct involvementw in an uncompromising w

m journalistic campaign to moralise political life and hiso unflagging denunciation of .c te the abuse of popular credulity by the ecclesiasticala authorities: g h s .a w w w I own my self no less inclined to scepticism in history than in speculations, and m o see reason to distrust the historical relations .cand testimonies of uninspired men, te a g as well as observe the universal sophistry hand false reasoning, which prevail in s .a 8 common conversation, harangues and books.w w w

m o .c Collins’ library was also a focus for tlearnede socialising; invitations were greatly a g h coveted and the host would order ins fine wines to accompany the presentation of .a w 9 w new books. Adding to his collectionw naturally required constant correspondence

m with writers, reviewers, editors,o book-sellers and shippers. Anne Goldgar has .c te a explained very clearly how theseg transactions were central to the establishment h s .a of intellectual networks andw communities in the seventeenth and eigtheenth w w

m o .c te a g h s 5 .a A Discourse concerningw Ridicule and Irony in Writing, in A Letter to the Reverend w w Dr. Nathaniel Marshall (London, 1729), p. 25. See D. Berman, ‘Anthony Collins: Aspects m o of his Thought and .cWritings’, Hermathena, 119 (1975): pp. 64–8; [Thomas Stackhouse], te a g The Life of Mr. Woolstonh (London, 1733), p. 21. s 6 .a J. Israel, wRadical Enlightenment. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650– w w

1750 (Oxford,m 2001), pp. 11–12. o 7 .c see J.te Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century a g h British Philosophys (Oxford, 2005), p. 8: ‘There is no threat to freedom from the “natural” .a w necessitationw of choices by motives, since liberty is simply a matter of not being prevented w from actingm in line with the most pressing motive’. o 8 .c te [Anthony Collins], An Historical and Critical Essay on the Thirty Nine Articles of a g h thes Church of England (London, 1724), p. vi. .a w 9 w w BL, Add. MSS. 4282, fols 145v, 146r, 176r, 224r, 228r. © Copyrighted Material The Books and Times of Anthony Collins (1676–1729) 223 © Copyrighted Material

10 centuries. Scholars would congregate in libraries not only to read and discussm o .c te new books or different methods of study, but on occasion also to write, sometimesa g h s together. Building a library, even just reading and making marginal annotations,a . w 11 w was ‘a collective act’. w

m o .c te a g h s .a Collins was born on 21 June 1676 in Isleworth, Middlesex, to the westw of London. w w His father Henry, a lawyer, appears to have been an Anglican. R ichard Bentley m o .c insinuated that Collins’ mother, Mary Dineley, was a Catholic andte that she brought a 12 g h up her child accordingly. The source, however, is suspect ands perhaps betrays a .a w slanderous intent. The Collins family was financially well-to-dow and able to give him w

m an education at Eton and then at King’s College in Cambridgeo (1693–96), though .c te he left before graduating. His tutor at Cambridge was the atheologian Francis Hare, g h s later Bishop of Chichester, and the author of The Difficulties.a and Discouragements w w w which attend the Study of Scripture (1714). Following a family tradition, Collins m o commenced legal training at the Temple in London,.c though he never practised te a g law and indeed never really needed to apply himselfh to any profession. Much of s .a 13 his ‘largely uneventful’ life was spent in rural Ewssex, where he devoted himself w w primarily to his intellectual pursuits, to managingm his vast estates (more than o .c 20,000 acres) and to administering local justicete in the surrounding area, deeming a g h the role of a ‘gentleman’ to be that of dedicatings oneself disinterestedly to the life .a 14 w of the community. w w

m Two journeys to the Spanish Netherlandso and United Provinces, during which .c te a he spent most of his time anxiously huntingg for rare books and manuscripts, reflect, h s together with his library catalogue, .aan inexhaustible curiosity about the world and w w w his avid interest in reading. The works he wrote between 1707 and 1717 were m o mainly philosophical, while the.c writings published between 1720 and 1729 were te a g mostly historical and philological.h The public offices he occupied explain why, s .a w when intervening in the theological,w philosophical and political controversies of w his age, as he did repeatedly,m he not only resorted to the flimsy shield of anonymity o .c te a g h s .a 10 w a. Goldgar, Impolitew Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, w

1680–1750 (New Haven,m 1995). o 11 .c te J. Champion,a ‘Enlightened Erudition and the Politics of Reading in John Toland’s g h Circle’, HJ, 49 (2006):s pp. 119–20. .a w 12 w Remarksw upon a Late Discourse of Free-Thinking: in a Letter to F.H. D.D. by

m Phileleutheruso Lipsiensis (London, 1713), p. xiii, in The Works of Richard Bentley, (ed.) .c te A. Dyce (3 avols, London, 1836–38), 3, p. 314. g h 13 s D..a Berman, ‘Anthony Collins (1676–1729)’, in The Dictionary of Eighteenth- w w Centuryw British Philosophers, (ed.) J. Yolton, J.V. Price and J. Stephens (2 vols, Bristol,

m 1999).o .c te a14 g see BL, Add. MS 4221, fol. 329, Add. MS 4282, fols 240–44, Add. MS 4313, fols h s 71–3,.a MS Stowe 750, f. 441; J. O’Higgins, Anthony Collins: The Man and His Works (The w w Hague,w 1970), pp. 1–22, 224–41; J. Dybikowski, ‘Anthony Collins’, ODNB. © Copyrighted Material 224 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material but also adopted communicative strategies – reticence, insinuation, deliberately m o weak argumentation – that served to dissimulate his views. A law passed. c by te a g h William III (9 & 10 William III c. 32) stated that anyone daring to questions the .a w orthodox doctrine of the Trinity or the supernatural nature of Christianityw was w to be stripped of all public offices – civic, ecclesiastic or military.m In 1698, o .c te Collins married Martha Child, the daughter of Lord Francis Child,a a banker, g h s who also became Mayor of London in that same year. They had four.a children, w w though only two daughters survived to adulthood. Martha died inw 1703, leaving

m o Collins to look after three children. In the same year Collins met.c John Locke. te a They immediately began corresponding and continued to do sog until the death of h s .a Locke, who reiterated his respect and affection for Collins onw various occasions. w w In a letter dated 3 April 1704, he credited Collins with having understood his m o .c Essay Concerning Human Understanding better than anyonete else. In the same a g h year, John Toland dedicated his translation of Aesop’s Fabless to Collins, and did .a 15 w likewise in 1709 for Adeisidaemon. In fact, ‘Collins seemsw to have been friendly w

m with most of the prominent free-thinkers of his time.o … One suspects that British .c te free-thinkers, in the first half of the eighteenth acentury, formed a more closely g h 16 s knit group than is generally thought.’ A letter to.a Henry Dodwell on 17 October w w w 1706 reveals an early determination on Collins’ part to advocate tolerance and the m o freedoms of opinion and of the press: .c te a g h s .a I think ye clergy have not a judical power eitherw in absolution or excommunication w w

and am for toleration in matters of merem religion. ... I am for ye Liberty of ye o 17 .c Press. te a g h s .a w w Between 1707 and 1708 Collins wengaged in a lively dispute with Samuel Clarke

m in which he sustained the anti-theisto theses of materiality and of the mortality of .c 18 te a the soul. One of the most assiduousg frequenters of the Grecian Coffee House, h s .a ‘[that] glorious club of heroesw whose name will be held in honour by all who abhor w w

m o .c te a g h s 15 .a st.H. Daniel, Johnw Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind (Montreal, 1984), w w p. 33. m o 16 .c d. Berman,te ‘Deism, Immortality, and the Art of Theological Lying’, in J.A.L. a g h Lemay (ed.), Deisms , Masonry, and the Enlightenment: Essays Honouring Alfred Owen .a w Aldridge (Newark,w DE, 1987), p. 68. w 17 st Edmundm Hall, Oxford, MS 12, ‘Collins to Henry Dodwell the elder’ (17 October o .c 1706). Cf. Anthonyte Collins, A Letter to the Reverend Dr. Rogers, on occasion of his Eight a g h Sermons, concernings the Necessity of Divine Revelation (London, 1727), p. 2: ‘I was always .a w of opinion,w that Toleration or Liberty of Conscience in matters of mere Religion, was the w way ofm Knowledg and Truth, the way of good Neighbourhood, and Peace, and Order, and o .c the wayte of Wealth and Strength in Society’. a g h 18 s See S. Landucci, ‘Mente e corpo nel dibattito fra Collins e Clarke’, in A. Santucci .a w w (ed.),w L’Età dei Lumi. Saggi sulla cultura settecentesca (Bologna, 1998), pp. 126–42. © Copyrighted Material The Books and Times of Anthony Collins (1676–1729) 225 © Copyrighted Material

19 Christianity’, Collins soon became known for his decidedly heterodox religiousm o .c te opinions, and not only in London. During a trip to the United Provinces in 1711a he g h s had met Jean Le Clerc, the Quaker merchant Benjamin Furly and Eugene, Princea . w w of Savoy. He returned to the Dutch Republic three years later, while controversyw

m was raging in London about his new book, A Discourse of Free-Thinkingo , which .c te a was to prove a great success. In it, he vigorously upheld the claim thatg freedom of h s .a thought is an inalienable human right. w w w

m o .c I could proceed to give an account how [the Priests] dispute about te... every point a g h in the whole Christian Religion, as well as about the Meaning of almosts every text .a w in the Bible: But what I have produc’d being sufficient to provew their divisions w

m about the meaning of the Scripture in matters of the greatesto importance, I may .c te just conclude that it is necessary for every Man, instead ofa relying upon them, to g h 20 s think freely for himself. .a w w w

m o In The Hague, Collins gathered together a circle of.c free thinkers at the premises te a g of the English bookseller and publisher Thomas hJohnson. They were favourably s .a impressed by his work. Later he went to Flanders,w where he was given a respectful w w welcome. He also had plans to go to France andm Italy, but news of the death of a o .c friend led him to return home early. In the meantimete he had made agreements for a g h the supply of books with the French booksellerss Pierre Dunoyer and Paul Vaillant .a w in London. He also enjoyed the hardworkingw collaboration of the printer Robinson, w

m who sold the Discourse of Free-Thinkingo at his shop at the ‘Golden Lion’ near St .c te a Paul’s Cathedral. For books from Hollandg he generally turned to Johnson, who h s forwarded them to the London publisher.a James Woodman. In Amsterdam, Mortier w w w found books for him through the mediation of the bookseller Cailloné, a Huguenot m o exile in London. And in France .che could rely on the instincts and alacrity of Pierre te a g Desmaizeaux. h s .a w In 1718, Collins was electedw Treasurer of the County of Essex, where he was w 21 already serving as a Justicem of the Peace and Commissioner of Taxes. In 1724 o .c te he remarried, his seconda wife Elizabeth (d. 1737) being a daughter of Sir Walter g h s Wrottesley. The last . fivea years of Collins’ life were, however, rather troubled: w w he was afflicted byw painful kidney stones, which were ultimately the causeof

m his death, and sufferedo greatly as a result of the premature death of one of his .c te a children in 1723.g Despite everything, he continued to cultivate his interest in h s .a biblical criticismw and exegesis, also involving friends and readers. The Viscount of w w Barrington reported that it was customary, after dinner, for Collins and his guests m o .c ‘to have yete Greek Testament laid upon the table as they were all men of letters, and a g h s .a w 19 w wJohn Witty, The First Principles of Modern Deism Confuted (London, 1707), p.

m xvi. o .c 20te a g [Anthony Collins], A Discourse of Free-Thinking, Occasion’d by the Rise and h s Growth.a of a Sect Call’d Free-Thinkers (London, 1713), p. 76. w w 21 w BL, Add. MS 4282, fol. 228r. © Copyrighted Material 226 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

22 had a taste for scriptural criticism’. Amongst the lost works of those years, it is m o worth mentioning the annotated translations of Cicero’s De natura deorum and. c De te a 23 g h divinatione. Of the two works published in the year of his death and traditionallys .a w ascribed to Collins, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity (1729) and A Discoursew w concerning Ridicule and Irony (1729), only the latter can be attributed tom Collins o 24 .c te with reasonable certainty. Collins died on 13 December 1729 at his Londona home g h s in Harley Street. He was buried ‘in a new vault belonging to that family.a in the new w w burying ground belonging to St. George’s ... it being his particular desirew not to be

m 25 o buried in any church’. The Parish Church of Saint George – ‘the.c London Temple te a of Hymen’ in Hanover Square – had been designed by John Jamesg and consecrated h s .a on 13 March 1725 by the Bishop of London, Edmund Gibson.w Many of Collins’ w w manuscripts were entrusted upon his death to Desmaizeaux, who sold them to his m o .c widow. She subsequently lent them to Gibson, who, it teseems, destroyed them, a g h an outcome that was greatly regretted by Desmaizeauxs as he felt he had been .a 26 w indirectly responsible. w w

m o .c te a g h s By May 1718 Collins had found the definitive and.a best location for his library, in w w w Baddow Hall. Collins was very satisfied, as he immediately informed Desmaizeaux, m o his most assiduous and learned literary informant:.c ‘My books are all in order, in a te a 27 g very commodius room above stairs’. Accordingh to Thomas Birch, who wrote the s .a earliest extended account of Collins’s lifew and works: w w

m o .c His Library, which was a very largete and curious one, was open to all Men of a g h Letters, to whom he readily communicateds all the lights and assistance in his .a w w power, and even furnished his wantagonists with books to confute himself, and

m o .c te a g h s .a w 22 w w O’Higgins, Anthony Collins , p. 228. m 23 o [Collins], Historical.c and Critical Essay, p. 279; BL, Add. MS 4282, fols 184r, te a g 206r. h s 24 .a d. Berman, ‘Anthonyw Collins: Aspects of His Thought and Writings’, Hermathena, w w 99 (1975): pp. 64–8. See also Jacopo Agnesina, ‘Sur l’attribution à Anthony Collins du m o Discourse concerning.c Ridicule and Irony in Writing’, La Lettre Clandestine, 17 (2009): te a g pp. 277–89. h s 25 .a w The Weeklyw Medley and Literal Journal (Saturday, 27 December 1729). w 26 BL, Add.m MS 4282, fol. 245r: ‘January, 6th 1730 – I have done a most wicked o .c e thing. I am tpersuadede that I have betray’d y trust of a person who for 26 years has given a g h me continueds instances of his friendship and confidence. I am convinced that I have acted .a w e contraryw to y will and intention of my dear deceas’d friend.’ Elizabeth Collins would w later auctionm off the entire collection. See BL, Add. MS 4282, ff. 252–7; I. Disraeli, ‘Des o .c Maizeauxte and Anthony Collins’s MSS’, in Curiosities of Literature (3 vols, London, 1858), a g h 3, pp.s 13ff. .a w 27 w w Collins to Pierre Desmaizeaux, 25 May 1718 (BL, Add. MS 4282, f. 147r). © Copyrighted Material The Books and Times of Anthony Collins (1676–1729) 227 © Copyrighted Material

directed them how to give their arguments all the force, of which they were m o 28 .c te capable. a g h s .a w w This striking statement conjures up a picture of someone more interestedw in the

29 m cause of truth than in his own cause. o .c te a In his influential monograph on Collins, the Jesuit scholar Jamesg O’Higgins h s .a stated that ‘on Collins’ death, in 1729, the library contained some 6906w items, and, w 30 w consequently, more volumes’. He presumably limited himself to adding together m o .c the 3,451 lots advertised for sale in the 28 days of the first auctionte of Collins’ a g h library (18 January–24 February 1731), the 2,222 texts in octavos formaque minori, .a w the 821 in quarto, the 399 in folio and the 13 subscription wbooks sold in a later w

m auction (10 March–16 April 1731). The two auctions were heldo ‘at St Paul’s Coffee .c te 31 House in Paul’s Church-Yard, ... beginning every Eveninga at Five a Clock’. The g h s manuscript catalogue actually lists 10,801 items, including.a 456 titles not in the w w w catalogue and a large number of repetitions (in that the same works are sometimes m o listed several times: under the name of the author;.c the name of each individual te a g author in the case of collective works; the translators;h the glossators; the titles; s .a 32 or even subject matter, in the case of biographiesw or legal proceedings). The w w manuscript and autograph catalogue is held min the university library of King’s o .c College, Cambridge (Keynes Ms 217, ‘Bibliothecate Collinsiana’). In 1977 the a g h catalogue was given some much-need restorations – the pages were cleaned, .a w the cuts and holes patched and it was reboundw in leather – which has helped to w

m preserve it in its entirety and make it moreo readily consultable. Two sheets of the .c te a catalogue seemed to have been removedg at some stage: one between pages 531 and h s 532, the other between 537 and 538..a The numbering of the final pages (541–64) w w w is patchy. Collins completed his first compilation in 1720. In the following nine m o years, however, he expanded his.c library enormously, almost doubling the number te a g of works. He noted the new titlesh on the even-numbered pages of the catalogue, s .a w which he had wisely left blankw for later additions. He wrote in the new entries w next to the authors alreadym listed, being careful to maintain the alphabetical order o .c te wherever possible, thougha this is sometimes inexact and discontinuous. It is also g h s possible to discern various.a abrasions and erasures, and, in some cases, possibly w w for reasons of spacew or to replace titles that had been removed, the entries of the

m first version are interspersedo with titles published after 1720. In an appendix to the .c te a catalogue there areg two jumbled lists of titles, for the most part anonymous, one h s .a on the odd-numberedw pages and the other on the even-numbered ones. The works w w

m o 28 .c te thomasa Birch, ‘Anthony Collins’, in Pierre Bayle, A General Dictionary, Historical g h and Criticals (10 vols, London, 1734–41), 4, pp. 404–5. .a 29 w w wCf. Berman, ‘Anthony Collins: Aspects of His Thought and Writings’, p. 50.

30 m Oo ’Higgins, Anthony Collins, p. 24. .c 31te a g see Thomas Ballard, Bibliotheca Antonij Collins, Arm.; Or, A Compleat Catalogue h s of. athe Library of Anthony Collins, Esq., deceas’d (2 parts, London, 1731). w w 32 w see Tarantino, Lo scrittoio di Anthony Collins. © Copyrighted Material 228 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material by anonymous authors are followed by other clusters of titles, most of which are m o grouped according to the initial of the authors’ names or are by the same writer..c te a g h It is not clear whether these were preliminary notes for a planned reorderings of .a w the catalogue, prevented by Collins’ death, or whether they were volumesw he had w loaned or borrowed. m o .c te For the most part, Collins’ library contained works about philosophy,a religion g h s and theology. However, by no means did his interests lack eclecticism..a He had an w w extensive collection of Greek and Latin classics, numerous historical works,w treatises

m o on political and constitutional topics, English literary classics .andc biographies. te a He also had more than forty periodicals. There were booksg on science, law, h s .a literature, economics, architecture, navigation, numismatics, wornithology, botany, w w agriculture, even the art of embalming. There was a handful of books about natural m o .c magic. Amongst the works of John Evelyn there was, unsurprisingly,te his English a g h translation of Gabriel Naudé’s Advis pour dresser une bibliothèques (Instructions .a w concerning erecting of a library), as well as Fumifugiumw (1661), which reported w

m alarming medical observations about the effects ofo London’s unhealthy air. He .c te also had a treatise by Edward Tyson, entitled Orang-Outang,a sive homo sylvestris g h s (1669), which provoked considerable scientific.a and religious debate because it w w w drew disconcerting parallels between the structure of the human brain and that m o of monkeys’. Particular attention was devoted.c to travel accounts and memoirs, in te a g that the customs, rituals and political systemsh of other, far-flung peoples offered s .a a fine opportunity for making comparisonsw with Western nations and Churches, w w which were plainly incapable of peacefullym incorporating competing identities and o .c aspirations: te a g h s .a w w Let any man look into the Historyw and State of the Turks, and he will see the

m influence which their toleratingo Principles and Temper have on the peace of their .c te a Empire. ... They have toleratedg various Sects, and particularly Christians (upon h s .a the terms of paying a smallw tribute) tho those Christians esteem their Prophet w w an Impostor, and would infallibly extirpate with Fire and Sword their present m o 33 Protectors, if the Empire.c was in their hands. te a g h s .a w Many titles listed inw the catalogue reveal Collins’ interest in the Far East (from w

m China to Japan ando from Persia to Siam), but also in Italy, Spain, Sweden, .c te Moscovia, Americaa and Africa. The recurring literary fiction of diaries and g h s correspondence.a purportedly by Eastern travellers, who encountered, and were w w amazed by, thew contradictions and iniquity of European political and ecclesiastical

m o power structures,.c was to become a tried and tested expedient in eighteenth-century te a g Europeanh literature. One expression of this literary genre is an effective epistolary s .a booklet wentitled A Letter from an Arabian physician to a famous Professor in the w w University of Hall in Saxony, concerning Mahomet’s taking up Arms, his marryng m o .c of manyte Wives, his keeping of Concubines, and his Paradise (dated Paris, 14 June a g h s .a w 33 w w [Collins], Discourse of Free-Thinking, pp. 102–3. © Copyrighted Material The Books and Times of Anthony Collins (1676–1729) 229 © Copyrighted Material

1706). This can be attributed, if not to Collins himself, then certainly to his milieu.m o .c te By restating what was a common tolerationist argument, as well as a regulara g h s complaint voiced by early Quakers, the booklet credits Islam with a greater degreea . w w of tolerance towards otherness than that displayed by the Christian confessions,w

m whose religious practices are certainly no less absurd than those of Islam:o .c te a g h s .a [Mahomet] put no man to death merely upon an account of his Religion.w ... He w w acted an infinitely more merciful and just part than any Sect of Christians never m o .c did, when they had it in their power to apply their wholesome severitieste to those a g h who differ’d from them, if it were only for wearing their clothess in a different .a 34 w manner from them. w w

m o .c te The Letter from an Arabian physician appeared occasionallya as an appendix to g h s the English translation of Spaccio by Giordano Bruno.a or to the Discourse of w w w Free-Thinking, and has been attibuted both to Toland and to Collins, though the m o translation of Spaccio is generally attributed to the.c obscure William Morehead te a g (who would have translated it for Collins’ privateh use). The latter is listed in s .a Collins’ catalogue as the editor of another workw that is in a certain sense pro- w w

Mahometan, namely Four Treatises Concerningm the Doctrines, Discipline and o .c Worship of the Mahometans (London, 1712).te French translations of the Letter a g h circulated in manuscript form and, from 1714s onwards, in print, as an appendix to .a 35 w Collins’ work. w w

m o .c te a g h s Radical Reading (and Writing) in.a Enlightenment Europe w w w

m o When examining a private library.c there is always the temptation to make te a g deductions about the philosophical,h political or religious inclinations of its owner, s .a w establishing a rigid connectionw between the owner and the prevailing orientation w of the works. Justin Championm has recently stressed the weakness of an approach o .c te that presupposes a passivea relationship between the content of a book and the g h s reading experience, or.a even the necessary identity between owner and reader. The w w presence of illicit literaturew in the libraries of Collins, Furly and Eugene Prince of

m Savoy, ‘the three meno who owned the most dangerous collections in Europe’, might .c te a g h s .a w 34 w A Letterw from an Arabian physician to a famous Professor in the University of Hall

m in Saxony (Paris,o 1706), p. 6. .c 35 te a seeg F.H. Heinemann, ‘Prolegomena to a Toland Bibliography’, Notes and Queries h s (25 September.a 1943), p. 183; G. Carabelli, Tolandiana. Materiali bibliografici per lo studio w w w dell’opera e della fortuna di John Toland (1670–1722) (Florence, 1975), pp. 158–9, 167– m o 8, 170–72;.c G. Aquilecchia, ‘Scheda bruniana: la traduzione “tolandiana” dello Spaccio’, te a Giornaleg Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 152 (1975): pp. 311–13; P. Almond, ‘Western h s Images.a of Islam, 1700–1900’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 49 (2003): w w wpp. 412–24. © Copyrighted Material 230 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material have been a symptom rather than a cause of a subversive intellectual disposition. m o ‘Toland, like Furly, Collins, Locke et al. were not just interested in reading “radical”.c te a g 36 h books, but primarily wanted to engage with the arguments of the mainstream.’s .a w In this respect, they adopted the rhetorical strategies of the radicals of thew 1640s w and 50s, who were much more sophisticated than they are normally creditedm with o .c te being, and in whose writings ‘the languages of the dominant culture area frequently g h s scrambled and misapplied for the purposes of parody and subversion,.a but also to w 37 w develop and articulate new and radical modes of thought’. w

m o O’Higgins recognised the Christian rationalists, the Cambridge.c Platonists and te a the latitudinarian theologians as the authors who exerted the greatestg influence on h s .a Collins. Their work is all widely represented in Collins’ library.w But the ideal and w w theoretical continuities that O’Higgins proposed are in place to support his deistical m o .c interpretation of Collins. Furthermore, they presuppose tea traditional reading of a g h 38 English latitudinarianism that has been questioned by mores recent studies. Collins’ .a w reflections on the issues of evil, necessity, the conventionalw status of ethics and the w

m materiality of the soul all seem instead to move in theo direction of a philosophical .c te negation of the existence of God. Furthermore, Collinsa openly reiterated Bayle’s g h s 39 argument that atheism is in any case preferable.a to superstition. The need to w w w disguise uncomfortable truths might have been the result of a legitimate fear for m o his personal safety or reputation, or even an .cindulgence for the so-called simple- te a g minded, who apparently wished only to beh deceived. Whether he is revealing the s .a irremediable divergences between theologians,w denouncing the corruption of the w w biblical text or the judgments underlyingm the typical interpretation of the messianic o .c prophecies, or confessing the unknowabilityte of divine attributes, Collins seems a g h to insinuate that it is pointless to pays any heed to a god that is unknown to us .a w w and whose eternity and perfectionw are such that it would be impossible for that

m god to act within time and makeo provision for human beings. So, where Collins .c te a expresses views that conformg to Christian orthodoxy, one must conclude that he h s .a was lying. David Berman andw Pascal Taranto have examined the clever disguises w w of Collins’ heterodox thought, concealed from his enemies and the uneducated, m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a 36 g J. Champion,h Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, s .a 1696–1722 (Manchester,w 2003), pp. 26, 31, 41. See also J. Champion, ‘“The Fodder of Our w w

Understanding”:m Benjamin Furly’s Library and Intellectual Conversation c. 1680–c. 1725’, o .c in Hutton (ed.),te Benjamin Furly, pp. 111–48. a 37 g h MscDowell, English Radical Imagination, p. 9. .a 38 w Ow ’Higgins, Anthony Collins, pp. 40–50; R. Ashcraft, ‘Latitudinarianism and w

Toleration:m Historical Myth versus Political History’, in in R. Kroll, R. Ashcraft and o .c P. Zagorinte (eds), Philosophy, Science and Religion in England, 1640–1700 (Cambridge, a g h 1992),s p. 155. .a w 39 w w [Collins], Discourse of Free-Thinking, pp. 105–6. © Copyrighted Material The Books and Times of Anthony Collins (1676–1729) 231 © Copyrighted Material

but accessible to like-minded readers. In their opinion, Collins was not reallym a o 40 .c te deist, but a genuine and systematic atheist, albeit covert. a g h s The classics of the Catholic Pyrrhonical tradition, and important and rarea titles . w w relating to Jewish anti-Christian polemic, figured prominently on Collins’w shelves.

m The arguments of both traditions found their way into his works, no olonger as .c te a ammunition for a shrewd confessional strategy, but as useful tools for pickingg apart h s .a any rational, philological or historical justification for the Christian wrevelation and w w for denouncing the fraudulence of the Churches. Although the seventeenth century m o .c was marked by profound hostility towards Catholics, there was neverthelesste some a g h scope for Catholic proselytism in England. The Jesuits organiseds a missionary .a w programme and set up colleges to train talented English controversialists.w Many w 41 m of these drew on the Pyrrhonical tradition to contest the o Anglican apologists. .c te John Vincent Canes, Paulin Cressy, Thomas White and Ea dward Knott repeatedly g h s maintained that the Anglican ‘rule of faith’ was insufficient.a grounds for certain w w w religious knowledge. Montaigne had been the first to apply, with fideistic results, m o Pyrrhonical conclusions to the context of the sixteenth-century.c religious crisis: te a g the foundation of knowledge is sensorial perception;h however, as this can prove s .a deceptive, it is better to suspend judgement, therebyw eluding the arrogance of w w human reason and the vain suffering of religiousm conflict. Unable to decide, the o .c Christian Pyrrhonist acts and believes in tcompliancee with the dictates of the a g h religion in which he or she has been broughts up. Collins naturally had the works of .a w Sextus Empiricus (Fabricius’ 1718 edition,w with Estienne’s Latin edition alongside w

m the Greek text), Montaigne, Charron ando La Mothe le Vayer. He also had a large .c te a number of works by the nouveaux g pyrrhoniens (such as Daniel Huet, Gabriel h s Naudé, Guy Patin and John Sergeant)..a Pierre Bayle is referenced in 24 points of w w w the catalogue. Above all, Collins had the complete works of Richard Simon, and m o he cited or implicitly referred to.c them throughout his own work. He used Simon’s te a g texts to lend weight to his strategyh of demolishing the authority of the Scriptures s .a w and of tradition, and drew onw them for rigorous scholarship and philology. The first w 42 respectful, direct allusion mto Richard Simon is in the Discourse of Free-Thinking, o .c te where, by demonstratinga the plausibility of different faiths, Collins ultimately g h s invalidates the credibility.a of each of them: w w w

m o .c 40 te Berman, ‘Deism,a Immortality, and the Art of Theological Lying’, pp. 61–78; g h s P. Taranto, Du déisme.a à l’athéisme: la libre pensée d’Anthony Collins (Paris, 2000), w w p. 18. See also wM. Benítez, ‘Anthony Collins revisité: déisme, panthéisme et athéisme aux

m temps modernes’,o La Lettre Clandestine, 15 (2007): pp. 317–37; P. Taranto, ‘Altitude ou .c te platitude? Anthonya Collins, l’histoire, la philosophie: Droit de réponse à Miguel Benítez’, g h s La Lettre .aClandestine, 17 (2009): pp. 291–308; D. Lucci, Scripture and Deism: The Biblical w w Criticismw of the Eighteenth-Century British Deists (Bern, 2008).

41 m o R.H. Popkin, ‘Skepticism and Counter-Reformation in France’, Archiv für .c te a Reformationsgeschichteg , 51 (1960): pp. 60–62; RH. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from h s Savonarola.a to Bayle (Oxford, 2003). w w 42 w [Collins], Discourse of Free-Thinking, p. 90. © Copyrighted Material 232 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

The Priests throughout the World differ about Scriptures, and the Authority of m o Scriptures. ... Mere diversity of opinions has no tendency in nature to confusion .c te a g h in society. The Pythagoreans, Stoicks, Scepticks, Academicks, Cynicks, ands .a w Stratonicks, all existed in Greece at the same time, and differ’d from one anotherw w

in the most important points. ... And yet no confusion ever arouse in Greecem on o .c te account of this diversity of opinions. Nor did the infinite variety of Religionsa and g h s43 Worships among the Ancients ever produce any disorders or confusion..a w w w

m o There are discernible and recurring analogies between Collins’ celebrated.c Discourse te a and the Treatise of Humane Reason written by Martin Clifford,g the sophisticated h s .a secretary to the Second Duke of Buckingham. Clifford’s bookw circulated widely in w w Europe in the form of a French translation by the Unitarian William Popple, adding m o .c fresh impetus to the long-running debate on tolerance betweente Pierre Jurieu, Elie a g 44 h Saurin and Pierre Bayle. Extensive extracts from the twos works found their way, .a w in French translation, into an anonymous treatise (sometimesw attributed to A.-F. w

m Boureau-Deslandes) entitled De la certitude des oconnoissances humaines, ou .c te Examen philosophique des diverses prérogatives dea la Raison et de la Foi; avec g h s un Parallele entre l’une et l’autre: Traduit de l’Anglois,.a par F.A.D.L.V. (London, w 45 w w 1741). In his treatise Clifford did not so much search for a rational foundation m o for morality as recognise a moral dimension in.c rationality. What is important is not te a g what but how individuals believe. All individualsh should responsibly consider the s .a grounds for their beliefs and declare themw honestly, ‘whereas on the contrary side, w w the submitting our judgments to Authority,m or any thing else whatsoever, gives o .c universality and perpetuity to every error’:te a g h s .a w w This variety of opinion neitherw begat any civil war in Greece, neither did the

m Peripateticks (when both by theo strength of their arguments and their Emperour, .c te a that party was become the greatest)g set up any Inquisition, or High Commission h s .a or Committee against thew rest; but every man enjoyed his opinion with more w w 46 safety and freedom, than either his goods and wife. m o .c te a g h In A Discourse concernings the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion .a w (1724), Collins adoptedw a shrewder rhetorical strategy: while reaffirming the w

m o .c te a 43 g [Collins], hDiscourse of Free-Thinking, pp. 52–3, 101. s 44 .a w see [Martinw Clifford], A Treatise of Humane Reason (London, 1674), pp. 87–91, 7– w

10; G. Tarantino,m Martin Clifford (1624–1677). Deismo e tolleranza nell’Inghilterra della o .c Restaurazionete (Florence, 2000); G Tarantino, ‘Martin Clifford and A Treatise of Humane a g h Reason (1674):s A European-Wide Debate’, in Ruth Evelyn Savage (ed.), Philosophy and .a w Religionw in Great Britain and Ireland in the Age of Enlightenment: Essays Presented to w

M.A. Stewartm (Oxford, 2011). o 45.c te see J.L. Carr, ‘A Curious Eighteenth-Century Translation’, Modern Language a g h Reviews , 55 (1960): pp. 575–7. .a w 46 w w [Clifford], Treatise of Humane Reason, pp. 4–5, 7–9. © Copyrighted Material The Books and Times of Anthony Collins (1676–1729) 233 © Copyrighted Material

sole, absolute necessity of the prophetic argument for Christianity, he ends up mby o .c te suggesting that it has to be denied decisive force. In this work Collins considereda g h s five prophetic passages from Matthew’s Gospel (1:22–3, 2:15, 2:23, 11:14, a13:14). . w w None of them, according to Collins, prove that the biblical prophecies occurredw

m literally in the life of Jesus. Almost all the Christian exegetes had interpretedo these .c te a passages ‘in a secondary, or typical, or mystical, or allegorical, or genigmatical h s .a sense, that is, in a sense different from the obvious and literal sense’.w If then w w Christianity is only proven by an allegorical interpretation of prophecies, it m o .c effectively has no certain epistemological prop whatsoever.te In his Histoire a g h Critique Simon had discussed at least three of the five passagess from Matthew .a w considered by Collins (1:21–3, 2:15, 2:23). And Collins expresslyw refers the reader w

m to Simon for a closer analysis of the theme. In the 180 pageso of the second part .c te 47 of Grounds and Reasons, Collins cites Simon at least fortya times. A similar use g h s 48 of Simon’s works can be found in The Scheme of Literal.a Prophecy Considered. w w w Despite the undeniable analogies, however, Collins and Simon depart radically m o in their conclusions. Simon argues that allegory alone.c cannot represent positive te a g proof of the truth of Christianity, unless this allegoricalh interpretation is backed s .a up and handed down by the Catholic tradition. Collins,w on the other hand, is little w w inclined to delegate determination of the contentm of faith to any authority other o .c than individual reason. te a g h The late Richard H. Popkin observeds that one factor contributing to the .a w intellectual crisis of the seventeenth century,w in addition to the circulation of w

m 49 sceptical texts, was the greater availabilityo of the classics of Jewish apologetics. .c te a A series of concomitant circumstancesg favoured greater interest in Jewish culture h s and literature in Protestant Europe..a Besides a widespread millenarianism and w w w the flourishing of Jewish studies, sometimes prompted by a proselytising intent, m o other contributory factors were. c the contemporary debate about tolerance towards te a g religious minorities and the interesth in biblical criticism that emerged in deist or s .a w otherwise heterodox circles.w Collins shared with other Enlightenment authors an w unresolved ambiguity describedm by Adam Sutcliffe as a mixture of admiration for o .c te the Jewish cultural traditiona and intolerance for the ritualism of the uneducated g 50 h s Jewish masses. In the.a Discourse of Free-Thinking, Collins went so far as to w w 51 say that they were anw ‘illiterate, barbarous, and ridiculous people’. His library

m o .c te a g 47 h [Anthonys Collins], A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian .a w Religion, in twow parts (London, 1724), pp. 40, 45–6. w 48 m [Anthonyo Collins], The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered; in a View of the .c te Controversy,a Occasion’d by a late Book, intitled, A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons g h of the Christians Religion (London [= The Hague], 1726). .a w 49 w wR.H. Popkin, ‘Jewish Anti-Christian Arguments as a Source of Irreligion from the

m Seventeentho to the Early Nineteenth-Century’, in M. Hunter and D. Wootton (eds), Atheism .c te froma the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1992), pp. 159–81. g h s 50 .a a. Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2003). w w 51 w [Collins], Discourse of Free-Thinking, p. 157. © Copyrighted Material 234 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material contained many histories of the Jews and Hebrew grammars. He had the République m o des Hébreux (Amsterdam, 1705) by the erudite Dutch scholar Peter van der Kun.c te a g h (Petrus Cunaeus) and a four-volume edition of the Bibliotheca Hebraea (Hamburg,s .a w 1715) by Johann Christoph Wolf (1683–1739), an eminent Hebraist from Hamburgw w whose library collection amounted to some 25,000 volumes. Collins alsom had De o .c te republica Hebraeorum by Carlo Sigonio, De legibus Hebraeoruma ritualibus g h s by John Spencer and Antiquitez Judaïques by Jacques Basnage. .a The auction w w catalogue referred to a collection of ‘tracts relating to the Jews’. Andw amongst the

m o numerous works by Toland there was naturally his Nazarenus, or,.c Jewish, Gentile te a and Mahometan Christianity (1718). In this work, Toland claimedg to have found h s .a the manuscript of a new Gospel, the Gospel of Barnabas, wwhich recorded the w w beliefs of the Nazarenes, the earliest Jewish followers of Christ, who ‘observed m o .c the original precepts of Jesus, while … preserving all that twase of value in Judaism’ a g 52h and rejecting Paul’s teachings as ‘impious innovations’.s .a w Collins had also collected various works relatingw to the Jewish-Christian w

m controversy. Unsurprisingly he had Richard Mayo’so De Veritate religionis .c te Christianae, the Conference between a Papist aand a Jew (1678), Basnage’s g h s Histoire des Juifs and Kidder’s Demonstration .aof the Messias. Significantly, he w w w owned at least two editions of Isaac Troki’s work: a Spanish manuscript entitled m o ‘Fortificacion de la Fé’, and a Latin manuscript.c called ‘Munimen fidei’, which te a g was published by Johann Christoph Wagenseilh as Tela Ignea Satanae: Hoc s .a est, arcani, et horribiles Judaeorum adversusw Christum Deum (Altdorf, 1681). w w

Collins, moreover, possessed two verym rare manuscripts purchased in Holland at o .c great expense: Orobio de Castro’s ‘Prevencioneste Divinas contra la Vana Ydolatria a g h de las Gentes’, and ‘Providencia Divinas de Dios con Israel’ by Saul Levi Mortera, .a w w one of the three chief rabbis of wAmsterdam’s Sephardic community. Mortera’s

m ‘Tratado da verdade da Ley de Mo oisés’, in which the divine inspiration of the New .c te a Testament was denied, circulatedg widely in manuscript. Although it was aimed at h s .a the more radical exponents w of Dutch Protestantism, it was never translated into w w the local language. It circulated principally in the Spanish version produced by m o Chacham Moses Raphael.c de Aguilar entitled ‘Providencia de Dios con Ysrael’ and te a g h other similar variants. s .a w w w

This Mortera wasm the Master of the famous Spinoza; and this Work of his is o .c te esteem’d by thea Jews to be the shrewdest book they have against Christianity. g h s They are forbid,.a under pain of excommunication, to lend it to any christian, for w w fear of drawingw a storm upon themselves for producing such strong objections

m o against. cthe christian religion. Wherefore no copies are to be procur’d of it but by te a 53 g the greatesth accidents. s .a w w w 52 m J. Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton, o .c NJ, 2005),te pp. 40–43. a g h 53 s [Collins], Grounds and Reasons, p. 82. See S.L. Morteira, Tratado da Verdade da .a w w wlei de Moisés, escrito pelo seu próprio punho em portuguès em Amsterdao 1659–1660, ed. © Copyrighted Material The Books and Times of Anthony Collins (1676–1729) 235 © Copyrighted Material

It is noteworthy that Wagenseil’s Tela Ignea Satanae, which was issued in fivem o .c te parts, also included ‘Liber Nizzachon vetus’. Probably written in the thirteentha g h s century in France or Germany, this was one of the most aggressive of alla anti- . w 54 w Christian polemics. ‘Nizzachon’ seems to denote victory, confutation or polemic.w

m It was called ‘vetus’ to distinguish it from a later text of the same name publishedo .c te a in Prague about 1400. g h s .a Collins drew heavily on this very extensive and rare body of controversialistw w w literature to try to demonstrate that the man crucified on Golgotha did not fulfil the m o .c Jews’ messianic expectation of an invincible liberator, and that thete miracles alone a g h were not sufficient to prove his divinity. As Gerard Cragg aptlys notes: ‘If the Bible .a w was a record of Revelation, prophecy and miracle were its twinw supports. To these w

m the defenders of orthodoxy made their appeal; against them,o therefore, the Deists .c 55 te directed their attack.’ ‘Deist’ authors generally shared thea Spinozian view that all g h 56 s events follow the immutable order of nature. While ‘N.a izzachon vetus’ attributed w w w Jesus’ miracles to skilful application of magical arts acquired in Egypt, Collins m o affirmed: ‘Miracles ... can never mark out a Messias,.c Jesus for the Messias, if te 57 a g both are not mark’d out in the Old Testament.’ Thhe Messiah awaited by the Jews s .a would not have disregarded the Mosaic Law. Rwather than healing the wounds of w w the spirit with the promise of future Redemptionm and the bewildering testimony o .c of the cross, the true Messiah would have liftedte them up, like a triumphant prince, a g h from a material condition of privation, oppressions and suffering. .a w w w

m o .c te a Liberty and Power: Conclusions g h s .a w w w Collins’ interest in biblical criticism must not simply be attributed to the erudite m o tastes of a wealthy scholar. As.c the following allusion to the main tolerationist te a g debates of the day clearly shows,h his scholarly interests were prompted by a deep- s .a w w w

H.P. Salomon, Acta Universitatism Conimbrigensis (Coimbra, 1988); M. Saperstein, Exile in o .c Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira’ste Sermons to a Congregation of ‘New Jews’ (Cincinnati, a g h 2005). s .a 54 w Liber Nizzachonw vetus autoris incogniti, ex Ms. Bibliothecae Argentoratensis, in w

m Johann Christoph Wagenseil,o Tela Ignea Satanae: hoc est, Arcani, et horribiles Judaeorum .c te adversus Christum aDeum, et Christianam religionem libri Anekdotoi (Altdorf, 1681), tom. I. g h 55 s g. Cragg,.a Reason and Authority in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1964), w w p. 84. w

56 m r. Burns,o The Great Debate On Miracles: From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume .c te a (Lewisburg,g PA, and London, 1981); J.R. Jacob, Henry Stubbe, Radical Protestantism and the h s Early Enlightenment.a (Cambridge, 1983); L. Simonutti, ‘Spinoza and the English Thinkers. w w Criticismw on Prophecies and Miracles: Blount, Gildon, Earbery’, in W. van Bunge and W.

m Klevero (eds), Disguised and Overt Spinozism Around 1700 (Leiden, 1996), pp. 191–211. .c te a57 g [Collins], Grounds and Reasons, p. 32. Cf. The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High h s Middle.a Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus, with an introduction, translation, and w w wcommentary by D. Berger (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 63–4, 74–6, 262. © Copyrighted Material 236 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material felt moral and political impulse, by a profound aversion for corruption and the m o abuse of political power, and the conviction that theological rather than political.c te a g h legitimisation of secular justice did more harm than good to society: s .a w w w

Nothing can be more forcibly written, to show the impolitickness, the folly,m the o .c te wickedness, and absurdity of beating men into the Gospel or church, thana what g h s we have seen already publish’d in Mr. Bayles Philosophical Commentary.a on w w these words, Compel them to enter; in Mr. Lockes Three Letters for Toleration;w in

m o the Essay concerning the power of the Magistrate in matters of the. creligion; and te a 58 in the late Bangorian Controversy by the Divines of the Church ofg England. h s .a w w w His library shelves did not just house more than 60 titles relating to the Bangorian m o .c controversy and the works of Harrington and Milton, but alsote the Law of Freedom a g h by Gerrard Winstanley; George Fox’s Journal; Monarchys no Creature of God’s .a w Making, one of the first republican treatises (thew author, John Cook, was the w

m Solicitor-General and leading prosecutor at the trialo of Charles I); the Leveller .c te work London’s Liberties (1651); and Nathaniel Bacon’sa Historicall Discourse, a g h s classic of ancient constitutionalism. .a w w w Though perhaps anachronistic, it is not inappropriate to consider Anthony m o Collins – in the words of Gary De Krey – a .‘politicalc radical’, one of ‘those who te a g reject, challenge, or undermine the establishedh political norms or conventions of s .a their day, the intellectual rationales that legitimatew those norms or conventions, and w w 59 the structures of authority that maintain mthem’. Moreover, a recent historiographic o .c debate, in pointing out radicalism’s strongte dependence on context, revealed the a g h limits of a ‘nominalist’ or a ‘substantive’s approach to the study of radicalism, .a w w suggesting a ‘functional’ approachw instead (‘radicalism exists at certain times and

m places and can be recognized by othe functions it performs’). A history of radicalism .c te a might, then, arise out of ‘studyg of the interaction between a history of events and h s 60 .a a history of languages and/orw ideas’. Such an approach fits with the growing w w scholarly recognition that the relationship between ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heterodoxy’ m o in early modern England,.c whether in terms of religious organisation or intellectual te a g 61 h exchange, is dynamic ands symbiotic rather than static and oppositional. .a w w w

m o .c te a 58 g The Schemeh of Literal Prophecy Considered, p. 398. s 59 .a w g. De wKrey, ‘Radicals, Reformers, and Republicans: Academic and Political w

Discourse in Restorationm London’, in A. Houston and S. Pincus (eds), A Nation Transformed. o .c England Afterte the Restoration (Cambridge, 2001), p. 80. a g 60 h Burgess,s ‘Matter of Context’; see also G. Burgess and M. Festenstein (eds), English .a w Radicalism,w 1550–1850 (Cambridge, 2007). w 61 m o n. McDowell, ‘Writing the Literary and Cultural History of Radicalism in the .c te Englisha Revolution’, in M. Caricchio and G. Tarantino (eds), Recent Historiographical g h Trendss of the British Studies (17th & 18th Centuries), Cromohs 11 (2006), .w © Copyrighted Material The Books and Times of Anthony Collins (1676–1729) 237 © Copyrighted Material

The so-called deists were far from unanimous in their political views. Tmhe o .c te Earl of Rochester’s paradoxical fideism can be traced back to a repulsion fora the g h s instrumental rationalism of the latitudinarians, and his heterodoxy to a complexa . w 62 w and volatile ‘radical royalism’. As for Toland, his republicanism was ‘elitew and

m hierarchical’. In his writings, ‘the conceptual assertion “that it is onlyo possible .c te a to be free in a free state” was deployed as a justification for reinforcingg the h s 63 .a independence of the Lords’. Furthermore, to Toland, philosophicalw truth only w w seemed attainable by a very restricted number of people: a civil religion had to m o .c be provided or preserved for everyone else. Collins, on the otherte hand, who had a g h no fideistic leanings whatsoever and was content with the resultss of individual .a w rational investigation, however fallible, set out, in my view, tow undermine any self- w

m serving social or institutional prevarication. o .c te a g h s It is objected, That certain Speculations (tho false) are necessary.a to be impos’d w w w on Men, in order to assist the Magistrate in preserving the Peace of Society: And m o that it is therefore as reasonable to deceive Men into.c Opinions for their own te a g Good, as it is in certain cases to deceive Children.h ... I will grant the Reasoning s .a contain’d in the Objection to be found on a just wPrinciple, viz. That the Good of w w

Society is the Rule of whatever is to be allow’dm or restrain’d; and I will likewise o .c grant, that if Errors are useful to human Society,te they ought to be impos’d: and a g h consequently I must allow the Inference, Thats Thinking ought be restrain’d. But .a w then I affirm, That the Rule is as falsly asw it is irreligiously apply’d, and that both w

m Experience and Reason demonstrateo the Imposition of Speculations, whether .c te a true or false, to be so far from beingg a Benefit, that it has been and must be the h s 64 greatest Mischief that has ever befel.a or can befal Mankind. w w w

m o In 1975, following David L. Jacobson’s.c hypothesis of ten years earlier, David te a g Berman definitively attributedh a number of articles to Collins published inthe s .65a w Independent Whig in 1720.w This was an anti-clerical weekly, written for the w most part by two well-knownm Hanoverian publicists, John Trenchard and Thomas o .c te Gordon. Caroline Robbinsa described it as ‘among the most widely read and g h 66 s important polemical .a works of the reign of George I’. Although short-lived, w w w

m o 62 .c s. Ellenzweig,te ‘The Faith of Unbelief: Rochester’s “Satyre,” Deism, and Religious a g h Freethinking in Seventeenth-Centurys England’, JBS, 44 (2005): p. 34. .a 63 w Champion,w Republican Learning, p. 250. w

64 m [Collins],o Discourse of Free-Thinking, pp. 111–12. .c 65 te a d. gBerman, ‘Anthony Collins’ Essays in the Independent Whig’, Journal of the h s History of.a Philosophy, 13 (1975): pp. 463–69; D.L. Jacobson, The English Libertarian w w Heritage:w From the Writings of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon in The Independent

m Whig oand Cato’s Letters (San Francisco, 1994), p. xxiv. .c te a66 g C. Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman. Studies in the h s Transmission,.a Development and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the w w Restorationw of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (Cambridge, MA, 1959), © Copyrighted Material 238 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material over a period of thirty-five years there were no fewer than seven English and two m o American editions, and, in 1767, a French translation by the Baron of Holbach..c te a g h In article 51 of the Independent Whig, Collins developed a theme expoundeds .a w by Locke; he considered the Church to be a legal association, to which wonly its w members owed obedience. No one, in his view, should be obliged to be mpart of it o .c te or punished for not joining. However, Collins had a much more radicala concept g h s of tolerance than that of his friend and mentor. In the society imagined.a by Locke, w w confessional groups were closed, peacefully coexisting communities.w There was

m o no possibility for an individual to leave a religious community without.c losing their te a civil and political rights. And, in truth, Locke excluded the atheistg from the sphere h s .a of tolerance. Spinoza’s – and Collins’ – vision was different:w every individual w w should be free to express what they believed, while the formation of broad and m o .c 67 influential ecclesiastic hierarchies should be prevented orte checked. a g h s .a w When the Minds of the Youth, and their Passions ...w are bred up to hate the w

m Persons of Men of other Persuasions, to abhor theiro Doctrines, and think it .c te matter of just Disgrace to change the Principles of theira Education: And when all g h s this is taught as the Dictates of the Holy Scriptures;.a must they not, under these w w w Prejudices, read the Scriptures, without understanding them? ... But even this m o is nothing to what those must go through, if.c they dare to understand the Bible te a g differently from what is vulgarly understoodh in the Country where they live: s .a They will be deemed Hereticks. ... Whatw is called Heresy, undoes Men in their w w

Trades and Callings, subjects them to mEcclesiastical and Civil Prosecutions, and o .c 68 deprives them of all Preferments in thete Church or State. a g h s .a w w The ‘Independent Whigs’ sharedw the Calvinist view that human beings are

m fundamentally depraved and constantlyo vulnerable to the temptation of money, .c te a and deduced from this that it gwas necessary to vigilantly monitor the integrity of h s .a those designated to govern: w‘Almost all men would follow evil, if they found their w w greatest advantage or pleasure in it’. They stressed the inescapable ambivalence m o of power, which is at one.c and the same time a precondition and a threat to liberty. te a g h ‘And whereas power can,s and for the most part does, subsist where liberty is not, .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w p. 115. See alsom R.S. Crane and F.B. Kaye, A Census of British Newspapers and Periodicals, o .c 1620–1800 t(London,e 1979), p. 49; G. Tarantino, ‘Le Symbole d’un Laïque: il “catechismo a g h repubblicano”s di Thomas Gordon’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 112 (2010): pp. 386–464. .a 67 w w see J. Israel, Locke, Spinoza and the Philosophical Debate concerning Toleration w in the mEarly Enlightenment (c.1670–c.1750) (Amsterdam, 1999), pp. 5–20. o 68.c te a [Anthony Collins], The Enmity of the High Church to the Bible, in The Independent g h Whigs , The Fifth Edition (2 vols, London, 1732), 2 (no. XXXVII, Wednesday, 28 September .a w w w1720), pp. 308, 309. © Copyrighted Material The Books and Times of Anthony Collins (1676–1729) 239 © Copyrighted Material

liberty cannot subsist without power; so that she has, as it were, the enemy alwaysm o 69 .c te at her gates.’ a g h s At the beginning of this essay I mentioned that moral determinism anda the . w w primacy of the Law are two key elements in Collins’ radicalism. I will wtry now

m to conclude by clarifying this connection. Collins engaged in the diatribeo with .c te a Samuel Clarke and in other writings on issues relating closely to theg materiality h s .a of the soul and human liberty. The deficiencies in intelligence and w memory found w w in children and the elderly persuaded him that human thought is characterised by m o .c generation, succession and corruption, just like any other materialte process. As for a g h the concept of liberty, it appeared to him to be contradictory, ins that it presupposes .a w the possibility of a cause without an effect. w w

m o .c te [There] can be no liberty but what supposes the certaintya and necessity of all g h s events. True liberty therefore is consistent with necessity,.a and ought not to be w 70 w w oppos’d to it, but only to compulsion. m o .c te a g In his claim that ‘liberty is compatible with necessity’,h Thomas Hobbes had been s .a extremely influential: ‘preferences are not up tow us; volitions are preferences; so w w 71 volitions are not up to us’. In choosing betweenm two objects, we are led to opt for o .c the one that attracts us most, that seems to bete the best or at any rate the lesser of a g 72 h two evils. ‘It is a matter of experience, thats man is ever determin’d in his willing .a 73 w or acts of volition and choice.’ Implicitw in Collins’ doctrine of liberty was the w

m intention to undermine the clerical presumptiono to determine and judge what is .c te a just or unjust, impious or wise. But itg was also closely bound up with his rejection h s of Cartesian dualism and a philosophical.a affinity with the Spinozian reductio ad w w w unum of thought and extension. Finally, there is the question of moral content. m o In Collins’ view, this is entirely.c determined by the requirements of peaceful te a g social coexistence. Subjectively,h Collins’ morality is ‘rigorously hedonist’. The s .a w human being is a necessaryw agent, determined by pleasure and pain. What makes w crime immoral is the painm of punishment, which has nothing to do with moral o .c te judgement of the individual,a but is exclusively about the well-being and cohesion g 74 h s of the community. I.ta is the law, understood as social convention rather than as w w w

m o 69 .c J. Trenchardte and T. Gordon, Cato’s Letters: or, Essays on Liberty, Civil and a g h Religious, and others Important Subjects, (ed.) R. Hamowy (4 vols in 2, Indianapolis, 1995), .a w 2, no. 40 (5 Augustw 1721), p. 280; 1, no. 33 (17 June 1721), p. 239. w 70 [Anthonym Collins], An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason in Propositions, the o .c te Evidence whereofa depends upon Human Testimony (London, 1707), p. 50. g 71 h Harris,s Of Liberty and Necessity, pp. 7–8, 57. .a w 72 w w[Collins], Essay Concerning Use of Reason, pp. 45–50; BL, Add. MS 4282, fols

m 129v–130.o .c 73te a g [Anthony Collins], A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (London, h s 1717),.a p. 52. w w 74 w Taranto, Du déisme à l’athéisme, pp. 332, 415, 421, 422. © Copyrighted Material 240 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material something imposed from on high, that determines morality and commits everyone, m o without exception, to adhere to it. Anti-revelation, anti-authoritarianism, moral.c te a g h determinism, primacy of the Law: what is radical in Collins’ thought is not justs his .a w refusal of any metaphysical justification of the established temporal and wspiritual w orders, but also his rebuttal of any paternalistic and elite alibi for a civil religion.m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

Chapter 12 m o .c te a g h s William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture,.a w w w

m o and the Nature of Radicalism .c te a g h s .a Jason McElligott w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m Introduction o .c te a g h s William Hone was a far from prosperous bookseller who.a traded from a succession w w w of small shops in Fleet Street, Old Bailey, The Strand, Ludgate Hill and Paternoster m o Row in the quarter of a century before 1826. He was.c a minor figure in London te a g radical circles but was propelled to national prominenceh in 1817 by the decision s .a of the Attorney General to try him on three separatew charges of blasphemous w w 1 libel. By 1832 he had rejected progressivem politics and embraced reaction, o .c yet his earlier stance proved to be an inspirationte to freethinkers throughout the a g h 2 nineteenth century, most famously in a notoriouss blasphemy trial of 1883. Hone .a w was the subject of a useful biography publishedw in 1912 but thereafter he received w

m little, if any, attention until the worko of Ann Hone and Marcus Wood, which .c te a illuminated important aspects of earlyg nineteenth-century radical networks and h s political culture. In recent years, Kyle.a Grimes has done much to rescue Hone w w w from obscurity, most notably with his excellent on-line resource of Hone-related m o material, and Ben Wilson has produced.c a very readable portrait of Hone as a key te a g 3 figure in the development of h a free press in Britain. s .a w The relatively scant literaturew on Hone presents him as a moderate radical who w was interested primarily min peaceful political reform. This essay will sketch an o .c te outline of Hone’s politicala beliefs. In so doing, it will demonstrate that Hone was g h s much more socially and.a politically radical than has recently been acknowledged, w w w

m o .c 1 te throughouta this chapter I use the term ‘radical’ in the sense of ‘functional radicalism’, g h s as developed by .aJ. Colin Davis in ‘Radicalism in a traditional society: the evaluation of w w radical thoughtw in the English Commonwealth 1649–1660’, History of Political Thought,

m 3, no. 2 (1982):o pp. 192–213. .c 2 te a J. Mg arsh, Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture and Literature in Nineteenth-Century h s England (Chicago,.a IL, 1998), pp. 18–60. w 3 w w F.W. Hackwood, William Hone: His Life and Times (1912; reprinted New York, m o 1970);.c A. Hone, For the Cause of Truth: Radicalism in London, 1796–1821 (Oxford, te a 1982);g M. Wood, Radical Satire and Print Culture, 1790–1822 (Oxford, 1994); B. Wilson, h s The.a Laughter of Triumph. William Hone and the Fight for the Free Press (London, 2005). w w Forw Grimes’s ‘William Hone BioText Project’, see http://www.uab.edu/english/hone/. © Copyrighted Material 242 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material and that he was interested in changing much more than the system of political m o representation in Parliament. It will be suggested that Hone’s encyclopaedic.c te a g h knowledge of early-modern print-culture – in particular, his interest in the Levellers .a w leader John Lilburne – provides important evidence against which to testw recent w assertions about the impossibility of tracing a British radical tradition acrossm the o 4 .c te early modern period and beyond. Finally, it will also be suggested thata historians g h s of radicalism need to read a variety of texts in much more sophisticated.a ways w w than they have hitherto done; Hone’s career demonstrates that it isw necessary to

m o deploy a range of tools to ascertain what radicals were saying.c in public, what te a they were deliberately not saying in public, and how and why theyg chose between h s .a the options of speaking plainly, encoding their messages orw remaining silent at w w particular points in time. m o .c te a g h s .a w The Social, Political and Economic Radicalism of Williamw Hone w

m o .c te William Hone was born in Bath in 1780, though hisa family moved to London when g h s he was a child. In 1800, aged twenty, he began to.a trade as a bookseller; a business w w w which he followed with varying degrees of failure for the next three decades. He m o died in the capital ten years after the Reform.c Bill of 1832. Hone came from a te a g conservative, evangelical Christian backgroundh and became interested in politics s .a at a very young age. In his autobiography whe recorded hearing from a neighbour, at w w the age of nine, of the fall of the Bastille.m He and his family followed subsequent o .c events in France in the London newspapers,te and often had a map of Europe to a g h hand so that they could chart the movementss of armies across the Continent. At the .a w w age of twelve he penned a six-versew doggerel poem against the French Revolution,

m which was published by the Ao ssociation for Preserving Liberty and Property .c te 5 a against Republicans and Levellers.g In 1796, he signalled his conversion to the h s .a side of the reformers by joiningw the London Corresponding Society (LCS). This w w conversion – at, it must be said, a particularly inauspicious time for the friends m o of liberty – was brought.c about by an intoxicating mixture of youthful rebellion te a g h against his conservatives religious upbringing; discussions about politics with .a w friends, colleagues, andw neighbours; exposure to contemporary printed news and w

m pamphlets; and, aso we shall see, his passion for (and access to) printed items from .c te the sixteenth anda seventeenth centuries. It is not known how active Hone was g h s in the LCS, or .a when he left the organisation. The only thing that is clear about w w these years isw that, through a programme of voracious reading, he constructed for

m o himself a ‘rational’.c form of religion that admired the person of Jesus Christ but te a g viewed theh Bible as nothing more than an intriguing historical text. s .a w w w 4 m G. Burgess and M. Festenstein (eds), English Radicalism, 1550–1850 (Cambridge, o .c 2007),te pp. 1–12, 62–81, 218–35, 313–31; B. Worden, Roundhead Reputations: The English a g h Civils Wars and the Passions of Posterity (London, 2001). .a w 5 w w [William Hone], The Contrast [1792] s.sh., copy at BL, Add. MS 40,120, fol. 2r. © Copyrighted Material William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture and the Nature of Radicalism 243 © Copyrighted Material

It is impossible to delineate the exact contours of Hone’s political beliefs at anym o .c te point in time, or to trace how his ideas evolved and changed. Hone spoke loudlya g h s against what he disapproved of – corruption, oppression, tyranny, and bigotrya – . w w but individuals can define these terms in any number of ways, and nowherew in his

m voluminous surviving public pamphlets or private letters and papers doeso Hone .c te 6 a ever spell out precisely what he wanted. Hone’s published works g are usually h s .a placed firmly within a broad, constitutionalist idiom of reform. Theyw condemned w w current abuses but tended to place the blame on one person – in Hone’s case, m o .c usually the Prince Regent, who succeeded to the throne in 1821 aste George IV – or a g h a small clique of ministers. They implied, moreover, that that thes system could be .a w successfully reformed once this person or clique had been removedw from power. w

m It is natural to assume that this position represents Hone’so actual politics, but it .c te was a common strategy for reforming polemicists to insinuatea themselves within g h s this mainstream constitutionalist discourse in order to .aplant ‘seemingly innocent w w w and benign ideas from which revolutionary implications could be drawn’. In other m o words, attention to the literal and surface meaning .cof a text can miss entirely the te a 7 g intended message of the piece: texts may have hadh decidedly radical undertones. s .a During the 1810s we catch a number of tantalisingw glimpses of Hone working w w with a group of like-minded men who believedm in non-violent parliamentary o .c reform. In June 1810 he was prominentte among those who organised the a g h enthusiastic welcome for the moderate reformists MP Sir Francis Burdett on his .a w release from imprisonment for libel uponw the privileges of the House of Commons, w

m and four years later he collected moneyo for the relief of Lord Cochrane who had .c te a been framed on charges of corruptiong after bringing to light serious abuses in the h 8 s administration of the Royal Navy. .Yet,a it would be a mistake to assume that Hone w w w was only, or even primarily, interested in franchise reform. He had broader social m o interests, including religious liberty.c for Roman Catholics and racial equality for te a g black Africans. He was a long-standingh supporter of Catholic Emancipation and s .a w seems to have drafted a petitionw to Parliament in the mid-1820s which attacked w the restrictions upon Romanm Catholics as ‘anti-Christian, unjust, and in spirit o .c 9 te subversive of the Protestanta principle’. In 1810, the alleged son of Toussaint g h s L’Ouverture, the heroic.a leader of a West Indian slave revolt who had died in 1803, w w was living as one ofw the family in Hone’s house in London. The one surviving

m letter from Hone too the young boy reveals his concern for the physical well-being .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o 6 .c te J. Epstein,a Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual and Symbol in England, g h 1790–1850s (Oxford, 1994), pp. 20, 26; D. Worrall, Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance .a w w and Surveillance,w 1790–1820 (London, 1992), p. 110.

7 m o m. Philp, ‘On Not Inventing the English Revolution’, in Burgess and Festenstein .c te (eds),a English Radicalism, pp. 143, 147. g h s 8 .a Wilson, Laughter of Triumph, p. 63; Hackwood, William Hone, pp. 86–90. w w 9 w BL, Add. MS 40,120, fol. 252r. © Copyrighted Material 244 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

10 and intellectual development of his charge. As late as 1821 Hone defended the m o memory of the French Revolution and condemned the ‘Continental Despots’ .andc te a g h English ministers who had conspired ‘to crush the rising liberties of France’s in .a w the mid-1790s. He ignored the Revolutionary Terror and admitted that w France w had committed ‘acts of military aggression’ when it ‘fell back into Slavery’m under o .c te Napoleon, but claimed that the wars against France had been directed ‘againsta the g h 11 s best interests of mankind’. Such a spirited defence of the Revolution.a at such a w w late date, long after many other men had renounced their youthful wenthusiasm for

m o events across the Channel, is a telling indication of the likely nature.c and extent of te 12 a Hone’s politics. g h s .a Hone was also interested in economic reforms that might walleviate the distress w w of the poor and, in particular, the reform of the criminal justice system. In 1806, for m o .c example, he and his then business partner John Bone, anotherte former member of a g h the London Corresponding Society, convened a public meetings at a tavern near St .a w Paul’s. They planned to replace the Poor Laws with somethingw called ‘Tranquillity’, w

m a scheme which would be part savings bank, insuranceo office and employment .c te exchange. It was not unlike a system of National Insurance,a but in the absence of g h s either state support or sponsorship from wealthy.a men the scheme was doomed to w w w failure; those who needed it most were precisely those who were least likely to m o 13 be able to put aside a few pence every week.c in anticipation of future distress. te a g Hone was particularly concerned with tryingh to reform the notorious abuses and s .a inequities of the criminal justice system.w His near-constant state of financial w w embarrassment and his several bankruptciesm ensured that he took a particular o .c 14 interest in the reform of the laws concerningte the imprisonment of debtors. In a g h 1814, he took it upon himself to exposes the inhuman and degrading treatment .a w w meted out to prisoners in the lunaticw asylum of Bethlem, and was instrumental in

m the drawing-up of plans for a new,o altogether more rational and humane form of .c 15 te a asylum. The following year gsaw the publication of a damning indictment of the h s .a legal system; a comprehensivelyw researched pamphlet which demonstrated that a w w young servant girl named E liza Fenning had recently been sent to the gallows by a m o vindictive, partial judge on.c the basis of nothing more than circumstantial evidence te a g 16 h supported by lies, fabricationss and inventions. Hone was particularly concerned .a w w w

m 10 o Wilson, Laughter.c of Triumph, p. 63; Hackwood, William Hone, pp. 83–4; William te a Wordsworth, The Completeg Poetical Works (London, 1888). h s 11 .a BL, Add.w MS 40,120, fols 168r–169r. w 12 w BL, A dd. MS 40,120, fol. 169r. See also W. Hone, The Right Divine of Kings to m o Govern Wrong!.c (London, 1821), unpaginated [p. 12]. te a 13 g h Wilson,s Laughter of Triumph, p. 4; Hackwood, William Hone, p. 74; A. Hone, For .a w the Causew of Truth, p. 32. w 14 m BL, Add. MS 40,120, fols 162r–v, 196r–197r. o 15.c te BL, Add. MS 40,856, fols 2r–3v; BL, Add. MS 40,120, fols 49r–50v. a g h 16 s William Hone The Important Results of an Elaborate Investigation into the .a w w wMysterious Case of Elizabeth Fenning (2 pts, London, 1815). © Copyrighted Material William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture and the Nature of Radicalism 245 © Copyrighted Material

to defend the principle of habeas corpus and the right to trial by a jury of one’sm o .c te peers. For him, as for many other radicals, the right to trial by jury was the essencea g h s of English liberty: the great bulwark against tyranny which had limited the abilitya . w w of successive administrations to impose their will upon free-born Englishmen.w

m Without the fundamental right to be tried by a jury, the reform of the o franchise .c te 17 a was, or would be rendered, meaningless. g h s .a In the five years or so after 1817 Hone worked with thew illustrator George w w Cruickshank to produce sixteen skilful satires of, and parodies upon, the regime. m o .c Many of these items focussed on the plight of the poor, and theirte extraordinary a g h success was due in large part to the almost perfect combinations of Cruickshank’s .a w skill in drawing striking – and deceptively simplistic – imagesw which related w

m directly to the words penned by Hone. Hone’s attacks on theo Prince Regent as the .c te ‘dandy of sixty [years of age], / who bows with a grace a / And has taste in wigs, g h s collars, cuirasses, and lace’ would not have had the same.a bite in the absence of w w w Cruickshank’s drawings of the aging prince as a corpulent, indolent and drunken m o debauchee; the visual contrast between his large backside.c and pot-belly and the te a 18 g emaciated children of the poor is striking even almosth two hundred years later. s .a At first glance the Bank Restriction Note of 1819w looks like a real banknote, but w w on closer inspection it becomes clear that the poundm sign has been replaced with a o .c curling hangman’s rope; the name of the Governorte of the Bank of England is given a g h as the eponymous hangman ‘J. Ketch’; ands the serial number of note has been .a w 19 replaced with the lifeless bodies of elevenw hanged men and women. This was a w

m powerful attack on the hypocrisy of a ogovernment which allowed the production .c te a of banknotes which were easily forgedg and then hanged hungry men, women and h s children for passing them off in shops..a Hone intended it to reach into ‘every nook w w w 20 and cranny where a Bank note goes’. At least one contemporary who saw the m o Bank Restriction Note before its.c publication believed that this flimsy piece of paper te a g was ‘worth fifty folio volumes’h of written polemic, and hoped that ‘some real good s 21 .a w may arise from it’. He wasw proved right; within a few days of its appearance the w

Bank of England withdrewm its easily forged notes and began to replace them with o .c te a more secure form of papera currency. g h s .a w w w

m Encoding Tyrannicideo .c te a g h s .a Hone’s best-sellingw pamphlet The Man in the Moon, which was published in the w w first weeks of 1820, is ostensibly nothing more than a witty satire againstthe m o .c te a g 17 h Epstein,s Radical Expression, p. 65. .a 18 w w wThe Political House That Jack Built (London, 1819); The Queen’s Matrimonial

m Laddero (London, 1820). .c 19te a For an on-line copy of this ‘banknote’, see http://libraries.adelphi.edu/bar/hone/. g h s 20 .a BL, Add. MS 40,120, fol. 115r. w w 21 w BL, Add. MS 40,120, fols 116v–17r. © Copyrighted Material 246 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Prince Regent, but when one reads the text in conjunction with the paratext it is m o 22 possible to recover something of Hone’s mindset at that particular point in time..c te a g h The text begins with the anonymous author recounting that he had recently dreamts .a w that he went to the moon in a balloon and there found that everything resembledw w that which he had left behind on earth. The author happened to see the ‘Princem of o .c te Lunataria’ on his way to deliver a ‘grand oration’ to the members of ahis Senate. g h s He followed the Prince and recorded the speech, which began with .athe less than w w statesman-like: ‘I grieve to say, / That poor old Dad, / Is just asw __ bad’. The

m o allusion to the long-standing illness of George III that would have.c been clear to te a all readers. The Prince apologised for dragging the Senators fromg their country h s .a estates but told them the shocking news that ‘CONSPIRACYw and TREASON w w are abroad’. He demanded decisive measures ‘to quell the Radicals, / and save m o .c our bacon’, and suggested that the hungry of the nation teshould be forced to eat a g h ‘STEEL LOZENGES’ – that is, soldiers’ bayonets – ands that all due care should .a w be taken to prevent the ‘circulation of little books’ producedw by the radicals. At the w

m end of the Prince’s speech, the author heard a loud o noise which consisted of the .c te groans of those imprisoned in dungeons, the moansa of starving children, and the g h s din of war. He awoke from his dream and found .ahimself on earth again. w w w There is nothing particularly seditious about this pamphlet until one reads the m o two epigraphs at the start of the text in their.c original context. The first, on the te a g title-page itself, is from Shakespeare’s Cymbelineh : ‘if Caesar can hide the Sun s .a with a blanket, or put the Moon in his pocket,w we will pay him tribute for light.’ w w

Cruickshank’s illustration below this quotationm demonstrates the impossibility of o .c the stocky, corpulent ‘Prince of Lunataria’te ever managing to achieve such a heroic a g h feat: he deserves only ridicule, not stribute or respect. Yet, the deeper meaning of .a w w the epigraph is clear from the contextw of Act III, Scene I of Shakespeare’s play,

m in which the Roman official o Caius Lucius informs the British king Cymbeline .c te a that he has not paid the necessaryg yearly tribute to Caesar. Cymbeline’s queen h s .a reminds him of the heroic resistancew of the ancient Britons to the Romans, and his w w son Cloten speaks the words quoted by Hone (‘if Caesar can hide the Sun …’) as m o a way of asserting that his.c father should refrain from prostrating himself before te a g h the tyrant. Cymbeline sthen asserts that it is fitting for a ‘warlike people, whom we .a w reckon / Ourselves tow be’ to throw off Roman tyranny, and draws encouragement w

m from the other peopleso in Europe who ‘for / Their liberties are now in arms’. .c te The theme ofa armed resistance to tyranny is continued in the second of the g h s epigraphs quoted.a at the start of The Man in the Moon: w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a 22 w wFor Hone’s authorship, probably in conjunction with another unknown writer, see w

m BL, Aodd. MS 40,120, fol. 127r, and Add. MS 41,071, fol. 2r. The two poems at the end of .c te the pamphleta were solely the work of Hone, as were, in all likelihood, the two epigraphs at g h thes start of the text. For an example of a reader who understood that there were meanings .a w w encodedw in the text, see The News, no. 753 (16 January 1820), p. 20. © Copyrighted Material William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture and the Nature of Radicalism 247 © Copyrighted Material

is there not m o .c te Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, a g h Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the men s .a w w Who owe their greatness to their country’s ruin? w

m o .c te a Unlike the quotation from Shakespeare, Hone did not provide his readersg with the h s .a source of these lines: they are from Act I, Scene I of Joseph Addison’sw play Cato, w 23 w which was first performed in 1713. Cato (95–46 bc) was a Roman senator; a m o .c noble, heroic and high-minded defender of the republic, who committedte suicide a g h rather than surrender to the victorious tyrant Julius Caesar. Addison’ss play opens .a w with Caesar marching on the beleaguered members of the Romanw Senate who had w

m taken refuge in the North African town of Utica. The odds areo heavily against Cato .c te but he is determined to fight ‘the cause / Of honour, virtue,a liberty, andRome ’, and g h s tries to rally his supporters with a speech to the Senate which.a begins: ‘Fathers, we w w w once again are met in council. / Caesar’s approach has summon’d us together, / m o And Rome attends her fate from our resolves’. Cato’s.c oration ends with a rousing te a g call to arms: ‘A day, an hour of virtuous liberty,h / Is worth a whole eternity in s .a bondage’. At the end of the play, with the fall ofw Utica imminent, Cato commits w w suicide, but as he dies news arrives that Spainm has risen against Caesar. Portius, o .c one of Cato’s sons, is left to lament: ‘Were teCato at their head, once more might a g h 24 Rome / Assert her rights, and claim her liberty’.s As with the first epigraph from .a w Shakespeare, there is hope for the futurew because there are brave souls in Europe w

m who are in arms against tyranny. o .c te a At one level, the reader is merelyg meant to contrast the nobility of Cato and h s the imbecility of the Prince Regent..a Yet, the deeper, violent undertone of The Man w w w in the Moon is clear when one looks at the context of Hone’s second epigraph in m o the original play by Addison. I.cn Act I, Scene I, Cato’s sons Marcus and Portius te a g contemplate the relentless forwardh march of Caesar, and Marcus is made to say: s .a w w w

I’m tortured, even to madness,m when I think o .c te On the proud victor: aevery time he’s named g h s Pharsalia rises to my.a view! – I see w w Th’ insulting tyrant,w prancing o’er the field

m Strow’d with Romeo ’s citizens, and drench’d in slaughter, .c te a His Horse’s hoofsg wet with Patrician blood! h s .a Oh Portius,w is there not some chosen curse, w w Some hidden thunder in the stores of Heaven, m o .c Red withte uncommon wrath, to blast the man, a g 25 h Whos owes his greatness to his country’s ruin? .a w w w

23 m o A.C. Guthkelch (ed.), The Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Addison, Vol. I: Poems .c te and aPlays (London, 1914), pp. 335–420. g h s 24 .a Addison, Cato, I, i, 31–32; II, i, 7–9; II, i, 99–100; II, ii, 28–32; V, iv, 58–59. w w 25 w ibid., I, i, 15–24. © Copyrighted Material 248 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Caesar’s brutal victory at the battle of Pharsalus in 48 bc forced the few remaining m o defenders of the republic to flee to North Africa. The Man in the Moon was.c te a 26 g h composed between late December 1819 and late January 1820, and it iss hard .a w not to read Pharsalus as a metaphor for the slaughter at Peterloo in Augustw 1819. w

If the message of Hone’s second epigraph was the necessity of tyrannicide,m it is o .c te perhaps significant that he silently changed the original call to destroya ‘the man, g h s / Who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin’, to the more general.a ‘the men / w w Who owe their greatness to their country’s ruin’. The change is unlikelyw to have

m o been accidental. He was probably broadening the call for vengeance.c to include te a the leading ministers of the administration: George Canning, Lgord Sidmouth and h s 27 .a Lord Castlereagh. w w w Hone’s call for the assassination of the Prince Regent and some of his leading m o .c ministers is clear, but it would perhaps be incorrect to characterisete Hone’s politics a g h as ‘republican’ at this point in time. His intimate knowledges of the English Civil .a w Wars of the 1640s and the Commonwealth and Protectoratew of the 1650s (which w

m will be examined below in the last section) may haveo convinced him that it was .c te possible to have the constitutional form of a republica – but for the citizens of that g h s state to be unfree, and perhaps even less free than. athey had been under monarchical w w w government. Hone may have followed those eighteenth-century thinkers who m o admired the execution of Charles I as ‘the .cexemplary punishment of a tyrant’, te a g 28 but did not necessarily favour the subsequenth abolition of the monarchy. On s .a the other hand, he may have mimicked wthose late-seventeenth- and eighteenth- w w century republicans who, conscious ofm the terrible posthumous reputation of the o .c English Commonwealth, publicly supportedte a monarchy but secretly desired to a g h eviscerate the power of the monarch.s The outward form of government would .a w w remain the same, but there wouldw be such a fundamental shift in the balance of

m constitutional power that the kingo would be reduced to a figurehead: ‘a convenient .c te 29 a detail, certainly, but a disposableg one’. It is perhaps more likely, however, that h s .a Hone was merely ‘Red withw uncommon wrath’ in the aftermath of Peterloo and w w that, although he knew what he was against, he was less sure of the exact nature of m o the positive changes that. c could or should be enacted by the reformers. te a g h s .a w w w

m Blasphemous Rumourso .c te a g h s Hone was catapulted.a to national prominence in December 1817 by the ill-fated w w decision of thew government to try him for blasphemous libel. In fact, he faced not

m o .c te a 26 g h BL,s Add. MS 40,120, fol. 127r; BL, Add. MS 41,071, fol. 2r. .a 27 w wThe Man in the Moon was dedicated, sarcastically, to George Canning. This w dedicationm and two rhymes appended to the end of the main text also attacked Sidmouth o .c and Castlereaghte in the strongest possible terms. a g h 28 s Worden, Roundhead Reputations, p. 153. .a w 29 w w ibid., pp. 10, 139, 112–13, 114, 139, 210. © Copyrighted Material William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture and the Nature of Radicalism 249 © Copyrighted Material

merely one trial but three separate trials on three consecutive days. The immediatem o .c te pretext for the prosecutions was three parodies which he had published againsta the g h s government earlier that year: John Wilkes’s Catechism of a Ministerial Membera , . w w The Political Litany and The Sinecurist’s Creed. Each of these parodies usedw the

m form of a part of the Book of Common Prayer but changed the content too ridicule .c te 30 a the government and its hangers-on. g h s .a During the Napoleonic wars, criticisms of the corruption andw venality of w w England’s rulers had fallen largely on deaf ears due to a mixture of patriotic m o .c sentiment, high wages and full employment. Yet, for many of Georgete III’s subjects, a g h the peace dividend after 1815 consisted of hunger and economics dislocation and, .a w in such circumstances, the regime’s flagrant venality began wto rankle. The violent w

m Spa Fields Riots of 1816, the greatly increased circulationo of the radical and .c te republican press, and the hostile reception given to the Princea Regent whenever g h s he appeared in public, showed the depth of the alienation.a of large sections of the w w w people from their rulers. In 1817, a severely rattled government passed a number m o of repressive pieces of legislation, including the suspension.c of the Habeas Corpus te a g Act. The government was also anxious to teachh the radical press a lesson and s .a Hone was evidently carefully selected for punishmentw because it was believed w w that it could be suggested that his offences werem not against the Prince Regent, but o .c against God and the Church ‘as by law established’.te What juror could possibly a g h side with this impecunious, radical booksellers against the Almighty? .a w It is not possible here to do full justicew to Hone’s speeches at his trial in w

m December 1817, which have been describedo as among the greatest ever made in .c 31 te a an English court. The parodies producedg much mirth from the public gallery as h s they were read into the official record.a by the clerk, yet Hone went out of his way w w w to condemn those who laughed. He faced the Anglican burghers of the jury with m o a simple strategy. He acknowledged.c that he was not a member of the Church of te a g England but presented himselfh as a man of independent mind, good character, s .a w sober disposition and religiousw sensibilities who had been vindictively persecuted w by a government which mwas determined to erode the fundamental liberties of o 32 .c te England. He argued thata parodies were as old as printing; there had never been g h s a prosecution for parody;.a and he had parodied the government, not the Church or w w religion. His had beenw a political not a religious act. Indeed, men should not be

m punished for reasoned,o rational arguments made in good faith. He recognised, he .c te a said, when addressingg the jury: h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h 30 s The.a Three Trials of William Hone for Publishing Three Parodies (3 pts, London, w w 1818), pp.w 9–10, 82.

31 m o Wilson, Laughter of Triumph, pp. 222–59; E.P. Thompson, The Making of the .c te a Englishg Working Class (London, 1963), p. 721. See J. McElligott, ‘Rethinking Hone’s h s Blasphemy.a Trials of 1817’ (forthcoming). w w 32 w Three Trials of William Hone, pp. 18–19, 120, 158–9. © Copyrighted Material 250 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

that the political opinions of the gentlemen of the jury might be opposed to his m o own. But here the difficulty was trifling, because he was sure that prejudices .c te a g h were fast wearing away; that men, as they intermixed more kindly, respected thes .a w conscientious opinions of each other: and believing, as he did most sincerely,w w

that opinions wholly opposed to his views were honestly entertained by mostm o .c te respectable and worthy men, he also believed that such men would givea him g h s credit for as much honesty in his persuasions, and thus each would tolerate.a the w w other. He therefore, from a jury of enlightened merchants of the City ofw London,

m o claimed their protection of his right to express his opinions, opposed,.c as he te a imagined they might be, to their own; and he was persuaded, that gjust and liberal h s .a feelings would rally in the hearts of his jurymen, and that theyw would do unto w 33 w him as they would that men should do unto them. m o .c te a g h This appeal to the ‘honesty’ and ‘just and liberal feelings’s of a jury of ‘enlightened .a w merchants of the City of London’ was a powerful, and highlyw successful, rhetorical w

m tool. It could stand as the archetype of Jürgen Habermas’so model of a reasoned, .c te enlightened, rational and independent bourgeoisa public sphere – and should, g h s incidentally, serve as a warning about the futility.a of trying to locate a ‘public w w 34 w sphere’ amid the sectarian strife of Tudor and S tuart England. m o The Attorney General opened the case for.c the prosecution by reference to the te a g 1662 Act of Uniformity which protected hthe Established Church from ridicule. s .a Hone, for his part, stood on the Revolutionw of 1688 and likened the government w w 35 to the Stuarts and their hated Court of Sm tar Chamber. The central element in his o .c defence was a collection of more thante eighty parodies from old books, pamphlets a g h and visual prints, which he used to sshow how commonplace and uncontroversial .a w w religious parodies had been sincew the first invention of printing. The earliest of

m these sources was a parody by Martino Luther on the first verse of the first Psalm. .c te a And if there was a single momentg in each trial when the jury decided to acquit h s .a Hone it was probably, if onew can judge by the murmurs of disapproval from the w w public gallery, when the A ttorney General stood up to rebut Hone’s defence and m o remarked that Martin Luther.c should have been prosecuted for blasphemy if he te a g 36 h had indeed published sthe piece quoted by Hone. One need hardly remark that .a w it was disastrous for wthe Attorney General to have aligned himself with the Pope w

m and to have reinforcedo the link between Hone and Luther in front of a Protestant .c te a g h s 33 .a Three Trialsw of William Hone, p. 128. w w 34 Cf. P.m Lake and S. Pincus, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern o .c England’, JBSte , 45 (2006): pp. 270–92; P. Lake and S. Pincus (eds), The Politics of the a g h Public Spheres in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007). For an overview of the .a w serious conceptualw weaknesses in early modern British historians’ use of the term ‘public w sphere’,m see J. McElligott, ‘The Perils of Print Culture: EEBO, ECCO and the I-Generation’ o .c (forthcoming).te a g h 35 s Three Trials of William Hone, pp. 94, 125, 141–2. .a w 36 w w ibid., pp. 64, 131, 151. © Copyrighted Material William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture and the Nature of Radicalism 251 © Copyrighted Material

jury. Hone’s acquittal at the end of each day’s trial, and his acclamation at them o .c te end of the third day by a crowd of over 20,000 Londoners outside the Guildhall,a g h s showed the powerlessness of the government and earned him a national reputationa . w 37 w as the defender of constitutional freedom and liberty of the press. He wasw now

m effectively beyond censure by the government; they would not risk yeto further .c te a public humiliation by trying him again. g h s .a William St Clair has rightly warned about the huge exaggerationw of print-runs w w by authors and booksellers during this period in order to enhance the desirability m 38 o .c of their products. Be that as it may, Hone’s satires and parodieste do seem to have a 39 g h sold like ‘wildfire’. The Political House that Jack Built (1819),s an attack on the .a w lawyers, soldiers, clerics and courtiers who underpinned royalw power, apparently w

m sold more than 100,000 copies in a few months, and sales ofo The Man in the Moon .c 40 te (1820) seem to have been comparable. During the turbulenta years between 1819 g h s and 1821, Hone’s populist arguments against tyranny, corruption,.a and oppression w w w found a ready audience throughout Britain. Yet the political temperature cooled m o decisively during the early 1820s. The ill-advised Cato.c Street Conspiracy alienated te a g moderate reformist opinion from the republicanh ultra-radicals who advocated s .a violence. This occurred just as the economy beganw to improve and the first moves w w were made to prune the bloated Civil List, reformm the criminal code, cut taxes o .c 41 and remove the most flagrant abuses of power.te Hone followed the mood of the a g h 42 public in becoming progressively less interesteds in politics during the decade. By .a w November 1826 he had turned his back onw his earlier notoriety, wishing to consign w

m 43 his political pamphlets to an unlamentedo grave. Over the following years he .c te a maintained an interest in the progressg of parliamentary Reform, but did not agitate h s for it in any way. By 1832, he had travelled.a so far away from his previous positions w w w that he condemned the Reform A ct as too far-reaching. Two years later, he and m o 44 several of his family became members.c of an evangelical Christian church. te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w 37 w BL, Add. MS 40,120, fol. 93v. m o 38 .c W. St Clair,te The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge, 2004), a g h pp. 25, 181. s .a 39 w BL, Addw MS 40,120, fol. 115r w 40 Wood,m Radical Satire, pp. 215–63. o 41 .c te Thompson,a English Working Class, p. 709; R. Hendrix, ‘Popular Humor and the g h “Black Dwarf”’,s JBS, 16 (1976): p. 128; V. Gatrell, City of Laughter. Sex and Satire in .a w w Eighteenth-Centuryw London (London, 2006), pp. 417, 420, 425, 575, 580.

42 m Go atrell, City of Laughter, p. 544. .c 43te a g William Hone, Facetiae and Miscellanies (12 pts, London, 1827), p. iii. The preface h s to. athis work is dated November 1826. w w 44 w Hackwood, William Hone, pp. 305–15. © Copyrighted Material 252 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Print-Culture and the Radical Tradition m o .c te a g h In one sense, Hone’s career was far from unique. There were plenty of mens and .a w women in London in the three decades after 1789 who advocated various typesw and w 45 shades of social, economic and political reform. Many of these peoplem suffered o .c te for their cause. Hone was, in fact, only one among hundreds of writers, booksellers,a g h s printers, shop assistants and hawkers who faced charges in relation to .radicala books w 46 w and pamphlets in the years between 1789 and 1825. Hone was, however,w unique

m o in several important respects: his intense bibliomania, his eclectic.c tastes, and his te a profound knowledge of early modern print culture. Marcus Woodg has written at h s .a length on Hone’s indebtedness to eighteenth-century books andw pamphlets, but has w w failed to notice his intense familiarity with Tudor and Stuart print-culture. Unless m o .c one appreciates the broad range of the material he read – fromte his own times back a g h to the first appearance of moveable type in the late fifteenths century – one can only .a w get, at best, a partial and misleading picture of Hone’sw rhetorical strategies and w 47 m polemical purpose. o .c te Hone’s earliest memories were of reading. He starteda at the age of four or five g h s with, conventionally enough, The Bible and The Pilgrim’s.a Progress. The volume of w w w his reading increased almost exponentially over time and by the age of sixteen he m o felt able to declare that there were no romances.c or novels in the English language te a g 48 which he ‘had not sought out and perused’.h He obviously benefited greatly s .a from the sudden flowering in the third quarterw of the eighteenth century of cheap w w editions of hitherto expensive literary works,m a process which has been described o .c 49 in William St Clair’s stimulating Thete Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. a g h Whenever one comes across Hone ins any context throughout the entire course of .a w w his life he is invariably reading, buying,w perusing, reviewing, selling, borrowing

m or collecting books. Any moneyo he earned from his business was frittered away .c 50 te a buying old books. g h s .a The copy of The Pilgrim’sw Progress given to him by his father at the age of w w four was, as he recorded in his autobiography, a ‘good old woodcut copy’. By the m o time he was 10 he had taken.c to haunting booksellers’ stalls around London to read te a g 51 h old black-letter material.s At about the age of twelve, he befriended a cobbler in .a w Theobald’s Road whow had amassed a large collection of ‘black-letter lore’, including w

m Caxton’s 1482 editiono of the medieval history book known as the Polychronichon .c te a g h s .a w 45 w w see A. Hone, For the Cause of Truth, passim. m 46 o st Clair,.c Reading Nation, p. 310. te a 47 g Wood,h Radical Satire, passim. s 48 .a w wHackwood, William Hone, p. 54. w 49 m st Clair, Reading Nation, p. 205. o 50.c te i. McCalman, Radical Underworld. Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers a g h in sLondon, 1795–1840 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 214. .a w 51 w w Hackwood, William Hone, p. 29. © Copyrighted Material William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture and the Nature of Radicalism 253 © Copyrighted Material

52 and Richard Pynson’s Kalendar of Shepherds, first published in 1497. The detailsm o .c te of Hone’s early reading are sketchy; almost all of what is known about his readinga g h s habits during this period derives from the autobiographical fragments he penneda . w w during the 1830s. These snippets of information do, however, suggest that wit would

m be unwise to follow William St Clair in insisting upon a ‘mass extinction’o of old .c te a black-letter ballads and chapbooks in the Romantic period due to the gavailability, h s .a 53 for the first time, of relatively cheap novels and collectionsw of poetry. Many w w readers must, like Hone, have seen no inherent contradiction in enjoying texts m o .c that had been available for centuries in addition to reading a rangete of innovative a g h literary genres. s .a w At some point during his early to mid-teens Hone madew a chance discovery w

m which had a profound impact both upon his immediate politicalo development, and .c te on the course of his entire adult life. He came across a discardeda sheet of paper from g h s an old book which had been used to wrap an item bought.a in some shop or other. He w w w read it and became fascinated by it. He toured the bookshops of the capital until m o he came across somebody who could identify it as .ac sheet from the 1649 account te a g of John Lilburne’s trial and acquittal at Guildhall hon charges of treason. He saved s .a his pocket-money and bought a copy of the originalw pamphlet for half a crown. w w 54 It riveted him and led to a lifelong fascinationm with the Leveller leader. There is o .c very little evidence as to what Hone read betweente his mid-teens and about 1819, a g h but in that year he began to amass a large collections of incunabula, printed books, .a w manuscripts and visual prints as part of whis research for his ‘History of Parody’. w

m In 1826, however, Hone was declared o bankrupt and, early in the following year, .c te a he was forced to auction this collectiong in an attempt to pay some of his debts. We h s therefore have a clear idea of the books.a and pamphlets that Hone owned during the w w w period of his life when he was at his most politically radical. m o Among the 659 individual .c lots that went under the hammer was a volume te a g of pamphlets which containedh Lilburne’s Innocency and Truth Justified (1646); s .a w a book of prints containingw two seventeenth-century portraits of Lilburne; five w tracts published for and againstm the Levellers between 1647 and 1659; a ‘large o .c te collection’ of 82 pamphletsa by and about Lilburne and the Levellers; and another, g h s smaller, collection of .‘a Lilburne Tracts’, which had belonged to a certain Jeremiah w 55 w Joyce in 1794. Hone’sw interest in the Leveller leader was so strong that he

m o .c te a g 52 h Ibid., p. 43;s M.W. Driver, ‘When is a miscellany not miscellaneous? Making sense .a w of the Kalenderw of Shepherds’, Yearbook of English Studies, 33 (2003): pp. 199–214. w

53 m st Clair,o Reading Nation, pp. 351–2. .c 54 te a Hackwood,g William Hone, pp. 39–41. The tract was The Triall, of Lieut. Collonell h s John Lilburne,.a By an extraordinary or special Commission, of Oyear and Terminer, at the w w Guild-Hallw of London, the 24, 25, 26. of Octob. 1649. Being as exactly pen’d and taken in

m short ohand (1649). .c te a55 g Catalogue of Books, Books of Prints, &c. Collected for a History of Parody, by h s Mr.a William Hone, Containing an Extensive and Remarkable Assemblage of Extraordinary w w Parodiesw (1827), items 302, 538, 617, 636, and 637. © Copyrighted Material 254 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material arranged for somebody to transcribe the text of A Discourse Betwixt Lieutenant m o Colonel John Lilburn … and Mr Hugh Peter (1649), one of the few Lilburne.c te a 56 g h pamphlets that was not among his personal collection in 1827. He presumablys .a w arranged for this transcription to be made before May 1820, when he discoveredw w the Thomason Tracts, which contain this pamphlet and many other tractsm by and o 57 .c te about Lilburne. a g h s Blair Worden has claimed that the Levellers ‘as a subject of historical.a scholarship w w and controversy’ were a discovery of the twentieth century. He suggestsw that few,

m o if any, people had ever heard about this groupuscule before they were.c adopted and te a championed by Marxist-inclined historians. Worden admits thatg John Lilburne’s h s .a name did appear sporadically throughout the eighteenth and nineteenthw centuries, w w but suggests that ‘it was not as a Leveller leader or an exponent of Leveller ideas m o .c that he was famed. He owed his celebrity rather to thete legal issues raised by a g h his trials of 1649 and 1653, to his spirited and colourfuls performances at them, .a 58 w and to the popular clamour they aroused.’ These claimsw are less than entirely w

m convincing. Hone did indeed first encounter Lilburneo in the context of his 1649 .c te trial, but his interests evidently developed far beyonda the constitutional issues g h s raised by the Leveller’s trials. Hone intended to write.a ‘a Life of that Extraordinary w w w Person’ and his collection of as many items as possible by and about the other m o Leveller leaders and their followers suggests.c that he would have situated his te a g 59 subject within the broader religio-politicalh contexts of the 1640s and 1650s. s .a Hone was not merely interested in Lilburnew and the Levellers. In fact, the personal w w library that he was forced to sell in 1827m contained a surprising array of ‘radical’ o .c texts from across the entire early modernte period: all of the Marprelate tracts from a g h the 1580s; five Digger pamphlets froms 1649; a ‘rare and curious’ collection of the .a w w works of Gerrard Winstanley; Henryw Neville’s 1647 Parliament of Ladies and his

m utopian 1668 Isles of Pines; as wello as at least one of the Martin Mar-Priest tracts .c te a from the 1640s. He also had ang impressive collection of Whig material from the h s .a Exclusion Crisis, as well asw a startling familiarity with the literature in support w w of the Glorious Revolution. In addition, he had gone out of his way to collect a m o number of important works.c by the key eighteenth-century radical polemicists John te a g 60 h Wilkes and John Hornes Tooke. .a w Hone was not thew only man to believe that the burning issues of his times w

m were much the sameo as those of Lilburne’s day. In 1794, as mentioned above, .c te Jeremiah Joyce (1763–1816)a had owned a volume of Lilburne pamphlets which g h s subsequently ended.a up in Hone’s possession. Joyce was a political radical; a w w Unitarian ministerw who extolled the virtues of the French Revolution. He worked

m o as a tutor to.c the children of the Earl of Stanhope, an English aristocrat who, during te a g h s 56 .a Bw L, Add. MS 40,113, fols 3r–22r. w w 57 m BL, Add. MS 40,113, fols 43r–54r. o 58.c te Worden, Roundhead Reputations, pp. 319, 323, 330. a g h 59 s Catalogue of Books, Books of Prints, &c., p. 35. .a w 60 w w ibid., items 63, 341, 342. © Copyrighted Material William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture and the Nature of Radicalism 255 © Copyrighted Material

the 1790s, supported the revolutionary government in France and styled himselfm o .c te ‘citizen’. Joyce was involved in distributing pamphlets by Tom Paine in the earlya g h s 1790s, and was a member of two groups which were viewed with deep suspiciona . w w by the authorities: the London Revolution Society (LRS) and the Societyw for

61 m Constitutional Information (SCI). In 1794, he was appointed Secretary too the Joint .c te a Committee between his Society for Constitutional Information and gthe London h s .a Corresponding Society which, incidentally, the young William Honew happened to w w join two years later. In May 1794, however, at a time of heightened tension, Joyce m o .c was arrested, interrogated by the Privy Council, and charged withte high treason. a g h He spent time in the Tower, but was released in December afters the trials of the .a w first three of his alleged co-conspirators collapsed. It was w during this period of w 62 m incarceration that Joyce kept a volume of Lilburne’s tracts oclose by his side. The .c te pamphlets served as a talisman, but they also served as a remindera of the perceived g h s tendency of those in power to trample upon the rights of.a the populace, as well as a w w w symbol of the belief in the power of the law to thwart tyranny. m o After his release from custody, Joyce retreated from.c active political engagement te a g and made a decent living as a writer of encyclopaediash and popular, none-too- s .a technical scientific manuals and treatises. w Joyce died in 1816, and there isno w w direct evidence that he and Hone ever met, butm they did move in the same circles o .c in London and had a number of friends andte acquaintances in common: Hone’s a g h acquaintance George Dyer succeeded Joyces as tutor to the children of the Earl of .a w Stanhope, and both Joyce and Hone werew close friends of the prominent Unitarian w

63 m minister Robert Aspland. The lack ofo a direct connection between Hone and .c te a Joyce may be nothing more than a quirkg of the surviving historical sources: Joyce h s died in 1816, but the vast majority.a of Hone’s surviving letters date from after w w w 1818. Whether or not the two men knew each other intimately, or even at all, m o is immaterial. Their fetishisation,.c in the 1790s and the 1820s respectively, of a te a g volume of political pamphletsh from the 1640s and 1650s demonstrates that the s .a w idea of a radical tradition wasw not simply an anachronistic, ahistorical invention of w twentieth-century Marxistm historians. Modern scholars are right to stress that there o .c te was no trans-historical radicala party, no fixed, permanent ‘programme’ for which g h s radicals in each and every.a age struggled against the same, unchanging enemy. They w w are right to stress thatw those men and women from different centuries who fought

m o .c te a g h 61 s J. Issitt,. a Jeremiah Joyce: Radical, Dissenter and Writer (Aldershot, 2006), w w pp. 1–71. w

62 m P. Gregg,o Free-Born John: A Biography of John Lilburne (London, 1961), p. 397, .c te a n. 1. This itemg had not been among Joyce’s books and pamphlets that had been seized at h s the time of.a his arrest, a list of which will be found at The National Archives, London, TS w w 11/964.w The question naturally arises as to which of Joyce’s friends brought the volume to

m him ino the Tower, and whether any of these friends were also interested in Lilburne. .c te a63 g on Hone and Dyer, see Bodl., MS Eng. Misc.c.32, fols 23r, 24r, 25r, 27r–v. For h s Hone’s.a closeness to Aspland, see BL, Add. MS 40,120, fol. 63r. For the connection between w w Aw spland and Joyce, see Issitt, Jeremiah Joyce, pp. 9, 80–81, 86. © Copyrighted Material 256 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material against ‘tyranny’ often had entirely different understandings of what they meant m 64 o by the term. Yet, it is necessary to realise that radicals of the English Revolution.c te a g h and the early nineteenth century (and, one suspects, radicals in every other sera of .a w human history) looked to the past for inspiration, legitimation and vindication.w w

There is a sense in which these men were manufacturing a tradition for theirm own o .c te uses, but it would be a mistake to assume that only radicals invent traditionsa for g h s themselves: all traditions – whether radical or conservative, left or.a right – are w w shaped, moulded and manufactured by individuals for their own particularw uses.

m o It is necessary to stress, however, that such manufactured traditions.c are not te a necessarily fabrications. For men like Hone and Joyce, books andg pamphlets were, h s .a in a sense, time-travellers that crossed the centuries to bear witnessw to their part in w w a great, ongoing struggle between liberty and tyranny. m o .c Historians who dismiss the idea of a radical traditionte in British history are a g h often insufficiently aware of the rhetorical and polemicals strategies which authors .a w chose to pursue, or had forced upon them by considerationsw of censorship and w

m imprisonment. It is true that one finds very few referenceso to, say, John Lilburne .c te and the Levellers if one searches the titles of eighteenth-a and nineteenth-century g h s books which happen to survive in academic research.a libraries. This does not, w w w however, mean that men and women in later ages were necessarily uninfluenced m o by, or unaware of, earlier radicals, as has been.c demonstrated by the examples te a g of William Hone and Jeremiah Joyce. Theh very real threat of censorship was a s .a strong disincentive to republishing, or quotingw from, earlier radical works, but w w it was not the only reason for the subterraneanm nature of the radical tradition. It o .c was perhaps much more significant thatte Hone was a polemicist who was trying to a g h win as many readers as possible tos the deeply contentious and divisive concept .a w w of Reform. As such, he did not wishw to wear his learning on his sleeve; he may

m even have felt that ostentatious displayso of historical knowledge would have been .c te a counter-productive. Hone wiselyg chose not to beat his readers over the head with h s .a Lilburne, abstract notions ofw natural rights, or the history of previous attempts w w to use the courts to intimidate and punish the opponents of the government. m o Instead, Hone presented .thec public with deceptively simple squibs and satires, the te a g h titles, form and languages of which were invariably drawn from nursery rhymes, .a w children’s games andw toys, and the printed and visual ephemera of popular culture. w

m The nursery rhymeo that inspired The Political House that Jack Built (1819) is well .c te known even almosta two hundred years later, but some others need explanation: g h s The Queen’s Matrimonial.a Ladder (1820) was inspired by a popular didactic toy for w w girls called ‘Tw he Matrimonial Ladder’ and The Man in the Moon (1820) blended

m o together a host.c of influences from popular chapbooks, ballads, songs, catches and te a g rhymes. Byh using such sources, Hone was able to present himself as a plain-talking s .a Englishmanw in conflict with a group of pompous over-educated lackeys who used w w education and book-learning to mask their parasitic activities. He appealed to the m o .c emotions,te not the intellect, of the reader, and appropriated the commonplace and a g h s .a w 64 w w Burgess and Festenstein (eds), English Radicalism, pp. 1–12, 62–81, 313–31. © Copyrighted Material William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture and the Nature of Radicalism 257 © Copyrighted Material

common-sense – words that were, and are, widely associated with a conservativem o .c te worldview – for a radical purpose. He was certainly trying to compete witha and g h s undermine conservative polemicists like Hannah More, who tried to appropriatea . w w popular culture and cheap print for their own ends, but at a deeper level hew knew

m instinctively that these genres and formats were the best way to attracto a wide .c te a audience: the sort of people who, to quote one of the great polemicistsg of the h s 65 .a English Revolution, ‘little regard truths in a serious garb’. w w w Hone’s trials for blasphemous libel are a striking example of his ability to edit m o .c out his radical sources in order to win over particular audiences.te It is noteworthy a g h that Lilburne – his childhood hero who had been tried in the exacts same building .a w 66 all those years previously – was not invoked once during thesew trials. Hone did w

m not mention any of the seventeenth- or eighteenth-century authorso one might have .c te 67 expected him to quote or cite in defence of his right to publisha the parodies. He g h s also chose to ignore the copious notes that his friend Robert.a Aspland compiled for w w 68 w him on the history and conceptualisation of blasphemy. Instead, the 87 books m o he deployed in his defence at the trials fall into two.c main categories. The first te a g consisted of a large number of parodies of religioush texts by James Gillray (1757– s .a 1815), George Canning (1770–1827), or Robertw Southey (1774–1843). Gillray’s w w beautifully engraved visual prints were producedm by an avowed conservative o .c opposed to the French Revolution, and the textste written by Canning and Southey a g h had the benefit of being produced in the 1790ss by young radicals who had become .a w deeply conservative establishment figuresw by the time of Hone’s trial. He believed w

m that all of these sources would be wello known to the members of the jury, and .c te a envisaged that many of them might haveg some or all of these works in their personal h 69 s libraries. The second category of books.a Hone cited in his defence came from the w w w sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There was a reference to a parody of the first m o Psalm by Martin Luther, and one.c each from England in the 1520s and 1610s, but te a g the core of this category was providedh by Royalist propaganda from the Civil War s 70 .a w period. These items includedw The Plague of Westminster (1647); Ecce The New w

Testament of our Lords andm Saviours (1648), which was ordered burned by the o .c te a g h s .a 65 w Mercurius Pragmaticusw , no. 1 (28 March–April 1648), sig. 1r–v. w 66 it is necessarym to stress that this point contradicts the unsupported assertions of o .c M. Wood, Radical tSatiree , pp. 122–5, and O. Smith, The Politics of Language, 1791–1819 a g h (Oxford, 1984), p.s 198. .a 67 w see, forw example, G. Kemp, ‘Ideas of Liberty of the Press, 1640–1700’ (unpublished w

m PhD dissertation,o University of Cambridge, 2001). .c 68 te asplanda used his extensive researches as the basis for three sermons on blasphemy g h s which he. a delivered at the Unitarian church in Hackney on 13, 20 and 27 July 1817. He w w publishedw these sermons as An Inquiry into the Nature of the Sin of Blasphemy, and into the

m Proprietyo of Regarding it as a Civil Offence (London, 1817). .c 69te a g Three Trials of William Hone, pp. 45, 50, 111, 112, 153, 163. h s 70 .a J. McElligott, Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England w w (Woodbridge,w 2007). © Copyrighted Material 258 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

House of Commons on 23 February 1648; and four humorous ballads from a 1662 m 71 o collection of anti-Cromwellian songs. This reliance on Royalist propaganda.c te a g h might seem strange in the context of his outspoken attack on the Stuarts sat his .a w trials, but he had chosen his examples well. He presented to the Anglicanw jurors w religious parodies in defence of a king which had been produced by menm who o .c te would have supported the very Act of Uniformity of 1662 which thea Attorney g h s General had invoked as the justification for the prosecutions. .a w w w

m o .c te a Conclusion g h s .a w w w This essay has demonstrated that William Hone was much more socially and m o .c politically radical than has hitherto been acknowledged, andte that he was interested a g h in reforming much more than the system of political representations in Parliament. .a w Indeed, for men like Hone, political reforms may havew been less important than w

m legal reforms, or perhaps more accurately, the usefulnesso of political reforms may .c te have been predicated upon the existence of a faira and equitable reformed legal g h s system. Recent work on radicals and radicalism.a across the early modern period w w w is to be welcomed in so far as it demonstrates that there was no coherent, stable m o trans-historical political movement which fought.c across the centuries for the same te a g demands. It is important not to construct falseh traditions and continuities by imputing s .a to men and women in the past ideas thatw they did not, and could not, have held. w w

At the same time, however, one should mnot ignore the continuities, whether real or o .c merely perceived at the time as being real,te in the issues that confronted radicals who a g h looked back in time. A study of print-cultures is the key to unlocking the nature and .a w w extent of the continuities and differencesw in radical politics across the early modern

m and modern periods. Every one oof John Lilburne’s pamphlets which Hone read or .c te a owned in the 1820s had existedg throughout the almost two hundred years between h s 72 .a their first production and Hone’sw discovery of them. They were a constant physical w w presence across the centuries; time-travellers which inspired and enthused Hone, m o and which he read as evidence.c that many of the issues of his day were identical te a g h to those which had confronteds Lilburne: the demand for annual parliaments, the .a w plight of imprisoned wdebtors, the necessity for free, impartial and courageous juries w

m to protect the fundamentalo rights of free-born citizens, and the question of how to .c te ensure that whena one removed a bad ruler one did not merely replace him with g h s someone who .wasa much worse. There were, of course, discontinuities between w w the two eras –w the centrality of religious experience to seventeenth-century radical

m o discourse is.c entirely absent from Hone’s published works – but it would be a te a g misrepresentationh of the past to pretend that Hone and others had no access to, or s .a knowledgew of, earlier struggles against ‘tyranny’. This chapter has demonstrated w w

m o 71.c te Three Trials of William Hone, pp. 29, 30–31, 103, 104, 114–16. a g h 72 s I owe this point to Michael Mendle, whose forthcoming work will shed much light .a w w onw the nineteenth-century discovery and use of early modern historical sources. © Copyrighted Material William Hone (1780–1842), Print-Culture and the Nature of Radicalism 259 © Copyrighted Material

that historians of radicalism, as well as those who do not believe that such a historym o .c te exists, need to learn to read texts in much more sophisticated ways than they ahave g h s hitherto generally attempted: paratext is often at least as important as the texta itself. . w w Furthermore, Hone’s trials suggest that historians also need to be aware wof what

m radicals consciously omitted from their polemics partly due to fear of censorship,o .c te a but also in a conscious attempt to reach a wider readership than theg traditional h s .a market for radical polemic and political theory. w w w Hone’s career as a polemicist and his subsequent apostasy suggest that m o .c radicalism is best conceived of not as a continuous ‘red thread’te spun across the a g h ages, but as a series of moments. Some of those ‘moments’ overlappeds each other, .a w and might conceivably be construed as a form of handed-downw tradition. Other w

m radical moments were discontinuous, separated by time ando space, and it is only .c te with the factoring in of print-culture that one can see howa ideas and ideologies g h s could be transmitted across long chronological periods..a One might say that Hone w w w was not a long-distance runner but a relay-racer: he ran with the baton for a period m o of time before it was passed on to others, many of whom.c also only ran with it for a te a g short space of time. Sometimes the baton was handedh to him by his contemporaries s .a or near contemporaries, but on other occasions whe simply picked up a baton that w w had lain unused for many years, decades, orm centuries. The most striking thing o .c about Hone’s radical polemics was that they tdrewe on a variety of different sources, a g h some predictable, some highly unconventional,s unusual or unpromising. The most .a w potent weapons in the radical arsenal couldw be fashioned from the most apolitical w

m or conservative of materials. To return oto the metaphor of the relay race, the baton .c te a he carried was far from the standard g specifications laid down by the International h s Athletics Association. One can only.a imagine the horror that the Royalists of the w w w English Civil Wars and the anti-Jacobins of the 1790s would have felt at their m o polemics being used against monarchy.c and in favour of democratic reform in the te a g 1810s. Hone’s career demonstratesh that there is no such thing as a radical idea or s .a w book per se. Books and wordsw have no inherent meaning: a radical book is merely w 73 one which is put to a radicalm use at a particular point in time. o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w 73 w J. McElligott, ‘Calibrating Early Modern Print Culture’ (forthcoming). © Copyrighted Material 260 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w The title-page of William Hone’s The Man in the Moon (1820). w w © Copyrighted Material © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te a g h Index s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w Association for Preserving wLiberty and Adamites, 150 m o Addison, Joseph, 247 Property against .Rc epublicans and te a Africa, 133, 228, 243, 247, 248 Levellers, 242 g h s Agreements of the People, 63, 67, 74, 75 Astrology, 1 .a w w w Albigensians, 192 Atheists, 2, 3, 150, 153, 173, 222, 230, m o Alexandria (Egypt), 155 231, 238 .c te a Allen, Benjamin, 76 Augsburg, Leagueg of, 194 h s Avogadro, Giovan.a Battista Birago, 147 Allen, Hannah, 76 n. 32 w w w America, 207, 228 m o Massachusetts Bay, 100 Bachilor, John,.c 77, 84 te a Providence Island, 78, 79 Bacon, Fg rancis, 142, 170 h s .a Rhode Island, 76 Bacon,w Nathaniel, 236 w w Rowley, New England, 207, 211 Bacon, Robert, 70, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, m o Amsterdam, 151, 181, 207, 209–11, 217, .c 85, 86 te a Baillie,g Robert, 111 225, 234 h s .a Ancient theology, 24, 89 w Baker, Daniel, 155 w w Antichrist, 23, 32, 106, 187 Bank of England, 245 m o Anticlericalism, 16, 25, 98, 103–04 .c Bank Restriction Note of 1819, The, 245 te a g Anti-formalism, 82 h Baptists, 3, 6, 8, 9, 17, 27, 28, 32, 70, 74, s .a Anti-imperialism, 89, 130, 136–7 w 76, 77, 80, 82, 84, 88, 90, 91, 92, w w Antinomians, 16, 28, 32–3, 35, 36, 38, 40, 93, 94, 101, 105, 106, 107, 108–09, m o 42, 43, 46, 49, 71, 72, 73, 76,.c 78, 111, 112, 116, 117, 150, 183, 189 te a g 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86,h 116, 150 Barber, Edward, 106 s .a Anti-popery, 28, 130, 135, 136,w 185, 187, Bardi, Ferdinand, 155 w w 198, 200 Basnage, Jacques, 234 m o Antisabbatarians, 150 .c Bastille, Fall of, 242 te a g Antiscripturists, 112, 150h Bate, George, 147 s .a Anti-Trinitarians, 75, 80,w 109, 150, 157, Baxter, Richard, 42, 79, 86, 93 w w 171, 172 Bayle, Pierre, 230, 231, 232, 236 m o Apocalyptic thought,.c 28, 33, 46, 89, 95, Bayly, Charles, 154 te a g 107, 111, 129,h 183–204 Beale, John, 173 s .a Aquinas, Thomas,w 99 Behmenism, 74, 79, 80, 81, 83, 88, 90, 91, w w Arianes, 150 92, 93, 173, 181 m o .c Bentham, Jeremy, 1 Aristotelianism,te 157 a g h Aristotle, s133 Berkshire .a Arminians,w 32, 35, 36, 38, 74, 94, 150, Abingdon, 70, 80, 120 w w

m 171–2 Bradfield, 80 o .c Army,te New Model, 32, 51 Reading, 74 a g h Aspland,s Robert, 255, 257 Bernard of Clairvaux, 45, 46, 47 .a w w Bernardi, Francisco, 157, 158 w © Copyrighted Material 262 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Bernini, Domenico, 152, 153 Boreel, Adam, 168 m o Beverley, Thomas, 185, 194, 195, 196, 203 Borges, Jorge Luis, 2 .c te a Bible Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 153 g h s .a Abraham, 95, 97 Boyle, Michael (Archbishop of Armagh),w w w Adam, 24, 94, 95, 97–8, 145 212 m o Babylon, Whore of, 95, 189, 200 Boyle, Robert, 167, 168, 179 .c te a g Daniel, Book of, 95, 104, 125, 184, Boyse, Joseph, 27, 205–19 h s .a 189, 192 Boyse, Matthew, 207, 211 w w w David, King of Israel, 186 Brewster, Thomas, 71, 75, 76 m o Eden, Garden of, 24, 95 Brightman, Thomas, 183.c te a g Esau, 97, 98 Bristol, 80, 151 h s .a Eve, 24 Brookhouse, Thomas,w 186, 187, 189, 191, w w Ezekiel, Book of, 106, 125, 188 198, 199–202 m o Herod (Antipas), King of Judea, 196 Browne, Richard,.c 63 te a g Isaac, 96 Browne, Robert,h 210 s .a Isaiah, Book of, 119, 121, 125–6 Brownists, 111,w 150, 211, 217, 218 w w Jacob, 96 Brunfels, Otto, 101 m o Jeremiah, Book of, 97, 186 Bruno, Giordano,.c 157, 229 te a g Jesus Christ, 47, 95, 100, 104, 118, Bruodin,h Anthony, 151 s .a 121, 123, 126, 190, 200, 233, 234, Brusoni,w Girolamo, 147 w w 235, 242 Buckinghamshire, 52, 88, 102, 186, 191 m o Judas, 101, 102 .c Great Marlow, 51–2 te a g Luke, Gospel of, 118, 120 Bull,h Digby, 191, 192, 197, 203 s .a Mary, mother of Jesus, 45, 46–7 w Bullinger, Heinrich, 108 w w

Matthew, Gospel of, 94, 95, 98, 100, m Burdett, Sir Francis (MP), 243 o .c 104, 107, 233 te Burton, Henry, 77, 78 a g h Nebuchadnezzar, 196 s Burton, Hezekiah, 163 .a w Numbers, Book of, 100, 188 w Butler, John, 185 w

Rebekah, 96 m Butler, Thomas, 81, 85 o .c Revelation, Book of, 94–6, 106,te 110, Byron, George Gordon, 1 a g h 184–9, 191–8, 235 s .a w Saul, King of Israel, 186 w Caius Lucius, 246 w

Sennacherib, King of Assyria,m 196 Calvert, Giles, 27–8, 69–86 o .c Song of Songs (Canticles),te 37, 40, 45, Calvin, Jean, 99, 104, 105 a g h 46, 47, 48, 118, 120,s 121, 122 Calvinism, 16, 40, 158, 163, 167 .a w Zechariah, Book of,w 96, 110, 186 Calvinist doctrine, 32, 36, 47, 48, 49, 94, w

Biddle, John, 80 m 98, 172, 238 o .c Birch, Thomas, 169,te 173, 226 Cambridge, 31, 33, 34, 35, 39–42, 45, 48, a g h Bisaccioni, Maiolino,s 146, 147, 148, 151 161, 167, 168, 169, 174, 175, 178 .a w Blasphemy, 3, 20,w 85, 104, 145, 241, 180, 181, 223, 227 w

248–51,m 257 Cambridge o .c Blasphemy Actte (May 1648), 96, 99 Christ’s College, 162, 175 a g h Blasphemys Act (August 1650), 44, 71 Clare College, 162 .a w Blunden,w Humphrey, 74 n. 24 Emmanuel College, 41, 44, 161–2, 178 w

Bonaparte,m Napoleon, 244 Gonville and Caius College, 161 o .c te Jesus College, 161, 178, 179 Bone,a John, 244 g h Books burning, 20, 75, 100, 103 King’s College, 45, 161, 223, 227 .a w ‘Bookw of Sports’, 41, 100 Magdalene College, 39, 161 w © Copyrighted Material Index 263 © Copyrighted Material 191, 192, 197, 198, 206, 207, 209, Pembroke College, 31 m Peterhouse, 35, 42 215, 217, 218, 236 o .c te a Trinity College, 161 Anglicans, 28, 175, 196, 197, 204,g 205, h s Cambridge Platonists, 26, 162–73, 175, 216, 223, 231, 249, 258 .a w w w 177–9, 181, 182, 230 Cicero, 139, 226 m o Cambridgeshire Circumcision, 95 .c te a Soham, 195 Civil War (English), 9, 11, 18, g22, 34, 51, h s Candia, War of, 153 52, 53, 54, 66, 68, 87,.a 101, 108, w w w Canes, John Vincent, 231 109, 119, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, m o Canning, George, 248, 257 153, 161, 167, 184,.c 199, 200, 201, te a Carter, William, 74 n. 21 203, 248, 257, 259g h s .a Cartesianism, 166, 170 Clarke, Samuel, 224,w 239 w w Cary, Lucius (second Viscount Falkland), Clarkson, Lawrence, 43, 44, 71, 74, 83 m o 167 Clifford, Martin, 232.c te a Cary, Mary, 74 Cloten (son of Cymbeline),g 246 h s .a Caryl, Joseph, 74 n. 21 Clubmen, 13 w w w Casanate, Girolamo, 155 Coke, Sir Edward, 142 m o Cassirer, Ernst, 166, 167, 170 Cole, Peter,.c 76 te a g Castlereagh, Lord, 248 Coleridge,h Samuel Taylor, 164 s .a Catalonia, 29, 88, 146 Collier,w Thomas, 70, 74, 82, 85 w w Catholic Emancipation, 243 Collins, Anthony, 27, 221–40 m o Catholics, 13, 23, 102, 194, 243 Collins,.c Henry, 223 te a g English, 31, 34, 46, 47, 153, 209, 231 Comenius,h Jan Amos, 168 s .a Irish, 135, 213, 218 w Commonwealth, the, 68, 79, 82, 104, 129, w w Italian, 29, 145, 150, 156, 157 130, 133, 138, 140, 143, 182, 248 m o Cato, 247 .c Community of goods, 93–4 te a g Cato, Joseph Addison’s, 247 h Conspiracy, Cato Street, 251 s .a Caussin, Nicolas, 40 w Conway, Anne, 93, 168, 173, 175, 177 178, w w Caxton, William, 252 181 m o Censorship, 20, 256, 259 .c Cook, John, 75, 135, 236 te a g Chaissy, Gilles, 149 h Cooper, Anthony Ashley (first Earl of s .a Chamberlayne, Edward, 151 w Shaftesbury), 140, 169, 182, 209, w w Chamberlen, Peter, 69, 70, 71, 79, 80 221 m o Chapman, Livewell, 75, 76 .cn. 32 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 170 te a g Charron, Pierre, 231 h Coppe, Abiezer, 26, 27, 31, 33, 34, 44, s .a Chartists, 15, 88 w 46–8, 70, 71, 74, 80, 83, 113–27 w w Coppin, Richard, 43 n. 30, 71, 74, 80 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 2 m o .c Cheevers, Sarah, 154te Cornwall, 18 a g h Cheshire s Corsini, Filippo, 152 .a w Cottrell, James, 76 Dukinfield,w 80 w

Child, Francism (Lord Mayor of London), Couling, Nicholas, 81 o .c 224 te Council of State, 41, 70, 71, 73, 76, 129, a g h Child, Martha,s 224 133, 162 .a w Chiliasts,w 150, 199 Counter-Reformation, 34, 41, 42, 45, 48, w

Chillingworth,m William, 167 89 o .c China,te 228 Covel, John, 168 a g h Churchs of England, 3, 18, 99, 111, 154, Covenanters, 3 .a w w 158, 172, 176, 177, 179, 182, 185, Cradock, Samuel, 193 w © Copyrighted Material 264 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Crashaw, Richard, 31–49 Dissenters, 3, 10, 27, 28, 182, 197, 198, m o Creech, Giles, 76 n. 32 201, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 213,.c te a Cressener, Drue, 195, 196 215, 217–19 g h s .a Cressy, Paulin, 231 Dodwell, Henry, 224 w w w Cripps, Henry, 77 Donne, John, 47, 48 m o Crisp, Tobias, 43, 45 Drayton, William, 75 .c te a g Cromwell, Oliver, 32, 43, 44, 45, 78, 107, Drogheda, massacre of, 129, 137–8h s .a 133, 135, 141, 147, 148, 151, 162, Dublin, 46, 205, 211–2, 217 w w w 171, 174, 200 Dublin m o Cross, Walter, 188, 189, 191, 193–4 ‘Leg Inn’, The, Essex.c Street, 212 te a g Cruickshank, George, 245–6 St. Patrick’s Cathedral,h 206 s .a Cudworth, Damaris, 171 Trinity College, 206w n. 5 w w Cudworth, Ralph, 161, 162, 163, 166, 168, Wood Street, 207, 211, 214, 216 m o 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, Dugard, Thomas,. c31, 32, 44 te a g 175, 177, 181, 182 Dunbar, battle of,h 129, 137, 138 s .a Culpeper, Cheney, 55 Dunton, John,w 194–5, 196 w w Culverwell, Nathaniel, 162, 169, 177 Dury, John, 78, 84, 86, 168 m o Cymbeline, 246 Dyer, George,.c 255 te a g Cymbeline, William Shakespeare’s, 246 h s .a Edict ofw Nantes, Revocation of, 195 w w Davies, John, 168 Edwards, Thomas, 29, 36, 46, 74, 77, 78, m o Davies, Sir John, 132 .c 151, 181 te a g Dawson, Gartrude, 76 Eh leutherian Islands, 79, 80, 84 s .a Dawson, John, 76 w Ellythorp, Sebastian, 200 w w

Dawson, Samuel, 76 n. 32 m Elys, Edmund, 168, 176 o .c De Aguilar, Moses Raphael, 234 te Emlyn, Thomas, 216 a g h De Castro, Orobio, 234 s Emperors, Roman .a w D’Ewes, Sir Simonds, 52 w Augustulus, 188 w

De la Mothe le Vayer, François, 231m Diocletian, 196 o .c De Liguori, Alfonso Maria, 152 te Nero, 106 a g h De Linda, Lucas, 151 s Theodosius, 188 .a w De’ Medici, Cosimo, 150, 152w Enlightenment, The, 25, 233 w

De Montaigne, Michel, 231 m Radical, 27, 222 o .c Deists, 150, 222, 230, 231,te 233, 235, 237 Enthusiasts, 42, 115, 150, 167, 173, 176, a g h Dell, William, 32, 36, 74s 85, 86, 161 184 .a w Denck, Hans, 91 w Episcopacy, 176, 200, 201 w

Dering, Sir Edward, 59m Erasmus, Desiderius, 108 o .c Derrida, Jacques, 115te Erbury, William, 70, 74, 82, 84, 85 a g h Descartes, René, s167, 170 Essex, 223, 225 .a w Devon w Eton School, 223 w

Dartmouth,m 120 Eugene, Prince of Savoy, 225, 229 o .c Dexter, Gregory,te 76 Evans, Katherine, 154 a g h Diggers, 3,s 8, 9, 15, 16, 17, 23, 28, 69, 70, Evans, Valentine, 186, 200 .a w 71,w 72, 75, 79, 80, 87–8, 90, 93, 94, Evelyn, John, 228 w

m 97, 100, 109, 110, 254 Everard, William, 79, 97 o .c te Exclusion crisis, 209, 254 Dillingham,a John, 134, 135, 143 g h Dineley,s Mary, 223 .a w w Fabbroni, Francesca, 145 w © Copyrighted Material Index 265 © Copyrighted Material Goad, Christopher, 79, 85 Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 32 m Faithorne, William, 178 Godwin, Thomas, 116 o .c te a Family of Love (Familists), 32, 46, 74, 76, Goodkin, Vincent, 143 g h s 80, 81, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 109, 111, Goodwin, John, 76, 77, 163 n. 12 .a w w w 112, 150, 167, 178, 181 Gordon, Thomas, 237 m o Fanatics, 150 Gornia, Giovan Battista, 152 .c te a Fenning, Eliza, 244 Gorton, Samuel, 80–81 g h s Fermo, 146, Grand Tour, 146 .a w w w Ferne, Henry, 61 Graziani, Giralamo, 147 m o Field, John, 73 n. 19 Grebel, Conrad, 107, 108.c te a Fiennes, William (first Viscount Saye and Greece, 232 g h s .a Sele), 78, 79, 84 Greek, 31, 122, 225, w228, 231 w w Fifth Monarchists, 3, 8, 9, 17, 45, 72, 74, Greville, Robert (second Baron Brooke), m o 80, 85, 86, 109, 130, 150, 167, 178, 31, 44, 162,.c 174 te a 190, 200 g h s .a Filmer, Sir Robert, 61 Haak, Theodore,w 168 w w Finch, John, 168 Habeas corpus , 245 m o Fisher, Edward, 74 Habeas corpus,.c Act of, 249 te a g Fisher, Samuel, 154, 158 Hague, Th he, 225 s .a Fitch, William (Benet of Canfield), 46 Halhead,w Henry, 79 w w Fleming, Robert, 189 Halliday, Timothy, 207, 211, 212, 213 m o Forbes, John, 145 Hallywell,.c Henry, 168 te a g Fotinians, 150 Hh ampden, John, 59 s .a Fowler, Edward, 168 w Hampshire w w Fox, George, 111, 236 Titchfield, 185 m o France, 29, 88, 146, 193, 194, 195, 196, .c Winchester, 188 te a g 210, 225, 231, 235, 242, 244, 255h Hare, Francis, 223 s .a Franck, Sebastian, 91 w Harrington, James, 28–29, 70, 132, 134, w w Frankland, Richard, 207, 208 135, 139, 140, 143, 236 m o Free grace, 33 n. 6, 35, 36, 37, 40, .42–3,c Harrington, Sir James, 69–70 te a g 45, 47, 48, 81 h Harris, John, 53 s .a Freeman, Francis, 81 w Harrison, Robert, 211 w w Fronde, The, 146, 149 Hartlib, Samuel, 69, 74, 78, 167, 168, 170, m o Fry, John, 80 .c 173, 179 te a g Furly, Benjamin, 225, 229,h 230 Hartlib Circle, 170, 171 s .a w Hawke, Michael, 141–3 w w Heaven, 31, 35, 37, 83, 97, 98, 119, 124, Galilei, Galileo, 170 m o .c Garrett, Walter, 185,te 192, 197 125, 126, 172, 187, 247 a g h Gell, Robert, 75, 80,s 163 n. 12 Hebrew, 1, 115–17, 174, 234 .a w German Peasants’w War, 7, 90, 91, 101 Hell, 31, 35, 114, 124, 153, 181 w

Germany, 90, m101, 151, 193, 194, 196, 235 Herbert, George, 42 o .c Gibson, Edmundte (Bishop of London), 226 Heresy, 20, 148, 157, 175, 238 a g h Gillray, James,s 257 Hertfordshire .a w Ginsburg,w Allen, 114 Wallington, 185 w

Glanvill,m Joseph, 163, 168, 171, 177 Hill, Thomas, 161 o .c Glisson,te Francis, 168 Hills, Henry, 53, 76, 85 a g h Gloucestershires Hobbes, Thomas, 1, 4, 166, 214, 218, 239 .a w w Gloucester, 80 Holdsworth, Richard, 40–41, 161 w © Copyrighted Material 266 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Holland, 66, 93, 206 n. 3, 209, 225, 234 Jackson, Elizabeth, 207 m o Holland, Cornelius, 70, 79, 80 Jackson, Thomas, 216 .c te a Holy Office, 145, 155, 156 Jan of Leiden, 91, 93, 183 g h s .a Homer, 122 Japan, 228 w w w Hone, William, 27, 241–59 Jerusalem, 104, 120, 125, 154, 197 m o Horn, George (Honorius Reggius), 151 New, 69, 70–71, 80, 83, 124,.c 186, 190 te a g House of Commons, 57, 62, 63, 65, 66, 69, Temple at, 104, 120, 192 h s .a 80, 86, 101, 102, 105, 106, 172, Jesuits, 32, 34, 40, 41, 231 w w w 174, 187, 243, 258 Jews, 97, 98, 100, 120, 171, 174, 189, 190, m o House of Lords, 57, 61, 62, 237 234, 235 .c te a g Howse, Robert, 76 n. 32 Jones [née Boyle], Katherineh (Viscountess s .a Hubmaier, Balthasar, 107 Ranelagh), 168,w 179 w w Huet, Daniel, 231 Joyce, Jeremiah, 253–6 m o Huguenots, 195, 210 Judaisers, 99–100,.c 116 te a g Humanism, 24, 26, 33, 89, 166 Judaism, 116, 118,h 179, 234 s .a Husband, Edward, 73 n. 19 Julius Caesar,w 104, 137, 246, 247, 248 w w Hut, Hans, 107 Jurieu, Pierre, 231 m o Hutterites, 94, 107, 108 .c te a g Hyde, Edward (first Earl of Clarendon), Kabbalism,h 173 s .a 143 Keach,w Benjamin, 189, 192, 195 w w Hyrne, Henry, 168 Keith, George, 168 m o Kent,.c 58, 59, 60, 62, 64, 208 te a g Iconoclasm, 23 h Roydon Hall, East Peckham, 58 s .a Independents, 8, 38, 41, 45, 55, 74, 75, 76, w King, William (Archbishop of Dublin), w w

77, 80, 84, 85, 132, 134, 143, 150, m 206, 215 o .c 154, 176, 211, 215, 216 te Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian, 167, 181 a g h Independent Whig, 237, 238 s Knott, Edward, 231 .a w Ingelo, Nathaniel, 162, 168 w Knowles, John, 80 w

Inquisition, Roman, 154, 156, 157, 232m Koyré, Alexandre, 166, 167, 170 o .c Ireland, 18, 29, 43, 88, 129, 130, 132,te 134, Kullin, Sarah, 71 a g h 135, 137, 138, 140, 141,s 143, 144, .a w 149, 156, 185, 194, 206,w 211, 212, L’Ouverture, Toussaint, son of, 243 w

213, 215, 217, 218, 219m Larner, William, 73, 76, 77, 85 o .c Ireton, Henry, 149 te Latimer, Hugh, 108 a g h Islam, 229 s Latin, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 39, 40, 44, 46, 48, .a w Isle of Wight, 45 w 115, 117, 151, 155, 168, 169, 228, w

Israel, 38, 96, 97, 102,m 111, 125 231, 234 o .c Italy, 29, 146, 147, te149, 151, 153, 154, Latitudinarians, 150, 153, 163, 170, 237 a g h 155, 156, s 157, 159, 193, 225, 228 Laudians, 31, 33, 35, 38, 40, 41, 48, 59, .a w Genoa, 146w 167, 172 w

Livorno, 146,m 154, 155, 156 Le Clerc, Jean, 225 o .c Naples, te29, 88, 146 Lead, Jane, 200 a g h Palermo,s 146 Leti, Gregorio, 147, 150 .a w Pisa,w 145, 146 Levant, The, 154 w

Rome,m 24, 29, 131, 142, 149, 151, 154, Levellers, The, 3, 8, 9, 15, 16, 32, 60, 72, o .c te 75, 53, 54, 58, 66, 67, 68, 84, 88, a 156, 158, 188, 189, 190, 247 g h s Venice, 29, 131, 146, 154, 157 109, 125, 130, 134, 149, 150, 152, .a w w 153, 158, 242, 253, 254, 256 w © Copyrighted Material Index 267 © Copyrighted Material

Ley, John, 78 m Libertines, 3, 33 n. 6, 43, 47, 71, 150 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 29, 131, 132, 139,o .c te a Lilburne, John, 15, 54, 58, 62, 66, 67, 242, 142 g h s 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258 Machiavellianism, 132, 158 .a w w w Lily, William, 115 MacSweeney, Barry, 114 m o Lindsey, Theophilus, 182 Magalotti, Lorenzo, 150, 152 .c te a Livy, 29, 131, 142 Magna Carta, 24 g h s Lloyd, Lodowick, 74 n. 24 Maidley, Richard, 69 .a w w w Lloyd, William (Bishop of St. Asaph), 197 Malta, 155, 156 m o Llwyd, Morgan, 79 n. 41, 80 Manlove, Timothy, 217 .c te a Locke, John, 165, 171, 172, 175, 182, 224, Marcus (son of Cato), 247g h s .a 230, 236, 238 Marillac, Intendant, 210w w w Lollards, 91, 92, 112 Marprelate tracts, 221, 254 m o London, 10, 16, 19, 21, 25, 27, 43, 46, 60, Marston Moor, battle.c of, 207 te a 65, 70, 73, 74, 75, 76, 80, 88, 100, Marten, Henry, g130, 137 h s .a 101, 105, 124, 125, 147, 149, 150, Marx, Karl, 5w w w 157, 169, 175, 184, 188, 189, 198, Marxist historians, 7, 8, 14–17, 21, 26, 52, m o 207, 208, 209, 212, 216, 223, 224, 89,.c 90, 254, 255 te a g 225, 226, 228, 241, 242, 243, 250, Massey,h Edward, 55 s .a 252, 255 Mason,w John, 186, 191, 193, 200, 203 w w London Maynard, Sir John, 53, 54 m o ‘Black-spread-Eagle’ (St. Gregory by Mayo,.c Richard, 234 te a g St. Paul’s), 69–86 Mh ede, Joseph, 179, 180, 183, 187 s .a Cheapside, 100 w Mennonites, 92, 150 w w Coleman Street, 19, 184 Metham, Lady, 39 m o Fleet Street, 241 .c Metham, Sir Thomas, 39 te a g ‘Golden Lion’, 225 h Middlesex s .a Grecian coffee house, 224 w Isleworth, 223 w w Guildhall, 251, 253 Mill, John Stuart, 4 m o Harley Street, 226 .c Milton, John, 2, 131, 133, 134, 143, 164, te a g Lombard Street, 76 n. 32 h 165, 171, 172, 174, 179, 182, 236 s .a Ludgate Hill, 241 w Mollineux, Henry, 191, 198, 199, 200 w w Old Bailey, The, 241 Molyneux, William, 132 m o Paternoster Row, 241 .c Monarchs, English te a g St. Mary-le-Bow, 43 h Charles I, 32, 67, 68, 70, 75, 146, 148, s .a St. Paul’s Cathedral,w 225, 244 197, 199, 201, 203, 236, 248 w w Charles II, 143, 184, 186, 187, 195, St. Sepulchre’s, 188m o .c Smithfield, 65 te 197 a g h Strand, The, 241s George I, 237 .a w George III, 246, 249 Theobald’s wroad, 252 w

London Correspondingm Society (LCS), George IV, 243 o .c 242,te 244, 255 Henry VIII, 101 a g h London Revolutions Society (LRS), 242, James I, 61 .a w 255w James II, 185, 186, 187, 195, 197, 209 w

Ludlow,m Edmund, 70, 75 William III and Mary II, 185, 195, 197, o .c Luffe,te John, 151, 154, 156 201 a g h Lupis,s Antonio, 145, 154 Monarchs, French .a w Lw uther, Martin, 107, 250, 257 Louis XIV, 194, 195–6 w © Copyrighted Material 268 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Moone, Richard, the elder, 80 Oxfordshire m o Moone, Richard, the younger, 75, 80 Great Tew, 167 .c te a Morando, Bernardo, 147, 153 g h s .a Moravia, 91, 94 Paine, Thomas (stationer), 76, 77 w w w More, Hannah, 257 Paine, Thomas, 255 m o More, Henry, 93, 162, 166, 167, 170, 171, Pajoli, Alfonso, 147 .c te a g 173, 175, 177, 178, 180, 181 Paracelsians, 93 h s .a More, Thomas, 90, 91 Parker, Samuel, 176–7 w w w Morehead, William, 229 Parker, William, 75 m o Mortalists, 157 Pastimes .c te a g Mortera, Saul Levi, 234 bowls, 100 h s .a Mosaic Law, 36, 38, 95, 97, 99, 100, 101, football, 100 w w w 105, 107, 235 morris dancing, 100 m o Moscovia, 228 Patin, Guy, 231 .c te a g Mosheim, Johan Lorenz, 169 Patrick, Simon,h 162, 168 s .a Moule, Gregory, 71 Paul III (Pope),w 157 w w Moyle, Walter, 131 Peasants’ Revolt (of 1381), 15, 88, 90 m o Muggletonians, 9, 18 Pelagians,.c 32 te a g Münster, 91, 92, 93, 105, 107, 109, 112, Pendarves,h John, 70, 120 s .a 183 Pendarves,w Thomasine, 70, 119–20 w w Müntzer, Thomas, 91, 92, 93, 107, 112 Penington, Isaac, 155 m o Musgrave, John, 55 Penn,.c William, 168 te a g ‘My One Flesh’, 71 Perfectionists,h 75, 80,81 s .a w Perfettists, 150 w w

Napoleonic wars, 249 m Perrot, John, 151, 154–6 o .c Naudé, Gabriel, 228, 231 te Persia, 228 a g h Nayler, James, 81, 151, 158 s Peterloo massacre, 248 .a w Nedham, Marchamont, 54, 132, 133, 137,w Peters, Hugh, 75, 254 w

138, 139, 142, 143 m Petitions, 18, 19, 20, 58, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, o .c Netherlands, the, 64, 207, 211, 218,te 223 69, 71, 72, 77, 84, 101, 206, 215, a g h Neville, Henry, 132, 140, 142, 156,s 254 243 .a w Newcombe, Thomas, 76 w Petto, Samuel, 188, 189, 194 w

Newcomen, Thomas, 120 m Petty, William, 168 o .c Niclaes, Hendrik, 74, 83, 92,te 93, 109, 173 Pharsalus, battle of, 248 a g h Nicodemism, 157 s Philadelphians, 181, 200 .a w Nonconformists, 3, 14,w 90, 175, 187, 198, Plato, 163, 165 w

207 m Pliny, 141 o .c Non-resistance, 23,t e107, 108–11 Plotinus, 47, 165 a g h Norman Yoke, 15,s 24, 102 Poitou, 210 .a w Norris, John, 168w Poland, 146, 194 w

m Politicians (sect), 154 o .c Origen, 47, t173,e 177, 178 Poole, Elizabeth, 70 a g h Origenists,s 150 Poor Laws, the, 244 .a w Ottomanw Empire, 190 Popple, William, 232 w

Overton,m Henry, 76, 77 Pordage, John, 74, 80 o .c te Portius (son of Cato), 247 Overton,a Richard, 62, 74, 101, 221 g h Owen,s John, 85, 211 Portugal, 29, 88, 146 .a w Ow xford, 44, 46, 48, 116, 158 w © Copyrighted Material Index 269 © Copyrighted Material 171, 176, 187, 215, 218, 224, 229, Presbyterians, 8, 32, 36, 42, 55, 56, 77, 78, m 84, 85, 93, 111, 116, 117, 150, 154, 235, 236 o .c te a 176, 189, 193, 199, 205, 206, 207, Restoration, The, 3, 10, 11, 21, 22, 42,g 57, h s 211, 213, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219 75, 79, 143, 156, 163, 165, 167,.a w w w Price, Richard, 182 173, 174, 175, 178, 179, 182, 184, m o Priorato, Galeazzo Gualdo, 146 196, 197, 199, 201 .c te a Protectorate, the, 141, 142, 248 Revolution g h s Prynne, William, 55, 61, 62, 67, 68 American, 14, 22, 182 .a w w w Pseudo-Dionysius, 46, 47 English, 2, 3, 9, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, m o Ptolemy, 143 21, 22, 24, 27, 28,.c 29, 71, 72, 73, te a Puritans, 8, 16, 23, 27, 31, 41, 42, 48, 49, 75, g h s .a 59, 72, 75, 77, 89, 92, 93, 145, 150, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84,w 86, 88, 89, 90, 92, w w 154, 163, 171, 199, 207 100, 112, 146, 147, 148, 152, 163, m o Putney Debates, 8, 36, 52 164, .c te a Pym, John, 52 171, 174, 256,g 257 h s .a Pynson, Richard, 253 French, 14,w 17, 22, 182, 244 w w Glorious (of 1688–89), 28, 185, m o Quakers, 3, 8, 9, 18, 29, 71, 72, 74, 76, 80, .c 186, 187, 202, 215, 250, 254 te a g 81, 86, 88, 90, 93, 111, 130, 145, Russian,h 17, 22 s .a 150–56, 158, 167, 176, 181, 191, Rich, Nw athaniel, 79 w w 198, 200, 215, 216, 219, 225, 229 Rich, Robert, 81 m o Quintinists, 150 Rinuccini,.c Giovanni Battista, 149 te a g Rh iots, Spa Fields, 1816 s .a Rainborowe, Thomas, 52 w Robert, Sir Thomas, 208 w w Rainbow, Edward, 161 Robinson, George, 154 m o Raison d’état (Ragion di Stato), 158 .c Robinson (London printer), 225 te a g Randall, Giles, 46 h Rochester, Earl of, 237 s .a Ranters, 3, 9, 16, 18, 31, 34, 42, 43, 44,w 47, Rogers, John, 45, 46 w w 71, 72, 74, 76, 80, 88, 90, 93, 113, Roman Catholic Church, 152, 153, 154, m o 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 145,.c 150, 194, 218 te a g 152–3 h Rossetti, Carlo, 149 s .a Rawdon, Sir George, 168 w Rothmann, Bernhard, 107 w w Raworth, Ruth, 76 Royal Navy, 243 m o Reform Act (1832), 251 .c Royalists, 4, 13, 23, 27, 29, 41, 47, 51, 57, te a g Reformation, 7, 8, 22, 53,h 87, 88, 90, 157, 58, 66, 102, 129, 137, 147, 158, s .a 183, 193, 199 w 161, 174, 257, 258, 259 w w Rust, George, 177 Reformation m o .c Magisterial, 6, 89,te 90 Rutherford, Samuel, 32, 33 n. 6, 36, 46 a g h Radical, 6–7, s24, 27, 28, 72, 89, 90, 93, Rye House Plot, 212 .a w 112 w Ryswick, Treaty of, 194, 196 w

Regicide, 18, m41, 67, 68, 70, 82, 125, 130, o .c 132,te 135, 149, 174, 248 Sabbatarians, 150 a g h Republicans,s 3, 9, 10, 11, 14, 18, 24, 28, Sabbath, 99–101 .a w 70,w 74, 79, 80, 89, 102, 129–44, Sadler, John, 69, 161, 162, 171 w

m 156, 164, 174, 181, 236, 237, 242, Sallust, 131 o .c te 248, 249, 251 Salmon, Joseph, 74, 75, 81 a g h Religiouss toleration, 21, 25, 28, 29, 33, Saltmarsh, John, 26, 27, 31, 32–45, 48, 74, .a w w 36, 42, 67, 71, 78, 81, 85, 93, 157, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 86 w © Copyrighted Material 270 Varieties of 17th- and Early 18th-Century English Radicalism © Copyrighted Material

Salvetti, Amerigo, 157 Sprigge, William, 74 m o Salvetti Antelminelli, Giovanni, 157 Stanley, Sir Thomas, 143–4 .c te a San Gimignano, 145 Star Chamber, Court of, 62, 250 g h s .a Sancroft, William (Archbishop of Sterry, Peter, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48, w71, 79, w w Canterbury), 161, 168 86, 162, 167, 171, 173, 174, 175, m o Sarpi, Paolo, 158 177, 181 .c te a g Satan, 190 Stoicism, 165, 232 h s .a Sattler, Michael, 105, 108 Stokes, Jane, 154 w w w Saurin, Elie, 231 Strada, Famianus, 41 m o Sceptics, 150, 231, 232 Streater, John, 74 .c te a g Schleitheim Articles, 105, 107 Stubbe, Henry, 75 h s .a Schwenckfeld, Caspar, 91 Stubbs, John, 154, 158w w w Scotland, 111, 129, 130, 133, 134, 136, Sturm, Christopher, 168 m o 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 205 Suffolk .c te a g Scott, Robert, 147 Sudbury, 188h s .a Sedgwick, William, 70, 74, 79, 82, 84, 86 Summers Islands,w 78, 79 w w Seekers, 3, 9, 78, 82–3, 84, 86, 88, 93, 150 Supra-formalism, 82, 83 m o Senate, Roman, 246–7 Surrey .c te a g Sergeant, John, 231 Cobham,h 87 s .a Serristori, Antonio, 155 Guildford,w 109 w w Shakespeare, William, 246–7 E ast Sheen, Richmond, 175 m o Sharp, John, 168 .c St George’s Hill, 69, 87 te a g Sharpe, Thomas, 207 h Walton-on-Thames, 69, 87, 110 s .a Sherlock, William, 201 w Sussex w w

Sherman, John, 162–3 m Rye, 80 o .c Ship Money, 59, 61 te Winchelsea, 59 a g h Siam, 228 s Swiss Brethren, 107, 108 .a w Sidmouth, Lord, 248 w Switzerland, 91 w

Sidney, Algernon, 132, 133, 134, 143m o .c Simmons, Matthew, 76 te Tany, TheaurauJohn, 74, 79, 85 a g h Simon, Richard, 231, 233 s Taylor, Jeremy, 167, 168 .a w Simons, Menno, 107, 108 w Thomason, George, 32 w

Siri, Vittorio, 146, 148, 149 m Thomason Tracts, 21, 32, 33, 254 o .c Skinner, Augustine, 64 te Thoresby, John, 207 a g h Smith, Francis, 75 s Thoresby, Ralph, 27, 205–19 .a w Smith, John, 162, 169, w170, 177 Tillam, Thomas, 74 w

Socinians, 80, 172 m Tithes, 94, 101–02, 103, 104, 106, 112 o .c Somerset te Toland, John, 224, 229, 230, 234, 237 a g h Bath, 242 s Tomlyns, Samuel, 199 .a w North Cadbury,w 192 Tooke, John Horne, 254 w

Southey, Robert,m 257 Toulmin, Joshua, 182 o .c Sowle, Andrew,te 76 Tremblers, 150 a g h Spain, 43,s 142, 228, 247 Trenchard, John, 237 .a w Spencer,w John, 234 Trinity, doctrine of, 172, 173, 175, 181, w

Spencer,m William, 177 182, 216, 224 o .c te Troki, Isaac, 234 Spinoza,a Baruch, 234, 238 g h Spiritualists,s 6, 28, 71, 80, 81, 82, 84, 86 Tuckney, Anthony, 161, 163, 168 .a w Sw prigge, Joshua, 70, 79, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86 Turkey, 146 w © Copyrighted Material Index 271 © Copyrighted Material

Turkish Empire (see also Ottoman White, Nathaniel, 78 m Empire), 189 Wilkes, John, 249, 254 o .c te a Turks, 228 Wilkinson, Robert, 81 g h s Tutchin, John, 185 Williams, Daniel, 211 .a w w w Twysden, Sir Roger, 51, 58–68 Whichcote, Benjamin, 161, 162, 163, 167, m o Tyson, Edward, 228 168, 171, 173–5, 178, 179,.c 181, te a 182 g h s Uniformity, Act of (1662), 250, 258 Whichcote, Mary, 179 .a w w w United Provinces, The, 218, 223, 225 White, Thomas, 231 m o Universal redemption, 36, 94–8, 112, 157, Whitehall Debates, 8, 85.c te a 173, 181 Whitelocke, Bulstrode, g162 h s .a Utica, 247 Whittel, John, 196 w w w Utilitarians, 169 Wildman, John, 53, 55 m o Williams, Roger, .75,c 85 te a Van der Kun, Peter (Petrus Cunaeus), 234 Wiltshire g h s .a Van Helmont, Francis Mercury, 181 Marlborough,w 199 w w Van Limborch, Philip, 168 Winstanley, Gerrard, 16, 21, 27, 28, 52, m o Vane, Henry, 79, 80, 85, 86, 140 69,.c 71, 74, 79, 81, 82, 84, 87–112, te a g Vaughan, Thomas, 173 236,h 254 s .a Venner, Thomas, 184 Wise, wThomas, 169 w w Witchcraft, 167 m o Wagenseil, Johann Christoph, 234–5 Wither,.c George, 55 te a g Waldensians, 192 Wolf,h Johann Christoph, 234 s .a Wales, 129 n. 1, 142–3 w Woodman, James, 225 w w Wrexham, 80 Wooley, Francis, 212 m o Walker, Clement, 55, 67, 68 .c Worcester, battle of, 47, 129 te a g Walwyn, William, 33 n. 6, 74, 136 h Worthington, John, 161, 162, 167, 168, s .a Waple, Edward, 188, 193, 195 w 170, 171, 174, 175, 178–80 w w Ward, Seth, 168, 176 Worthington, Mary, 180 m o Ward, Thomas, 186, 200 .c Wright, John, 73 n. 19 te a g Waring, Thomas, 132, 133, 143 h Wrottesley, Elizabeth, 225 s .a Warr, John, 52, 81, 84 w Wrottesley, Sir Walter, 225 w w Warwickshire Wycliffe, John, 92, 112 m o Ragley Hall, 181 .c te a g Warwick, 31, 44 h Yorkshire s .a Weber, Max, 5 w Leeds, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 214, w w 219 Webster, John, 80, 85m o .c Westminster Assemblyte of Divines, 10, 77 Mill Hill, 207, 214, 217 a g h Westmorland s .a w Kendal, 207,w 208 Zilioli, Alessandro, 147 w

Whigs, 11, 181,m 185, 209, 212, 213, 238, Zwingli, Huldrych, 108 o .c 254 te a g h s .a w w w