SOURCE: "The Later Life of Gerrard Winstanley," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XXVI, No. 1, January-March, 1965, pp. 133-36.

In the following essay, Vann reviews the scant evidence available regarding the later years of Winstanley's life, examining the way in which the few known facts may support or contradict the portrait of Winstanley painted by the pamphlets he wrote in the late 1640s and early 1650s.

The Digger Gerrard Winstanley published his last pamphlet in 1652. Almost three centuries passed before his collected works were edited by George H. Sabine and made the subject of a book by D. W. Petegorsky.¹ But neither Sabine nor Petegorsky could do much to dispel the obscurity cloaking the life of Winstanley after his retirement as a pamphleteer. The only glimpse of Winstanley was in 1660, when he appeared as a plaintiff in chancery and as a "tithe-gatherer of propriety" in the pages of...