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.”
From Labour Review, Vol.3 No.3, May-June 1958,
pp.77-82.
History Workshop-No. 24 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 134-140
By Clement Hawes
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