Sunday 27 March 2011

Radical Religion in Cromwell’s England A concise history from the English Civil War to the end of the Commonwealth Andrew Bradstock published by I.B.Tauris 2011 pp189 paperback £15.99.


This book is a rarity. Under conditions where current historiography of the English Civil war is mostly dominated by revisionist historians who think that groups such as, Diggers or Levellers are not worth looking or that the Ranters did not exist at all this book is a welcome challenge.

Bradstock, who is a Howard Paterson Professor of Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago New Zealand is to be commended for writing such a book in a very hostile intellectual climate. His use of historians, such as Christopher Hill and Brian Manning, who have fallen out of favour is to be congratulated. It is safe to say that Braddock's historiography is heavily influenced by the fact that he is a Christian socialist.

His examination of groups such as the Levellers, Ranters, Diggers, Fifth Monarchists is highly detailed unlike Christopher Hill his failure to link these groups to the changes to England's social and economic development is a weakness. His apology for using the term is too much of a concession to the revisionists.

Bradstock was very reluctant to get into a scrap with the revisionist historians explaining"I do, of course, make it clear (p. xxiv) that it is not my intention in the book to engage in this debate, though I am afraid my main reason for adopting this policy is rather tame and un-academic. Early in the piece, I did inform my publishers that I was rethinking the appropriateness of the term ‘radical’, and might wish to adopt some other term in the text, but was duly advised that the title of the book was already fixed and that retaining the word radical in it was important as a"selling point’. I must admit I did entirely see their point – and their concern that the book serve primarily to introduce new readers to the movements it discusses, not specific scholarly debates – and so decided simply to flag up the debate and stick with the term (though careful readers will notice that it actually appears very infrequently in the text, and then almost always in inverted commas). It seemed to me that, even if I were to go into the issue in some depth, I would have to come down on the side of retaining the term in order to make the text match the title, and so I simply indicated my general ‘relaxedness’ regarding the term, echoing Christopher Hill’s exasperation with those calling for a new one (p. xxv)”.

Bradstock begins with a crucial question. Why study these groups? Moreover, to answer this, he makes a valid point when he says you define your attitude to the civil war by your attitude to the radical sects.
In the introduction, Bradstock uses the quote from Winstanley to set the scene for his history of these groups. The present state of the old world is running up like "parchment in the fire”.' claimed Gerrard Winstanley, leader of the radical religious group the Diggers.  As the book states, this period was "one of the most turbulent periods in that country's history.

Despite Bradstock's reluctance to use the word radical, this is an excellent introduction to the groups such as the Levellers and Diggers. His diligent research and writing style is very accessible. The book is broking down by the different religious groups into their own chapters. While Bradstock cites Hill as one of his influences from an early age, it is clear that Bradstock comes from an entirely different social and political standpoint from Hill. While admitting that these groups did turn the world upside down, Bradstock seems to have not to have taken on board too much of Hill's materialist outlook.

The majority of the book concentrates on “Religious issues and the Bible” and for him, religious issues “drove the conflict and affected the way people thought and acted. Bradstock is of the firm opinion like John Morrill that the civil war was “Europe's last war of religion”.

While the book focuses on people who joined together to a certain body of ideas and who wanted political, economic, social and religious change” Bradstock hardly mentions the massive social and economic changes which pulsed during the 17th Century.

The book does, however, challenge the conception that interest in these groups is nil, and he believes that these groups still have a contemporary significance mirroring societal problems in the 21st Century. We are still grappling with many of the issues discussed by Ranters and Diggers such as the nature of democracy, dictatorship and social inequality today.

The fact that these groups sought to understand the social, political and economic changes of their day within the framework of religion is not a surprise. The Marxist writer Cliff Slaughter in his better days wrote  Like the religious systems of all class societies, Christianity is a set of beliefs whose meaning can be turned in entirely different and sometimes opposite social directions. Since it is not a rational or scientific theory of the world, its parts may be rearranged and selected according to the needs and inclinations of the faithful. For the revolutionary workers under modern capitalism, religion is, without any qualification, part of the armoury of reaction. However, in previous epochs, before the objective conditions existed for an oppressed class fully to comprehend social reality and achieve its liberation, the framework of all social doctrine, reactionary and progressive, remained religious. The two-sidedness of Christian development (on the one hand, it served to defend feudal and then capitalist reaction, on the other it served as an ideological cover and inspiration for revolt) is rooted in the very nature of universal religions. In Marx's words, ‘Religious misery is at the same time the expression of real misery and the protest against that real misery’.” [1]

While Bradstock does not have very much to say about modern-day revisionists, he does provide some insight on past controversies. J C Davis challenged whether the Ranters even existed. Davis went further than most historians by saying the Ranters were a myth. They were not a coherent group whom Davis limited to three or four individuals. Anything more was the creation of “hostile pamphleteers”. [2]

According to Christopher Hill, Davis’s main argument was that the radical sects were primarily a figment of the imagination of the Communist Party Historians Group of which Hill was a leading member. In reply is Hill said “I do not think I need comment on Davis's allegation that the rediscovery (or invention) of the Ranters in the 1970s was part of a conspiracy between Communist and ex-Communist historians. This is flattering to A. L. Morton and myself, though I hardly think it will recommend itself to Norman Cohn, who preceded both of us, and the many other good historians who have studied them. However, the analogy perhaps tells us something about Davis's mode of thought. Conservative conspirators invented the Ranters in the Seventeenth Century, communist conspirators re-discovered (or reinvented) them in the twentieth. The opposing arguments are both necessary if we are to avoid the just possible alternative, that the Ranters did exist. Why is it so crucial for Davis to prove that they did not? What is he frightened of”. [3]

The most substantial part of the book is Bradstock take on the Levellers. The Levellers started to organise like a political party in the years 1645-46. They were responsible for many of modern-day political techniques such as mass demonstrations, collecting petitions, leafleting and the lobby of MPs. Their strength mainly lay in London and other towns and had quite considerable support in the army. The movement was a hugely disparate group and frequently crossing over into the Diggers or as they have called the True Levellers. The Ranters were on the extreme left wing of the Leveller movement.

The central plank of the Leveller manifesto was the call for a democratic republic in which the House of Commons would be more important than the House of Lords. A Leveller would have wanted redistribution and extension of the franchise, legal and economic reform on behalf of men of small property, artisans, yeoman, small merchants, and the very layer which made up the Levellers themselves.

Bradstock shows the persecution suffered by the radical sects. The treatment of the Quaker leader James Nayler, even by today's standards is genuinely shocking. The Baptists, who were one of the smallest groups were constantly hounded akin to the McCarthy witch hunts of the Communists of the 1950s and 60s. Their leaders were regularly imprisoned and tortured.

Bradstock observes that arriving at an objective understanding of the size and influence of these groups is not helped by the exaggerated fear and reaction to them by the authorities. Oliver Cromwell, however, was acutely aware that the ideas of the Levellers and the smaller groups within them, such as the Diggers and Baptists were becoming a dangerous business. Speaking of the Levellers Cromwell said of what he called the ‘lunaticks’ “You must break these men, or they will break you.”

The book on numerous occasions cites the fact that the authorities accused the sects of breaking the social fabric of society. This fear was not altogether unfounded. Ranters leader Coppe highlights this friction between classes:‘Mighty men! ... Those that have admired, adored, idolised, magnified, set you up, fought for you, ventured goods, and good name, limb and life for you, shall cease from you.’ ‘For this Honour, Nobility, Gentility, Propriety, Superfluity. &c. hath (without contradiction) been the Father of hellish horrid pride, arrogance, haughtiness, loftinesse, murder, malice, of all manner of wickednesse and impiety; yea the cause of all the blood that ever hath been shed. from the blood of the righteous Abell, to the blood of the last Levellers that were shot to death.’

Hear one word more (whom it hitteth it hitteth) give over thy base nasty, stinking, formall grace before meat, and after meat ... give over thy stinking family duties, and thy Gospel( Ordinances as thou callest them; for under them all lies snapping, snarling, biting, besides covetousnesse, horrid hypocrisie, envy, malice, evil surmising.’‘Kings, Princes, Lords, great ones, must bow to the poorest Peasants; rich men must stoop to poor rogues, or else they’ll rue for it ...‘Howl, howl, ye nobles, howl honourable, howl ye rich men for the miseries that are coming upon you ‘For our parts, we that hear the Apostle preach, will also have all things common; neither will we call anything that we have our own. [4]

No wonder that George Fox, the Quaker, found the Ranters, ‘were very rude, and stirred up the rude people against us.’

It is a shame that  Bradstock offers little insight into the social origins of any leaders of the various groups. Gerrard Winstanley leader of the Diggers was a businessman, and  his radicalism coincided with one of the most revolutionary chapters in English history.

His avocation of the redistribution of land through the pamphlet called The Law of Freedom in a Platform, saw him elaborate a Christian/Communist basis for society in which property and wages were abolished. In “ From A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England he said "The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land".

I would not say that Bradock's book is a turning point in the study of the radicals of the English revolution. However, does add to our understanding of these groups and his work forms a growing body of knowledge that has recently appear other work by John Rees and Rachel Foxley.

In conclusion, as Slaughter writes “for the understanding of some of the great problems of human history, the study of religion is a necessity but"the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism.”


[1]   Religion and Social Revolt
From Labour Review, Vol.3 No.3, May-June 1958, pp.77-82.
[2]   See Fear,Myth and History-The Ranters and the Historians.
[3] The Lost Ranters? A Critique of J. C. Davis-Christopher Hill
History Workshop-No. 24 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 134-140
[4] Mania and Literary Style: The Rhetoric of Enthusiasm from the Ranters to ...
By Clement Hawes


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