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Why bother about the Muggletonians? The question not only provides the title to one of the chapters in this book: it is, in a sense, what the whole book is about. The reader will find that there are a number of very good reasons for bothering.

Muggletonianism was one of the many sects that sprang up in mid-seventeenth century England. Because its members did not go out to make converts they were never more than a few hundred strong; yet, astonishingly, the sect survived, centuries after most of its rivals had vanished. The man thought to have been the last Muggletonian died in 1979.

To study the Muggletonians is to obtain a special insight into the religious life and also the social history of the seventeenth century. Their central belief was that two tailors named John Reeve and Ludowick Muggleton were the Two Last Witnesses foretold in the book of Revelation who were to usher in the last days of the world. Strange as such tenets may seem to us, Christopher Hill has shown that they were group with whom Milton seemed to share more doctrines than with any other: intellectually, they were not a negligible part of the seventeenth century scene.

This book follows the history of the sect and uses it also to throw light on the world of the artisans and tradespeople who provided the bulk of the membership. It is an important contribution to out knowledge of the age, which amply justifies its unexpected choice of subject.

Contents

Preface

Bibliographical Note

1 The Muggletonian Archive

William Lamont

2 Why Bother About the Muggletonians?

Christopher Hill

3 The Muggletonians: An Introductory Survey

Barry Reay

4 John Reeve and the Origins of Muggletonianism

Christopher Hill

5 Lodowick Muggleton and 'Immediate Notice'

William Lamont

6 Laurence Clarkson: An Artisan and the English Revolution

Barry Reay

Index

My article from this breviary stuff, entitled TheaurauJohn : A Name, Not The Thing, is reprinted in the recently published issue 2 of the No Quarter anarchist zine. It also includes an interesting interview with Marcus Rediker, the historian, writer, teacher, and activist; unlike many published historians, he is also a great writer, not simply stuck in the dust of academia thinking that a procession of facts constitutes a book; he also understands 'that general readers are smart and thoughtful and capable of getting interested in complex, well-researched histories', which is a fact that has been evidently missed by many. In my opinion, his work is comparable to that of the late Christopher Hill, whose article Radical Pirates? is also reprinted in this issue of No Quarter. Radical Pirates? 'deals with the period in England after 1640 … [of] those who rejected a state church, supported full religious toleration, and often carried this over to advocacy of democratic, communist, or antinomian ideas – beyond the pale of respectable puritanism.' It deals with the apparent disappearance of radical ideas after 1660.

The memoires of French anarchist, Illegalist and founding member of The Bonnot Gang, (la bande à Bonnot), Octave Garnier, are presented, translated from the French. He was a believer in the theory of la reprise individuelle, the belief that since the bourgeois and the rich obtained their wealth through exploitation of the lower classes, individuals are justified in redistributing wealth on a small scale, (i.e. stealing it back), rather than waiting for a general redistribution of wealth "after the revolution".

No Quarter also contains bibliographies and many, many reviews of books through which readers can further pursue their interests.

The editor says in his introduction that the purpose 'of this zine is not to withdraw from the present, from the world, and to seek comfort in dusty books and libraries … or to escape into fantasy. This zine does not look at history as an escape from the present, but rather to better understand what has happened and is happening now', and that's breviary stuff, that is.

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