Winstanley and Baptist Thought

Abstract

Of all the enigmas about Gerrard Winstanley, perhaps the greatest is how did a man of unremarkable origins come to articulate one of the most penetrating and damning critiques of his own society in such powerful and crafted prose? The answer to this question has as much to do with Winstanley's spiritual progress and broadening intellectual horizons as with his increased engagement in local and national politics, which became more pronounced after the establishment of the Digger plantation. Accordingly, this essay focuses on an aspect of Winstanley's development, namely his interpretation, adaptation, and articulation of teachings characteristically – albeit not always exclusively – maintained by certain prominent Baptists and their followers. I have suggested elsewhere that the outlines, if not the precise moments, of Winstanley's spiritual journey can be reconstructed with confidence. Beginning in either childhood, adolescence, or some point in adulthood, he was a puritan; then perhaps a separatist; then, it can be inferred, a General Baptist; then he dispensed with the outward observance of gospel ordinances (analogous to a “Seeker”) before falling into a trance. Here, I want to build on my own work together with John Gurney's important recent studies by locating Winstanley within a milieu that makes his beliefs and subsequent practices explicable. For it appears that despite his undoubted gift for original thought, Winstanley did not always give credit where it was due.

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Winstanley and Baptist Thought
Ariel Hessayon
Published online: 28 May 2014.
To cite this article: Ariel Hessayon (2014) Winstanley and Baptist Thought, Prose Studies: History,
Theory, Criticism, 36:1, 15-31, DOI: 10.1080/01440357.2014.914749
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Ariel Hessayon
WINSTANLEY AND BAPTIST THOUGHT
Of all the enigmas about Gerrard Winstanley, perhaps the greatest is how did a man of
unremarkable origins come to articulate one of the most penetrating and damning critiques
of his own society in such powerful and crafted prose? The answer to this question has as
much to do with Winstanley’s spiritual progress and broadening intellectual horizons as
with his increased engagement in local and national politics, which became more
pronounced after the establishment of the Digger plantation. Accordingly, this essay focuses
on an aspect of Winstanley’s development, namely his interpretation, adaptation, and
articulation of teachings characteristically – albeit not always exclusively – maintained
by certain prominent Baptists and their followers. I have suggested elsewhere that the
outlines, if not the precise moments, of Winstanley’s spiritual journey can be reconstructed
with confidence. Beginning in either childhood, adolescence, or some point in adulthood, he
was a puritan; then perhaps a separatist; then, it can be inferred, a General Baptist; then
he dispensed with the outward observance of gospel ordinances (analogous to a “Seeker”)
before falling into a trance. Here, I want to build on my own work together with John
Gurney’s important recent studies by locating Winstanley within a milieu that makes his
beliefs and subsequent practices explicable. For it appears that despite his undoubted gift for
original thought, Winstanley did not always give credit where it was due.
Keywords Gerrard Winstanley; Diggers; Baptists; Thomas Lambe
Introduction
Of all the enigmas about Gerrard Winstanley, perhaps the greatest is how did a man of
unremarkable origins come to articulate one of the most penetrating and damning
critiques of his own society in such powerful and crafted prose? The answer to this
question has as much to do with Winstanley’s spiritual progress and broadening
intellectual horizons as with his increased engagement in local and national politics,
which became more pronounced after the establishment of the Digger plantation.
Accordingly, I want to focus here on an aspect of Winstanley’s development, namely
his interpretation, adaptation, and articulation of teachings characteristically – albeit
not always exclusively – maintained by certain prominent Baptists and their followers.
It is well known that Winstanley had once been a believer in adult baptism. He says
so himself in Truth Lifting Up Its Head above Scandals (1649), and there seems little
reason to doubt his word: “for Baptism, I have gon through the ordinance of dipping,
which the letter of the Scripture doth warrant, yet I doe not presse any one thereunto”
(CWGW I: 449).
1
Yet until recently the significance of Winstanley’s statement had not
been given sufficient attention. John Gurney, however, has noted the presence of
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Prose Studies, 2014
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Baptist emissaries in Surrey during the mid-1640s (Gurney, Brave Community 41, 95 –
6). Thus, about the beginning of September 1645 and accompanied by the Norwich
weaver Samuel Oates, the Colchester soapboiler Thomas Lambe reportedly preached
in a church at Guildford; apparently, he would have done the same a few days later at
Godalming on a Sunday had the minister not denied him the use of his pulpit. Murray
Tolmie has deservedly called Lambe’s church, which then met at a house in Bell Alley,
Coleman Street but would shortly relocate to Spitalfields, the “most notorious sectarian
church in London during the English civil war.” Lambe himself was an energetic
emissary who traveled extensively through several counties during the war. He and
Oates were heading to Portsmouth and if they followed the road from London would
have first passed en route through Kingston-upon-Thames, Esher, and Cobham, where
Winstanley had been living since autumn 1643 (Edwards I: 92 – 5, 146;Tolmie,
“Thomas Lambe, soapboiler” 7).
Another itinerant Baptist evangelist active in Surrey was Thomas Collier. The
Presbyterian heresiographer and author of Gangraena, Thomas Edwards, called him a
“great Sectary,” relating how about the beginning of April 1646 this “mechanicall
fellow” preached in the meeting place at Guildford to an Independent congregation
swelled by people thronging from nearby towns come to hear this “rare man.”
Described as a husbandman or carter (possibly because, like his fellow Baptist Henry
Denne, he subscribed to the belief that ministers should work with their hands), Collier
was banished from Guernsey and afterwards imprisoned at Portsmouth for sowing the
seeds of “Anabaptism, Anti-sabbatarianism, and some Arminianisme” (Edwards, II:
148; III: 27, 41, 51– 2). Important research by Gurney has now drawn attention to
“distinct echoes” of Collier’s works in Winstanley’s earliest texts, and even allowing
for important theological differences Gurney thinks it “hard to believe that Winstanley
never read Collier or heard him preach, or that Collier was wholly unfamiliar with
Winstanley’s writings” (Gurney, Gerrard Winstanley 22, 24 – 26, 27– 28, 29, 39 –40,
42– 43).
While Guildford lay about 11 miles southwest of Cobham on the London-
Portsmouth road, Kingston was roughly 8 miles to the northeast. Chamberlains’
accounts for 1643– 1644 together with a warrant made out on 15 August 1644 indicate
that “Anabaptists” were probably arrested here, taken to Westminster, and possibly
brought before the Parliamentary Committee of Examinations for questioning. Further
evidence comes from a pamphlet dated 7 April 1645 based on two sermons delivered at
Kingston in February that year by Richard Byfield, rector of Long Ditton, Surrey.
Condemning the denial of infant baptism as an infection that had led to the
“diseasednesse of the Congregation of Kingston,” Byfield censured the heretical beliefs
of antinomians, anti-Sabbatarians, Anabaptists, Arminians, Socinians, and Papists as
pollutants that defiled the English church and Temple of God (Gurney, Brave Community
41– 2;Byfield, “Epistle Dedicatory,” 20–1).
It is conceivable that Byfield’s “Temple-vermine,” the “new disturbers” that
allegedly boasted of “fals[e]” gifts such as scriptural interpretation and revelation
(1 Corinthians 14: 26), but significantly not glossolalia (Acts 2: 4), referred to a
conventicle whose dozen or so members were seized with Bibles in their hands at the
house of John Fielder, a Kingston miller, one January Sunday 1645 (Byfield 33– 4).
Briefly imprisoned, upon their release they resumed meeting privately after Sabbath
day divine service and were apprehended again in March. Fielder was additionally
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charged with Sabbath breaking and recusancy. Protracted legal proceedings ensued
during which Fielder was advised by his solicitor Edward Barber, a London cloth-
drawer whose Baptist church sometimes met at a “great house” in Bishopsgate Street.
Barber’s own experience at the hands of the Court of High Commission for denying
infant baptism and payment of tithes followed by 11 months imprisonment in Newgate
and dealings with the Court of King’s Bench well-equipped him to make the
defendant’s case (Edwards, I: 96 – 7, 104– 5;Barber, Certain Queries 14;Wright,
“Edward Barber” 355– 70).Suggestively, Winstanley and the future Digger Henry
Bickerstaffe were to represent Fielder in arbitration in February 1649, with the
Leveller leader John Lilburne serving as part of Fielder’s legal team (Fielder 2, 4 –6;
Gurney, Brave Community 42, 76 – 8, 131, 132– 3, 134).
I have suggested elsewhere that the outlines, if not the precise moments, of
Winstanley’s spiritual journey can be reconstructed with confidence. Beginning in either
childhood, adolescence, or some point in adulthood, he was a puritan; then perhaps a
separatist; then, it can be inferred, a General Baptist; then he dispensed with the outward
observance of gospel ordinances (analogous to a “Seeker”) before falling into a trance
sometime between 16 October 1648 and 26 January 1649. Although Winstanley’s
puritan and Baptist phases can only be gleaned from reminiscences, they still provide a
valuable insight into the evolution of his thought. While we can only speculate when,
where, and by whom Winstanley was baptized – probably between autumn 1644 and
spring 1648, perhaps in the River Thames at Kingston, or the River Neckinger at
Rotherhithe, or the Tower of London moat, possibly by a member of Lambe’s or
Barber’s church – the imprint of distinctive General Baptist tenets, especially in his first
five publications, is both unmistakable and crucial for understanding the development of
his ideas. The influence of Baptist precedents can be seen, for example, in Winstanley’s
understanding of apostolic practice and implementation of the doctrine of community of
goods (Acts 4: 32), with its striking resemblance to sixteenth-century Hutterite practice
in Moravia (Hessayon, “Early Modern Communism” 1– 50). It is present in the Diggers’
use of emissaries to spread the good news that they had begun laying the foundations of
universal freedom (Matthew 28: 19). And it can also be seen in Winstanley’s beliefs
about universal redemption and particular election, not to mention his attitude toward
Scripture, divine gifts, Jewish law, ordinances, the Saturday and Sunday Sabbath, tithes,
ministers, magistrates, religious toleration, and nonresistance. Taken as a whole it
largely positions his early teachings as budding forth from fertile General Baptist soil.
Indeed, it is fruitful in some respects to consider the Diggers as an offshoot from the main
branch of the General Baptists, with roots going back to the Radical Reformation
(Hessayon, “Gerrard Winstanley, Radical Reformer” 87– 112).
In this essay I want to build on Gurney’s work as well as my own by locating
Winstanley within a milieu that makes his beliefs and subsequent practices explicable.
Much of the evidence is circumstantial and necessarily selective. Thus, Winstanley’s
onetime companion and fellow Digger William Everard had been a Baptist. Like
Winstanley, Everard eventually moved beyond this doctrinal position when he rejected
believer’s baptism, gospel ordinances, and the efficacy of prayer. In mid-October 1648
Winstanley defended him in print from accusations of blasphemy following Everard’s
imprisonment by the bailiffs of Kingston. Moreover, just before digging began on St
George’s Hill, Everard was charged with interrupting a church service at Staines,
Middlesex, in a threatening manner, shaking an agricultural tool at the minister and calling
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him a son of perdition (2 Thessalonians 2: 3; Hessayon, “Everard, William”). Everard may
also have been involved in a dramatic incident at Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, about mid-
February 1649 when six soldiers reportedly entered the church after evening service, one
claiming to have received a divine command to deliver God’s message. This consisted of
five points: that the Sabbath was abolished as an unnecessary Jewish ceremonial law; that
tithes were abolished for the same reason; that ministers were abolished as “Antichristian”
and now replaced by Christ’s Saints whom he enlightened with “Revelations, and
Inspirations”; that magistrates were abolished, being redundant now that Christ had “erected
the Kingdom of Saints upon earth”; and that the Old and New Testaments were abolished
because Christ had now arrived in glory. At this point he set fire to a little Bible (Walker II:
152–3). Significantly, abolition of the Sabbath, tithes, and ministers together with
antiscripturism were all theological positions characteristically if not exclusively
maintained, with varying degrees of sophistication, by several General Baptists – notably
members of Lambe’s and Barber’s churches.
Then there is Winstanley’s indirect association with Barber through Fielder. It may
be noteworthy that Barber, Everard, and Winstanley, along with the Baptist Edmund
Chillenden and the Leveller printer William Larner, had all been apprenticed into the
Merchant Taylors – although each to different masters over a period of 20 years in
what was a very large London livery company.
2
Another indirect connection worth
mentioning may have been with the physician Peter Chamberlen, who had adopted
believer’s baptism about 1648 and was acquainted with Barber (Chamberlen, Master
Bakewells Sea of Absurdities 3). Chamberlen was also author of The Poore Mans Advocate
(prefaced 3 April 1649), a work acquired by the London bookseller George Thomason
the day before he dated his copy of the Diggers’ first published manifesto, The True
Levellers Standard Advanced: Or, the State of Community Opened, and Presented to the Sons of
Men (prefaced 20 April 1649). Chamberlen’s proposals, which were to be discussed by
a committee appointed by the Council of State, included – once the State had been
satisfactorily recompensed for its losses from Crown and Church estates – granting the
poor cultivation and usage of the commons, wasteland, forests, chases, heaths, and
moors. Mario Caricchio has discovered that Chamberlen’s scheme was publicized
through a broadsheet intended as a petition to be read in parish churches and public
places. Signatures were to be deposited with the bookseller Giles Calvert, who was also
Chamberlen’s and Winstanley’s publisher. They would be collected by Richard
Maidley – assumed, although the evidence is not conclusive, to be the Surrey Digger of
that name (Chamberlen, The Poore Mans Advocate 47 – 9;The Humble Petition of Officers
and Souldiers, brs;Caricchio, “News from New Jerusalem”69–70;CWGW II: 450).
Chamberlen’s solution to England and Wales’ critical agrarian problem somewhat
resembles another petition, circulated in London and its surroundings in mid-February
1649 and subsequently presented to the House of Commons, calling for opening up
common land to the poor that had been “wrongfully enclosed.”
3
It has also been compared
with John Jubbes’ scheme of December 1648 to prevent famine and provide for the poor
by enclosing marshes, fens, and common pastures, apportioning a quarter to the indigent of
those parishes in which such land was situated (Jubbes, Several Proposals 9;Jubbes, An
Apology 13;The Moderate 42 (24 April– 1 May 1649): 481; Brailsford 433 –4). A Norfolk-
bred Parliamentarian army officer influenced by the preaching of John Saltmarsh (Sir
Thomas Fairfax’s recently deceased chaplain), Jubbes’ proposal formed part of a modified
version of the Agreement of the People issued with the support of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen,
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and Common Council of London and later summarized in The Moderate. Although not a
Leveller himself, Jubbes had spoken at the Putney debates (28 October– 11 November
1647) (Jubbes, An Apology 2, 7, 19;Brailsford 304, 357– 8;Baker and Vernon, Agreements of
the People 6–7.). So too did some soldiers who were already or subsequently became
Baptists – William Allen, Chillenden, Richard Deane, Robert Everard, and perhaps also
John Rede,
4
while Collier had preached a sermon taken from Isaiah 65: 17 on ADiscoveryof
the New Creation at army headquarters, Putney, on 29 September 1647. Indeed, historians
have rightly emphasized support among Baptists and future Baptists – mainly General
rather than Particular Baptists – for various versions of the Agreement of the People with its
demands for religious toleration and the abolition of tithes; notably by Barber, Collier,
Henry Danvers, Robert Everard, Jeremiah Ives, Lambe, Oates, Richard Overton, and
John Vernon (Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints 170– 1;Wright, The Early English Baptists
203, 204, 207, 210–1). In addition, Denne was associated with the army mutiny of May
1649 (considered a Leveller revolt by several contemporaries), infamously renouncing his
former principles to save his life, while Rede was likewise charged with assisting the
Levellers’ cause at this dangerous time (Denne, The Levellers Designe;Bayley 344– 5). Given
this widespread Baptist involvement in political agitation it would be interesting to
speculate on the role played by individual Baptists in promoting the published declarations
circulated on behalf of the “well-affected” of London, Southwark, and several counties –
especially in light of the well-known affinities between three pamphlets emanating from
Buckinghamshire and the Diggers’ declaration of April 1649.
Besides Winstanley’s social network and the Baptist background more generally,
the Diggers imitated the Baptist churches in March 1650 through their use of
authorized emissaries. As well as encouraging people to cultivate common land, these
messengers solicited donations for a common treasury from among the “well-affected”
of the southern and midland counties. Although evidence survives for only one journey
undertaken by two men encompassing 34 named stopping-places (the majority in
Buckinghamshire), it appears that despite their meandering route, the Digger agents
traveled through areas where they expected to be well received. These included at least
nine towns and villages with either an existing Baptist presence or else Baptist churches
that would be established during the 1650s.
5
Among them were Bedford, where about
1650 an open membership separatist congregation was formed, and Fenstanton and
Warboys, where Denne had founded General Baptist churches. The Warboys church
book even records the Diggers’ activities on the “commons and heath-grounds”
together with Winstanley’s prophecy that “Israel must go free,” recalling that in 1650
the Baptist churches began listening too much to the “errors” of “Diggers, Levellers,
and Ranters ... insomuch that several churches were so shaken that most of our
Christian assemblies were neglected or broken up” (Underhill 269 – 70).
Perhaps even more compelling than this circumstantial evidence, however, are the
marked similarities between a number of Winstanley’s ideas and corresponding
features of Baptist thought. It is to these we now turn.
Community of goods
Communal ownership of property and belongings was a controversial if ancient doctrine
that subsequently became a distinguishing feature of some early and medieval Christian
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heresies as well as specific Protestant sects, who envisaged themselves as communities
imitating apostolic practice. Yet once Anabaptists seized the town of Mu
¨nster in 1534,
proclaiming it the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21: 2), abolishing private ownership of
money, forcefully establishing community of goods and then polygamy, that place
became synonymous with community of all things – not to mention sectarian anarchy. In
consequence, having all things common was condemned by sixteenth-century Protestant
reformers like Heinrich Bullinger, Jean Calvin, and John Ponet as a foul doctrinal error
maintained by fantastical spirits who perverted scripture to serve their madness.
Consequently, the principle of community of goods, despite scriptural sanction (Acts
2:44–45, 4:32), was condemned by the 38th of the 39 articles of the Church of England
(1563) as a false boast of certain Anabaptists – notwithstanding that every Christian man
ought to give alms liberally according to his ability. Indeed, among the intolerable Baptist
doctrinal errors consistently enumerated by heresiographers were the notions that a
Christian man could not in good conscience have possessions but must make “all things
common,” and that he was permitted to have “many wives”(Pagitt 13, 24).
Rather than fading from collective memory the stigma of Mu
¨nster lingered, revived
through print as a cautionary atrocity story. Published as warnings against introducing
religious toleration in England, these pamphlets paralleled the infamous exploits of
Thomas Mu
¨ntzer and Jan of Leiden with contemporary events to highlight the threat to
Church and State from Anabaptism, which was compared to a contagion, canker, or
gangrene that had infected several limbs of the body politic and was spreading to its heart.
The danger of guilt by association was not lost on the General Baptist Richard Overton
who recognized the calumny that awaited if the struggle for liberty of conscience failed:
“for who writ the Histories of the Anabaptists but their Enemies?”(Overton, Araignment of Mr.
Persecution 20). Furthermore, following the linkage made by heresiographers between
having all things common, polygamy and the abolition of both private property and
personal possessions, the Leveller leadership was forced to issue conciliatory public
statements that communism had no place in their political program.
Perhaps aware of this dark history and the danger of guilt by association Winstanley
envisaged his little group as both a spiritual and temporal community of love and
righteousness; members of Christ’s mystical body living in the last days before the
destruction of Babylon and coming of the Lord, The King of Righteousness, who would
remove the curse placed upon the Creation and make the earth a common treasury.
Indeed, while the Diggers welcomed newcomers that would willingly submit to their
communal precepts, Winstanley thought that only those who had undergone an
illuminating spiritual transformation could willingly dispense with their possessions and
have all things common. Yet Winstanley was also careful to stress that his notion of
community did not extend to sharing women. Accordingly, he distanced himself from
the perceived sexual excesses of the Ranters, condemning their conduct as carnal rather
than spiritual. This emphasis on morality links the Diggers with other religious groups
who emerged during the English Revolution, notably the Behmenists and Quakers.
Universal redemption and particular election
While Baptists agreed that there was no scriptural justification for infant baptism, they
remained divided on several important theological questions – especially the
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schismatic issue of whether Christ died for the sins of all mankind or whether only the
elect were to be saved by God’s free grace and mercy (Romans 9: 11 –13). Although
denominational alignments did not harden until arguably autumn 1644, there were on
the one hand followers of Calvinist doctrine who believed in the “particular Election
and Reprobation” of individuals (Particular Baptists), and on the other essentially
maintainers of core Arminian or Remonstrant tenets who, while usually accepting
particular election and denying free will, nonetheless taught the “Universal Love of
God to all” and thus the possibility of universal redemption (General Baptists)
(Howard, A Looking-Glass for Baptists 5–6;Crosby, History of English Baptists I: 173 –4).
If Winstanley was referred to at all by the beginning of the eighteenth century then
it was not only as a claimed forerunner of Quakerism, but also as a believer in universal
salvation. Accordingly, Winstanley’s The Mysterie of God, Concerning the Whole Creation,
Mankinde (1648) was cited by Richard Roach, rector of St Augustine, Hackney, as an
example of a Universalist tradition that stretched back to Origen, Clement of
Alexandria, and Gregory of Nyssa (Roach, “Preface”;Apetrei 228). The London
bookseller John Denis the elder, whose son and namesake owned a copy of
Winstanley’s Law of Freedom, added works by Theaurau John Tany, Richard Coppin,
and William Erbery to this catalogue of authors who had written in apparent support of
the doctrine of universal restoration (Denis’s catalogue 36, no. 885;Denis, “Preface” to
Restoration of All Things xxxiii – iv). Even so, Winstanley’s views were more complex
than posthumous inclusion in this list suggested. For in The Mysterie of God he actually
advocated a heterodox marriage of universal redemption with particular election.
Acknowledging potential contradictions with this seemingly irreconcilable combi-
nation, Winstanley explained that sinners would endure a finite period of punishment
– but certainly not Purgatory as taught by the Catholic Church – before their ultimate
salvation (CWGW I: 266, 269– 70, 286–8, 289; cf. Rabisha 30).
Winstanley’s belief in universal redemption, it must be emphasized, was
considered a doctrinal error, one that from 2 May 1648 was punishable by
imprisonment if disseminated – which may explain why the first edition of The Mysterie
of God has an undated preface and bears no publisher’s imprint (Firth and Rait I: 1135).
Furthermore, and crucially, Winstanley was not unique in simultaneously maintaining
universal redemption and particular election. On the contrary, as the eighteenth-
century Baptist historian Thomas Crosby was to observe, Lambe had previously
endeavored at “the reconciling of particular election, with universal redemption”inA Treatise of
Particular Predestination (1642) (Crosby III: 56– 7). Here, Lambe declared that “Christs
dying for all, and particular Election” stood together; “there is no contradiction betwixt these
two, but a sweet concord”. Beginning with a defense of particular predestination, he
proceeded with a response to several objections by suggesting that election was an
additional means of making some believe in Christ besides redemption (Lambe, A
Treatise of Particular Predestination A2v, Bv-B2, B2v). Lambe returned to this subject
about three years later in a defense of his London church entitled The Fountaine of Free
Grace opened (1645; 2nd ed., 1648), denying that the “doctrine of Christs dying for all” was
contradicted by God’s election of “some persons before the world began”(Lambe, The
Fountaine 21– 2).
6
This published vindication of his congregation from the “scandalous
aspersions of holding free-will, and denying a free Election by Grace” was issued shortly
after Lambe had reportedly preached the “Arminian” doctrine of “universal Grace”
before a “mighty great” audience at St Benet Gracechurch. It did not, however, prevent
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Edwards from subsequently attacking Lambe’s church. (Lambe, The Fountain title page;
Edwards I: 92).
In Gangraena (1646) Edwards raged that all members of Lambe’s congregation
preached “universal Redemption” (Edwards I: 92). Denne, a “great Antinomian” and
“desperate Arminian,” allegedly often preached the doctrine that the everlasting Gospel
(Revelation 14: 6) was to believe that Christ died for all, for Judas as well as for Peter,
even for Muslims and pagans; “and that all the sins of men committed against the Moral
law, were actually forgiven and pardoned when Iesus Christ shed his blood” (Edwards
I: 26, 49 [mispaginated], 76– 7, 181–2). Similarly, Oates preached against the
doctrine of “Gods eternal Election and Predestination” and was later charged with
perverting Scripture to support his contention that “Christ dyed for all and ev
r
y man”
(Edwards I: 92– 4; II: 10;Betteridge 208).
Then there was Mrs Attaway, said to be a lace woman. She too reportedly
preached “many dangerous and false” doctrines, including that because God was good
he would not damn his own creatures eternally, that “there shall be a generall
Restauration, wherein all men shall be reconciled and saved,” and that “Christ died for
all.” Moreover, even through Edwards’s hostile filter there is a striking anticipation of
Winstanley in Attaway’s apparent belief that “there was Esaus world and Jacobs world;
this was Esaus world, but Jacobs world was comming shortly, wherein all creatures shall
be saved.” For Winstanley envisaged Jacob and Esau as types. Esau’s dominion was
supported by university-trained clergymen and public preachers, “false Teachers” and
betrayers of Christ. Conversely, Jacob would sweep away “all the refuge of lies, and all
oppressions” to “make the earth a common treasury.” Indeed, Attaway again preceded
Winstanley in declaring that a prophet would:
come forth to preach this new Doctrine of generall Restauration and Salvation of
all; and though all should be saved, yet there should be degrees of glory between
those that have been Saints (they should be more glorious) and those who were the
wicked, though now restored. (Edwards I: 87; III: 26 – 7; cf. CWGW I: 501– 2,
511– 2, 550, 564)
Given the physical proximity before mid-February 1646 of Lambe’s church to John
Goodwin’s gathered congregation (the former was then located in Bell Alley, off
Coleman Street, the latter in nearby St Stephen’s church on Coleman Street), it is
unsurprising to learn of a member of Goodwin’s church attending out of curiosity a
Sunday evening meeting at Lambe’s where he “reasoned the possibility of men to be
saved who are not Elected.” Meanwhile at Bishopsgate Street, the question of “whether
Christ died for all men” was hotly debated late into the night on 12 November 1645 by
about 80 Baptists including members of Barber’s church (Edwards I: 94, 104). Mention
should also be made here of William Erbery pleading for “universall Redemption,” as
well as two treatises which may no longer be extant: Timothy Batte’s A True Vindication
of the Generall Redemption of the Second Adam (1645) and Jubbes’s The Water of Life or the
True Way to General Salvation (1652) (Edwards I: 35; III: 90;Bibliotheca Uffenbachiana I:
861, no. 51(4).
While it is possible, of course, that Winstanley’s heterodox conjunction of
universal redemption with particular election had been developed independently, it is
far more likely that it evolved through a process of listening to a member of Lambe’s
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church (perhaps Lambe himself when evangelizing in Guildford or elsewhere in Surrey
on the London-Portsmouth road), reflection, discussion, and literary expression. And
since Winstanley only cited scripture in support of this doctrine (as was his usual
practice), this reinforces the impression of hearing rather than reading.
Scripture
In an address to the scholars of Oxford and Cambridge and all those calling themselves
ministers of the Gospel at the front of Truth Lifting Up Its Head above Scandals Winstanley
declared that regardless of their ability to render Hebrew and Greek into English,
scholars and clergymen did not possess the original Scriptures as written by the Prophets
and Apostles – merely copies of questionable accuracy. Consequently, their
contradictory translations, inferences, conjectures, and doctrines were akin to a savage
beast ripping asunder the Gospel, whose inner truth could not be apprehended through
corrupt flesh but be judged only by the Spirit of the risen Christ, which was now
spreading through his sons and daughters (CWGW I: 409-10). Within the main text
Winstanley adopted a catechetical format, explaining that the Gospel was God the Father
himself whereas the Scriptures contained only testimonies of his appearance to comfort
believers. And in these “latter” days when God was manifesting himself to rule in the flesh
of his saints, the writings of the Prophets and Apostles would cease, their validity being
superseded by the everlasting Gospel: the Lord himself (CWGW I: 429-36).
I argue in a forthcoming essay that during the English Revolution initial objections
to an unquestioning adherence to the outward letter of Scripture together with doubts
about its salvific potential were, on the whole, reinforced by several interlinked
doctrinal positions: the supremacy of the interior spirit over exterior flesh; the
supersession of ordinances such as Baptism; seeking and awaiting a return to the
primitive Christianity of the Apostles; and belief in the imminent second coming of
Christ (Hessayon, “Not the Word of God”). It is also significant for our purposes that
all the individuals named by Edwards in Gangraena whose publicly expressed beliefs
included notions consonant with antiscripturism had, with the important exception of
William Erbery, voluntarily undergone believer’s baptism.
Thus, many members of Lambe’s congregation were accused of slighting the
Scriptures (Edwards I: 94). Oates, for instance, was charged with asserting that “y
e
old
Testam[en]
t
is nul’d, and they y
t
preach it or alleadg it, are Moses disciples, not Ch[ris]ts”
(LJ, ix: 571;Betteridge 208). Collier, who had likewise been active in Surrey,
maintained that the Hebrew and Greek text of the Bible was undoubtedly corrupt since
Papists had preserved and transmitted copies of the original. Given that the Papacy had
probably perverted the earliest version and that several Greek copies contradicted each
other in particular places, he advised his fellow self-regarding saints to place their faith in
God, through whom Scripture’s glorious inner truth would be revealed to their spirit
(Collier, A General Epistle 30– 9). Then there was Thomas Webbe, who reportedly said
that the Scriptures were the “golden-Calf and brazen-Serpent” that had set the King and
Parliament at variance. Only when these idolatrous objects had been dashed to pieces
would the divisions that had rent the kingdom asunder be healed. Furthermore, Webbe
allegedly claimed that the Scriptures were nothing but a man-made tradition, whose
authority was purposefully sustained by a parasitic clergy that derived their livelihood
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from the monopoly they exercised over its interpretation. (LJ, vii: 71, 80 –1;Edwards I:
54, 74– 5; II: 138).
Equally heinous were the teachings disseminated in print by Lawrence Clarkson.
His first pamphlet, The Pilgrimage of Saints (1646), contained several inflammatory
passages “highly derogatory to the Scriptures.” These included Clarkson’s apparent
assertion that the Bible was not the word of God but a human invention. Accordingly,
regardless of the authenticity or otherwise of the original manuscript or indeed the
English translation’s accuracy, the Scriptures had no authority as a guide to Christian
conduct (Edwards I: 18, 19, 29, 73, 127; II: 7, 165– 6). In the same vein, surgeon John
Boggis was accused of wishing “he had not known so much of the Bible” which was only
paper (Edwards II: “To the Christian Reader,” 161 –3). A final example is Clement
Wrighter, whom Edwards denounced as an arch heretic, fearful apostate,
antiscripturist, skeptic, and atheist. Wrighter had been an Independent, General
Baptist and associate of Lambe. According to Edwards, he asserted that there was no
Gospel, no ministry, nor faith unless anyone could demonstrate that they had been
called to the ministry in the manner of the Apostles. Wrighter, moreover, was said to
have affirmed in conversation that:
the Scriptures are not the Word of God, neither in the Translation, not yet in the
Original tongues, so as to be an infallible foundation of Faith; that the Scriptures
are writings only probably to be believed as the Story of Henry the Eighth.
(Edwards I:81– 3; III: 136)
The Saturday and Sunday Sabbath
Profanation of the Sabbath was a serious matter during the English Revolution. Indeed,
the “Book of Sports” – a royal initiative encouraging traditional Sunday pastimes
outside the hours of divine service – was publicly burned on 10 May 1643 at
Cheapside. What is more, according to the provisions of an Ordinance of 8 April 1644
traveling and laboring on the Sabbath were punishable by 10 and 5 shilling fines,
respectively (Firth and Rait I: 420 – 2).
Unlike some prominent separatist and Baptist Judaizers (Christians who adopted
selected Jewish customs and religious rites), and despite himself exhibiting Judaizing
tendencies, Winstanley was no defender of the Saturday Sabbath. But whereas he
regarded the Jewish Sabbath as a type, as an outward observance practiced one day in
seven by Jews that prefigured what Christians would “perform in the substance,” he
insisted that keeping Sunday holy had not been achieved by force. Rather, it was a
“voluntary act of love” among the Apostles who had tasted the “day of Christ.”
Consequently, Winstanley rebuked ministers for enforcing observance of the Sunday
Sabbath with the magistrates’ power, endeavoring to compel people “to keep that day
after the manner of the Jewish tipe.” With this context in mind, the actions of five
Diggers who began cultivating the earth on St George’s Hill one April Sunday takes on
extra significance since this appears to have been a confrontational gesture. Certainly,
this unashamed Sabbath breach echoes Jesus’ teaching that it was lawful to do good on
Sabbath days (Luke 6: 5 – 10), and chimes with Winstanley’s conviction that Saints
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filled with the indwelling Christ were not bound by outmoded forms of Jewish worship
but liberated from weekly Sabbath observance (CWGW I: 161, 288 – 89, 449, 451).
Moreover, there are suggestive antecedents and parallels.
Thus, in 1627 the supposed Familist and one-time Putney resident John Etherington
was publicly humiliated and pressured to recant certain blasphemous opinions, including
that the Sabbath day “was of no force” since the Apostles’ time and that every day “is a
Sabbath as much as that which we call the Sabbath day” (Denison 33 –4). More recently
Byfield had denounced anti-Sabbatarians from a Kingston pulpit, accusing them of
perverting the fourth commandment by teaching the Sabbath to be a ceremonial rather
than moral law (Byfield 20). Similarly, one of the numerous doctrinal errors enumerated
by Edwards was anti-Sabbatarian, namely that all days “are alike to Christians under the
new Testament, and they are bound no more to the observation of the Lords day, or first
day of the week then to any other” (Edwards I: 30). Among Lambe’s church were three
women who worked as “gold and silver wyre drawers” who regularly practiced their
craft on Sundays, reportedly claiming they recognized no Sabbath since “every day was
alike to them” (Edwards I: appendix, 124). Oates too was charged with maintaining that
“there is no Saboath to be observed, but all dayes are alike,” while Collier went so far as to
deny the “Morality of the Sabbath” in conference with Edwards (LJ, ix: 572;Betteridge
208;Edwards III: 29, 41). In the same vein, on New Year’s Day 1645 an unidentified
army surgeon – perhaps Timothy Batte – preaching on Colossians 2: 16 –17 in the West
Country declared the Sabbath was “not to be observed.” Privately he allegedly asserted in
conference with a minister that “there is no Sabbath to be kept since Christs fulfilling the
Law, since no command for it in the Gospel” (Edwards II: 152 –3).
Tithes and anticlericalism
With the outbreak of Civil War in England, removal of church courts and sequestrations,
resistance to the collection of tithes, hitherto sporadic, became widespread. On 8
November 1644, Parliament issued an Ordinance authorizing Justices of the Peace in
certain circumstances to commit defaulters to goal. Opposition to the forced
maintenance of ministers, however, grew fiercer. Thus, Lilburne, then a member of
Edmund Rozier’s Independent congregation, asserted that tithes were a Jewish
ceremonial law that had been abolished with Christ’s death on the cross (Lilburne,
Englands Birth Right Justified 13). At the same time Overton denounced ministers as a
covetous, “ravening greedy generation,” contrasting them unfavorably with primitive
Christians who provided for the poor. Accordingly, he publicized the “abundance of
Poore, Fatherlesse, Widdowes, & c.” starving in every parish, urging voluntary
contributions as an alternative ([Overton], Ordinance for Tythes 22). Overton’s Ordinance
for Tythes Dismounted (1645) was shortly denounced by Edwards together with other
works fulminating against tithes as “Antichristian, Jewish, Diabolical, the root and
support of Popery.” Indeed, Edwards counted as doctrinal errors the beliefs that tithes
were “unlawfull, Jewish and Antichristian” and that ministers of the gospel “ought to
work with their hands.” He also provided several examples of those preaching against
tithes, including Denne, William Dell, and a famous but unnamed Baptist of Coventry
(Edwards I: 30, 76; II: 12, 22; III: 21, 32, 38, 46, 69, 81, 96, 98, 175, 219). To these
can be added William Walwyn, Clarkson, Oates, Collier, Chamberlen, and Barber
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(Walwyn 178– 9;Clarkson, A Generall Charge 9;LJ, ix: 573;Betteridge 209;Collier, A
Brief Discovery 4–9;Chamberlen, The Poore Mans Advocate 6;Barber, The Storming and
Totall Routing of Tithes). Against this backdrop, petitions were organized and presented to
the Lord Mayor of London and House of Commons urging the removal of burdensome
tithes, arguing they were a Jewish ceremonial law abrogated with the coming of Christ.
Winstanley too reproved the clergy for enforcing the collection of tithes through
the magistrates’ power, despite lacking justification in either “Reason” or “Scripture.”
(CWGW I: 161, 176, 438, 451; II: 195). Condemning the “selfish tyth-taking” preachers
and all others that preached for hire, he compared their covetousness to Judas, betrayer
of Christ (CWGW I: 517, 528, 557). This hostility to tithes was, moreover, of a piece
with the anticlericalism that pervades Winstanley’s writings. Criticizing the clergy’s
unwarranted monopoly on preaching together with those proud scholars who were
preventing humble fishermen, shepherds, husbandmen, and tradesmen – latter-day
Apostles – from speaking about their spiritual experiences and revealing divine truths,
Winstanley denounced preaching as a trade (CWGW I: 174 – 75, 180, 183– 84, 317–
18, 324– 5). Subsequently, he condemned 10 outward ordinances whose observation
he considered unwarranted, including preaching not from inward experience but
knowledge gained through hearing, reading, and studying; expounding Scripture for
financial gain; compelling people to attend church services through misusing the
magistrates’ power; and persecuting the “Spirit within” that had made Moses
(a shepherd), Amos (a fruit gatherer), the Apostles (fishermen), and Christ
(a carpenter) preachers (CWGW I: 437 – 38, 446, 449– 52).
Once again there are significant antecedents and parallels. For example, in the wake of
a Parliamentary Ordinance against lay preaching (26 April 1645), Clarkson justified the
practice by highlighting the lowly occupations of Christ and his disciples, comparing a
carpenter, fishermen, and tentmakers with humble tradesmen (Firth and Rait I: 677;
Clarkson, Truth Released from Prison B4
r–2
,B4
r–3
). Similarly, in a justification of Preaching
without Ordination, prefaced at Kingston on 20 August 1647, Chillenden declared that God
was no respecter of rank. Hedisposed the free gift of his spirit to whom he pleased, upon a
cobbler, tinker, chimneysweep, ploughman, or any other tradesman as much as “to the
greatest learnedst Doctors in the world” (Chillenden 6). Collier too invoked the carpenter,
fisherman, and tentmaker, excoriating those clergymen who arrogantly dismissed the
scriptural interpretations of laborers as men ofno breeding and little learning; “when poor
tradesmen, Coblers, Taylers, Tinkers, Plow men, Carpenters, all sorts ofmen shall preach
the everlasting Gospel, with so much light, life, and power,” who then would buy the
wares of clergymen? (Collier, A Brief Discovery 11, 19). For Wrighter there was no ministry
because the clergy could not demonstrate their calling, as had the Apostles. Consequently,
ministers laid false claim to authority and orthodoxy, publicly charging those that dissented
from them “in doctrine or practice to be Heterodox, erronious persons, Sectaries,
Schismaticks, Blasphemers, or Hereticks” (Edwards I: 82;Wrighter 27– 9). Oates went
further: ministers were “Anti Christian Preists, periured p[er]sons” (Betteridge 208).
Nonresistance
During the sixteenth century certain Anabaptist individuals and groups (notably Menno
Simons, some Swiss Brethren, and Hutterites), along with the Polish Brethren and
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English Familists, became notorious as advocates of nonresistance. Accordingly,
nonresistance was implicitly rejected by the 37th of the 39 Articles and denounced as a
foolish Anabaptist misinterpretation of scripture. English heresiographers and
controversialists, moreover, long sustained the association between Anabaptism,
pacifism, and nonresistance – although these same critics admittedly gave greater
attention to Anabaptist acts of violence. Indeed, for all their doctrinal disputes the
majority of English Baptists were not pacifists, a number serving as soldiers and
chaplains in Parliament’s armies during the Civil Wars.
Against this backdrop Winstanley’s feelings about using violence – it is
noteworthy that he did not fight in the Civil War – stand out. Disapproving of
weapons which would destroy yet “never build up” and peacefully expecting the
fulfillment of the prophecy that “swords shall be beaten into plough irons” and “spears into
pruning hooks” (Micah 4: 3), he informed readers of The New Law of Righteousnes that “all
these wars,” “killing one another,” and “destroying Armies” were but “the rising up of
the curse” under whose burden the Creation groaned (Romans 8: 22) (CWGW I: 505,
526– 27, 545).
Afterwards, in The True Levellers Standard Advanced, the Diggers lamented the
maintenance of tyrannical oppression by death and destruction. Instead, they declared
their willingness to accept martyrdom, to offer their blood, and, unarmed, sacrifice
their lives to promote “universal Liberty,” trusting the Lord of Hosts to deliver them
from Egyptian bondage (Exodus 6: 5 – 6), “not by Sword or Weapon” but by his “Spirit.”
(CWGW II: 2, 6, 9– 10, 20). Accounts of their activities confirm that these were not
hypocritical empty words since the Diggers would neither fight nor defend themselves
by force of arms, submitting meekly to authority. Furthermore, there were several
instances when they responded to violence with nonresistance. Indeed, despite
enduring “Remarkable Sufferings” brought about by the “great red Dragons power”
(Revelation 12: 3), Winstanley remained unbowed (CWGW II: 146 –47). Victories
obtained by the sword were victories of the murderer, of the kind one slave got over
another. But now there was striving in England against “the Lamb, the Dove, the meek
Spirit” and “the power of love.” And though his enemies still fought with weapons like
the “Sword of Iron,” Winstanley warned that they would perish with them. For armed
with the “Sword of the Spirit which is love,” he regarded himself as a soldier of Christ
engaged in a spiritual battle: “Dragon against the Lamb,” “the power of love against the
power of covetousnesse” (CWGW II: 61 – 62, 91, 97– 98, 132 –33).
This examination of the Baptist context is not meant to provide a universal
explanation. By focusing on the Baptist aspects of Winstanley’s social network, on
Baptist forerunners and analogues, as well as the distinctive hallmark of Baptist thought
in his writings and activities, it necessarily excludes other personalities and influences.
Moreover, appreciating the Baptist background alone does not account for
Winstanley’s subsequent trajectory. But if it does not enable us to predict where he
was heading, it at least affords us a glimpse of where he was coming from.
Some unanswered questions remain. First, why is there so little surviving evidence
concerning Winstanley’s Baptist phase; second, why does he refer only fleetingly to
having been a Baptist; third, why does he not quote from, or apparently allude to, the
writings of his former coreligionists? The first may simply be chance. Had Edwards
written a fourth part of Gangraena, had he more Surrey-based informants, then a few
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more fragments might have been added. The second is perhaps because Winstanley had
moved beyond observance of outward ordinances when he began writing, so may have
considered it unnecessary to dwell on his past beliefs. The third, however, requires
some discussion.
In The New Law of Righteousnes Winstanley declared that what he had spoken of had
not been “received from books, nor study” but had instead been “freely” received.
At first glance it might be tempting to take Winstanley’s meaning as an artless assertion
that everything he had proclaimed thus far had been by direction of the Holy Spirit. Yet
that would be a mistake. For in the same work he relates how during a trance he had
heard the words “Worke together. Eat bread together.” The impression that he was
referring here specifically to digging as a divinely inspired venture is reinforced by his
powerful preface to Several pieces gathered into one volume (20 December 1649), where
he insisted “all that I have writ concerning the matter of digging, I never read it in any
book, nor received it from any mouth.” Indeed, in The Breaking of the Day of God (1648)
Winstanley stated that his scriptural exegesis derived from reading books, notably John
Foxe’s widely circulated Protestant history of the English Church, Actes and Monuments
of matters most special and memorable (popularly known as The Book of Martyrs). Elsewhere
he cited the legal commentaries of Sir Edward Coke, adopted and developed the notion
of a “Norman Yoke” in his Digger writings, used the phrase Machiavellian cheats,
quoted proverbs, and perhaps invented some of his own. Winstanley may also have
been familiar with an edition of Thomas More’s Utopia, with Francis Bacon or
popularizations of his philosophy, and with Anthony Ascham’s Of the Confusions and
Revolutions of Government (1649). In addition, Winstanley may have had some medical
knowledge, perhaps derived from conversations with his mistress and father-in-law,
or by consulting their anatomical, herbal, physic, surgery, and natural history books.
There are even a few unacknowledged quotations in his writings; one ultimately
indebted to a passage in the Essex clergyman John Smith’s posthumously published An
Exposition of the Creed (1632); another from the second part of Coke’s Institutes of the
Lawes of England (1642) (CWGW I: 98– 99, 104, 137, 185, 513, 567; II: 80; Hessayon,
“Gerrard Winstanley and Jacob Boehme” 8, 17 – 18, 28). All of which suggests that,
despite his undoubted gift for original thought, Winstanley did not always give credit
where it was due.
Acknowledgments
I have profited from the advice of Andrew Bradstock, Tom Corns, John Gurney,
Lorenza Gianfrancesco, and John Rees. But I remain responsible for any mistakes or
shortcomings.
Notes
1. All references to Winstanley’s works follow The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley,
eds. T.N. Corns, A. Hughes, and D. Loewenstein, cited in the text as CWGW.
2. Barber was apprenticed to Thomas Rephall or Rephald of St Benet Fink on 1 July 1611
(freed 16 August 1620); Everard to Robert Miller of Barbican on 14 August 1616;
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Larner in February 1630 (freed October 1637); Winstanley to Sarah Gater of St
Michael, Cornhill, on 25 March 1630 (freed 21 February 1638); and Chillenden to
George Kendall, button seller of Canon Street on 6 February 1631 (freed 7 March
1637).
3. Subscriptions were to be sent to William Wallis, a hosier dwelling at “The Gun” in
Aldgate. See To the Commons of England, brs; The Humble Petition of divers Inhabitants of
London.
4. “Lieutenant-Colonel Reade” is usually identified as Thomas Reade but Lieutenant-
Colonel John Rede was commissioned governor of Poole by Fairfax on 11 November
1647, the concluding day of the debates.
5. The Digger agents’ itinerary arranged alphabetically by county, with locations of Baptist
churches during the 1650s highlighted in bold: Bedford, Cranfield, Dunstable,
Dunton, Kempston (Bedfordshire); Wickham, Windsor (Berkshire); Barton,
Colnbrook, North Crawley, Mursley, Newport Pagnell,Stony Stratford,
Wendover, Weedon, Winslow (Buckinghamshire); Redbourn, Royston,Watford,
Welwyn (Hertfordshire); Fenstanton, Godmanchester, Kimbolton, St Neots,
Warboys (Huntingdonshire); London; Hanworth, Harrow, Hounslow, Whetstone
(Middlesex); Wellingborough (Northamptonshire); Cobham, Putney (Surrey); and
“Mine,” possibly a mining camp in Hertfordshire. See Whitley, “Baptist Churches till
1660” 236– 54; Gurney, Brave Community, 184 –5.
6. This work was attributed to Lambe by Crosby, whose source was one of Lambe’s
descendants.
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Dr Ariel Hessayon is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Goldsmiths,
University of London. He is the author of ‘Gold Tried in the Fire’. The Prophet Theaurau
John Tany and the English Revolution (Ashgate, 2007) and coeditor of three collections of
essays on Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2006), Varieties of
Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism in Context (Ashgate, 2011),
and An Introduction to Jacob Boehme: Four Centuries of Thought and Reception (Routledge,
2013). He has also written extensively on a variety of early modern topics: antiscripturism,
book burning, communism, environmentalism, esotericism, extra-canonical texts,
heresy, crypto-Jews, Judaizing, millenarianism, mysticism, prophecy, and religious
radicalism. Address: Department of History at Goldsmiths, University of London, London
SE 14 6NW, UK. [email: a.hessayon@gold.uk]
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