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    Plan détaillé Texte intégral The Diggers and the commons The Ranters and the commons The Levellers and the commons Conclusion Bibliographie Notes de bas de page Auteur

    Representing the Commons in Early Modern England

    Ce livre est recensé par

    Précédent Suivant
    Table des matières

    Chapter 1

    What Does “Common” Mean? British Civil War Radical Sects and the Commons

    The Case of the Diggers, the Ranters and the Levellers

    Commun ? Oui, mais jusqu’à quel point ? Les Diggers, les Ranters, les Levellers et les communs

    Laurent Curelly

    p. 23-39

    Résumés

    This essay investigates the sectarian milieu of revolutionary England in the mid-seventeenth century and addresses the new forms of discourse concerning private property and the use of common goods that emerged in the turbulent 1640s culminating in the trial of Charles I and the regicide. It explores the writings of three Civil War radical sects – the Diggers, the Ranters and the Levellers – and brings out the views of the commons expressed in them. Studying these three radical sects through the prism of their approach to the commons helps to form a clearer picture of these dissenting groups and of their thought at a pivotal time in the history of the British Isles. The Diggers, the Ranters and the Levellers became involved in debates as to whether private property was constitutive of society or whether it could be traded for communal practices based on shared goods and resources. This chapter looks into the way each of these sects viewed the commons, before considering what their attitudes to the commons tell us about the English Revolution and deciding how valuable their contributions are to our own understanding of communality.

    Ce chapitre s’intéresse aux nouvelles formes de discours politique à propos de la propriété et des biens communs qui surgirent dans la sphère radicale à l’époque de la révolution anglaise du milieu du dix-septième siècle. Il prend appui sur les écrits de trois groupes radicaux – les Diggers (« Bêcheurs »), les Ranters (« Divagueurs ») et les Levellers (« Niveleurs ») – publiés dans les années 1640 et, plus particulièrement, au moment du régicide de Charles Ier en 1649, et expose la conception que ces radicaux se faisaient des communs. Dans leurs pamphlets, les Diggers, les Ranters et les Levellers interrogèrent, entre autres sujets, la nature de la propriété : était-elle constitutive de l’ordre social ou pouvait-elle être remplacée par des pratiques communalistes reposant sur le partage des biens et des richesses ? Ce chapitre met en évidence la façon dont la conception des communs telle qu’elle s’exprime dans les écrits des trois groupes radicaux étudiés nous renseigne sur ce que fut la révolution anglaise de la première moitié du dix-septième siècle. Il montre également combien ces contributions à la réflexion sur le sujet sont éclairantes quant à notre propre compréhension de la notion de communs.

    Texte intégral The Diggers and the commons The Ranters and the commons The Levellers and the commons Conclusion Bibliographie Notes de bas de page Auteur

    Texte intégral

    1“I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he”, New Model Army speaker and Leveller Thomas Rainsborough claimed in a heated conversation with Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton, his son-in-law, during the Putney Debates in the autumn of 1647. Rainsborough pressed for manhood suffrage on the grounds that, according to natural law, all men were born equal. As a result, suffrage was to be common to all men born in England. Ireton, conversely, insisted that the franchise should be the preserve of the happy few, whereby he meant that it ought to remain very much as it was – tied to property and wealth.1

    2One year and a half later, the Digger leader Gerrard Winstanley showed similar concern about the plight of the disenfranchised, but his alarm was of an economic rather than of a political nature and had to do with the pressing issues of dire poverty and famine. Winstanley blamed it all on enclosures, that is to say the appropriation of common land by supposedly rapacious landowners, which translated into the planting of hedges or the building of walls to prevent access to common land. Those responsible for privatising open fields were the nobility, whose ancestry often went as far back as William the Conqueror’s barons, and the gentry, an emerging class of local landowners, of which Cromwell was a prominent member. Winstanley and his fellow Diggers blamed enclosures for excluding the greater part of the English population: “Money […] hedges in some, and hedges out others”,2 as they put it, both literally and figuratively, the verb “to hedge” being used here as a metaphor for enclosed fields. They called for common land3 to be returned to common use instead of being appropriated by the few to the exclusion of the many.

    3These two examples show that the property issue was central to many Civil War political debates. Radical sects, in particular, contributed their own theories of what is now known as the commons, whether then the commons took the shape of an extended franchise, as advocated by the Levellers, or consisted in free access to common land, as was the Diggers’ claim. Such theories and such political debates intensified at the time of the English Revolution. They were fostered by the collapse of normative monarchical order as well as the demise of hierarchical power structures.

    4This essay will explore the writings of three Civil War radical sects – the Diggers, the Ranters and the Levellers – and bring out the views of the commons expressed in them.4 The term “the commons” is to be understood here as shared goods, resources and practices, material or immaterial. It makes sense to study these sects together because they produced their ideas contemporaneously and because they held views that, notwithstanding significant differences, were not poles apart – not to mention the fact that they interacted with and responded to one another in some of their writings. The Diggers, the Ranters and the Levellers were especially active in the late 1640s, in particular at the momentous time of the regicide, the abolition of the Stuart monarchy and the establishment of the Commonwealth, a republic of an oligarchic nature. The Diggers’ enterprise began in the spring of 1649 and came to an end one year later after the Surrey colony had been dispersed by Commonwealth authorities. In the first half of 1649 the Levellers supported mutinies within the New Model Army while their leaders published seditious pamphlets against the Republic and its officials, including Cromwell, which caused them to be arrested and gaoled in the Tower of London. As for the Ranters, they were individual voices rather than a fully-fledged group. They may be characterised by their antinomianism, that is to say their rejection of earthly laws and their disregard for morality on the grounds that they were absolved from sin. Not so long ago, the Ranters were the object of historiographical controversy that pitted revisionist against Marxist historians; the former went as far as to deny their very existence and argued that, but for a few individuals, the Ranters were merely the creation of hostile pamphleteers.5 However, the Ranters’ actions must have been seen as potentially dangerous and subversive, as the Commonwealth government had the Rump Parliament pass laws on blasphemy and sexual licence.6 Today, scholars generally agree that the Ranters, like the Diggers and the Levellers, were part and parcel of the sectarian landscape of revolutionary England.

    5The combined action of these three sects led Commonwealth authorities to toughen their response to dissenters, whose voices they tried to silence not only because they represented both an immediate and a lasting threat against the state but also because they were apt to subvert social norms and hierarchies – the very norms and hierarchies that had been upheld rather than challenged by the English Republic. Arguably, studying the Levellers, the Diggers and the Ranters through the prism of their approach to the commons helps to form a clearer picture of these dissenting groups and of their thought at a pivotal time in the history of the British Isles. The three sects became involved in debates as to whether private property was constitutive of society or whether it could be traded for communal practices based on shared goods and resources. This chapter will look into the way each of these sects viewed the commons, before considering what their attitudes to the commons tell us about the English Revolution and deciding how valuable their contributions are to our own understanding of communality.

    The Diggers and the commons

    6An investigation of the three radical sects’ approach to the commons should begin with the Diggers, regardless of chronology, since their occupation of St George’s Hill in Surrey – not to say their “squatting” on common land, as such a venture would probably be termed today – was much talked about and provoked various responses. The Diggers’ appropriation of common land actually caused other radical sects to distance themselves from them and clarify their own positioning with regard to social norms and expectations. The property issue linked to the enclosure movement was what produced these misgivings and made some clarifying necessary.

    7Enclosures put a dent in England’s land structures inherited from the Norman Conquest. Not that medieval society was egalitarian in any way, but at least smallholders and landless labourers could utilise common lands for their own needs. These were administered by manorial courts. Enclosures thus deprived commoners, labourers and copyhold tenants alike of their customary rights of access to land. Common land was integral to England’s agrarian economy, as it underpinned land as well as social structures. The rationale behind it was not so much the redistribution of resources or wealth as a form of solidarity that was crucial to an economy characterised by food shortages and endemic poverty.7 Common land helped to cement local communities.

    8While open field farming relied on communally administered landholdings, even though such land patterns reflected and upheld local hierarchies, enclosures made private property the dominant feature of agricultural structures, as they generated non-communal forms of land administration, thus forcing impoverished farmers out of their land and creating monopolies that were in the hands of the aristocracy as well as the landed gentry. The transformation of land patterns continued unabated in the late 1640s at a time when England experienced a severe economic recession caused by the Civil Wars and several years of bad crops that sent food prices soaring and produced food shortages. This, together with continued landlord-tenant disputes in the parish of Cobham, caused the 1649 Digger community to occupy common land on St George’s Hill.8

    9In most of their writings, from their manifesto The True Levellers Standard Advanced, published in April 1649, to their leader Gerrard Winstanley’s utopian piece The Law of Freedom in a Platform, printed in 1652, the Diggers argued for the abolition of private property and the common ownership of land and natural resources. This social programme, they claimed, was inspired by the apostles’ communal living, as is evidenced in this verse that describes the shared use of goods as one of the foundations of the early Christian Church: “The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common” (Acts 4:32).9 As it drew upon the Apostles’ experience, the Diggers’ communalism was quintessentially – and unsurprisingly – Christian. The abolition of private property or the eradication of “Mine and Thine”,10 as Winstanley put it, went hand in hand with a form of spiritual revival. Their communalism was not just eschatological, for the Diggers produced a political programme that referred to land as a “common treasury”11 and promoted communal social structures. In the Diggers’ “real utopia”,12 money as currency as well as commercial and financial transactions were to be abandoned and give rise to shared resources instead, as this passage from one of the Diggers’ tracts illustrates: “Money must not any longer (after our work of the Earths community is advanced) be the great god, that hedges in some, and hedges out others”.13 The Diggers – Winstanley most prominently among them – drew upon the enclosure metaphor as a land and social boundary suggesting inclusiveness / exclusiveness. The Diggers believed that the poor were entitled to recover their customary right of access to common land, of which greedy landowners had dispossessed them.

    10However, to Winstanley, who was a pacifist, recovering that right did not mean forcing out those who had erected enclosures or those who laid claim over common land as being theirs. In fact, in a letter to General Fairfax, commander-in-chief of the New Model Army, beside justifying the Diggers’ “digging and ploughing” on St George’s Hill, Winstanley made it clear that he did not mean to infringe upon existing property rights but that he opposed the privatisation of open fields.14 In other words, he suggested that two agrarian, economic and social systems should cohabit, at least temporarily: on the one hand, the enclosure system, which would preserve landowners’ property, and on the other hand, a communal system based on shared land and resources that would benefit the “poor common people”.15 The Diggers advocated the establishment of an autonomous political, economic and social system as an alternative to private property, one that would not be governed by power relations or commercial transactions. Nearly one and a half centuries before, Thomas More had condemned enclosures in his Utopia.16 More, however, did not quite see his ideal society as an alternative social system, but rather as an intellectual – and elitist – game. Christopher Hill stressed the difference between More’s Utopia and Winstanley’s utopian piece The Law of Freedom in a Platform in his preface to a collection of Digger writings:

    Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) had sketched a communist society, but this was a jeu d’esprit, written in Latin, the language of the intellectual elite. […] But Winstanley’s pamphlets were published in the vernacular, at the height of great revolution, and they aimed at rousing the poorer classes to political action.17

    11By promoting the coexistence of two competing landholding systems, Winstanley and his friends may well have paid lip service to the idea that private property could not be abolished straight away so as not to alienate the landed gentry, to which group most Commonwealth leaders belonged. This may account for the fact that, according to the Diggers, land could be integrated into a communal system if landowners gave up on their property titles of their own accord, rather than be deprived of them, as Winstanley argued:

    While we keep within the bounds of our Commons, and none of us shall be found guilty of medling with your goods, or inclosed proprieties, unlesse the Spirit in you freely give it up, your laws then shall not reach us.18

    Winstanley sounds blithely optimistic here, as he suggests that a society without private property will eventually prevail after the rich and powerful have consented to this. Winstanley’s Law of Freedom foregrounds a landholding system free from enclosures. Through this teleological vision Winstanley defends a “real”, alternative political platform. He argues that the Diggers’ resources are there for the sharing, garnered in store-houses that community members will be required to supply through their work for the benefit of the others. Communal store-houses will keep individuals away from unfair commercial transactions, hence from ruthless power relations. Hill called this a communist programme:

    Winstanley himself took the lead in establishing a communist colony, which he hoped would be widely imitated. So neither Russia nor Germany nor France but England gave the world its first communist political programme.19

    12For the Diggers it was crystal clear that private property was legitimised by monarchical order, and that the Norman Conquest was to blame for it all. Winstanley’s antiroyalism and anti-Normanism combined in his denunciation of enclosures as symbols of the privatisation of common land. As part of the royal line of succession stretching back to William the Conqueror, Charles I only compounded the problem: “He parcelled out the earth to some, and denied it to others”.20 Winstanley described the Conquest as the original political and social sin which had put an end to the Anglo-Saxon Golden Age and which the Civil Wars had begun to redeem, but the work certainly needed to be completed. Because the poor common people and some members of the gentry threw in their lot jointly behind Parliament to overthrow royal power and break the Norman Yoke, Winstanley was willing to accept that two geographical and social spaces could temporarily coexist, “both Gentry in their inclosures, Commonalty in their commons”.21 This acknowledgement did not stop him, in The Law of Freedom, from vituperating against the gentry, portrayed as “more covetous”22 than the landed aristocracy descended from the Norman elite. Despite such ambiguities, which were probably due to the historical circumstances in which Winstanley penned his writings, Digger thought is permeated by a perception of land as a common good; as a result, land – especially common and waste land – should be accessible to all community members, “without respect of person” – a phrase rehearsed like a sound bite that the Diggers took from the Acts of the Apostles (10:34). Land should especially be accessible to the poor because the law of Creation made it so – a reading of natural right theory shaped by Winstanley’s Christian beliefs.

    The Ranters and the commons

    13As for the Ranters, they had a wider understanding of the commons than Winstanley and his companions. Unlike the Levellers, they were not an organised political club, and unlike the Diggers, they did not set up communities. The Ranters were individuals who authored tracts, but they had no fully-fledged political or economic programme to offer. They were mostly religious enthusiasts-cum-libertines; some motifs ran through their writings that reflected a different vision of society from that of other sects. As did the Diggers, they rejected private property, and in line with the practice of primitive Christians as described in the Acts of the Apostles, they adopted an extensive approach to communalism. For them, as it was for Winstanley and the Digger community, the world was a “common treasury”. They inveighed against those who breached this principle, although communalism for the Ranters was not so much about land as about resources and commodities writ large.

    14The Ranters’ writings, most of which were published between 1649 and 1651, sparked controversy and caused Commonwealth authorities to adopt repressive measures and crack down on any social practices that were believed to smack of Ranterism. The trouble with the Ranters, it was thought, was that they practised an antinomian form of religion, borrowed from the sixteenth-century German Anabaptists who undertook to build a new Jerusalem in Münster, in Westphalia, and established polygamy. As part of this heterodox lineage, the Ranters believed that human laws did not apply to them because their election as godly people made them sinless creatures. This explains why they promoted an all-embracing vision of communalism, which did not only bear on economic life, as with Winstanley, but also affected the domestic sphere and human beings, especially women. Their writings thus reflected a wide-ranging, not to say boundless, perception of the commons. In one of his tracts, for instance, Ranter Abiezer Coppe invited each and every one to contribute to the common treasury in this fashion: “Cast all into the Treasury, &c. account nothing thine owne, have all things in common”.23

    15Such a view of communalism may be found in Plato’s Laws. The ideal city that the Greek philosopher described in it did not rest only on the common use of land – the earth being everyone’s homeland, they were all supposed to tend it more carefully than children would tend their mother – but on common property at large, which extended to the domestic sphere:

    The first and highest form of the state and of the government and of the law is that in which there prevails most widely the ancient saying, that “Friends have all things in common”. Whether there is anywhere now, or will ever be, this communion of women and children and of property, in which the private and individual is altogether banished from life, and things which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become common, and in some way see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise and blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasions, and whatever laws there are unite the city to the utmost […], whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting upon any other principle, will ever constitute a state which will be truer or better or more exalted in virtue.24

    16Similarly, the Ranters advocated extensive communalism. The Radical Reformation that took place in Münster and found a breeding ground in revolutionary England allowed for the expression of radical voices like those of the Ranters – or those of the Diggers, for that matter – that came out of the Puritan milieu and whose common feature was their millenarian mysticism. The Ranters rejected laws, norms and formalism even more extensively than did the Diggers in that they professed antinomianism, which was to shape their social and sexual practices, as Coppe wrote: “Be no longer so horridly, hellishly, impudently, arrogantly, wicked, as to judge what is sinne, what not, what evill, and what not, what blasphemy and what not”, only to conclude that “sinne and transgression is finisht”.25

    17Coppe drew upon a verse from Isaiah in which the Jewish prophet predicted that “every valley shall be exalted [by God], and every mountain and hill shall be made low” (40:4) to advertise spirit levelling.26 He thus distanced himself from forms of levelling advocated by other sects, in particular “digger levelling” and “sword levelling” – that is to say the Levellers’ programme, the “power of the sword” being a running theme in Leveller thought. As opposed to these two forms of levelling, Coppe’s “spiritual, inward levelling” was to favour the emergence of a universal community of goods and beings: “The true Communion amongst men, is to have all things common, and to call nothing one hath, ones own”.27

    18Unsurprisingly, the Ranters’ theories were seen as potentially subversive; to be sure, some social norms had begun to crumble in revolutionary England, but social life was still shaped by a solid normative apparatus. The Ranters’ communalism must have been considered unacceptable to such a degree that it caused not only Commonwealth authorities but also other radical sects, not least the Diggers, to respond. In order to clear their name and avoid opprobrium, Winstanley and his friends made a point of distancing themselves from the Ranters in several of their pamphlets and denied indulging in a “community of women”.28 In A Vindication of Those, Whose Endeavors Is Only to Make the Earth a Common Treasury, Called Diggers, published in 1650, Winstanley denounced the so-called “Ranting practise” because “the abundant eating and drinking, and actuall community with variety of women” favoured excessive behaviour and signed the victory of the power of the senses and of the flesh over the power of the spirit.29 In his utopia The Law of Freedom in a Platform, he emphasised even more forcefully the dichotomy between the shared use of natural resources (“community of all the fruits of the Earth”) and the community of human beings as practised by the Ranters (“community of all men and women for Copulation”), and insisted that “every mans wife and every womans husband [are] proper to themselves”.30 Winstanley granted women property over their own bodies, but his ideal society, centred as it was around the family unit, was inconsistent with the notion of a community of beings, which he saw as a source of alienation rather than an expression of liberty, especially regarding women. Concerning the institutional response to the Ranters, Commonwealth authorities passed laws to repress social practices that were deemed immoral, in particular when they related to sexual licence, adultery and partner-swapping, thus censuring the very notion of a community of goods and communal living. Its subversive potential for established political and social order was definitely a cause for concern to the political and social elite in those restless years: added to the revolutionary fire, such rebellious fuel might well have precipitated the downfall of the newly-formed Commonwealth.

    The Levellers and the commons

    19Although the Levellers preceded the Diggers and the Ranters, they will only be discussed at this point because the Leveller label is misleading and the Levellers’ approach to the commons is more problematic than their rivals’. The Levellers as a political club came together in 1645, but its members rejected the name tag they were given by their opponents – royalists, Presbyterians, some independent MPs as well as the Grandees of the New Model Army. The word “Levellers” was a catch-all term of invective that came in handy to refer to radical groups of all stripes, including the Levellers, who did not call themselves that way.

    20The Levellers developed a political programme based on political equality between free-born citizens. They denied that they ever wanted to abolish private property and stressed their attachment to property in several of their tracts. For example, in a pamphlet – entitled A Manifestation from Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne, Mr William Walwyn, Mr Thomas Prince, and Mr Richard Overton (Now Prisoners in the Tower of London), and Others Commonly (Though Unjustly) Styled Levellers – that was printed on 14 April 1649, at the very time the Digger controversy was gaining momentum, the Leveller leaders insisted that “We profess therefore that we never had it in our thoughts to Level mens estates, it being the utmost of our aime that the Commonwealth be reduced to such a passe that every man may with as much security as may be enjoy his propriety”.31 It may be thought that, by defending private property in this way, the Levellers intended to differentiate themselves from the Diggers and thus save their name. That was probably the case, but some Leveller or Leveller-inspired texts that were published at an earlier date also condemned the collectivisation of goods and resources. So did the Petition of 11 September 1648, bearing some 40,000 signatures. One of the clauses provided that Parliament should not abolish private property: “That you would have bound your selves and all future Parliaments from abolishing propriety, levelling mens Estates, or making all things common”.32 It was more of a precautionary step than an actual warning, as it was not the Long Parliament’s intentions to “make all things common”. This provision was taken up, though not in so many words, in the Levellers’ constitutional blueprint, The Agreement of the People, both in a draft that was debated with the officers of the New Model Army at Whitehall in December 164833 and in the printed version of May 1649,34 which was much more seditious than the earlier draft, as it spared no effort in castigating the Commonwealth. The December 1648 version, which was adopted after the Leveller leaders had walked out of the Whitehall talks, defended property in terms that were similar to the May 1649 version, which the Levellers drafted while they were imprisoned in the Tower of London – the text was sneaked out, printed and publicised. This certainly shows that there was some sort of consensus on the property issue between the Levellers and the Army Grandees, some of whom took office as Commonwealth leaders.

    21The Levellers had no particular interest in sweeping economic and social reforms aiming at the redistribution of wealth, including land. That said, even though their programme was primarily of a political nature, they pleaded for significant economic measures, such as the abolition of state monopolies, and supported free commerce between nations of the kind that developed in Britain throughout the eighteenth century. Their defence of unfettered trade was a very first step towards a form of economic liberalism that was supposed to parallel the development of political liberties, which meant so much to them. It may be argued that Leveller theories foreshadowed Lockean liberal thought.

    22What about land, then? The Levellers did express a desire to help the poor and downtrodden: in some of their writings, they argued – unexpectedly perhaps – for the abolition of newly-built enclosures in order for common land to be returned to the poor. For instance, a 1647 address to the New Model Army, rank-and-file soldiers and officers alike, expressed this concern:

    That all grounds which anciently lay in Common for the poore, and are now impropriate, inclosed, and fenced in, may forthwith (in whose hands soever they are) be cast out, and laid open againe to the free and common use and benefit of the poore.35

    Such a demand was reiterated in later tracts, including the 11 September 1648 petition and A Manifestation. By supporting an economic measure of this sort that would improve the lot of the poor, the Levellers had no intention of challenging private property, but they expressed their concern that a longstanding rural practice was increasingly being threatened by the ongoing privatisation of common land, which, by nature, should be open to all.

    23And yet, the Levellers’ Manifestation included a caveat about the abolition of private property: the authors would not agree to it unless the people demanded it expressly – “unlesse there did precede an universall assent thereunto from all and every one of the People”. They referred to primitive Christianity to back this argument: “The Community amongst the primitive Christians, was Voluntary, not Coactive”.36 There lay the difference between the Levellers and the Diggers: the latter saw the sharing of resources as a necessary alternative to private property, which they considered as an evil social practice that needed redeeming, while for the former it was a mere caveat in an otherwise orthodox defence of private property. The Levellers believed that property held society together and that freedom could not be guaranteed without it. In The Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges, the most prominent Leveller leader John Lilburne denied that he intended to destroy property, insisting that property rights protected the poor from the rapacity of the rich, who, but for them, would “Levell and destroy al property of meum & tuum”, notably through tax extortion.37

    24The Levellers’ acceptance of the abolition of private property, provided it was expressly demanded by the people, may be explained in four different ways. First, Leveller thought was not uniform and the movement accommodated individual voices capable of expressing conflicting views. For example, the Petition of 11 September 1648 demanded the dismantling of recently built enclosures so that poor people could make use of common land again. This petition was supported by the Leveller leaders, who referred to it in later tracts. However, William Walwyn denied in one of his writings that he intended to tear down fences or hedges and that he advocated the collectivisation of land.38 Even though the 1648 petition and Walwyn’s vindication served different purposes, it is worth highlighting these diverging views.

    25Second, the Levellers advanced a political programme which, in the heyday of radical activism in the spring of 1649, had to reckon with the demands of other sects, as all of them competed for visibility in the public sphere. Leveller thought was generally cogent but it was apt to fluctuate in the face of political contingencies. As did other groups, the Levellers had to elbow their way through the hurly-burly of sectarian agitation, and that was likely to entail some compromising.

    26Third, the mention of communal property may have been a way for the Levellers to show charitable behaviour towards the poor. On several occasions the Levellers took the defence of the poor and the oppressed against the rich and the mighty. The deep-seated Christian sympathy that they felt for their neighbours – “without respect of persons” (Acts 10:34) – tuned into a moral duty to provide assistance to the needy. One of the ways to ease poverty and curb rampant famine was certainly to allow impoverished farmers to plant common land, even when it had been enclosed. The notion that God made no distinction between people was central to the Diggers’ agrarian communism. It does not mean that, although the Levellers referred to it at some point, they should be regarded as the Diggers’ bedfellows. The two sects’ views may have matched in specific circumstances, but this does not make them two peas in a pod.

    27Fourth, more importantly perhaps, the Levellers considered that it was up to the free people of England to make decisions about their own lives. Leveller thought hinged on popular sovereignty; this means that the liberty of the people as a political community was not to suffer any limitations. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that even though the Levellers generally opposed the abolition of private property and the establishment of a community of goods, they would consent to it nonetheless if the free people of England asked for it expressly and with one voice.

    28The Levellers’ approach to the commons was a far cry from the Diggers’ economic communalism and even farther from the Ranters’ universal communalism. It was grounded in natural law and centred on popular sovereignty enshrined in an elected assembly. The Levellers hoped to build a democracy to which every free-born citizen could contribute through their vote. Their programme provided for the establishment of a “representative” elected on the basis of an extended franchise, but one that was exclusive of women as well as of beggars and vagrants, who depended on others for a living. The reason was that dependency prevented them from having property over their own bodies. To the Levellers, “self-property”, as they termed it, was integral to human beings and thus conditioned their emancipation. Property and liberty were the two sides of the same coin. The Levellers’ vision of communalism had to do with a common form of citizenship that was to accompany the establishment of a contract-based democracy – albeit not of a universal nature. Such a democratic regime would be buttressed by a written constitution that would guarantee the inviolability of the free people’s natural rights and civil liberties. Arguably, the Levellers’ views of political empowerment pertained to what we call “the commons” today, as they undergirded a form of political organisation that aimed at favouring the common good.

    29The issue of the commons was brought up when suffrage was debated at Putney in the autumn of 1647. The talks brought together Levellers, elected representatives of the New Model Army (called “Agitators”) as well as Army senior officers (the “Grandees”), including Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton. When the Levellers and their followers in the Army made a case for quasi-universal male suffrage, they did so on the basis of the “ancient rights” of the free people of England who had worked for their own freedom by defeating the king’s army in the First Civil War. Their opponents – the Army Grandees – replied that the existing franchise, tied to property as it was, was irrevocable, for it warranted property, in particular land property, as an inviolable right. Ireton insisted that

    […] if we shall go to take away this [whereby he meant limited suffrage], we shall plainly go to take away all property and interest that any man hath either in land by inheritance, or in estate by possession, or anything else.39

    He defended the notion of a franchise that was not based on wealth but was rather conditional on property, and property itself was to be warranted by civil law. To him only those who had “a permanent interest in the kingdom”, should it be “the meanest local interest”,40 were eligible for the franchise.

    30As a champion of political and social order, Ireton dismissed a more democratic franchise as liable to foster anarchy and ultimately break down social hierarchies. Although he was keen to defend property as constitutive of the body politic and as a prerequisite for freedom, he acknowledged – out of necessity – the existence of common goods, which he was willing to have the people enjoy by virtue of natural law, but these were restricted to the air that one breathed and the right to use roads:

    Men may justly have by birthright, by their very being born in England, that we should not seclude them out of England, that we should not refuse to give them air and place and ground, and the freedom of the highways and other things, to live amongst us.41

    They did not even include the bare essentials, as there was nothing about food in that list. Ireton’s apprehension of the commons did not stretch beyond res communes as written into Roman law.

    Conclusion

    31From this overview it may safely be argued that the issue of property and the correlated appreciation of the commons underlay many of the political debates that resulted from the explosion of radical sects in revolutionary England. Notions like equality between men, natural law, private property and the shared use of goods were hotly debated – most of them were subsumed under the term “levelling”. It has been shown that the form and the scope of this levelling, that is the dismantling of existing political and social systems, varied from one sect to the next. Commonwealth authorities had no qualms about lumping together all radical sects, as they accused them of squashing social norms and promoting anarchy. The Levellers would have been happy with political equality between free citizens as well as with the dissolution of monopolies with a view to encouraging free trade. The Diggers and the Ranters, as for them, pushed for de facto equality between men based on the shared use of goods. Winstanley even saw this principle as shaping his ideal society. He spared no effort in denouncing private property which, to him, was tantamount to the original sin, for it made distinctions between persons, between “Mine and Thine” – or meum et tuum, as the legal term went – and believed that this sin would eventually be redeemed by the sharing of goods. All sects sought to distance themselves from other sects and to fashion themselves as offering an original programme, but they all borrowed their theories from a common matrix.

    32It is that matrix that, in revolutionary England, begot different, sometimes competing, approaches to the commons. The sectarian milieu was certainly fluid, but the debates that it sparked, especially those that related to the commons and the issue of rights, invariably reflected power relations, on the one hand, and concerns about the acceptability of human behaviour, on the other hand, even though centres of normative power had actually begun to erode. The issue of what practices were socially acceptable led radical groups like the Levellers, the Diggers and the Ranters to come forward and jockey for position in an increasingly competitive sectarian environment. This is probably what caused Walwyn to deny in one of his pamphlets any connection between the Levellers, of which sect he was a leader, and the Münster Anabaptists, who practised the community of women, desiring a “plurality of wives, and all things common”.42 He thus meant to clear his name from the slanderous accusations that had been heaped on him and, by so doing, he set up his own normative framework – such norms as were likely to discredit the English heirs of the Münster Anabaptists, such as the Ranters.

    33As a pioneer of history from below, Hill undertook to uncover these radical sects and showed that they beckoned to twentieth-century readers. In the introduction to his seminal volume on sectarian radicalism, The World Turned Upside Down, the first edition of which was published slightly over fifty years ago, he teased out the meaning of the sectaries’ writings and insisted on their legacy:

    Historians are interested in ideas not only because they influence societies, but because they reveal the societies which give rise to them. […] By studying some of the less conventional ideas which surfaced during the English Revolution the object of this book is to obtain a deeper insight into English society than the evidence permits either before 1640 or after 1660, when the censorship ensured that really subversive ideas were not published. In so far as the attempt is successful it may tell us something not only about English history in this period of unique liberty, but also about the more “normal” periods which preceded and followed it.43

    A few lines above, he had identified the Levellers and the Diggers as having played a prominent role in this transmission process:

    The Levellers were better understood as political democracy established itself in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England; the Diggers have something to say to twentieth-century socialists.44

    34These voices calling from the past should definitely be heeded. They may have been those of fringe groups that challenged established norms, ingrained beliefs and mainstream attitudes, but it is precisely their being dissenting voices which makes them immensely appealing and central to a better understanding of the English Revolution and of revolutionary processes at large. A refreshed approach to history from below as was promoted by Hill and his disciples could well benefit from a further investigation of protest movements at play in seventeenth-century England in the light of current debates on the commons – those shared spaces and goods which, worlds apart from so-called “gated communities”,45 allow us to live and thrive as social beings.

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    Coppe A. ([1649] 2014), A Second Fiery Flying Roule, in A Collection of Ranter Writings: Spiritual Liberty and Sexual Freedom in the English Revolution, N. Smith (ed.), London, Pluto Press, p. 72-107.

    Corns T. N., Hughes A., Loewenstein D. (eds.) (2009), The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2 vols.

    Curelly L., Smith N. (eds.) (2016), Radical Voices, Radical Ways: Articulating and Disseminating Radicalism in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

    Curelly L., Popelard M. (eds.) (2023), Gerrard Winstanley. Pamphlets politiques, Brussels, Zones sensibles.

    Davis J. C. (1986), Fear, Myth and History: The Ranters and the Historians, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

    Gurney J. (2007), Brave Community: The Digger Movement in the English Revolution, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

    Hart D. M., Kenyon R. (eds.) (2014-2018), Tracts on Liberty by the Levellers and Their Critics (1638-1660), Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, 7 vols., online: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hart-tracts-on-liberty-by-the-levellers-and-their-critics-1638-1660-7-vols.

    Hill C. ([1972] 1991), The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution, London, Penguin.

    Hill C. (ed.) (1983), Winstanley: “The Law of Freedom” and Other Writings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

    Hill C. (1987), “The Lost Ranters? A Critique of J. C. Davis”, History Workshop, no. 24, p. 134-140.

    Lilburne J. ([1648] 2017), The Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges, Asserted and Vindicated, (against All Tyranny Whatsoever.) by Law and Reason. Being a Collection of the Marrow and Soule of Magna Charta, and of All the Most Principall Statutes Made Ever since to This Present Yeare, 1647. For the Preservation of the Peoples Liberties and Properties, in Hart & Kenyon (eds.) (2014-2018), vol. 5, text 5.8, online: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hart-tracts-on-liberty-by-the-levellers-and-their-critics-vol-5-1648-forthcoming.

    Lilburne J., Walwyn W., Prince T., Overton R. ([1649] 2015a), A Manifestation from Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne, Mr William Walwyn, Mr Thomas Prince, and Mr Richard Overton (Now Prisoners in the Tower of London), and Others Commonly (Though Unjustly) Styled Levellers, in Hart & Kenyon (eds.) (2014-2018), vol. 6, text 6.9, online: https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/hart-tracts-on-liberty-by-the-levellers-and-their-critics-vol-6-1649-forthcoming.

    Lilburne J., Walwyn W., Prince T., Overton R. ([1649] 2015b), An Agreement of the Free People of England. Tendered as a Peace-Offering to This Distressed Nation, in Hart & Kenyon (eds.) (2014-2018), vol. 6, text 6.11, online: https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/hart-tracts-on-liberty-by-the-levellers-and-their-critics-vol-6-1649-forthcoming.

    More T. ([1516] 1999), Utopia, in Three Early Modern Utopias, S. Bruce (ed.), Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 1-148.

    Overton R. ([1647] 2016), An Appeale from the Degenerate Representative Body the Commons of England Assembled at Westminster: To the Body Represented, the Free People in General of the Several Counties, Cities, Townes, Burroughs, and Places within This Kingdome of England, and Dominion of Wales. And in Especiall, to His Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax (Captaine Generall) and to All the Officers and Souldiers under His Command. By Richard Overton, Prisoner in the Infamous Goale of Newgate, for the Liberties and Freedomes of England, in Hart & Kenyon (eds.) (2014-2018), vol. 4, text 4.11, online: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hart-tracts-on-liberty-by-the-levellers-and-their-critics-vol-4-1647-forthcoming.

    Petition of 11 September 1648 ([1648] 2017), To the Right Honourable the Commons of England in Parliament Assembled, the Humble Petition of Thousands Wel-Affected Persons Inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamlets, and Places Adjacent, in Hart & Kenyon (eds.) (2014-2018), vol. 5, text 5.15, online: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hart-tracts-on-liberty-by-the-levellers-and-their-critics-vol-5-1648-forthcoming.

    Plato (2008), Laws, B. Jowett (trans.), Project Gutenberg, online: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1750/1750-h/1750-h.

    Saint-Victor J. de (2017), “Communaux”, in Dictionnaire des biens communs, M. Cornu, F. Orsi, J. Rochfeld (eds.), Paris, Presses universitaires de France, p. 250-254.

    Walwyn W. ([1649] 2015a), The Fountain of Slaunder Discovered. By William Walwyn, Merchant. With Some Passages Concerning His Present Imprisonment in the Tower of London. Published for Satisfaction of Friends and Enemies, in Hart & Kenyon (eds.) (2014-2018), vol. 6, text 6.15, online: https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/hart-tracts-on-liberty-by-the-levellers-and-their-critics-vol-6-1649-forthcoming.

    Walwyn W. ([1649] 2015b), Walwyns Just Defence against the Aspersions Cast upon Him, in a Late Un-Christian Pamphlet Entituled, Walwyns Wiles. By William Walwyn, Merchant, in Hart & Kenyon (eds.) (2014-2018), vol. 6, text 6.18, online: https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/hart-tracts-on-liberty-by-the-levellers-and-their-critics-vol-6-1649-forthcoming.

    Winstanley G. ([1649] 2009a), The New Law of Righteousness, in Corns et al. (eds.) (2009), vol. 1, p. 472-600.

    Winstanley G. ([1649] 2009b), A Declaration to the Powers of England, in Corns et al. (eds.) (2009), vol. 2, p. 1-30.

    Winstanley G. ([1649] 2009c), A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England, in Corns et al. (eds.) (2009), vol. 2, p. 31-42.

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    Winstanley G. ([1650] 2009e), A New-Yeers Gift for the Parliament and Armie, in Corns et al. (eds.) (2009), vol. 2, p. 107-160.

    Winstanley G. ([1650] 2009f), A Vindication of Those, Whose Endeavors Is Only to Make the Earth a Common Treasury, Called Diggers, in Corns et al. (eds.) (2009), vol. 2, p. 235-242.

    Winstanley G. ([1652] 1983), The Law of Freedom in a Platform, in Hill (ed.) (1983), p. 273-389.

    Woodhouse A. S. P. (ed.) ([1938] 1974), Puritanism and Liberty, Being the Army Debates (1647-9), from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents, 2nd ed., London, J. M. Dent & Sons.

    Wright E. O. (2010), Envisioning Real Utopias, London, Verso.

    Notes de bas de page

    1Woodhouse [1938] 1974, 53-55. In fact, the Levellers called for quasi universal suffrage, excluding those that could not depend on themselves for a living – women, servants and beggars. This point will be discussed further down.

    2Winstanley [1649] 2009c, 32. All quotations from Digger pamphlets are taken from Corns et al. 2009’s authoritative collection.

    3Winstanley and his friends used the word “the commons” to refer to the plots of land that were accessible to each and every one. The expression “common land” will be used in this essay to distinguish it from “the commons”, which is given here a wider scope than land – one that is in tune with the current usage of the latter phrase.

    4“Radical”, as in “radical sects”, is to be understood as being the opposite of “mainstream”. It is a fluid notion that depended on political, social and religious norms and expectations as well as the degree of acceptability of social behaviour. For details about this notion and its relevance to the English Revolution, see Curelly & Smith 2016, 37.

    5The book that ignited the controversy was J. C. Davis’s Fear, Myth and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Davis 1986). Christopher Hill, the well-known British Marxist historian and founding member of the Communist Party Historians Group, responded to it in an essay entitled “The Lost Ranters? A Critique of J. C. Davis” (Hill 1987).

    6These were “An act for suppressing the detestable sins of Incest, adultery and fornication”, passed in May 1650, and “An act against several atheistical, blasphemous and execrable opinions, derogatory to the honor of God, and destructive to humane society”, passed in August 1650.

    7Saint-Victor 2017.

    8Gurney 2007, 16-17.

    9All biblical references are taken from the King James Version.

    10Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 482.

    11For example, see Winstanley [1649] 2009c, 36.

    12Wright 2010.

    13Winstanley [1649] 2009c, 32.

    14Winstanley [1649] 2009d, 43-46.

    15Winstanley [1649] 2009b, 7.

    16More [1516] 1999, 22.

    17Hill 1983, 10. It is debatable whether The Law of Freedom in a Platform is actually a utopia. On this, see the “Introduction” to Curelly & Popelard 2023.

    18Winstanley [1649] 2009d, 45-46.

    19Hill 1983, 10. I argue that Hill’s historiographical theories should be given a new lease of life. They were hotly debated in Thatcherite England and widely contested by so-called revisionist historians. Post-revisionist historians have opened up new paths for research, and Marxist historians’ readings of radical activism seem to have gained favour again with students of the English Revolution. One of the reasons why Hill’s theories were opposed is that they supposedly played up sectaries’ plebeian origins. While there may be some truth in this, it is a fact that Civil War radicals were generally excluded from the political status quo, which is why these “marginal” voices came to challenge existing power structures.

    20Winstanley [1650] 2009e, 111.

    21Winstanley [1649] 2009d, 50.

    22Winstanley [1652] 1983, 281.

    23Coppe [1649] 2014, 106.

    24Plato, Laws, V, 739c-740b, in Plato 2008. Plato also discusses the community of women and children in his Republic, V, 458a. There is no mention of caring for the earth in the Ranters’ writings. Nor did tending the earth as one would tend a mother seem to have been a priority for the Diggers, who were mostly concerned about harnessing its resources for their livelihood. An eco-critical reading of the Diggers’ tracts, appealing though it may be, seems to me to miss the point, unless one posits that rejecting any form of (pre-)capitalistic venture turns Winstanley and his fellows into proto-environmentalists.

    25Coppe [1649] 2014, 83.

    26Ibid., 79.

    27Ibid., 105.

    28Winstanley [1650] 2009f, 235.

    29Ibid.

    30Winstanley [1652] 1983, 303-304.

    31Lilburne et al. [1649] 2015a.

    32Petition of 11 September 1648 [1648] 2017.

    33Anonymous [1648] 2017.

    34Lilburne et al. [1649] 2015b.

    35Overton [1647] 2016.

    36Lilburne et al. [1649] 2015a.

    37Lilburne [1648] 2017.

    38Walwyn [1649] 2015b.

    39Woodhouse [1938] 1974, 55.

    40Ibid., 54.

    41Ibid.

    42Walwyn [1649] 2015a.

    43Hill [1972] 1991, 17-18.

    44Ibid., 15.

    45“Gated communities” are typically residential estates with strictly controlled access. These spatial and social enclaves seem to have developed throughout the world.

    Auteur

    • Laurent Curelly

      Université de Haute-Alsace

      Laurent Curelly is professor of early modern studies at the University of Haute-Alsace. He has written extensively on radical sects, political and religious dissent as well as the press at the time of the English Revolution (1640s-1650s). His publications include The Moderate: An Anatomy of an English Radical Newspaper (1648-9) (Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017); Radical Voices, Radical Ways: Articulating and Disseminating Radicalism in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2016, co-edited with Nigel Smith); as well as a joint translation with Mickaël Popelard of a selection of Gerrard Winstanley’s political pamphlets, Gerrard Winstanley. Pamphlets politiques (Brussels, Zones sensibles, 2023). He is the editor of Revue française de civilisation britannique.

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    1Woodhouse [1938] 1974, 53-55. In fact, the Levellers called for quasi universal suffrage, excluding those that could not depend on themselves for a living – women, servants and beggars. This point will be discussed further down.

    2Winstanley [1649] 2009c, 32. All quotations from Digger pamphlets are taken from Corns et al. 2009’s authoritative collection.

    3Winstanley and his friends used the word “the commons” to refer to the plots of land that were accessible to each and every one. The expression “common land” will be used in this essay to distinguish it from “the commons”, which is given here a wider scope than land – one that is in tune with the current usage of the latter phrase.

    4“Radical”, as in “radical sects”, is to be understood as being the opposite of “mainstream”. It is a fluid notion that depended on political, social and religious norms and expectations as well as the degree of acceptability of social behaviour. For details about this notion and its relevance to the English Revolution, see Curelly & Smith 2016, 37.

    5The book that ignited the controversy was J. C. Davis’s Fear, Myth and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Davis 1986). Christopher Hill, the well-known British Marxist historian and founding member of the Communist Party Historians Group, responded to it in an essay entitled “The Lost Ranters? A Critique of J. C. Davis” (Hill 1987).

    6These were “An act for suppressing the detestable sins of Incest, adultery and fornication”, passed in May 1650, and “An act against several atheistical, blasphemous and execrable opinions, derogatory to the honor of God, and destructive to humane society”, passed in August 1650.

    7Saint-Victor 2017.

    8Gurney 2007, 16-17.

    9All biblical references are taken from the King James Version.

    10Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 482.

    11For example, see Winstanley [1649] 2009c, 36.

    12Wright 2010.

    13Winstanley [1649] 2009c, 32.

    14Winstanley [1649] 2009d, 43-46.

    15Winstanley [1649] 2009b, 7.

    16More [1516] 1999, 22.

    17Hill 1983, 10. It is debatable whether The Law of Freedom in a Platform is actually a utopia. On this, see the “Introduction” to Curelly & Popelard 2023.

    18Winstanley [1649] 2009d, 45-46.

    19Hill 1983, 10. I argue that Hill’s historiographical theories should be given a new lease of life. They were hotly debated in Thatcherite England and widely contested by so-called revisionist historians. Post-revisionist historians have opened up new paths for research, and Marxist historians’ readings of radical activism seem to have gained favour again with students of the English Revolution. One of the reasons why Hill’s theories were opposed is that they supposedly played up sectaries’ plebeian origins. While there may be some truth in this, it is a fact that Civil War radicals were generally excluded from the political status quo, which is why these “marginal” voices came to challenge existing power structures.

    20Winstanley [1650] 2009e, 111.

    21Winstanley [1649] 2009d, 50.

    22Winstanley [1652] 1983, 281.

    23Coppe [1649] 2014, 106.

    24Plato, Laws, V, 739c-740b, in Plato 2008. Plato also discusses the community of women and children in his Republic, V, 458a. There is no mention of caring for the earth in the Ranters’ writings. Nor did tending the earth as one would tend a mother seem to have been a priority for the Diggers, who were mostly concerned about harnessing its resources for their livelihood. An eco-critical reading of the Diggers’ tracts, appealing though it may be, seems to me to miss the point, unless one posits that rejecting any form of (pre-)capitalistic venture turns Winstanley and his fellows into proto-environmentalists.

    25Coppe [1649] 2014, 83.

    26Ibid., 79.

    27Ibid., 105.

    28Winstanley [1650] 2009f, 235.

    29Ibid.

    30Winstanley [1652] 1983, 303-304.

    31Lilburne et al. [1649] 2015a.

    32Petition of 11 September 1648 [1648] 2017.

    33Anonymous [1648] 2017.

    34Lilburne et al. [1649] 2015b.

    35Overton [1647] 2016.

    36Lilburne et al. [1649] 2015a.

    37Lilburne [1648] 2017.

    38Walwyn [1649] 2015b.

    39Woodhouse [1938] 1974, 55.

    40Ibid., 54.

    41Ibid.

    42Walwyn [1649] 2015a.

    43Hill [1972] 1991, 17-18.

    44Ibid., 15.

    45“Gated communities” are typically residential estates with strictly controlled access. These spatial and social enclaves seem to have developed throughout the world.

    Representing the Commons in Early Modern England

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    Curelly, L. (2025). What Does “Common” Mean? British Civil War Radical Sects and the Commons. In J. Elprin & M. Popelard (éds.), Representing the Commons in Early Modern England (1‑). Presses universitaires de Caen. https://doi.org/10.4000/13omw
    Curelly, Laurent. « What Does “Common” Mean? British Civil War Radical Sects and the Commons ». In Representing the Commons in Early Modern England, édité par Jeremy Elprin et Mickaël Popelard. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4000/13omw.
    Curelly, Laurent. « What Does “Common” Mean? British Civil War Radical Sects and the Commons ». Representing the Commons in Early Modern England, édité par Jeremy Elprin et Mickaël Popelard, Presses universitaires de Caen, 2025, https://doi.org/10.4000/13omw.

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    Elprin, J., & Popelard, M. (éds.). (2025). Representing the Commons in Early Modern England (1‑). Presses universitaires de Caen. https://doi.org/10.4000/13on7
    Elprin, Jeremy, et Mickaël Popelard, éd. Representing the Commons in Early Modern England. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4000/13on7.
    Elprin, Jeremy, et Mickaël Popelard, éditeurs. Representing the Commons in Early Modern England. Presses universitaires de Caen, 2025, https://doi.org/10.4000/13on7.
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