ABSTRACT
During the 1640s, when the parliamentary army was offering a radical challenge to the assumptions of local aristocrats, the whole of England was in a state of ferment. The army’s action stirred people all over the country to question an acquiescence they had hitherto taken for granted. Parliament’s need for support amongst the masses led it to permit a climate of toleration in which discussion of religious and spiritual matters could take place, unsupervised and uncensored, throughout the community. It was in such a climate that Gerrard Winstanley began to think and to write.
