SOURCE: "Gerrard Winstanley on Crime and Punishment," The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, Fall, 1996, pp. 735-47.

In the following essay, Rogers analyzes the emphasis of The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652) on crime, law, and punishment. Rogers comments specifically on the apparent shift in Winstanley's thought from a belief in individual moral responsibility to a focus on the state's role in governing morality.

Scholars have long recognized the importance of legal themes in Gerrard Winstanley's last writing, The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652). This detailed work devotes its final chapter not only to a general discussion of law but also to the specific criminal code appropriate to a communist commonwealth. Here the reader finds a lengthy list of crimes paired with punishments ranging from private rebukes to public execution. In addition, scattered throughout chapter 4, Winstanley takes up the elections, qualifications, and duties of judges and...