Royal Academian who mainly painted historical scenes, especially
from the time of the English Civil War. This painting was purchased in 1898
for 200 guineas. The Puritans, oppressed and persecuted during the reign of
James 1 and Charles 1, rose to power as the result of the Civil War in the
middle of the 17th century. This painting represents a meeting of soldiers,
divines and politicians, typical of meetings that took place between 1644
and the establishment of the practical dictatorship of Cromwell.
It shows the various forces of Puritanism - the eager and voluble fanatic;
the strong determined champion of civil liberty; the statesman; the brave
soldier; the man of moderate views; the hypocrite; the grave and learned devine;
the ignorant sectary.
Here you can see the passion, bigotry, self-satisfaction and the unctuous
piety contrasting with true piety, valour, sagacity and statesmanship.
This painting was conserved in 2001 with the aid of a grant from North West
Museums Service.
Different
beliefs are outlawed in intolerant societies. Even today, people are still persecuted
for their religious and political views. This painting captures the range of
human responses that often meet new ideas - from cynicism and suspicion to support
and diplomacy.
Another response to new ideas is scorn. People suggesting new ways of looking
at the world, like supporters of environmental causes, are often jeered at for
being unrealistic. Yet new ideas are vital for improving the world and creating
a sustainable future.
"Good
Sirs, before we discuss the abolition of Christmas, I fear I must inform you
of the lamentable incidents occurring recently in the parish of Walton-on-Thames,
in the good county of Surrey.
It would seem that in the month of April, a ragged band of land less ne'er-do-wells,
known locally as: The Diggers, and numbering some two dozen families, came to
the waste land of St. George's Hill. There, without permission of any kind,
they proceeded to erect some rough huts and tents, tether a few head of cattle,
and to generally employ themselves in the digging, manuring and planting of
the common - and all this on a Sunday morning, Sirs!
When asked what they were about, their spokesman, one Gerard Winstanley, made
such claims as these: 'That they had come together in peace to make the waste
ground grow, to unite the divided earth, that it might be a Common Treasury
for All.
This Winstanley disdained property as a sin, claiming that no person had a right
to own the land, and, as a natural consequence of this, it was clear that all
privately owned land must have been stolen from the people by trickery, violence,
and murder. It was declared that this band of 'Diggers,' would: defy both the
Landlords and the Laws of the Land, for was it not indeed the Landlords who
made the laws in order to keep the poor in their poverty?The man clearly has
no respect for democracy.
Further, this reprobate alleged that : the Clergy were just as bad as the Landlords,
either dazzling the people with Heaven, or damning them into Hell. He said that
they, 'The Diggers, would never worship the God the Clergy serve: the God of
Greed who feeds the Rich while Poor Folk starve. Clearly he was no good man
of tolerance, Sirs.
I am pleased to say that the local minister and lord of the manor, did organise
a sufficient number of robust, God-fearing and law abiding Christians to give
these 'Diggers' the good kick-in that they so clearly and richly deserved.
They have since been dispersed and driven away. Such dangerous lunatic ideas
and practices must always be dealt with so. Now Sirs, to the abolition of the
corrupt and heathen festival of Christmas…
)
