ABSTRACT
Early modern England was an unequal society, and gloried in the fact. Half a century after Queen Elizabeth’s death, even the most radical groups in the upheaval of the English Civil War found it very difficult to grasp the concept of equality. The Levellers, for instance, did not conceive of political equality: their commonwealth would have excluded the very poorest sections of society from political life. Only that tiny minority, the Diggers, then began to work out the meaning of the equality of humanity, and they found few sympathisers.
