Protestants believed that the world would end in 1600. It didn’t, quite.
For the next century, Britain was on fire. Civil war raged, the king was beheaded and London burned. But it was also the dawn of Enlightenment. The printing press spread overseas ideas and Captain Cook sought new horizons. The established church was probed and found wanting. Dozens of obscure groups sprang up: Ranters, Diggers, Levellers, Familists and Quakers, working people whose calling was both religious and political. Their ideologies ranged greatly but they were persecuted indiscriminately.
Dissenters breathes life into these forgotten visionaries. They were both everywhere and nowhere, and though they tread lightly, their legacies are still felt deeply today. Elizabeth Fry overhauled the prison service, visited every female convict ship bound for Australia, received a standing ovation at the world’s first anti-slavery convention, then promptly destroyed her journals upon realising she was famous. The Fifth Monarchist Prophetesses fought for gender equality. Diggers paved the way for common land ownership. Quakers were the first religious group in Britain to recognise gay marriage.
Dissenters uncovers four hundred years of moral protest. Through a series of British ‘pilgrimages’, award-winning writer Elizabeth Briggs unearths a rich, obscure corner of history that is almost, but not quite, forgotten.
I begin with both a birth and death.
The graveyard in Brigflatts is drinking in the spring air. Bunches of snowdrops bob curtsies to a faint sun, buckling under the weight of fresh dew. This quiet Quaker burial ground, the third oldest in Britain, rests at the end of a no-through country lane and marks the place where the Society of Friends began. It is a far cry from the Quaker cemetery in Norwich, now locked at night since it became a popular site for dogging.
‘The mason says: Rocks
happen by chance.
No one here bolts the door
… By such rocks
men killed Bloodaxe.’
Briggflatts, 1966
I am looking for one grave in particular. Uncut grass stems shiver, sheltered by four rows of orderly headstones and a dry stone wall strong in the local vernacular. It is proving as hard to pin Basil Bunting down in death as it was in life.
It is a beautiful wall. Selecting the right rock for each role in a wall such as this takes patience. Stones have six faces and you must consider how each one will lock with the boulders to either side, the inside, top and bottom, as well as how the surface exposed to the elements will fare. The hardest face of the rock should always look out. Walls must have some slope to stabilise them, achieved through counterbalancing each stone. The boulders in this wall have good contact between one another, so that I can’t inspect the centre of the wall, but the stones are still able to breathe.
There are 760 dead buried in this small patch, but perhaps only forty are indicated. Friends didn’t sanction the raising of headstones until 1850, which explains why so few final resting places are marked. Of the headstones that are erected, it is almost impossible to read what was once writ there.
‘Name and date
split in soft slate
a few months
obliterate.’
Briggflatts, 1966
I know the first to be buried here was Rebecca Langle in 1656 but God only knows where, and I expect he has long since forgotten. Bones crumble or are cremated, and new bodies are buried on top of old ones.
‘It isn’t so easy to tell Larkin from a corpse.’
Basil Bunting
I continue through the rows of identical headstones each carrying only the name and dates of birth and death of the body beneath, in Quaker fashion. There are lots of Handleys, Sharpes, two Briggs. Where are you, Bunting?
The hamlet of Brigflatts – one g, but Bunting preferred the old-fashioned spelling with two – is 1.5 miles from Sedburgh, England’s only official book town. Sheep graze almost into the high street, where I had to move over that morning to allow a small girl on a white pony to pass by. Houses have more chimneys than windows. A cobbled cut through to the shops is lined with tidy stone homes, pairs of muddy wellington boots to attention neatly outside them. There is snow on the western dales today; pillows of snow and blankets of snowdrops.
‘Snow lies bright on Hedgehope
And tacky mud about Till
where the fells have stepped aside
and the river praises itself.’
Briggflatts, 1966
The public loos are immaculate, and an artist has hung them with pictures of kingfishers for sale at £10 a painting, money to be put in the honesty box by the exit please. There are four bookshops including Clutterbooks, a charity store where profits go back into the community, where my precious change is given as a 50 pence piece with the head of Sherlock Holmes on one side. Even a shop called the Sleepy Elephant, which mainly sells walking gear, has shelves upon shelves of books for sale. Yet not one of these bookshops has a single volume of poetry by Basil Bunting.
Dissenters: Britain’s Lost Faiths and Forgotten Radicals
Elizabeth Briggs
Signed First Edition Bundle£30.0083 PledgesThe first edition hardback, signed by Elizabeth, plus the ebook and the name of your choice printed in the subscribers’ list at the back of the book.
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A Very ‘Civil’ Tea and Talk – 11 May 2025£20.003 PledgesJoin Elizabeth Briggs for a talk about some of Worcestershire’s lesser-known religious non-conformists and their role in the Civil War accompanied by a homemade cream tea. The venue is Mill Hall, Porter’s Mill, Claines, site of Queen Elizabeth I’s royal stay in Worcestershire, August 1575. Dating to the 13th century, this private home is a Grade II* site of significance bordering Monarch’s Way (the route along which Charles I fled England during the Civil War) 15.00-16.30 - Sunday 11 May, 2025. Book not included. Transport to site not included. LIMITED TO 25.
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A Very ‘Civil’ Tea and Talk – 18 May 2025£20.002 PledgesJoin Elizabeth Briggs for a talk about some of Worcestershire’s lesser-known religious non-conformists and their role in the Civil War accompanied by a homemade cream tea. The venue is Mill Hall, Porter’s Mill, Claines, site of Queen Elizabeth I’s royal stay in Worcestershire, August 1575. Dating to the 13th century, this private home is a Grade II* site of significance bordering Monarch’s Way (the route along which Charles I fled England during the Civil War) 15.00-16.30 - Sunday 18 May, 2025. Book not included. Transport to site not included. LIMITED TO 25.
2 Pledges
Embroidered Bookmark Bundle£75.009 PledgesReceive an exquisite, hand-embroidered bookmark, made by Fine Cell Work, a charity and social enterprise committed to the rehabilitation of prisoners. Plus a hand-written note from Elizabeth, the first edition hardback, signed by Elizabeth, the ebook and the name of your choice printed in the subscribers’ list at the back of the book. Limited to 25.
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Launch Party Bundle£150.004 PledgesTwo tickets to a launch party hosted at a central London venue of special significance to the radical tradition; two first edition hardbacks, signed by Elizabeth, plus one ebook and the name of your choice printed in the subscribers’ list at the back of the book. Limited to 40, venue to be confirmed, travel not included.
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First Edition Hardback Bundle£20.00103 PledgesThe first edition hardback plus the ebook and the name of your choice printed in the subscribers’ list at the back of the book.
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Give a Book Bundle£50.006 PledgesMake a £20 donation to Give A Book, a charity dedicated to promoting books and the pleasure of reading in the hardest places (their main work is within prisons, schools and with disadvantaged children); plus the signed first edition hardback, the ebook and the name of your choice printed in the subscribers’ list at the back of the book.
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Patron£250.004 PledgesBecome one of the book’s biggest supporters and get your name listed as a Patron at the head of the subscribers’ list plus two tickets to a launch party hosted at a site of special significance to the radical tradition, two signed first edition hardbacks, plus one ebook. Limited to 10, venue to be confirmed, travel not included.
4 Pledges
Ebook Download£10.0012 PledgesThe first edition ebook and the name of your choice listed in the subscribers’ list at the back of the book.
12 Pledges
Protestants believed that the world would end in 1600. It didn’t, quite.
For the next century, Britain was on fire. Civil war raged, the king was beheaded and London burned. But it was also the dawn of Enlightenment. The printing press spread overseas ideas and Captain Cook sought new horizons. The established church was probed and found wanting. Dozens of obscure groups sprang up: Ranters, Diggers, Levellers, Familists and Quakers, working people whose calling was both religious and political. Their ideologies ranged greatly but they were persecuted indiscriminately.
Dissenters breathes life into these forgotten visionaries. They were both everywhere and nowhere, and though they tread lightly, their legacies are still felt deeply today. Elizabeth Fry overhauled the prison service, visited every female convict ship bound for Australia, received a standing ovation at the world’s first anti-slavery convention, then promptly destroyed her journals upon realising she was famous. The Fifth Monarchist Prophetesses fought for gender equality. Diggers paved the way for common land ownership. Quakers were the first religious group in Britain to recognise gay marriage.
Dissenters uncovers four hundred years of moral protest. Through a series of British ‘pilgrimages’, award-winning writer Elizabeth Briggs unearths a rich, obscure corner of history that is almost, but not quite, forgotten.
I begin with both a birth and death.
The graveyard in Brigflatts is drinking in the spring air. Bunches of snowdrops bob curtsies to a faint sun, buckling under the weight of fresh dew. This quiet Quaker burial ground, the third oldest in Britain, rests at the end of a no-through country lane and marks the place where the Society of Friends began. It is a far cry from the Quaker cemetery in Norwich, now locked at night since it became a popular site for dogging.
‘The mason says: Rocks
happen by chance.
No one here bolts the door
… By such rocks
men killed Bloodaxe.’
Briggflatts, 1966
I am looking for one grave in particular. Uncut grass stems shiver, sheltered by four rows of orderly headstones and a dry stone wall strong in the local vernacular. It is proving as hard to pin Basil Bunting down in death as it was in life.
It is a beautiful wall. Selecting the right rock for each role in a wall such as this takes patience. Stones have six faces and you must consider how each one will lock with the boulders to either side, the inside, top and bottom, as well as how the surface exposed to the elements will fare. The hardest face of the rock should always look out. Walls must have some slope to stabilise them, achieved through counterbalancing each stone. The boulders in this wall have good contact between one another, so that I can’t inspect the centre of the wall, but the stones are still able to breathe.
There are 760 dead buried in this small patch, but perhaps only forty are indicated. Friends didn’t sanction the raising of headstones until 1850, which explains why so few final resting places are marked. Of the headstones that are erected, it is almost impossible to read what was once writ there.
‘Name and date
split in soft slate
a few months
obliterate.’
Briggflatts, 1966
I know the first to be buried here was Rebecca Langle in 1656 but God only knows where, and I expect he has long since forgotten. Bones crumble or are cremated, and new bodies are buried on top of old ones.
‘It isn’t so easy to tell Larkin from a corpse.’
Basil Bunting
I continue through the rows of identical headstones each carrying only the name and dates of birth and death of the body beneath, in Quaker fashion. There are lots of Handleys, Sharpes, two Briggs. Where are you, Bunting?
The hamlet of Brigflatts – one g, but Bunting preferred the old-fashioned spelling with two – is 1.5 miles from Sedburgh, England’s only official book town. Sheep graze almost into the high street, where I had to move over that morning to allow a small girl on a white pony to pass by. Houses have more chimneys than windows. A cobbled cut through to the shops is lined with tidy stone homes, pairs of muddy wellington boots to attention neatly outside them. There is snow on the western dales today; pillows of snow and blankets of snowdrops.
‘Snow lies bright on Hedgehope
And tacky mud about Till
where the fells have stepped aside
and the river praises itself.’
Briggflatts, 1966
The public loos are immaculate, and an artist has hung them with pictures of kingfishers for sale at £10 a painting, money to be put in the honesty box by the exit please. There are four bookshops including Clutterbooks, a charity store where profits go back into the community, where my precious change is given as a 50 pence piece with the head of Sherlock Holmes on one side. Even a shop called the Sleepy Elephant, which mainly sells walking gear, has shelves upon shelves of books for sale. Yet not one of these bookshops has a single volume of poetry by Basil Bunting.
Quakers are terrific
