Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War: A Study of the Social Philosophy of Gerrard Winstanley. David W. Petergorsky

In English history the seventeenth-century upheavals were of great importance in leading to parliamentary government, religious toleration and autonomous science. In both popular belief and scholarly teaching the Puritans have been given much credit for these developments. However, the process was much more tentative and complex than has often been supposed. For example, Milton is remembered as a prophet of popular liberty but his experience in the practical affairs of government drove him to aim at government by a virtuous aristocracy which was most likely to arise from among those who had property and the consequent time to spare for political activity. The recent awakening of interest in the more extreme sectarian and revolutionary movements on the Continent and in England has brought into sharper focus the relative conservatism of many of the Puritans and has given the English Civil War and its aftermath the appearance of a rift within the landowning and propertied classes. Science owed much to the current questioning of tradition and of authority but it also owed not a little to the diligence of several royalist clergy and laity who in their years of unemployment during the interregnum devoted themselves to scientific observations and experiments; the genius of Sir Christopher Wren was maturing during these years. Families and individuals were often torn by conflicts of loyalties. There was the loyalty to the possibility of a better and more balanced society free from ecclesiastical impositions and from the exercise of power without responsibility; there was also the loyalty to the existing structure of society which, for all its faults, was a fence protecting the country from mob rule and communal chaos. Many changed from side to side in the years before, during and after the Civil War and they did so not simply out of a prudential desire to be on the winning side but because they were apprehensive of the revolutionary trends in the movement in which they had got involved.

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Socialist Workers’ Party of Finland, 1920–1923

Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja ◽

10.37456/tvt.100317 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 55-69

Author(s):

Tauno Saarela

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

First World War ◽

Left Wing ◽

World War ◽

Social Democrats ◽

The Social ◽

The First World War ◽

Close Cooperation ◽

Soviet Russia ◽

First World

The Socialist Workers’ Party of Finland (SSTP) was a unique case in the division of the labour movements during and after the First World War. In many European countries, a left-wing social democratic or socialist group or party was established during the war, while in Finland the division took place only after the Civil War in 1918. The fact that a socialist party was only established after the division into social democrats and communists had taken place was also particular to Finland. The close cooperation of the SSTP with the illegal communist party residing in Soviet Russia and the party’s rejection of the Social Democrats were due to their differing interpretations of the Civil War and not their positions on the First World War. In Finland, the acceptance of many of the principals of the Communist International did not cause internal splits within the SSTP as it did in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and Norway. However, in addition to the rigorous criticism of the victors of the Civil War, it contributed to the difficulties the SSTP faced in its work and to the party’s ultimate dissolution. Paradoxically, the party was dissolved at a time when its involvement in the issues of Finnish society became more significant.

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Biography and Memory: Sandal Castle and the English Civil War

European Journal of Archaeology ◽

10.1179/1461957115y.0000000012 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 48-67 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Rachel Askew

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Material Culture ◽

English Civil War ◽

Social Discourse ◽

Richard Iii ◽

Charles I ◽

The Past ◽

The Social ◽

King Charles I ◽

Biographical Approach

The post-medieval castle is often neglected in English archaeology, with most analyses focusing on whether the castle was built for status or defence, a debate which has become known as ‘the Battle for Bodiam’. However, in the English Civil War between 1642 and 1651, many castles were fortified either for King Charles I or his rebellious Parliament. Although the fortification of castles during this period is often attributed to acts of desperation and a lack of more suitable defences, an examination of the Royalist occupation of Sandal Castle in West Yorkshire demonstrates how this view is simplistic. The decision to fortify Sandal can be directly linked to the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, when Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, the father of King Edward IV and Richard III, was killed outside its walls. This episode heavily influenced subsequent events, culminating in the occupation of the castle at the outbreak of the English Civil War. The importance of the past during this later conflict is reinforced by the faunal and artefactual assemblages, and the locations in which they were found (and consumed). The complexity of the social discourse at Sandal challenges current approaches in castle studies and highlights the need for a biographical approach which sees the interpretation and interaction of the castle through time and space as far more important than the motivations behind its initial construction. Such a way of proceeding complements existing methodologies but also relies on material culture and history to create a subtler interpretation of these complex buildings.

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Thomas Hobbes's Materialism, Language, and the Possibility of Politics

The Review of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0034670508000302 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 70 (2) ◽

pp. 190-220 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Nicholas Dungey

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Political Theory ◽

Human Nature ◽

Social Contract ◽

First Principles ◽

Thomas Hobbes ◽

The State ◽

Political Obligation ◽

English Civil War ◽

The Social

AbstractThomas Hobbes sought a reconstruction of philosophy, ethics, and politics that would end, once and for all, the bitter disputes that led to the English Civil War. This reconstruction begins with the first principles of matter and motion and extends to a unique account of consent and political obligation. Hobbes intended to produce a unified philosophical system linking his materialist account of human nature to his moral and political theory. However, his materialism gives rise to a set of perceptions, imagination, and desires that contribute to the chaos of the state of nature. The sort of person that emerges from Hobbes's materialist anthropology is unlikely to be able to make the necessary agreements about common meaning and language that constitute the ground of the social contract. Therefore, Hobbes's materialism frustrates the very purpose for which it is conceived.

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Ethics in the Marketplace: Gerrard Winstanley's London Bankruptcy, 1643

Journal of British Studies ◽

10.1086/385929 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 28 (2) ◽

pp. 97-119 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

J. D. Alsop

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Civil War ◽

English Civil War ◽

English Revolution ◽

The Earth ◽

The Creation ◽

Gerrard Winstanley ◽

Whole Earth

One of the casualties of the economic malaise occasioned by the English Civil War was the business career of an obscure thirty-four-year-old junior freeman of the London Merchant Taylors' Company. Had circumstances been otherwise, Gerrard Winstanley would never have gone on to become the eventual leader and spokesman of the Diggers or to develop some of the most innovative and challenging socioeconomic theories of the seventeenth century. Winstanley's bankruptcy of 1643 did not, of course, create by itself one of the foremost radicals of the English Revolution. But scholars are agreed that the failure provoked a significant break in the continuity of Winstanley's life that forced him to change his livelihood and to transport himself from London to Cobham in Surrey, the location of his Digger radicalism. Furthermore, Winstanley never forgot the experience. Throughout his writings of the later 1640s, the bitter contempt and frustration engendered by his financial failings were obvious. They also colored his perceptions of England's current character and its errors. His portrayal of all commerce as dishonest and corrupt is one of the most striking features of his writings:For matter of buying and selling, the earth stinks with such unrighteousnesse, that for my part, though I was bred a tradesmen, yet it is so hard a thing to pick out a poor living, that a man shall sooner be cheated of his bread, then get bread by trading among men, if by plain dealing he put trust in any.And truly the whole earth of trading, is generally become the neat art of thieving and oppressing fellow-creatures, and so laies burdens, upon the Creation, but when the earth becomes a common treasury this burden will be taken off.

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Office under Queen Elizabeth: the Case of Lord Hunsdon and the Lord Chamberlainship in 1585

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x00027485 ◽

1967 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 279-285 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Lawrence Stone

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

English Civil War ◽

The Political ◽

Small Minority ◽

Charles I ◽

Political Evolution ◽

The Social ◽

Economic Advancement ◽

Stuart England ◽

Similar Letter

In recent years considerable attention has been focused on the role played by the Court and government office in the social and political evolution of Elizabethan and Early Stuart England. Professor Trevor-Roper has treated office under the Crown as a smooth highroad to economic advancement, one of the principal causes of such rise of the gentry as may have occurred. According to this view, the political antecedents of the English Civil War are best interpreted in terms of the polarities of Court and Country: it was reaction against an overgrown and corruptly lucrative Court that inspired the opposition in 1640; it was desire to dismantle the whole centralizing apparatus which inspired the policy of the Independents in the late 1640s and the 1650s. Others, including Professor Aylmer and myself, have subjected officialdom to detailed inspection and have concluded that its rewards were usually modest, especially under Elizabeth and Charles I, its personnel was restricted in numbers, and its more spectacular beneficiaries were a very small minority. The recently published letter of Sir Edward Stanhope to Thomas Viscount Wentworth, advising him to refuse the Deputyship of Ireland in 1631, has cast a flood of light on contemporary attitudes towards the acceptance of at least one high office. Forty-six years before, when Henry Carey, 1st Earl of Hunsdon, was offered the Lord Chamberlainship of the Royal Household, he received a similar letter of warning from a close follower.

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Excavations at Basing Grange, Basing House, Hampshire, 1999–2006

Hampshire Studies ◽

10.24202/hs2020018 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 75 (1) ◽

pp. 323-378

Author(s):

David Allen ◽

Briony A. Lalor ◽

Ginny Pringle

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

18Th Century ◽

English Civil War ◽

Historical Society ◽

Tobacco Pipes ◽

House Site ◽

Early 18Th Century

This report describes excavations at Basing Grange, Basing House, Hampshire, between 1999 and 2006. It embraces the 'Time Team' investigations in Grange Field, adjacent to the Great Barn, which were superseded and amplified by the work of the Basingstoke Archaeological & Historical Society, supervised by David Allen. This revealed the foundations of a 'hunting lodge' or mansion built in the 1670s and demolished, and effectively 'lost', in the mid-18th century. Beneath this residence were the remains of agricultural buildings, earlier than and contemporary with the nearby Great Barn, which were destroyed during the English Civil War. The report contains a detailed appraisal of the pottery, glass and clay tobacco pipes from the site and draws attention to the remarkable window leads that provide a clue to the mansion's date of construction. It also explores a probable link with what was taking place on the Basing House site in the late 17th and early 18th century.

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