Hence it is, probably, that the opening epistle is
addressed to Oliver Cromwell, who at the time was Commander in Chief of
the Army, and the man to whom all England was looking with wonder and
admiration, not unmixed with anxious forebodings. The years that had
elapsed between the conception and the publication of Winstanley's book
had been momentous ones in this great man's career. Owing to Lord
Fairfax's reluctance to invade Scotland, the command of the
Commonwealth's Army had devolved on him: and right good use had the hero
of Naseby made of his opportunities. In September 1651 he won the
decisive battle of Dunbar; and in the same month of the following year
he won the even more decisive battle of Worcester, which, to use
Gardiner's words, manifested to the world that England refused "to be
ruled by a king who came in as an invader."[163:1] In the following
November, when Winstanley was sitting down to write his Dedicatory
Epistle, Cromwell was already back in his seat in Parliament,
endeavouring "to use the patriotic fervour called out by the invasion to
settle the Commonwealth on a broader basis," and agitating for "a time
to be fixed for the dissolution of the existing Parliament and for the
calling of a new one."[163:2] And in February 1652, when the book was
published, political and religious excitement in England was probably at
the greatest height to which it ever attained even in the stirring days
of the Commonwealth, and Cromwell may be regarded as standing at the
dividing line of his wonderful career.
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