Christopher Hill - The World Turned Upside Down

Christopher Hill (1912 2003) was educated at St Peters School, York, and at Balliol College, Oxford, and in 1934 was made a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. In 1936 he became lecturer in modern history at University College, Cardiff, and two years later fellow and tutor in modern history at Balliol. After war service, which included two years in the Russian department of the Foreign Office, he returned to Oxford in 1945. From 1958 until 1965 he was university lecturer in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history, and from 1965 to 1978 he was Master of Balliol College.

His publications include Lenin and the Russian Revolution; Puritanism and Revolution; Gods Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution; The World Turned Upside Down; Milton and the English Revolution, which won the Royal Society of Literature Award; A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People: John Bunyan and His Church, which won the 1989 W. H. Smith Literary Award and The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, which was shortlisted for the 1993 NCR Book Award.

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First published by Maurice Temple Smith 1972
Published in Pelican Books 1975
Reprinted in Peregrine Books 1984
Reprinted in Penguin Books 1991
This edition published 2019

Copyright Christopher Hill, 1972, 1975

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover design by Coralie Bickford-Smith
Cover Engraving from the title page of The world turnd upside down by J. T., 1647 British Library Board
All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images

ISBN: 978-0-141-92632-2

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In gratitude to Rodney for suggesting it, and to B, A, D, without whose cooperation and understanding this book would never have got written.

There are few activities more cooperative than the writing of history. The author puts his name brashly on the title-page and the reviewers rightly attack him for his errors and misinterpretations; but none knows better than he how much his whole enterprise depends on the preceding labours of others. I should like to single out three scholars to whom I am most conscious of indebtedness Mr A. L. Morton, who has published the only serious book on the Ranters, and whose study of Blake in relation to seventeenth-century radicals is equally important; Dr G. F. Nuttall, whose meticulous scholarship ranges over all the obscure by-ways of seventeenth-century religious history; and Mr K. V. Thomas, whose majestic Religion and the Decline of Magic has made us all re-think our ideas about seventeenth-century England. I benefited very greatly from supervising Mr Frank McGregors thesis on the Ranters, and from reading Professor W. A. Coles unpublished dissertation on the Quakers and discussing it with him. Many more debts are recorded in the footnotes. Dr Bernard Capp, Mr Peter Clark, Mrs K. R. Firth, Dr A. M. Johnson, Dr R. C. Richardson and Professor Austin Woolrych all allowed me to read and quote from material in advance of publication. Dr Robin Clifton, Professor G. H. George, Dr P. J. R. Phizackerley, Mrs Joan Thirsk and Professor C. M. Williams were generous in answering questions. Professor Rodney Hilton saved me from many errors, and did what he could to make the book more readable. My colleagues at Balliol allowed me a sabbatical term during which most of the writing was done: I am most grateful to them for their forbearance and to the protective vigilance of the College Secretary, Mrs Bridget Page. Especial thanks are due to Miss Pat Lloyd, who typed the whole book and corrected many of my spelling mistakes. She also helped generously and skilfully with proof-reading. My wife always comes last among those to be thanked and should always come first.

16 October 1971

I am grateful to many friends for suggesting corrections and improvements to the first edition of this book, especially to Dr Bernard Capp, Mr John Dunn, Mr Charles Hobday, Professor Ivan Roots and Mr Keith Thomas. I should have explained in my original Preface that seventeenth-century spelling and capitalization have been modernized in quotations. I have not altered the grammar when for instance Winstanley uses a plural subject with a singular verb. Readers of this book may be interested in The Law of Freedom and Other Writings, by Gerrard Winstanley, published as a Pelican Classic in 1973.

The following abbreviations have been used in the notes:

The Lord preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and the widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.