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Transplanting the Holy Land: Diggers, Fifth Monarchists, and the New Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Bernard Capp
Bernard Capp*
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Extract

For some Christians in all ages, the biblical Holy Land has possessed far more than historical significance. It has also provided an ideal, a vision, and even a model of the future, a godly society that might be established in some other time and place. This paper looks at England in a period when these aspirations held greater urgency and plausibility than at any other - the English Revolution. It focuses on two strands within that Revolution, the Diggers and Fifth Monarchists, both inspired by the vision of the Holy Land, but in dramatically different ways. Or so it would seem. The two groups are rarely considered together, yet it is possible by doing so to identify unexpected elements of commonality as well as difference.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 36: The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History , 2000 , pp. 288 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2000

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References

1 Sabine, George H., ed., The Works of Gerrard Winstanley (New York, 1965) [hereafter Sabine], p. 261 Google Scholar; cf. p. 190. For an introduction to Winstanley’s life and thought, and the Digger movement, see the introduction to Hill, C., ed., Winstanley: The Law of Freedom and Other Writings (Harmondsworth, 1973)Google Scholar.

2 Sabine, p. 162.

3 Ibid., p. 161.

4 Ibid., p. 255.

5 Ibid., p. 163.

6 Ibid., p. 263.

7 Ibid., pp. 260-1.

8 Ibid., p. 451.

9 For general surveys see Rogers, P. G., The Fifth Monarchy Men (London, 1966)Google Scholar; Capp, B. S., The Fifth Monarchy Men. A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism (London, 1972)Google Scholar.

10 The Clarke Papers, ed., Firth, C. H., 4 vols, Camden Society, ns 49, 54, 61-2 (London, 1891-1901), 2, p. 244 Google Scholar.

11 A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe Esq., ed., Birch, T., 7 vols (London, 1742) [hereafter Thurloe], 1, p. 442 Google Scholar.

12 Thurloe, 3, p. 136.

13 Hughes, W., Munster and Abingdon (Oxford, 1657), pp. 88–9 Google Scholar.

14 Sabine, p. 197.

15 Ibid., p. 187.

16 Ibid., p. 253 (emphasis added).

17 Ibid., p. 376.

18 Ibid., pp. 263-4.

19 Ibid., p. 264.

20 Thurloe, 1, p. 534.

21 Cary, Mary, The Resurrection of the Witnesses (London, 1653), p. 121 Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., p. 146.

23 A Door of Hope (London, 1661), p. 3.

24 Ibid., pp. 12-16.

25 Sabine, pp. 385-6; cf. p. 383.

26 Hill, Winstanley, p. 159 (from the title page of A New-year’s Gift (London, 1650)).

27 Sabine, pp. 385-6.

28 Ibid., p. 386.

29 Davis, J. C., Utopia and the Ideal Society (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 180–2 Google Scholar.

30 Sabine, pp. 183, 192.

31 Ibid., pp. 191-2, 197-8.

32 Rogers, John, To His Excellency the Lord General Cromwell. A Few Proposals (London, 1653)Google Scholar, broadside.

33 Ibid.

34 Sabine, pp. 542-4.

35 Capp, Fifth Monarchy Men, ch. 7.

36 Sabine, pp. 591-2.

37 Ibid., p. 521.

38 Thurloe, 6, p. 163; Door of Hope, p. 10.

39 Ibid., p. 11.

40 Ibid., p. 10.

41 Thurloe, 4, p. 382.

42 Canne, John, The Time of Finding (London, 1658), sig. A2v, pp. 74–5,Google Scholar 288.

43 Thurloe, 2, p. 196; 4, p. 382; Chamberlen, Peter, The Declaration and Proclamation of the Army of God (London, 1659)Google Scholar; idem, Legislative Powers in Problems (London, 1659); Capp, Fifth Monarchy Men, pp. 147-8, 150.

44 Door of Hope, pp. 5, 10.

45 Sabine, p. 169.

46 Cary, Mary, The Little Horns Doom and Downfall (London, 1651), pp. 288–94 Google Scholar.

47 Sabine, pp. 501-2.

48 Ibid., p. 600.

49 Door of Hope, p. 7.

50 Ibid., p. 8.

51 For the later years of the movement see Capp, Fifth Monarchy Men, ch. 9, and for further examples of defiance, Greaves, Richard L., Deliver Us from Evil (New York, 1986)Google Scholar, and idem, Enemies Under His Feet (Stanford, CA, 1990).

52 Sabine, p. 357.