778 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Brave community. The Digger movement in the English Revolution. By John Gurney. (Politics,
Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain.) Pp. xiii+236. Manchester–
New York : Manchester University Press, 2007. £55. 978 07190 6102 8
JEH (59) 2008 ; doi :10.1017/S002204690800537X
This is a valuable book about one of the best known, if fleeting, movements to
emerge during the English Revolution. In April 1649 a group of people occupied
St George’s Hill in the parish of Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Led by two former
apprentices of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, William Everard and Gerrard
Winstanley, these ‘ new Levellers ’ or ‘ diggers ’ began to cultivate the barren land,
sowing parsnips, carrots and beans in the hope of making the earth ‘a common
Treasury of livelihood to whole mankind, without respect of persons’. Everard justified the new
communal experiment with a vision, while Winstanley declared that during a trance
he had heard the words ‘ Worke together. Eat bread together ’. Complaints, however, were
soon made to the authorities and fearing a royalist rendezvous gathered under cover
of the commotion caused by such ‘ridiculous’ activities, the Council of State
dispatched two cavalry troops to investigate. Brought before Lord General Thomas
Fairfax at Whitehall, Everard allegedly asserted during questioning that he was of
the race of the Jews and that the people’s liberties had been lost since the Norman
Conquest. Though the Diggers adhered to the Golden Rule to do to others as
they would be done unto, intending to obey Gospel injunctions by feeding the
hungry and clothing the naked, Walton’s inhabitants were predominantly hostile to
their message. Opposition took various forms : the Diggers’ plantation was trampled
down, their wooden houses burned, cart sabotaged, a draught horse maimed
and cattle driven away; clothing, linen and food was stolen ; men and a boy
were victims of physical violence ; enemies filed suits for trespass against them in
Kingston’s court; several were imprisoned in Walton church and one in Kingston
gaol. These obstacles proved insurmountable and after less than twenty-one weeks
the Diggers reluctantly abandoned their efforts. A new colony established on the
Little Heath in neighbouring Cobham (Surrey) endured for approximately thirty-
four weeks. Other communities founded at Iver (Buckinghamshire), Wellingborough
(Northamptonshire) and elsewhere were also short-lived. Since their rediscovery in
the nineteenth century – first by Liberal, Socialist and Marxist historians and then
by Protestant nonconformists – the Diggers have been successively appropriated,
their image refashioned in the service of new political doctrines that have sought
legitimacy partly through emphasising supposed ideological antecedents. Recently
they have been insensitively incorporated within a constructed Green heritage,
narratives which at their worst seem little more than exercises in legitimation.
Gurney’s work maintains an approach, primarily identified with the Left, which
stresses the continuity of English radicalism. His concern, therefore, is to question
the view that the Diggers were perceived as unwelcome outsiders intruding on the
lives of the local community. Through superb archival research he reconstructs the
topography of Cobham, economic pressures and social relations within the parish as
well as assessing the deep impact of Civil War. Against a backdrop of ‘widespread
rural unrest ’ ( p. 52), he introduces the figure of Winstanley – a remarkable thinker
who articulately disseminated the Diggers’ doctrines in a number of important
publications. Gurney demonstrates that perhaps as many as a third of the seventy-
four Surrey Diggers whose names are known were local inhabitants, persuasively
tracing divergent responses to their activities in Walton (intense and unremitting
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opposition, especially from those resident near St George’s Hill) and Cobham (less
evident popular hostility as a consequence of conflicts and discontents within the
parish, counterbalanced by determined opposition from local gentry, rich land-
owners and their tenants). Although this book’s main theme is an exploration of local
contexts as well as an unravelling of Winstanley’s social network, lengthier discussion
of the intellectual dimension – especially the Diggers’ religious beliefs and the
manner in which they appropriated and refashioned biblical, millenarian and
hermetic texts – would have been welcome ; so too an introduction for readers
unfamiliar with the English Revolution and the historiography. All the same, this
study will stand the test of time for it is unlikely that the research will be surpassed.
GOLDSMITHS, ARIEL HESSAYON
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Cromwell and Scotland. Conquest and religion, 1650–1660. By R. Scott Spurlock.

Pp. xv+269 incl. 2 frontispieces. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2007. £25
( paper). 978 1 904607 77 9
JEH (59) 2008 ; doi :10.1017/S0022046908005708
This well-researched and convincingly argued book is important not only for the
light that it sheds upon Oliver Cromwell’s policies towards Scotland during the
Interregnum but also for its vivid reconstruction of the rich and varied nature of
Scottish religious life in those years. Spurlock’s account does not set out to replace
older works like Frances Dow’s Cromwellian Scotland (1979), but it does extend and
nuance them by opening up a hitherto neglected dimension of Scottish experience in
the 1650s. Spurlock emphasises that Cromwell did not simply seek religious
toleration as an end in itself, but rather that he wanted to promote unity among all
Christians. This policy evoked a wide variety of reactions in Scotland, ranging from
those Scottish sectaries and Independents who strongly sympathised with it, to the
Presbyterians who generally feared that it would unleash a wave of errors, heresies
and blasphemies. Spurlock succeeds in delineating the different shades on the
spectrum between these two extremes more subtly and precisely than any previous
scholar. He shows, in particular, how the English military presence in Scotland
helped to affirm those Scottish Independents and sectaries who were most
sympathetic towards Cromwellian policy. Sometimes this process can even be
traced to the impact of particular individuals, such as the English chaplain Nicholas
Lockyer in the north-east of Scotland in 1652. The result was that ‘by 1654 a plethora
of options were available to Scots malcontented with the Presbyterian Kirk ’, and
Spurlock argues that ‘ a fluid religious marketplace developed in which denomi-
national drifting was both common and protected ’ ( p. 156). It is interesting that this
marketplace included both Baptists and Quakers ; Spurlock shows how English
influence encouraged such sectarian activity. English Quakers were active in
Scotland from 1654 onwards, and at least fifteen – including George Fox – visited
Scotland in 1657. The result was that Scottish Quakerism survived into the
Restoration period and down to the present day: Spurlock persuasively argues that
this was one of the most important legacies of the Interregnum for Scotland. By
contrast, the Baptists were more heavily dependent on the English army to sustain
them, and never entirely lived down their association with continental Anabaptists,