Within the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century which
resulted in the triumph of the protestant ethic - the ideology of the
propertied class - there threatened another, quite different,
revolution. Its success 'might have established communal property, a far
wider democracy in political and legal institutions, might have
disestablished the state church and rejected the protestant ethic. In
"The World Turned Upside Down" Christopher Hill studies the beliefs of
such radical groups as the Diggers, the Ranters, the Levellers and
others, and the social and emotional impulses that gave rise to them.
The relations between rich and poor classes, the part played by
wandering 'masterless' men, the outbursts of sexual freedom, the great
imaginative creations of Milton and Bunyan - these and many other
elements build up into a marvellously detailed and coherent portrait of
this strange, sudden effusion of revolutionary beliefs.
