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    Plan

    Plan détaillé Texte intégral The occupation of St George’s Hill and its context The Norman Yoke: Winstanley’s ambivalence Leveller opposition to the conquest of Ireland Affects of political bodies 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 2

    Gerrard Winstanley and the Cromwellian Reconquest of Ireland: The Earth a “Common Treasury for All”?

    Gerrard Winstanley et la reconquête cromwellienne de l’Irlande : la terre comme « trésor commun pour tous » ?

    Z’hor Zizi

    p. 41-58

    Résumés

    Gerrard Winstanley holds a significant place in the history of the commons in England as the leader of the Diggers who led the movement of occupation of St George’s Hill in 1649, repudiating the institution of private property and claiming the earth to be a common treasury for the whole of mankind. Although his movement in favour of an agrarian revolution was coincident with the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Winstanley’s Digger writings reveal an astounding erasure of the Irish issue. While his pamphlets are a severe indictment of Cromwell and his government, Winstanley was to celebrate him as the heroic saviour of England on his return from Ireland. The aim of this chapter is not to pass judgement on Winstanley but to attempt to rethink his ambivalence in light of Frédéric Lordon’s Spinozist philosophy of affects in political bodies.

    Gerrard Winstanley occupe une place prépondérante dans l’histoire des communs en Angleterre en tant que leader des Diggers qui a mené le mouvement d’occupation de Saint George’s Hill en 1649, répudiant l’institution de la propriété privée et revendiquant la terre comme étant un bien commun à toute l’humanité. Malgré la concomitance de ce mouvement de révolution agraire avec la conquête cromwellienne de l’Irlande, les pamphlets du leader des Diggers ne soufflent mot de la question irlandaise. Si ces pamphlets sont une critique féroce de Cromwell et de son gouvernement, Winstanley l’acclame à son retour d’Irlande comme l’héroïque sauveur de l’Angleterre. L’objet de ce chapitre n’est pas de juger Winstanley mais de tenter de penser son ambivalence à la lumière de la théorie spinoziste des affects des corps politiques de Frédéric Lordon.

    Texte intégral The occupation of St George’s Hill and its context The Norman Yoke: Winstanley’s ambivalence Leveller opposition to the conquest of Ireland Affects of political bodies Conclusion Bibliographie Notes de bas de page Auteur

    Texte intégral

    1Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676), the leader of the Diggers, one of the radical groups which emerged during the English Civil War alongside the Levellers, Ranters, Fifth Monarchists and others, is remembered for leading, in April 1649, the collective occupation of the common and waste land at St George’s Hill on the southern fringes of Walton’s large commons in County Surrey. His communal project was eventually defeated, and Winstanley attracted little attention in his lifetime or was mocked “as a fanatic and troublemaker”.1 He was resurrected from oblivion in 1940 with David Petegorsky’s Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War, which recognised him as a major figure in the history of political thought.2 The following year saw the publication of George H. Sabine’s voluminous edition of Winstanley’s works.3 The Digger leader then began to attract considerable scholarly interest which resulted notably in Christopher Hill’s seminal study of radical ideas in the English Revolution, The World Turned Upside Down (1972).4 This was a major contribution to the rediscovery of the Digger leader by a far wider popular public in the 1970s, more particularly among the British left in general, “those members of a younger generation who increasingly questioned the achievements of post-war capitalism and rejected its values”.5 In recent decades, the quatercentenary of his birth was marked by the publication of his Complete Works by the University of Oxford, and his writings continue to speak powerfully to a good number of protest movements. “From the 1960s Haight-Ashbury Diggers”, John Gurney writes, “through Hyde Park Diggers and Digger Action Movement, to twenty-first-century land campaigners, G20 Meltdown protesters and Occupy movement activists, there have been frequent echoes of Winstanley’s writings in the activities of modern movements”.6

    2No doubt, Winstanley stands out among the seventeenth-century English radicals as the most vocal advocate of collective ownership of land, repeatedly claiming in his Digger writings the poor landless people’s right to the commons and wastes of England. In the first Digger manifesto, A Declaration to the Powers of England, also known by its alternative title, The True Levellers Standard Advanced, he argues that

    In the beginning of time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a common Treasury […] but not one word was spoken in the beginning, that one branch of mankind should rule over another.7

    Later, in his Letter to the Lord Fairfax, he clearly traces the rise of private property back to the Fall of man,

    […] when [Adam] consented to that serpent covetousness, then he fell from righteousness, was cursed, and was sent into the earth to eat his bread in sorrow; and from that time began particular property to grow in one man over another; and the sword brought in propriety, and holds it up.8

    The belief in a state of primitive communism was widespread in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. However, fusing Christian scriptural history with secular history, Winstanley views the Norman invasion of 1066 as a watershed closely akin to the Fall and also traces the emergence of private property back to the Norman Conquest. Looking backward to a radiant free and equal Anglo-Saxon past, he invokes the Norman Yoke as the source of all the political and social ills of England throughout his Digger pamphlets. His fiery attacks on conquest by the sword, murder and theft express a profound anti-Normanism which strangely bears all the hallmarks of anticolonial discourse.

    3The present chapter sets out to approach Winstanley’s idea of the earth as “a common Treasury for all”9 from the perspective of the Four Nations history, with special emphasis on Ireland, for reasons that will soon appear. It posits that it is impossible to dissociate the Civil War in England from the course of events unfolding in Scotland and Ireland. That the English Civil War is also known as “the war of the Three Kingdoms” is highly significant.10 Yet it seems that little or no attention has been paid to the fact that Winstanley’s communal digging experiment took place between April 1649 and April 1650, that is, at a time when Oliver Cromwell’s military expedition against Ireland was under way. Cromwell landed in Dublin in August 1649 and left the island in May 1650 after having crushed the Irish insurgents, leaving the country devastated: ten of its counties were to be set aside for the payment in Irish land of his soldiers’ arrears and the repayment of the “Adventurers” who had advanced money for the Civil War. In other words, Cromwell had just re-enacted William the Conqueror’s colonial pattern of military conquest, deportation and land confiscation on a drastic scale. As will be seen, the military expedition against Ireland raised serious issues especially among a number – albeit a small number – of the army Levellers. A significant body of evidence for Leveller opposition to the conquest of Ireland is provided in an article published by Norah Carlin in 1987. In it, she persuasively argues that “principled, radical opposition to English rule in Ireland did exist in 1649” and that “such views did at least overlap with typically Leveller ideas such as natural rights, freedom of conscience and the tyranny of the rule by conquest”.11 This chapter is greatly indebted to Carlin’s comprehensive study of Leveller resistance to service in Ireland, as it draws abundantly from the seventeenth-century sources she compiled. Conversely, when we turn to the pamphlets Winstanley issued between April 1649 and April 1650, they make no mention of Ireland; nor do they hint at Cromwell’s offensive. It seems that most studies on Winstanley have been carried out solely with England in mind, leaving out a crucial dimension of the wider political context in the British Isles against which he wrote his Digger tracts. Our view is that it is difficult to elude the unsaid in the writings of a man with such distinctive political insight as Winstanley.

    4Winstanley has been described as “the most obscure Englishman currently assigned any reasonable degree of historical significance throughout the entire post-medieval period”.12 That his “arguments were not always consistent” is also pointed out in the introduction to the Oxford edition of his works.13 The question at issue is how to reconcile Winstanley’s vehement anticolonial diatribes against William the Conqueror, his continual denunciation of the use of military force, with the dedication of his last work, The Law of Freedom in a Platform,14 to Cromwell, celebrating him as the hero of England, its saviour, its Moses freeing the English Israelites from their Norman bondage. In pointing to this paradox, the aim of this chapter is neither to dispute nor to belittle Winstanley’s status in the history of radical thought in England. It is, rather, to read afresh his Digger writings in the wider colonial context in order to delve deeper into the driving forces that lay behind the dissonance between his conception of the earth as a common treasury for all, his relentless calls for universal peace and justice, and his ultimate alignment with Cromwell. A fitting grid to come to terms with this discrepancy is Frédéric Lordon’s theory of affects in politics as expounded in three of his major works: Capitalisme, désir et servitude: Marx et Spinoza, Imperium: structures et affects des corps politiques and Les affects de la politique. An economist and philosopher, Lordon enlists Spinoza’s philosophy of affects as developed in the Ethics and The Political Treatise “to fill the gaps in Marx”.15 He argues that if Marx perfectly perceived and described the structures of the relations between capital and labour, “these structures, however, do not explain everything that takes place inside the capitalist organisations”.16 His chief concern lies with what these structures “run on”.17 Lordon’s contention is that the answer lies in Spinoza’s philosophy, which postulates that all social life runs on affects in the first place and not on reason. As he clearly explains in the opening pages of Capitalisme, désir et servitude, his goal is to combine Marx’s “structuralism of relations” and Spinoza’s “anthropology of passions”.18 As a heterodox economist, the task he assigns himself is “a re-examination of the employment question ‘through the passions’”; in other words, his Capitalisme, désir et servitude is a rethinking of key issues such as the paradox that lies at the root of capitalist society in which “capital’s few succeed in making labour’s many work for them”.19 More relevant to our purpose is Lordon’s enlistment of the Spinozist philosophy of affective life to examine the structures of political bodies. We shall have occasion to return in more detail to his theory of affects in politics in the final section of this chapter. Suffice it to say for the present that Lordon’s retooling of Spinoza in Imperium and Les affects de la politique bears a direct relevance to Winstanley. It goes a long way towards helping us to approach the paradoxes, contradictions and even, at times, the aberrations of political life as aspects that partake of the intrinsically conflicting nature of the tangled web of affects that underlie the life of political bodies.

    The occupation of St George’s Hill and its context

    5Winstanley’s digging experiment lasted a whole year, first at St George’s Hill, then at Cobham’s Little Heath, during which he published his famous Digger pamphlets. Stressing the primacy of action over words, he repeatedly argued that the earth was made to be a common treasury for all. The communal experiment he undertook at St George’s Hill was therefore an attempt to reclaim the right of the landless poor to the benefit of the land of England in accordance with the Law of Righteousness. Private property, he claims, is “the curse the creation groans under”,20 the breeding ground of oppression, murder and theft. The collective digging activities came to him in a trance, “both by Vision, Voice, and Revelation”,21 exhorting him to work for the restoration of the Law of Righteousness, by digging and labouring together, to lift the curse of bondage and enslavement. Obviously, the Diggers’ programme must be set against the intense millenarian speculation of the age, Winstanley repeatedly stressing his belief that “the spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of universal community and freedom, is risen, and is rising, and will rise higher and higher”.22 Emphasis was also laid on its universal scope:

    […] not only this Common or Heath should be taken in and manured by the people, but all the Commons and waste ground in England, and in the whole World, shall be taken in by the people in righteousness, not owning anie Propriety; but taking the Earth to be a Common Treasury, as it was first made for all.23

    From the initial fifteen signatories of the first Digger manifesto, A Declaration to the Powers of England (April 1649), their number rose to forty-five at the time of the second Digger publication, A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England (June 1649).24 All in all, according to Gurney, there were seventy-four identified Diggers, some of them known to be local inhabitants.25 Their professed aim was no less than the creation of a national movement of self-supporting agrarian communities. They remained insistent, however, that it was not their intent to encroach on the local landlords’ estates and that they were opposed to all form of violent action: “[…] we shall not do this by force of Arms, we abhorre it”.26 But violence turned against them as their colony suffered several assaults by the local manorial landlords in collusion with their tenants, the JPs and the judges: they had their crops and houses destroyed and were forced to disperse. Tensions heightened with the lawsuits that were filed against Winstanley and eight other Diggers. They eventually abandoned St George’s Hill to establish another Digger colony at the Little Heath in Cobham, where they were to meet similar harassment. Again, legal action was taken against Winstanley and, in April 1650, the Little Heath colony was brutally suppressed.

    6Winstanley’s agrarian activism must be set against the background of the explosive situation of the late 1640s and early 1650s. In the years that followed the First Civil War (1642-1645), unity broke down in the triumphant Parliament with a split between moderates and radicals. The class divide that surfaced in the army, the revolt in the army that ensued and the imminence of a Second Civil War in 1648 created a highly volatile situation which culminated in the trial of the king and his execution on 30 January 1649. Winstanley’s pamphlets were only part of the unprecedented outpouring of tracts, manifestos and petitions in which the radical political groups that had formed called for a thorough social transformation towards a far wider democracy. It was thought that the execution of the king and the abolition of monarchy were but a prelude to the freedom of the common people from all forms of oppression. However, monarchy abolished, the Council of State declared England a Free Commonwealth and it soon became clear that the Parliament now in power were not intent on meeting the common people’s more democratic demands which were expressed in the Levellers’ Agreement of the People (1647): the dissolution of the existing Parliament, the extension of the franchise, regular parliaments, equality before the law, the abolition of the enclosures as well as the abolition of the tithe. A strong sense of betrayal and disillusionment runs through not only the Levellers’ tracts but those of Winstanley as well; “for the Parliament promised”, he writes, “if we would pay taxes, and give free-quarter, and adventure our lives against Charl[e]s and his party, whom they called the Common enemy, they would make us a free people”.27

    7Social tensions were heightened by the acute economic distress of the years 1647-1650, “which saw the worst run of bad harvests in the seventeenth century and the lowest real wages”.28 Poor harvests, wartime disruption and heavy taxation combined to make “the years from 1647 to 1650”, according to Steve Hindle, the years of one of the “most serious depressions of the entire early modern period”.29 In Surrey, Cobham, where Winstanley lived, “lying as it did on the road from London to the major garrison at Porstmouth”,30 is reported to have been hardest hit by the burdens of war, having had to suffer from extensive free-quarter besides heavy taxation throughout the 1640s. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to see Winstanley arguing over and over again that the common people “have paid taxes, given free-quarter, and ventured [their] lives to preserve the Nations freedom”31 and that they were “resolved to be cheated no longer”.32 This is not to say that Winstanley himself or his fellow Diggers are to be counted among the desperately poor. However, they had been deeply affected by wartime burdens and the economic crisis and dreaded the harsh realities of hired labour.

    8Winstanley is a case in point. Although he did not volunteer to fight for the parliamentary army, he sided with the Parliament and signed the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643.33 He had left his birthplace, Wigan, in 1637 and set up his own business in London as a freeman of the Merchant Taylors’ Company engaged in the cloth trade, buying and selling cloth on credit. His business collapsed in November 1643, and he then moved to Cobham, where he became a grazier. In the years 1647-1648, he suffered a second financial collapse which plunged him into a profound spiritual crisis, which is reflected in the early religious writings he published before he undertook the agrarian protest at St George’s Hill.

    9In addition to the political upheavals and social hardships, the late 1640s and early 1650s were years of religious ferment. Winstanley must have distanced himself from the orthodox teachings of the Church of England during these critical years to develop his fierce anticlericalism and Puritan heterodox religious outlook. He rejected “the terrifying, darker God of orthodox Puritanism”34 and chose to use the term “Reason” for God, which he defines as the inward spiritual force present in every human being, a definition reminiscent of the inner light of the Quaker doctrine. Similarly, he rejected infant baptism, episcopacy and Sabbatarianism. It is significant, in this respect, that the occupation of St George’s Hill took place on a Sunday.35 All his Digger pamphlets are suffused with the radical millenarianism of the revolutionary period. His Digger experiment, which came to him in a trance, as he explains, is rooted in his millenarian visions of a regenerated world. Needless to say that his radical Puritanism entails a profound anti-Catholicism, a point that bears a crucial relation to his attitude to Ireland.

    The Norman Yoke: Winstanley’s ambivalence

    10Throughout his pamphlets aimed to legitimate – and marshal support for – the Digging experiment of Walton and Cobham, Winstanley makes abundant use of the Norman Yoke theory. This is true of almost all the English radical literature of the late 1640s and early 1650s. However, as Christopher Hill puts it, “[t]he Diggers’ was the most comprehensive and drastic restatement of the social version of the Norman Yoke theory”.36 In the first Digger manifesto, Winstanley writes:

    And the last inslaving Conquest which the enemy got over Israel, was the Norman over England; and from that time Kings, Lords, Judges, Justices, Bailiffs and the violent bitter people that are Freeholders, are and have been successively. The Norman Bastard, William himself, his Colonels, Captains, inferior Officers, and common Souldiers, who still are from that time to this day in pursuit of that Victory, imprisoning, robbing and killing the poore enslaved English Israelites.37

    This representation of England as a virtual Norman colony runs through each and every Digger tract. Months later, when the Digger community had left St George’s Hill and moved to Cobham, Winstanley continued to appeal to the Norman Yoke, as may be seen in the following passage from his New-Yeers Gift for the Parliament and Armie:

    As when our Norman William came into England and conquered; he turned the English out and gave the Land unto his Norman Souldiers every man his parcel to inclose, and hence rose up Propriety; for this is the fruit of War from the beginning, for it moves Propriety out of a weaker into a stronger hand, but still upholds the curse of Bondage.38

    As will be seen, this is a particularly startling passage in light of the events then unfolding in Ireland. The Norman Yoke theory received different interpretations and was put to different uses. The version in question is the more revolutionary version of the seventeenth-century English radicals who added their conception of the natural rights of man to the idea that the Anglo-Saxon people lived as free and equal and were robbed of their liberties by the tyranny of the Norman conquerors. This, in Hill’s view, was “a momentous transition” which implied that the English radicals were not simply fighting for the recovery of lost rights but for rights that “ought to exist” as human beings are by nature free and equal.39 Against the power of the sword, Winstanley preaches universal love. “Universal Love”, he writes, “unites not only Mankind into an oneness, but unites all other creatures into a sweet harmony of willingness to preserve Mankind”.40 The Golden Rule – “do to others as you would be done by” – holds a crucial importance in his theology.41

    11In actual fact, there is more to the Norman Yoke theory than its natural rights philosophy or its repudiation of war and depredation. “[A]s a rudimentary class theory of politics”, the Norman Yoke “united the Third Estate against the Crown, Church, and landlords, branding them as hereditary enemies of the people”.42 But it also included a national-chauvinistic element designed to strike the patriotic chord. The association of all the problems of England with

    […] William the Bastard, the French conqueror blessed by the Pope […] also stirred far profounder feelings of English patriotism and English Protestantism. Herein lay its strength. Men fought for the liberties of England, for the birthrights of Englishmen.43

    As will be seen in the final section of this chapter, for all their noble calls for universal brotherly love and unity, Winstanley’s Digger writings display a strong patriotic feeling which sits strangely with his conception of the earth as a common treasury for all. Considering his religious and moral principles, one might intuitively have expected him to share some of the concern that was expressed about Cromwell’s military campaign against the Irish. Yet, his Law of Freedom, published in 1652, two years after the violent suppression of the Digger community, is dedicated to Cromwell:

    God hath honoured you with the highest Honor of any man since Moses time, to be the Head of a People, who have cast out an Oppressing Pharaoh. For when the Norman Power had conquered our Forefathers, he took the free use of our English Ground from them, and made them his servants. And God hath made you a successful Instrument to cast out that Conqueror, and to recover our Land and Liberties again, by your Victories, out of that Norman hand.44

    Is not there a dramatic irony in this appeal to Cromwell, the man whose actions had just so conspicuously re-enacted the worst aspects of “Normanism”? To be fair, this is not to say that Winstanley reneged on the criticism of the Parliament’s policies of his Digger tracts. His Law of Freedom restates his argument that the revolution had stopped half-way, urging Cromwell “to see that the free possession of the Land and Liberties be put into the hands of the oppressed Commoners of England”.45 In this respect, Winstanley’s last work “can scarcely be seen as a retreat from the position he had adopted in 1649 and 1650”.46 The issue lies in his unexpected glorification of Cromwell, a military commander who embodied all that he professed to loathe, and his utter obliteration of Ireland and its colonisation. His Digger tracts lashed out against Cromwell, castigating him, his Council of State, his Parliament and army as the very incarnation of the Norman arch-enemy; he is now hailing him as “the successful Instrument” of England’s deliverance from Norman rule. Arguably, his stance testifies to the tension in the English radicals’ interpretation of the Norman Yoke between the enlightened idea of human rights and its much more exclusive English nationalist element.

    Leveller opposition to the conquest of Ireland

    12Yet Cromwell’s military expedition against Ireland did raise concern, as we have seen, mostly in the ranks of the army Levellers. According to Hill, the mutinies in the army, “in 1649 as in 1647, were caused by refusals to be drafted to Ireland”.47 Carlin shows that the association of the Levellers with Irish sympathies is mostly derived from the accounts of their enemies. In their account on their suppression of the 1649 soldiers’ mutinies, the army leaders, Fairfax and Cromwell, charge the Leveller leader, William Walwyn, with having said that “the Irish did no more but what we would have done ourselves, if it had been our case […] that they were a better natured people than we, […] why should they not enjoy the liberty of their consciences?”48 The same report states that the Levellers “have endeavoured what they can, to render service of Ireland either as unlawful (wherein they comply with Popish designs) or exceeding difficult”.49 In September 1649, the month following Cromwell’s landing in Ireland, A Declaration of the English Parliament complained that the Levellers

    […] delivered for good political doctrine, That Ireland was a free Kingdom, had been conquered by force and had justly vindicated their own Liberty, ought not to be compelled to any obedience or subordination to this Nation; That the soldiers ought not to suffer themselves to be transported thither, they had fought for their own Liberty here, but ought not to be commanded out of their own, to take away that of others. And what effect this had, and how far, and how long the Relief of Ireland was hindred by the Disobedience and Mutinies by them caused, is very well known.50

    13One striking document, according to Carlin, is a leaflet dated April 1649 and entitled Certain Queries Propounded to the Consideration of Those Who Are Intended for the Service of Ireland. She explains that no copy has survived of this leaflet, which consists of seventeen queries which called into question England’s right to reconquer Ireland, but that it was reconstructed from the reply published by the government in The Moderate Intelligencer between May and June 1649. This leaflet was distributed among the soldiers of the Commonwealth’s army during the preparations for Cromwell’s offensive. Two of these queries will suffice to show that there was unambiguous concern among some of the army Levellers about the legitimacy of England’s subjection of Ireland. The first raised the question

    Whether the condition of the conquered bee not Ireland, and the condition of the Conquerors bee not England, and Ireland unjustly termed Rebels, and their cause just and England a thieving usurping Tyrannie, and their cause altogether unjust, being against God and Nature, and therein, such as no judicious conscientious man can assist, or bid God speed.51

    The second,

    Whether those who pretend for freedome (as the English now) shall not make themselves altogether inexcusable, in entrenching upon others’ freedoms, and whether it be not a character of a true Patriot to endeavour the just freedom of all as well as his own?52

    14Further confirmation of Leveller resistance is provided by another anonymous tract which appeared on 5 April 1649. Its full title is The English Souldier’s Standard, to Repair for Wisdom and Understanding, in These Doleful, Back-Sliding Times: To Be Read by Every Honest Officer to His Soldiers and by the Soldiers to One Another. Carlin maintains that “there can be no doubt that it was, in political and ideological terms, a Leveller pamphlet”.53 One passage deserves full quotation, as it calls on the soldiers to think in conscience whether it was worth their while to embark on a war against the Irish knowing full well that the one they had fought for years in England clearly brought no improvement in their social condition:

    For consider, as things now stand, to what end you should hazard your lives against the Irish: have you not been fighting these seven years in England for rights and Liberties, that you are yet deluded of? And that too, when as none can hinder you of them but your own Officers, under whom you have fought? And wil you go to kil, slay and murther men, to make them as absolute Lords and Masters over Ireland as you have made them over England? […] Or if you intend not this, or would be sorry to see no better effects of your undertakings, it certainly concerns you in the first place, and before you go, to see those evils reformed here; that when occasion shall justly invite you thither, you may carry a good platform in your hands, such a one possibly they will never fight against: And it would be much more to be wished, that you might overcome them by just and equall offers, then by strength and force. And except you begin and proceed thus, how you will satisfie your consciences, is not discernible.54

    Curiously enough, the Levellers’ arguments in vindication of their objection to Cromwell’s colonial enterprise are not out of tune with Winstanley’s ethical principles. One would have reasonably predicted him to share the views of this Leveller rebellious minority. But as Lordon shows, political life defies reason and predictability. We must turn to his theory of affects in politics to attempt to untangle this paradox.

    Affects of political bodies

    15What exactly drives human beings to act, to do things, and what sets them in motion? Spinoza’s answer is “affects”. Central to the Spinozist “anthropology of passions” is the concept of “conatus” which he defines as “the effort by which ‘each thing as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being’”. To put it more simply, Spinoza’s “conatus” is “the force of existence […] the fundamental energy that inhabits bodies and sets them in motion”. It is, in other words, the life impulse or “the energy of desire”, for “to be is to be a being of desire”, and “to exist is to desire, and therefore to be active in the pursuit of one’s object of desire”.55 This desire to act comes as a result of the “affective power” of external things and causes. Contrary to widespread belief, societies, social institutions, and political groups do not run on reason but on affects. In the social institution of a factory, an external cause – say, for instance, the imminence of a massive layoff – affects the employees and provokes in their very bodies a common affect of anger, which prompts in its turn their desire to act collectively, that is to direct their energy (Spinoza’s “conatus”) against their employer’s decision, in one way or another. In other words, no collective action is possible without prior causal affection. On the battleship Potemkin, an example that Lordon likes to use, with its sailors “swinging into mutiny, indignant at the death penalty imposed on those whose only crime was to protest against rotten meat”, it is the powerful affect of indignation that sets the sailors in motion, “making the course of things bifurcate, thus producing change”.56 This does not mean that these exceptional moments of abrupt change are to be ascribed to any free will, for, in Spinoza’s deterministic philosophy of passionate servitude, human beings are not the free agents they like to think themselves to be. These bifurcatory moments in history “owe everything to the determinism of passionate dynamics”.57

    16Winstanley and his fellow Diggers bifurcated on 1 April 1649. The social and political context already outlined suffices to show that they were caught up in a plurality of affecting forces which resulted in the accumulated anger they harboured at their relegation by the backtracking government. “Discontent”, writes Lordon, “is the affective historical force that is capable of bifurcating the course of events”. He goes on to add, “[l]ike social life as a whole, of which it is simply the temporal unfolding, history runs on affects. But ‘bifurcatory’ history runs specifically on angry affects”.58 So the driving force behind the Diggers’ communal action was the bitter resentment at what they perceived as the Parliament’s betrayal. Taking matters into their own hands, they formed themselves into a self-sufficient community to dig, manure, plant and cultivate the land together outside the moneyed economy and the constraints of the existing order. As has already been pointed out, they envisioned their seditious activism as the inaugural stage of a truly Christian regeneration of the world, ushering in a new era breaking radically with the hallowed institution of private property. By turning to political activism, the Diggers were seeking to produce an effect and become an affecting power in their turn. In Les affects de la politique, Lordon states that “the primary task of a cause (in the political sense of the term) is to make present those things which are absent, to make visible (and thus affective) those things which are invisible”.59 He further suggests that the political activism of minority groups aims to make visible the invisible and empower the disempowered. This is precisely what the Diggers were seeking to achieve. And even though Winstanley claims to have staged the collective occupation of St George’s Hill in a bid to give primacy to action over words, the tracts he published in the heat of his entanglements with the local authorities and inhabitants indicate that he perfectly sensed the conative power of words and ideas. That his words continue to resonate with present-day activists carries some significance. His deployment of biblical references and the theory of the Norman Yoke were designed to legitimate the Digger undertaking, rally support and denounce in vehement language a government, whose chief leader was no other than Cromwell, that had reduced the lower classes to political insignificance.

    17To understand his unexpected alignment with Cromwell, a year after his agrarian protest was brought to an end, it must be borne in mind that England was facing threats of a royalist invasion from Ireland, and later from Scotland, not to mention the hostility of the continental monarchies. A year after the Diggers’ dispersal from Cobham, Cromwell had subdued Ireland and defeated the Scots who had declared Charles II king of England, Scotland and Ireland.60 Having averted these dangers, defeated the Irish insurgents and the Scottish army by the end of 1651, Cromwell stood as the strong man of England. Foremost among Winstanley’s concerns at this crucial juncture was the preservation of the new republican regime. Viscerally opposed to a return to a monarchical regime, Winstanley took the “Engagement” on 16 March 1650 in support of the Commonwealth of England.61 He also published a tract, England’s Spirit Unfoulded, or an Incouragement to Take the Engagement.62 For G. E. Aylmer, “England’s Spirit, makes it clear beyond any shadow of doubt that Winstanley still regarded the republican regime as a possible, perhaps indeed the only possible, basis for further social advance”.63 For all his strictures against Cromwell and the Council of State, he was convinced that “the maintenance of republican rule was a necessary precondition for further economic and social change”.64 In a rapidly shifting context of aggression from abroad, Winstanley’s dedication of his Law of Freedom celebrates a man who owed his rise to power to his military achievement after having so emphatically professed his repudiation of the right of conquest.

    18The fact of the matter is that, as Lordon intimates, “the same man can be affected by the same object in different ways at different moments”.65 In 1651, as the man who protected the new republic from all the threats of invasion, Cromwell stood as the charismatic providential man, an emanation of the multitude itself – the multitude being society as a collective or society as power – operating as an overpowering common affect. In the characteristic millenarianism of the age, just as Cromwell saw each of his victories as a sign of God’s approbation, Winstanley perceives him as the agent of providence, the divinely chosen leader capable of steering his people in the political and social drama that was unfolding. Whence his dedication to Cromwell of his last work, Law of Freedom, his political platform for the establishment of a true Commonwealth government. A radical Puritan, Winstanley must have shared Cromwell’s fanatic anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment; one of the reproaches he levels against Cromwell is that he had failed to achieve the extirpation of Popery, a promise of the Solemn League and Covenant. Unlike the fraction of the army Levellers who expressed qualms about the expedition against Ireland, Winstanley shows no ethical concern about Cromwell’s ruthless campaign against the Irish insurrection. Clearly, the silence he meticulously observes on Ireland throughout his writings is tantamount to an endorsement of its subjugation. Nonetheless, the absence of any explicit mention of Ireland in his writings does not mean that it was not at the back of his mind: for example, in A New-Yeer’s Gift, published on 1 January 1650, while Cromwell’s was in Ireland, he argued that if Parliament chose not to obstruct the Diggers’ activities,

    Our own Land will be increased with all sorts of Commodities, and the People will be knit together, in love, to keep out a forreign enemy that endeavours, and that will endeavour as yet, to come like an Army of cursed Ratts and Mice to destroy our inheritance; so that if this Freedom be quietly granted to us, you grant it but to yourselves, to Englishmen, to your own flesh and blood.66

    Clearly at work here is the common national affect which Winstanley shares with Cromwell and his fellow Englishmen. Several pages of Lordon’s Imperium are devoted to the common national affect as a considerably potent affect. “Loving and hating”, he writes, “is part of the national affect – loving each other and hating outsiders”.67 In the period under consideration, there was no lack of hatred for the Irish Catholics; for years, rumours of their atrocities against the Protestant settlers had been in circulation. Whether Winstanley’s disdainful animalisation of potential invaders, in the citation above, is an allusion to the Irish cannot be ruled out altogether. As Protestants, the Scots were a different matter. As Hill contends,

    The Irish should have been the natural allies of the English republican democrats, since they had the same enemies. But the Irish were papists, and papistry had become the major enemy for parliamentarians to an extent that made an alliance with Irish Catholics almost unthinkable.68

    Winstanley may well write that the earth “was made a common storehouse of livelihood to all mankind, friend or foe, without exception”;69 he may well write that “everyone, friend or foe, shall enjoy the benefit of their creation”;70 yet he remains, nonetheless, in the grip of the common English national affect. Ultimately, his national affect takes precedence over the radical principles of universal peace and social justice he claims to uphold. English patriotism may be seen at work in his proud celebration of Cromwell’s military victories. Similarly, patriotic fervour surfaces in the prophetic lyrical verses annexed to his dedication:

    In thee, O England, is the Law arising up to shine
    If thou receive and practise it, the crown will be thine.71

    In a similar poetic flight, he writes, “[t]he Heaven gates are now set ope for English Man to enter”.72 The Commonwealth of England is cast as the elect nation which, “in time”, will become “the Lily among the Nations of the Earth”.73 While the Digger writings are shot through with passionate diatribes against conquest, in the ideal Commonwealth Winstanley envisions in his Law of Freedom, there is the necessity to raise an army “against any Invasion, Insurrection or Rebellion […] to beat down the turbulency of any foolish spirit that shall rise to break our common Peace”.74 There are enough references to the danger of invasion in his last work to allow us to surmise that Winstanley had the Irish and Scottish threats in mind. It follows that his axiom of the earth as a common treasury for all calls for reappraisal.

    Conclusion

    19However generous, Winstanley’s leitmotiv of the earth as a common treasury for all must be realistically narrowed down to the bounds of his homeland. At issue is the belief in a unified humanity. Attractive as it may be, it is a delusion. As Lordon reminds us, “[t]he idea of ‘human race’ or ‘humanity’ does not correspond to any actual union and […], consequently, the objects to which it refers do not exist other than as ideas – in other words, they do not exist”.75 The Spinozist structuralism of political bodies postulates a fragmented humanity, with individuals assembling into finite groups according to regional affinities such as a common language, common customs, common culture or religion. “Mankind has not spontaneously formed into a unity”, Lordon maintains, “and humanity exists in a fragmented state – neither unified nor pulverised, but fragmented”.76 To say that human beings assemble under forces of convergence does not, however, preclude internal strife, as all political unions are subject to “the interplay of the antagonistic affective tendencies which both bring people together and drive them apart – the interplay of convergences and divergences”.77 There was assuredly no shortage of these contending forces of divergence and convergence in the turbulent years of the Civil Wars in England. Winstanley’s posture all these years is underpinned by the interplay of these antagonistic forces, of divergence in his Digger agrarian activism and convergence in his quiet acquiescence of Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland. Writing to Engels in another context, Marx asserts that “[t]he English reaction in England had its roots (as in Cromwell’s time) in the subjugation of Ireland”.78 Winstanley’s trajectory is a vivid testimony to this reaction. In the passionate dynamics of political groups, as Lordon suggests, “the play of affections is much more unchecked and capable of producing completely unexpected configurations which are sometimes even judged to be spontaneously aberrant”.79 Winstanley’s ultimate alignment with Cromwell may be deemed an aberration. Nevertheless, if we are ready to forego the idea that politics run on reason, and approach Winstanley through the Spinozist prism of affective life, perhaps we should then accept, as the editors of his Complete Works intimate, “a complex and elusive Winstanley, varying with time and context”,80 and take him on his own terms. In the cataclysmic years he lived through, he was a battlefield of affects, and “[…] we need to be wary about demanding too much consistency in an age of enormous religious flux and uncertainty”.81 If nothing else, the philosophy of affects in politics may provide guiding insight to understand his contradictions and help desist from searching for “a unitary Winstanley”.82

    Bibliographie

    Alsop J. D. (1994), “A High Road to Radicalism? Gerrard Winstanley’s Youth”, The Seventeenth Century, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 11-24.

    Aylmer G. E. (1968), “England’s Spirit Unfoulded, or an Incouragement to Take the Engagement. A Newly Discovered Pamphlet by Gerrard Winstanley”, Past and Present, no. 40, p. 3-15.

    Carlin N. (1987), “The Levellers and the Conquest of Ireland in 1649”, The Historical Journal, vol. 30, no. 2, p. 269-288.

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

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

    Gurney J. (2013), Gerrard Winstanley: The Digger’s Life and Legacy, London, Pluto Press.

    Hill C. (1948), “The English Civil War Interpreted by Marx and Engels”, Science and Society, vol. 12, no. 1, p. 130-156.

    Hill C. ([1958] 1990), Puritanism and Revolution, London, Penguin.

    Hill C. (1970), God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, London, Harper & Row.

    Hill C. ([1972] 1975), The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution, London, Penguin.

    Hindle S. (2008), “Dearth and the English Revolution: The Harvest Crisis of 1647-50”, Economic History Review, vol. 61, special issue, Feeding the Masses: Plenty, Want and the Distribution of Food and Drink in Historical Perspective, S. Hindle, J. Humphries (eds.), p. 64-98.

    Lordon F. ([2010] 2014), Willing Slaves of Capitalism: Spinoza and Marx on Desire [Capitalisme, désir et servitude: Marx et Spinoza], G. Ash (trans.), London, Verso.

    Lordon F. ([2015] 2022), Imperium: Structures and Affects of Political Bodies [Imperium: structures et affects des corps politiques], A. Bliss (trans.), London, Verso.

    Lordon F. (2016), Les affects de la politique, Paris, Seuil.

    Petegorsky D. W. (1940), Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War: A Study of the Social Philosophy of Gerrard Winstanley, London, V. Gollancz.

    Raymond J. (2012), “In 1649, to St George’s Hill”, Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 3, p. 429-446.

    Sabine G. H. (ed.) (1941), The Works of Gerrard Winstanley, with an Appendix of Documents relating to the Digger Movement, Ithaca, Cornell University Press.

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

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

    Winstanley G. ([1649] 2009c), A Letter to the Lord Fairfax and His Councell of War, in Corns et al. (eds.) (2009), vol. 2, p. 43-58.

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

    Winstanley G. ([1650] 2009e), England’s Spirit Unfoulded or an Incouragement to Take the Engagement, in Corns et al. (eds.) (2009), vol. 2, p. 161-170.

    Winstanley G. ([1652] 2009f), The Law of Freedom in a Platform, in Corns et al. (eds.) (2009), vol. 2, p. 278-404.

    Notes de bas de page

    1Raymond 2012, 430.

    2Petegorsky 1940.

    3Sabine 1941.

    4Hill [1972] 1975.

    5Gurney 2013, 124.

    6Ibid., 8.

    7Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 4.

    8Winstanley [1649] 2009c, 52.

    9Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 5.

    10It must be remembered that the Civil War in England was ignited by a Scottish rebellion in 1638-1639, followed by the Irish rebellion of 1641. The whole of the Scottish nation rose up in rebellion following Charles I’s unilateral decision to impose the English Prayer Book in Scotland, an overwhelmingly Presbyterian country. Two wars ensued which opposed Charles I to the Scots and ended with a humiliating defeat for the Crown. Considerably weakened and short of money, the king, who had ruled alone, without parliament, since 1629 (his Personal Rule), had to call a parliament in 1640 to grant him subsidies. The parliamentary opposition refused to vote subsidies unless the king agreed to consider their grievances. The protracted conflict between king and Parliament was further aggravated by the outbreak of the Ulster Rising of 1641, which then spread to the whole island. Ireland was seen as a potential backdoor for a Catholic invasion and, for the parliamentary opposition, the king could not be trusted with an army. The struggle between king and Parliament reached deadlock and civil war became inevitable.

    11Carlin 1987, 271.

    12Alsop 1994, 11, quoted in Corns et al. 2009, 1:2.

    13Corns et al. 2009, 1:49.

    14Winstanley [1652] 2009f.

    15Lordon [2010] 2014, x.

    16Ibid.

    17Ibid., xi.

    18Ibid., x.

    19Ibid., xi.

    20Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 6.

    21Ibid., 11.

    22Ibid., 14.

    23Ibid.

    24Winstanley [1649] 2009b.

    25Gurney 2007, 131.

    26Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 10.

    27Winstanley [1649] 2009b, 38.

    28Corns et al. 2009, 1:27.

    29Hindle 2008, 68, quoted in Corns et al. 2009, 1:27-28.

    30Corns et al. 2009, 1:13.

    31Winstanley [1649] 2009b, 38.

    32Ibid., 35.

    33The Solemn League and Covenant is the agreement concluded in 1643 between the English Parliamentarians and the Presbyterian Scots to avert the danger of a royalist alliance between Charles I and the Irish Catholic insurgents. The Scots were to lend military assistance to the Parliament’s army in return for the establishment of a Presbyterian Church on the Scottish model in England after the Civil War. The Scottish military assistance was to prove a decisive factor in the Parliament’s victory. The final document of the Solemn League and Covenant makes no explicit reference to the establishment of a Presbyterian Church in England, but it provided for the preservation of the Reformation and the extirpation of Popery.

    34Corns et al. 2009, 1:55.

    35Gurney 2007, 121.

    36Hill [1958] 1990, 89.

    37Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 12.

    38Winstanley [1650] 2009d, 110.

    39Hill [1958] 1990, 81.

    40Winstanley [1650] 2009d, 129.

    41Gurney 2007, 92.

    42Hill [1958] 1990, 65.

    43Ibid., 74.

    44Winstanley [1652] 2009f, 279.

    45Ibid., 287.

    46Gurney 2007, 216.

    47Hill 1970, 110.

    48Quoted in Carlin 1987, 269.

    49Ibid.

    50Ibid., 269-270.

    51Ibid., 271-272.

    52Ibid., 272.

    53Ibid., 276.

    54Ibid., 277.

    55Lordon [2010] 2014, 1.

    56Ibid., 139.

    57Ibid., 140.

    58Ibid., 149.

    59Lordon 2016, 64 (translation ours).

    60In addition to the internal opposition from the right (the Royalists) and left (the Levellers, Diggers and other radical groups), England was facing the risk of a royalist invasion led by Charles Stuart, the hereditary successor to the executed king, who was to ascend the throne in 1660 as Charles II. Of all these threats, the most likely was an invasion using Ireland as a base. In actual fact, Charles II had reached the island of Jersey during Cromwell’s siege of Drogheda (3-11 September 1649). He then landed in Scotland, where he was proclaimed king of England, Scotland and Ireland. Back in England, Cromwell had to fight another war against the Scottish army whom he defeated in the Battle of Dunbar (3 September 1650). The Scottish army then invaded England and was definitively beaten by Cromwell in the Battle of Worcester, a year later, on 3 September 1651. By November 1651, the date of Winstanley’s dedicatory epistle, Cromwell was at the height of his military prestige, having won a string of battles: Naseby (1645), Preston (19 August 1648), Drogheda (11 September 1649), Wexford (11 October 1649), Dunbar (3 September 1650) and Worcester (3 September 1651).

    61See Corns et al. 2009, 2:168: “The Engagement was first imposed on MPs in October 1649, then on other office-holders, and finally subscription was required of all men over 18, by an Act of January 1650 […]. Its wording was: ‘I do declare and promise, that I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now established, without king or House of Lords’”.

    62Winstanley [1650] 2009e.

    63Aylmer 1968, 5.

    64Ibid., 6.

    65Lordon 2016, 38 (translation ours).

    66Winstanley [1650] 2009d, 111.

    67Lordon [2015] 2022, 123.

    68Hill 1948, 148.

    69Winstanley [1649] 2009b, 32.

    70Ibid., 33.

    71Winstanley [1652] 2009f, 278.

    72Ibid., 312.

    73Ibid., 318.

    74Ibid., 349.

    75Lordon [2015] 2022, 49-50.

    76Ibid., 3.

    77Ibid., 5.

    78Letter to Engels, 11 December 1869, quoted in Hill 1948, 148.

    79Lordon 2016, 51 (translation ours).

    80Corns et al. 2009, 1:1.

    81Ibid., 1:51.

    82Ibid., 1:1.

    Auteur

    • Z’hor Zizi

      Université de Caen Normandie

      Z’hor Zizi is (retired) senior lecturer at the University of Caen Normandy where she taught British history. Her field of research concerns more specifically the English travellers and the Royal Society in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North Africa and the Near-East.

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    1Raymond 2012, 430.

    2Petegorsky 1940.

    3Sabine 1941.

    4Hill [1972] 1975.

    5Gurney 2013, 124.

    6Ibid., 8.

    7Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 4.

    8Winstanley [1649] 2009c, 52.

    9Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 5.

    10It must be remembered that the Civil War in England was ignited by a Scottish rebellion in 1638-1639, followed by the Irish rebellion of 1641. The whole of the Scottish nation rose up in rebellion following Charles I’s unilateral decision to impose the English Prayer Book in Scotland, an overwhelmingly Presbyterian country. Two wars ensued which opposed Charles I to the Scots and ended with a humiliating defeat for the Crown. Considerably weakened and short of money, the king, who had ruled alone, without parliament, since 1629 (his Personal Rule), had to call a parliament in 1640 to grant him subsidies. The parliamentary opposition refused to vote subsidies unless the king agreed to consider their grievances. The protracted conflict between king and Parliament was further aggravated by the outbreak of the Ulster Rising of 1641, which then spread to the whole island. Ireland was seen as a potential backdoor for a Catholic invasion and, for the parliamentary opposition, the king could not be trusted with an army. The struggle between king and Parliament reached deadlock and civil war became inevitable.

    11Carlin 1987, 271.

    12Alsop 1994, 11, quoted in Corns et al. 2009, 1:2.

    13Corns et al. 2009, 1:49.

    14Winstanley [1652] 2009f.

    15Lordon [2010] 2014, x.

    16Ibid.

    17Ibid., xi.

    18Ibid., x.

    19Ibid., xi.

    20Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 6.

    21Ibid., 11.

    22Ibid., 14.

    23Ibid.

    24Winstanley [1649] 2009b.

    25Gurney 2007, 131.

    26Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 10.

    27Winstanley [1649] 2009b, 38.

    28Corns et al. 2009, 1:27.

    29Hindle 2008, 68, quoted in Corns et al. 2009, 1:27-28.

    30Corns et al. 2009, 1:13.

    31Winstanley [1649] 2009b, 38.

    32Ibid., 35.

    33The Solemn League and Covenant is the agreement concluded in 1643 between the English Parliamentarians and the Presbyterian Scots to avert the danger of a royalist alliance between Charles I and the Irish Catholic insurgents. The Scots were to lend military assistance to the Parliament’s army in return for the establishment of a Presbyterian Church on the Scottish model in England after the Civil War. The Scottish military assistance was to prove a decisive factor in the Parliament’s victory. The final document of the Solemn League and Covenant makes no explicit reference to the establishment of a Presbyterian Church in England, but it provided for the preservation of the Reformation and the extirpation of Popery.

    34Corns et al. 2009, 1:55.

    35Gurney 2007, 121.

    36Hill [1958] 1990, 89.

    37Winstanley [1649] 2009a, 12.

    38Winstanley [1650] 2009d, 110.

    39Hill [1958] 1990, 81.

    40Winstanley [1650] 2009d, 129.

    41Gurney 2007, 92.

    42Hill [1958] 1990, 65.

    43Ibid., 74.

    44Winstanley [1652] 2009f, 279.

    45Ibid., 287.

    46Gurney 2007, 216.

    47Hill 1970, 110.

    48Quoted in Carlin 1987, 269.

    49Ibid.

    50Ibid., 269-270.

    51Ibid., 271-272.

    52Ibid., 272.

    53Ibid., 276.

    54Ibid., 277.

    55Lordon [2010] 2014, 1.

    56Ibid., 139.

    57Ibid., 140.

    58Ibid., 149.

    59Lordon 2016, 64 (translation ours).

    60In addition to the internal opposition from the right (the Royalists) and left (the Levellers, Diggers and other radical groups), England was facing the risk of a royalist invasion led by Charles Stuart, the hereditary successor to the executed king, who was to ascend the throne in 1660 as Charles II. Of all these threats, the most likely was an invasion using Ireland as a base. In actual fact, Charles II had reached the island of Jersey during Cromwell’s siege of Drogheda (3-11 September 1649). He then landed in Scotland, where he was proclaimed king of England, Scotland and Ireland. Back in England, Cromwell had to fight another war against the Scottish army whom he defeated in the Battle of Dunbar (3 September 1650). The Scottish army then invaded England and was definitively beaten by Cromwell in the Battle of Worcester, a year later, on 3 September 1651. By November 1651, the date of Winstanley’s dedicatory epistle, Cromwell was at the height of his military prestige, having won a string of battles: Naseby (1645), Preston (19 August 1648), Drogheda (11 September 1649), Wexford (11 October 1649), Dunbar (3 September 1650) and Worcester (3 September 1651).

    61See Corns et al. 2009, 2:168: “The Engagement was first imposed on MPs in October 1649, then on other office-holders, and finally subscription was required of all men over 18, by an Act of January 1650 […]. Its wording was: ‘I do declare and promise, that I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now established, without king or House of Lords’”.

    62Winstanley [1650] 2009e.

    63Aylmer 1968, 5.

    64Ibid., 6.

    65Lordon 2016, 38 (translation ours).

    66Winstanley [1650] 2009d, 111.

    67Lordon [2015] 2022, 123.

    68Hill 1948, 148.

    69Winstanley [1649] 2009b, 32.

    70Ibid., 33.

    71Winstanley [1652] 2009f, 278.

    72Ibid., 312.

    73Ibid., 318.

    74Ibid., 349.

    75Lordon [2015] 2022, 49-50.

    76Ibid., 3.

    77Ibid., 5.

    78Letter to Engels, 11 December 1869, quoted in Hill 1948, 148.

    79Lordon 2016, 51 (translation ours).

    80Corns et al. 2009, 1:1.

    81Ibid., 1:51.

    82Ibid., 1:1.

    Representing the Commons in Early Modern England

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    Zizi, Z. (2025). Gerrard Winstanley and the Cromwellian Reconquest of Ireland: The Earth a “Common Treasury for All”?. In J. Elprin & M. Popelard (éds.), Representing the Commons in Early Modern England (1‑). Presses universitaires de Caen. https://doi.org/10.4000/13omx
    Zizi, Z’hor. « Gerrard Winstanley and the Cromwellian Reconquest of Ireland: The Earth a “Common Treasury for All”? ». In Representing the Commons in Early Modern England, édité par Jeremy Elprin et Mickaël Popelard. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4000/13omx.
    Zizi, Z’hor. « Gerrard Winstanley and the Cromwellian Reconquest of Ireland: The Earth a “Common Treasury for All”? ». Representing the Commons in Early Modern England, édité par Jeremy Elprin et Mickaël Popelard, Presses universitaires de Caen, 2025, https://doi.org/10.4000/13omx.

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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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