SOURCE: "Winstanley and Freedom" in Freedom and the English Revolution: Essays in History and Literature, edited by R. C. Richardson and G. M. Ridden, Manchester University Press, 1986, pp. 151-68.

In the following essay, Hill argues that the freedom Winstanley sought for his countrymen included economic, social, and religious freedom. Hill examines the implications behind such beliefs and demonstrates that Winstanley attempted to appeal to the people of England through his use of the common vernacular in his writings.

Gerrard Winstanley was born in Wigan in 1609, into a middle-class puritan family of clothiers. He came to London, was apprenticed to a clothier, married and set up in business just before the Civil War. The war, severing communications between London and Lancashire, ruined him; he retired to the Surrey countryside where he herded other men's cows as a hired labourer.

The 1640s were years of religious and political turmoil—the...