Rodney Hilton's account of the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 remains the classic authoritative text on the 'English Rising'. Hilton views the revolt in the context of a general European pattern of class conflict. He demonstrates that the peasant movements that disturbed the Middle Ages were not mere unrelated outbreaks of violence but had their roots in common economic and political conditions and in a recurring conflict of interest between peasants and landowners.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

A New Introduction

Old Introduction

Part I: General Problems of Medieval Peasant Societies

1 The Nature of Medieval Peasant Economy

2 Early Movements and their Problems

3 Mass Movements of the Later Middle Ages

Part II: The English Rising of 1381

4 The Events of the Rising

5 The General Background

6 The Areas of Revolt

7 Social Composition

8 The Allies of the Rebels

9 Organisation and Aims

10 Conclusion

Index

In The lost sheep found, Laurence Clarkson (or Claxton) records his pilgrimage through the 'Seven Churches' of mid-seventeenth century England to his rest as the only true bishop under the new third Commission to John Reeve, sucessor to Moses and Paul.

Born in 1615 in Preston, Lancashire, Clarkson was educated in the Church of England but became such a puritan that he secretly sought godly ministers and scrupled at asking his father's blessing. Having learned to pray ex tempore, he became a Presbyterian and moved to London. There he soon turned Independent and then Antinomian. In pursuit of that dispensation, he joined Col. Fleetwood's regiment at Pulham Market in Norfolk where he preached free grace. After about six months he turned Baptist and on November 6, 1644, was dipped 'in the water that runneth about the Tower'. Returning to East Anglia he married, by mutual consent before the congregation, Robert Marchant's daughter Frances for whom he provided even during his later ramblings. He exercised his new ministry until January 24, 1644/5 when he was apprehended, as was Hanserd Knollys, on a parliamentary warrant, closely interrogated and confined at Bury St. Edmunds. By July, Clarkson had come under the influence of William Erberry: 'Do finding I was but still in Egypt burning Brick, I was minded to travel into the Wilderness; so seeing the vanity of the Baptists, I renounced them and had my freedom'. Thus Clarkson turned Seeker and wrote his first work The pilrimage of saints, by church cast out, in Christ found, seeking truth (London, 1646). He came to Thomas Edwards's notice, who confirms Clarkson's claim that he preached at Bow Church. For a year, Clarkson held a ministry at Sandridge in Hertfordshire. Having been turned out he became an itinerant preacher and wrote for a fee of twelve pounds, A generall charge or, impeachment of high-treason in the name of Justice Equity, against the comunuality of England (London, 1647). This pamphlet had a levelling tone: the communality is accused of a number of serious offences by the messenger of Justice-Equity, Experienced Reason, who replies to the communuality's objections to the charges. Experinced Reason castigates the communuality for choosing oppressors to represent them 'for who are the oppressors, but the Nobility and Gentry; and who are the oppressed, is not the Yeoman, the Farmer, the Tradesman, and the Labourer?' Expererienced Reason insists that this is a consequence of allowing the franchise to be confined to freeholders and freemen of corporations. Experienced Reason does not hesitate to condemn unequal taxation, social privilege, lawyers, clerics, the excise, justices of the peace, press censorship, tithes and the directory of worship.

Having wearied in a small parish in Lincolnshire to which he was next presented, Clarkson rejoined the army as teacher to Captain Cambridge's company. Being given two month's leave, he visited his wife before rejoining his regiment in London. There, through Giles Calvert, the radical publisher, he contacted 'a people caled My one flesh. Clarkson thus turned Ranter and wrote A single eye, all light, no darkness (London, 1650). At this time, Clarkson was an extreme antinomian who held that 'no man could be free'd from sin, till he had acted that so called sin, as no sin'. As 'Captain of the Rant', Clarkson indulged in a licentious, roving life and even counted Major William Rainborough among his acquaintances. Arrested under a parliamentary warrant, and examined by a committee of the Rump, Clarkson was imprisoned for blasphemy and his book burnt, but the further sentence of banishment was not executed; Rainborough was disabled from being a justice of the peace. When released Clarkson added the practice of astrology, healing and magic to his ranting. At last, called in 1658 to Faith as opposed to the various dispensations of Reason, this world and the devil, he published several works in justification of his new position, culminating in The lost sheep found which ends with an attack on the Quakers and the assertion of the true third Commssion of John Reeve. Ludowick Muggleton, with whom Clarkson was at odds, is never mentioned. However in 1661, Clarkson submitted to Muggleton and was received into favour. Clarkson died in 1667, a prisoner for debt in Ludgate; he had lent a hundred pounds to help rebuild after London's great fire but the borrowers absconded.

Flourishing briefly in the aftermath of the English Revolution (1649-1650), the Ranters have been seen as the ultimate counter-cultural group or movement of seventeenth-century England. Their apparent rejection of sin, hell and all moral constraints, authorities and limitations imposed from above has drawn considerable attention to them as illustrative of an irreligious popular culture and the determination of the people to have a revolution of their own making. Acting out a plebian permissiveness in denial of the Protestant ethic at the moment of its achievement of dominance, they have drawn the attention, in particular, of those seeking to record the history of a popular tradition rejecting the hegemony of bourgeois values.

This book calls in question that framework. The author argues that there was no Ranter group or movement; that the Ranters did not exist. Rather, a myth of the Ranters was projected in a press sensation and was sustained by heresiographers and sectarian leaders. The projection of this myth in the early 1650s is explained in terms of fears aroused by a revolutionary crisis and the dilemma of authority within sectarianism. In this sense the work forms a case study in the projection of deviance consequent upon a 'moral panic'. The elements out of which the mythic identity of the Ranter was composed are examined in detail, as is the projection of the myth.

A myth of repressive effect in the 1650s has been revived by left-wing historians in the 1970s and 1980s as part of the framework of their historiography of the English Revolution. Professor Davis examines this process and concludes by offering some commentary upon it. There is an appendix of documents, including the one core 'Ranter' text that has not hitherto been reprinted, and some of the sensational material of the early 1650s on the Ranters.

Contents
Preface
Note
List of abbreviations
1. The Historians and the Ranters
The Revival: Birth of a Movement
Before the Revival
The Rise of the Ranters: the World Turned Upside Down
The Consolidation of the Ranters
A Voice of Caution
Conclusion
2. Who were the Ranters?
The Problem
Approaching the Core
Eliminating the fringe
The new Messiahs
The new Prophets
New victims
Tightening the Core
George Foster
Joseph Salmon
Richard Coppin
Conclusion
3. Examining the Ranter Core
Introducing the Core
Jacob Bauthumley
Abiezer Coppe
A Justification of the Mad Crew
Laurence Clarkson
A Single Eye All Light
The Lost Sheep Found
Conclusion
4. The Ranter Sensation
Introduction
The Sensation
More Serious Accounts
Sectarian Exploitation and Semantic Deteriorisation
Conclusion
5. Explaining the Ranter Myth
Introduction
The Theory: Understanding the Myth
Moral Panics and Folk Devils
An anxious society: general anxieties
Revolutions and fear
Crucial anxieties: the problem of post-revolutionary order or godly reformation
The spectrum of fears embodied in the Ranter myth
The Practice: Manufacturing the Myth
The Press sensation and the limited basis of its production
The needs of sectarian consolidation
Projection: the manufacture of images and the mythic necessities of a conservative revolution
The materials of the myth
Conclusion
6. Explaining the Historians
Epilogue
Documents
1. A Justification of the Mad Crew (1650)
A JUSTFICATION OF THE MAD CREW IN THEIR WAYES AND PRINCIPLES Or The Madness And Weakness Of GOD IN MAN Proved Wisdom and Strength
2. The Ranters Religion (11 October 1650)
The Ranters Religion OR, A faithfull and infallible Narrative of their damnable and diabolical opinions, with their detestable lives and actions
3. The Routing of the Ranters (19 November 1650)
The Ranters Ranting: or A True Relation of a sort of People called Ranters, with some of their abominable and wicked carriages, and behaviour at their private meetings
4. Gilbert Roulston, The Ranters Bible (9 December 1650)
The Ranters Bible Or, Seven several Religions by them held and maintained
5. M. Stubs, The Ranters Declaration (16 December 1650)
6. The Ranters Recantation (20 December 1650)
THE RANTERS RECANTATION: And their SERMON Delivered At a Meeting on Tuesday last, in White-Chappel, being 17 of this instant DECEMBER
7. Strange Newes From Newgate (21 January 1651)
STRANGE NEWES FROM NEWGATE and the OLD-BAILEY: OR The Proofs, Examinations, Declarations, Indictments, Conviction, and confessions of I. Collins and T. Reeve, two of the Ranters taken in More-lane, at the General Sessions of Goal-Delivery; holden in the Old-Bailey the twentieth day, of this instant January, the Penalties that are inflicted upon them. The Proceedings against one Parson Williams for having four wives, and John Jackson a Scots Minister, condemned to be drawn, hanged, and quartered, for proclaiming Charles Stuart King of England, with the strange and wonderful judgement of God shewed upon one T. Kendall, a Ranter in Drury-lane who fell down dead as he was affirming that there is no God, or Hell to punish.
8. The Ranters Monster (30 March 1652)
RANTERS MONSTER: Being a True Relation of one Mary Adams, living at Tillingham in Essex, who named her self the Virgin Mary, blasphemously affirming, That she was with conceived with child by the Holy Ghost; that from her should spring forth the Saviour of the world; and that all those that did not believe in him were damn'd : With the manner how she was deliver'd of the ugliest ill-shapen Monster that ever eyes beheld, and afterwards rotted away in prison.
9. A Blow at the Root (4 March 1650)
A Blow at the Root. Or some OBSERVATIONS towards A Discovery of the Subtilties and Devices of Satan, practised against the Church and Truth of CHRIST, As in all Ages, so in these times especially
10. Title page of The Jovial Crew by S[amuel] S[heppard] (6 January 1651)
THE JOVIAL CREW OR, The Devill turn'd RANTER: Being a Character of The roaring Ranters of these Times
11. Title page of Bloudy Newse from the North by Samuel Tilbury (20 January 1651)
12. Title page of The Declaration of John Robins by G. H. (2 June 1651)
Index