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Gerrard Winstanley at Cobham

David Taylor ab
a
Surrey Archaeological Society, b Esher District Local History Society,

Online Publication Date: 01 August 1999

To cite this Article Taylor, David(1999)'Gerrard Winstanley at Cobham',Prose Studies,22:2,37 — 42

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01440359908586670
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 Gerrard Winstanley at Cobham

DAVID TAYLOR

As with most of Winstanley's life, his time in Cobham poses more questions
than answers. He is usually cited as having come to the Cobham area in the
early 1640s, and he himself refers to being in Kingston, just eight miles
from Cobham, in 1643. It seems likely that it was a family connection which
brought him to the area, as his first wife, Susan, was the daughter of William
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King of Cobham.1 His business in London having collapsed, he became a

grazier of cows, which was something more than a simple cowherd and
would have involved renting land and taking charge of other people's cattle.
In April 1646 Winstanley is listed as a householder in Street Cobham, a part
of Cobham which straddles the old Portsmouth Road and which is nearest
to Walton on Thames. Until this century Church Cobham and Street
Cobham were two separate communities. Street Cobham owed its existence
to the Portsmouth Road, and many of the people living there were of "the
middling sort": rather than being tied to the land, their trades and
occupations were related to the passing traffic, and for this reason Street
Cobham was marked by a sense of independence. It was here that the
Quakers built their Meeting House in 1679, and, two centuries later, the
Congregationalists built a chapel after having met for several years in a
room above one of the many inns in the area. It is interesting that
Winstanley appears to have lived at Street Cobham, which was also the part
of Cobham nearest to St George's Hill.
Exactly where the Diggers were on St George's Hill is uncertain.
Contemporary reports speak of them being "on that side of the hill next to
Campe Close".2 The late George Greenwood, historian of Walton and
Hersham, thought that this was "somewhere near Silvermere Farm on the
Byfleet Road rather than on the unprofitable slopes of St George's Hill
itself". Greenwood also considered that "the Diggers were not poor men in
the modern sense, but rather younger sons taken by the sheer logic of
Winstanley's ideas: indeed, early Fabians".3
The story of the Diggers' attempt to set up their commune on St
George's Hill between April and August 1649 is well enough known,
though perhaps less attention has been paid to the second episode in their
history, which was acted out wholly in the parish of Cobham. After the
Diggers were forced to leave St George's Hill they moved to Little Heath in
 38 Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649-1999
Cobham where they remained for at least eight months, a period twice as
long as the one spent on St George's Hill. Cobham's Great Heath is now
represented by the Fairmile Common between Esher and Cobham; the Little
Heath is still to be found about two miles to the east where the parishes of
Cobham and Stoke D'Abernon meet. Like St George's Hill, this was also
common land: the Diggers did not attack private property as such.
It was this second phase of the digging that incurred the wrath of Parson
Platt of Cobham; he does not seem to have been unduly worried about St
George's Hill as it was outside both his parish and manor. Winstanley
himself writes a dramatic account of the ending of this settlement in the
spring of 1650:
Thereupon at the Command of Parson Plat, [the attackers] set fire to
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six houses, and burned them down, and burned likewise some of their
householdstuffe, and wearing Clothes, throwing their beds, stooles,
and householdstuffe, up and down the Common, not pittying the cries
of many little Children, and their frighted Mothers, which are
Parishoners borne in the Parish.4
In the autumn of that year it is known that Winstanley and some of his
"poor brethren" hired themselves to Lady Eleanor Davies of Hertfordshire,
a remarkable self-styled prophetess. However, Winstanley's connections
with Cobham did not cease with his eviction from Little Heath, and in 1652
he was witness to the will of John Coulton of Cobham.5 Five years later, in
1657, William King of Cobham made over property in the manor of Ham to
Gerrard and his wife Susan, and perhaps it was this change in Winstanley's
circumstances that led to his acceptance and respectability in the parish.
Ham manor consisted of islands of property within the manor of Cobham:
it was in Chertsey parish and became part of the foundation grant of St
George's Chapel, Windsor. Steward's Mead, which was part of the land held
by Winstanley's father-in-law, was by the River Mole, opposite the present
Cobham Mill.6 The whereabouts of Winstanley's home is not known,
though an early seventeenth-century house, still standing in Church Street,
appears to have been the home of a William King in the 1640s. This
William King was, like Winstanley's father, a mercer.
The White Lion Inn, where, in August 1649, a boycott of the Diggers
was organized, still stands, but is now known as The Cobham Exchange and
serves hamburgers and cocktails instead of the "sack and tobacco" which
the Diggers' opponents consumed.7 The only house still standing in
Cobham which can be linked to the Diggers with any certainty is a medieval
warrener's cottage on Cobham Fairmile. This was at one time the home of
Anthony Wrenn, who I think we can safely assume was the same person as
the Digger of that name.8
 Gerrard Winstanley at Cobham 39
Beginning in 1659 Winstanley's name starts to appear in surviving
parish records: in that year he was appointed waywarden for Church
Cobham, and, in 1660, Overseer of the Poor.9 By 1664 Susan Winstanley
was dead and Gerrard had married Elizabeth Stanley. In 1665 a "Jeremiah
Winstanley" was baptised in Cobham parish church. In 1666 Gerrard was
reappointed waywarden and in 1667/68 a daughter Elizabeth was baptised
at Cobham. In 1668 Gerrard became one of the two churchwardens and in
1669 another son, Clement, was baptised at Cobham. One final documented
fact about Winstanley at Cobham was his appointment as one of the two
chief constables for the Elmbridge hundred in 1671; after this date
Winstanley is heard of no more in Cobham.
Yet even this documented evidence of Winstanley at Cobham raises
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questions:. why and how did the radical Digger Winstanley become
Winstanley the man of property and respected member of the community?
Where was Winstanley living between his return from Hertfordshire in 1650
and his appointment as a chief constable of Elmbridge hundred twenty or so
years later? Regrettably no documentary evidence has come to light to
answer this and other questions, and, since manorial and parish records for
this period are patchy, it is perhaps unlikely that any more will. Having said
that, however, I have to mention a chance discovery of some manorial papers
dating from 1646 which I found used as packing at the bottom of an old tea
chest containing part of the archives of a local landowner just a few years
ago. After some conservation work and research these scraps of paper were
found to be the secretary's original minutes of manorial court proceedings,
the fair copies of which are missing. One page carries the following note:
"They present also that Richard Genman, Widow Whiterow, Gerrald
Winstanley, Gewen10 Mills, Edward Mills and Elizabeth Perrier have dug up
and carried away peat on the waste of this manor without licence of the lord."
For this they were each fined the hefty sum of ten shillings (50p). This is the
earliest written evidence for Winstanley being in Cobham that has appeared
to date, with one possible exception which I shall mention later. Among these
papers was also the list of tenants for the tithing of Cobham Street for default
of suit at the Court Leet held on 10 April 1646. This list includes a "Gerrald
Winstanley". The previous list, dated 1642, does not include Winstanley, and
he was probably never a tenant of the manor as he seems not to be included
in any list of tenants at the Court Baron.
In a scholarly and detailed paper on Winstanley and the Digger
movement in Walton and Cobham, John Gurney has researched many of the
local aspects of the movement and helped flesh out some of the previously
scant detail about both their supporters and antagonists. Gurney writes that:
The middling sorts of Cobham were much more divided in their
response to the Diggers than Walton's inhabitants had been, and there
 40 Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649-1999
is no evidence here of a community united in its determination to
resist an external threat. Most importantly, several locals joined the
digging and would appear to have been among Winstanley's most
active supporters."
This is an interesting point, and does seem to confirm the presence of a
strong underlying current of nonconformity and dissent in its broadest sense
that can be traced in Cobham over a period of many centuries and which
may well have assisted Winstanley in his local activities. Dr Gurney also
refers to "Cobham's long tradition of landlord/tenant conflict".'2 The
following examples, though not mentioned in Gurney's article, also point to
the existence in Cobham of religious tensions over a long period. In the
sixteenth century the vicar of Cobham, George Lyster, was indicted for
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"failing to wear the surplice", and a few years later his sister Joan was also
indicted for using "scandalous words" in that she publicly said that "the
Bishop of Canterbury and the Counsayle make fool of the Queens Majestie,
and because she is but a woman she ought not to be governer of a Realme.
And that the bishop of Canterbury was but a preest, and that the world
would change err yt were longe".13 In the eighteenth century the
independents or congregationalists were very active in Cobham, and in the
nineteenth century the village became the centre of a strong Wesleyan
Methodist movement that spread throughout Surrey - much to the
annoyance of the local vicar who was a man of high church tendencies.
No less important was the establishment of a Quaker meeting in Cobham
in the seventeenth century. The Cobham area had been identified with
Quakerism from its early days, and in 1665 Ephraim Carter of Cobham was
committed to prison for holding a meeting in his house. In 1679 a purpose-
built meeting house was erected on land at Street Cobham which had been
purchased from the Vincent family, who had earlier been so opposed to the
Diggers. However, here is yet another mystery. James Alsop has written of
Gerrard Winstanley, the London corn chandler who was buried as a Quaker
in London in 1676.14 If this is our Gerrard Winstanley why did he not choose
to identify himself with the movement in Cobham? Winstanley had been
identified with Quakerism as early as 1647, when he acted as one of the
arbitrators in an action for false imprisonment brought by the future
Kingston Quaker leader, John Fielder. Fielder's other arbitrator was Henry
Bickerstaffe, who must surely be the same person as the Digger of that
name. In 1654 Edward Burrough the Quaker had written about a
"Wilstandley" who was assisting him in London.15 In 1678 Thomas Comber
in his Christianity No Enthusiasm made numerous references to Winstanley
and not George Fox as the father of Quakerism.16 So why did Gerrard not
choose to throw in his lot with the Cobham Friends instead of taking his
place in the established church? This brings in the question of Winstanley's
 Gerrard Winstanley at Cobham 41
religious faith, and the fact that he claimed divine inspiration is sometimes
overlooked or dismissed, some having argued that he simply used religious
language to convey a political message. I share Winstanley's belief that God
speaks to ordinary men and women in their time. Whatever his formal
religious affiliations were, Winstanley believed that God spoke to him, and
I believe that this is pivotal to understanding the man and his message.
I would like to close with one final mystery. Seventeenth-century parish
records for Cobham contain a list of all villagers who were to be assessed
for a levy to maintain the churchyard palings. As we run our eye down that
list our attention will be caught by two references to Thomas Smyth who
was charged for one "pain". Against each entry appears the name
Winstanley and "Mr" prefixes one of these entries. This appears to indicate
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either that Smyth's property was then, or had been, occupied by someone
named Winstanley. The title "Mr" implies a certain status. However, if we
look again at the top of the page we will find that this assessment was made
on 30 May 1631 - some 15 years before Gerrard Winstanley is accused of
wrongly digging peat from the common and 18 years before the Digger
episode. What does this mean? Was the name added later? Was it just
coincidental? Were there other Winstanleys living in Cobham? Was it this
that brought him here? More work is required on this matter."
I once had the opportunity to discuss this with Christopher Hill some
years ago. It was Hill who suggested that perhaps there were two Gerrard
Winstanleys, and then, after a pause, added with a chuckle, "but that way
madness lies"!

NOTES

1. Though see now John Gurney, "William King, Gerrard Winstanley and Cobham" below.
2. C.H. Firth (ed.), The Clarke Papers (London: Camden Society, 1894), p. 210.
3. In private correspondence held by the author.
4. Works, p. 434.
5. See John Gurney, "Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger Movement in Walton and Cobham",
The Historical Journal 37/4 (1994), pp. 791, 794.
6. John Gurney inclines to the view that the William King who held Steward's Mead was not
Winstanley's father-in-law but someone else bearing the same name: see Gurney, below.
King's Will is also discussed in James D. Alsop, "Gerrard Winstanley's Later Life", Past and
Present 82 (1979), p. 75.
7. LFOW, p. 143.
8. See D.C. Taylor, "Old Mistral, Cobham: A Sixteenth-Century Warrener's House Identified",
Surrey Archaeological Collections 79 (1989), pp. 117-24; and idem. Cobham Houses and
their Occupants (Cobham: Appleton, 1999), p. 110.
9. In this respect I feel a strong affinity with Winstanley, as part of his job was to manage the
accounts of charitable giving by the parish. Today the trustees of Cobham Combined
Charities administer this task and I like Winstanley am the Clerk!
10. This name is unclear in the document: it could be "Gowen" or even "Gordon".
11. Gurney, "Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger Movement", p. 790.
12. Ibid., p.775.
 42 Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649-1999
13. Surrey Quarter Sessions Records held at the Surrey History Centre, Woking.
14. Alsop, "Gerrard Winstanley's Later Life", p. 74.
15. This reference was originally uncovered by Barry Reay.
16. See Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975),
p. 241.
17. The most likely explanation does seem to be that Winstanley's name was added later, and
indeed the book appears to have been amended at various times to take account of subsequent
changes in the occupation of particular dwellings. It has been suggested (by, for example,
John Gurney, below, and in personal correspondence), that Winstanley's name was added to
the 1631 list some years later, and if this is in fact the case, then we need not worry unduly
about the presence of a Gerrard Winstanley in Cobham in 1631.

POSTSCRIPT
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William King, Gerrard Winstanley and Cobham

JOHN GURNEY

It has long been known that Gerrard Winstanley moved from London to the parish of
Cobham in 1643.' It is possible to date his move to between 8 October, when he took
the Solemn League and Covenant in the London parish of St Olave Jewry, and 20
December, when Surrey's county committee ordered rates to be set in Elmbridge
hundred for the two months' weekly assessment.2 Winstanley was included in this
assessment as a Cobham resident.3
Winstanley was later to write that when he left London he was "beaten out both of
estate and trade, and forced to accept of the good will of friends crediting of me, to live
a Country-life".4 Since the important discovery by James Alsop of the will of
Winstanley's father-in-law, the London surgeon William King, historians have
assumed that Winstanley moved to Cobham because of his family connections.5 Alsop
demonstrated that King held property in Cobham as a customary tenant of Ham manor,
and that in about 1657 he turned this over to Gerrard and Susan Winstanley.6 In view
of this clearly established connection between King and Cobham, scholars have felt no
need to look beyond King to identify the friends who may have provided Winstanley
with a retreat following the collapse of his cloth business.
Until now it has generally been accepted that King's links with the parish of
Cobham were longstanding, and that he must have held property in the parish before
Winstanley arrived in the autumn of 1643. He has usually been identified with the
William King, son of William King senior, who acquired the customary property of
Stewards Mead in Ham manor in 1615-16, following the death of his mother Judith
King.7 Recent research suggests, however, that the William King who held Stewards
Mead was not Winstanley's father-in-law, but a Cobham yeoman of the same name.
The confusion between the two is understandable, given that several individuals of this
name had connections with Cobham during the seventeenth century, including a
minister, a yeoman and a labourer, as well as Winstanley's father-in-law. Several other
Cobham householders bore the surname King.8 Every historian who has written about
the Diggers in recent years has accepted that there was some sort of link between
William King the London surgeon and William King the Cobham yeoman.9 Even
Robert Dalton, who in an important article on Winstanley's bankruptcy correctly