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Gerrard Winstanley atCobhamDavid Taylor a ba Surrey Archaeological Societyb Esher District Local History SocietyPublished online: 16 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: David Taylor (1999) Gerrard Winstanley at Cobham, ProseStudies: History, Theory, Criticism, 22:2, 37-42, 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 questionsthan answers. He is usually cited as having come to the Cobham area in theearly 1640s, and he himself refers to being in Kingston, just eight milesfrom Cobham, in 1643. It seems likely that it was a family connection whichbrought him to the area, as his first wife, Susan, was the daughter of WilliamKing of Cobham.1 His business in London having collapsed, he became agrazier of cows, which was something more than a simple cowherd andwould 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 partof Cobham which straddles the old Portsmouth Road and which is nearestto Walton on Thames. Until this century Church Cobham and StreetCobham were two separate communities. Street Cobham owed its existenceto the Portsmouth Road, and many of the people living there were of "themiddling sort": rather than being tied to the land, their trades andoccupations were related to the passing traffic, and for this reason StreetCobham was marked by a sense of independence. It was here that theQuakers built their Meeting House in 1679, and, two centuries later, theCongregationalists built a chapel after having met for several years in aroom above one of the many inns in the area. It is interesting thatWinstanley appears to have lived at Street Cobham, which was also the partof 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 toCampe Close".2 The late George Greenwood, historian of Walton andHersham, thought that this was "somewhere near Silvermere Farm on theByfleet Road rather than on the unprofitable slopes of St George's Hillitself". Greenwood also considered that "the Diggers were not poor men inthe modern sense, but rather younger sons taken by the sheer logic ofWinstanley's ideas: indeed, early Fabians".3

The story of the Diggers' attempt to set up their commune on StGeorge's Hill between April and August 1649 is well enough known,though perhaps less attention has been paid to the second episode in theirhistory, which was acted out wholly in the parish of Cobham. After theDiggers were forced to leave St George's Hill they moved to Little Heath in

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38 Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649-1999

Cobham where they remained for at least eight months, a period twice aslong as the one spent on St George's Hill. Cobham's Great Heath is nowrepresented by the Fairmile Common between Esher and Cobham; the LittleHeath is still to be found about two miles to the east where the parishes ofCobham and Stoke D'Abernon meet. Like St George's Hill, this was alsocommon land: the Diggers did not attack private property as such.

It was this second phase of the digging that incurred the wrath of ParsonPlatt of Cobham; he does not seem to have been unduly worried about StGeorge's Hill as it was outside both his parish and manor. Winstanleyhimself writes a dramatic account of the ending of this settlement in thespring of 1650:

Thereupon at the Command of Parson Plat, [the attackers] set fire tosix houses, and burned them down, and burned likewise some of theirhouseholdstuffe, and wearing Clothes, throwing their beds, stooles,and householdstuffe, up and down the Common, not pittying the criesof many little Children, and their frighted Mothers, which areParishoners 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 connectionswith Cobham did not cease with his eviction from Little Heath, and in 1652he was witness to the will of John Coulton of Cobham.5 Five years later, in1657, William King of Cobham made over property in the manor of Ham toGerrard and his wife Susan, and perhaps it was this change in Winstanley'scircumstances 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 StGeorge's Chapel, Windsor. Steward's Mead, which was part of the land heldby Winstanley's father-in-law, was by the River Mole, opposite the presentCobham 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. ThisWilliam King was, like Winstanley's father, a mercer.

The White Lion Inn, where, in August 1649, a boycott of the Diggerswas organized, still stands, but is now known as The Cobham Exchange andserves hamburgers and cocktails instead of the "sack and tobacco" whichthe Diggers' opponents consumed.7 The only house still standing inCobham which can be linked to the Diggers with any certainty is a medievalwarrener's cottage on Cobham Fairmile. This was at one time the home ofAnthony Wrenn, who I think we can safely assume was the same person asthe Digger of that name.8

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Gerrard Winstanley at Cobham 39

Beginning in 1659 Winstanley's name starts to appear in survivingparish records: in that year he was appointed waywarden for ChurchCobham, and, in 1660, Overseer of the Poor.9 By 1664 Susan Winstanleywas dead and Gerrard had married Elizabeth Stanley. In 1665 a "JeremiahWinstanley" was baptised in Cobham parish church. In 1666 Gerrard wasreappointed waywarden and in 1667/68 a daughter Elizabeth was baptisedat Cobham. In 1668 Gerrard became one of the two churchwardens and in1669 another son, Clement, was baptised at Cobham. One final documentedfact about Winstanley at Cobham was his appointment as one of the twochief constables for the Elmbridge hundred in 1671; after this dateWinstanley is heard of no more in Cobham.

Yet even this documented evidence of Winstanley at Cobham raisesquestions:. why and how did the radical Digger Winstanley becomeWinstanley the man of property and respected member of the community?Where was Winstanley living between his return from Hertfordshire in 1650and his appointment as a chief constable of Elmbridge hundred twenty or soyears later? Regrettably no documentary evidence has come to light toanswer this and other questions, and, since manorial and parish records forthis period are patchy, it is perhaps unlikely that any more will. Having saidthat, however, I have to mention a chance discovery of some manorial papersdating from 1646 which I found used as packing at the bottom of an old teachest containing part of the archives of a local landowner just a few yearsago. After some conservation work and research these scraps of paper werefound 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, GerraldWinstanley, Gewen10 Mills, Edward Mills and Elizabeth Perrier have dug upand 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 theearliest written evidence for Winstanley being in Cobham that has appearedto date, with one possible exception which I shall mention later. Among thesepapers was also the list of tenants for the tithing of Cobham Street for defaultof suit at the Court Leet held on 10 April 1646. This list includes a "GerraldWinstanley". The previous list, dated 1642, does not include Winstanley, andhe was probably never a tenant of the manor as he seems not to be includedin any list of tenants at the Court Baron.

In a scholarly and detailed paper on Winstanley and the Diggermovement in Walton and Cobham, John Gurney has researched many of thelocal aspects of the movement and helped flesh out some of the previouslyscant detail about both their supporters and antagonists. Gurney writes that:

The middling sorts of Cobham were much more divided in theirresponse to the Diggers than Walton's inhabitants had been, and there

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40 Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649-1999

is no evidence here of a community united in its determination toresist an external threat. Most importantly, several locals joined thedigging and would appear to have been among Winstanley's mostactive supporters."

This is an interesting point, and does seem to confirm the presence of astrong underlying current of nonconformity and dissent in its broadest sensethat can be traced in Cobham over a period of many centuries and whichmay well have assisted Winstanley in his local activities. Dr Gurney alsorefers to "Cobham's long tradition of landlord/tenant conflict".'2 Thefollowing examples, though not mentioned in Gurney's article, also point tothe existence in Cobham of religious tensions over a long period. In thesixteenth century the vicar of Cobham, George Lyster, was indicted for"failing to wear the surplice", and a few years later his sister Joan was alsoindicted for using "scandalous words" in that she publicly said that "theBishop 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 worldwould change err yt were longe".13 In the eighteenth century theindependents or congregationalists were very active in Cobham, and in thenineteenth century the village became the centre of a strong WesleyanMethodist movement that spread throughout Surrey - much to theannoyance of the local vicar who was a man of high church tendencies.

No less important was the establishment of a Quaker meeting in Cobhamin the seventeenth century. The Cobham area had been identified withQuakerism from its early days, and in 1665 Ephraim Carter of Cobham wascommitted 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 beenpurchased from the Vincent family, who had earlier been so opposed to theDiggers. However, here is yet another mystery. James Alsop has written ofGerrard Winstanley, the London corn chandler who was buried as a Quakerin London in 1676.14 If this is our Gerrard Winstanley why did he not chooseto identify himself with the movement in Cobham? Winstanley had beenidentified with Quakerism as early as 1647, when he acted as one of thearbitrators in an action for false imprisonment brought by the futureKingston Quaker leader, John Fielder. Fielder's other arbitrator was HenryBickerstaffe, who must surely be the same person as the Digger of thatname. In 1654 Edward Burrough the Quaker had written about a"Wilstandley" who was assisting him in London.15 In 1678 Thomas Comberin his Christianity No Enthusiasm made numerous references to Winstanleyand not George Fox as the father of Quakerism.16 So why did Gerrard notchoose to throw in his lot with the Cobham Friends instead of taking hisplace in the established church? This brings in the question of Winstanley's

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Gerrard Winstanley at Cobham 41

religious faith, and the fact that he claimed divine inspiration is sometimesoverlooked or dismissed, some having argued that he simply used religiouslanguage to convey a political message. I share Winstanley's belief that Godspeaks to ordinary men and women in their time. Whatever his formalreligious affiliations were, Winstanley believed that God spoke to him, andI believe that this is pivotal to understanding the man and his message.

I would like to close with one final mystery. Seventeenth-century parishrecords for Cobham contain a list of all villagers who were to be assessedfor a levy to maintain the churchyard palings. As we run our eye down thatlist our attention will be caught by two references to Thomas Smyth whowas charged for one "pain". Against each entry appears the nameWinstanley and "Mr" prefixes one of these entries. This appears to indicateeither that Smyth's property was then, or had been, occupied by someonenamed Winstanley. The title "Mr" implies a certain status. However, if welook again at the top of the page we will find that this assessment was madeon 30 May 1631 - some 15 years before Gerrard Winstanley is accused ofwrongly digging peat from the common and 18 years before the Diggerepisode. What does this mean? Was the name added later? Was it justcoincidental? Were there other Winstanleys living in Cobham? Was it thisthat brought him here? More work is required on this matter."

I once had the opportunity to discuss this with Christopher Hill someyears ago. It was Hill who suggested that perhaps there were two GerrardWinstanleys, and then, after a pause, added with a chuckle, "but that waymadness 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 andPresent 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 andtheir 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 theaccounts of charitable giving by the parish. Today the trustees of Cobham CombinedCharities 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.

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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 subsequentchanges 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 tothe 1631 list some years later, and if this is in fact the case, then we need not worry undulyabout the presence of a Gerrard Winstanley in Cobham in 1631.

POSTSCRIPT

William King, Gerrard Winstanley and Cobham

JOHN GURNEY

It has long been known that Gerrard Winstanley moved from London to the parish ofCobham in 1643.' It is possible to date his move to between 8 October, when he tookthe Solemn League and Covenant in the London parish of St Olave Jewry, and 20December, when Surrey's county committee ordered rates to be set in Elmbridgehundred for the two months' weekly assessment.2 Winstanley was included in thisassessment as a Cobham resident.3

Winstanley was later to write that when he left London he was "beaten out both ofestate and trade, and forced to accept of the good will of friends crediting of me, to livea Country-life".4 Since the important discovery by James Alsop of the will ofWinstanley's father-in-law, the London surgeon William King, historians haveassumed that Winstanley moved to Cobham because of his family connections.5 Alsopdemonstrated 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 viewof this clearly established connection between King and Cobham, scholars have felt noneed to look beyond King to identify the friends who may have provided Winstanleywith a retreat following the collapse of his cloth business.

Until now it has generally been accepted that King's links with the parish ofCobham were longstanding, and that he must have held property in the parish beforeWinstanley arrived in the autumn of 1643. He has usually been identified with theWilliam King, son of William King senior, who acquired the customary property ofStewards Mead in Ham manor in 1615-16, following the death of his mother JudithKing.7 Recent research suggests, however, that the William King who held StewardsMead 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 thisname had connections with Cobham during the seventeenth century, including aminister, a yeoman and a labourer, as well as Winstanley's father-in-law. Several otherCobham householders bore the surname King.8 Every historian who has written aboutthe Diggers in recent years has accepted that there was some sort of link betweenWilliam King the London surgeon and William King the Cobham yeoman.9 EvenRobert Dalton, who in an important article on Winstanley's bankruptcy correctly

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