ABSTRACT
‘Why may we not have our Heaven here (that is, a comfortable livelihood in the Earth) and Heaven hereafter too?’ 25 Gerrard Winstanley's question, posed in 1649, marks the emergence of the real Utopian. On 1 April, a date traditionally associated with the fatuous, half a dozen poor men began to dig common land at St. George's Hill, Weybridge, under his leadership. They wanted to prepare it for seeds, but their actions set a new tradition. Winstanley, a bankrupt cloth merchant turned a cattle herdsman, had conceived a vision of universal redemption. God, he saw, was reason immanent in every man, not living apart in glory, but working in all creation.
