A search for the roots of the dissenting tradition in England, rediscovering secret sects, extraordinary individuals and their eccentric, influential legacies.

Protestants believed that the world would end in 1600. It didn’t – quite.

For the next century, Britain was on fire. Civil wars raged, the king was beheaded and London burned. But it was also the dawn of Enlightenment. The printing press spread new ideas and Captain Cook sought bright horizons. The Church of England – established following the turbulent break with Catholicism and the Holy Roman Empire – was probed and found wanting. The time was ripe for people to take advantage of chaos and seek truths. Dozens of obscure groups with visions for a better world sprang up: Ranters, Fifth Monarchists, Muggletonians, Diggers and Quakers, working people whose calling was both religious and civil. Their ideologies ranged greatly but they were persecuted indiscriminately.

Dissenters uncovers England’s radical moral past, breathing life into forgotten visionaries and rekindling their legacies, which still inform how we live today. Levellers campaigned for the vote across social classes. Diggers created communal farms to feed the starving. Quakers led the movement to abolish slavery. Some of these groups are confined to the annals of the past. Some still practise today.

Uncovering six hundred years of British non-conformist beliefs and moral protest, Dissenters unearths a rich, obscure corner of history that is almost, but not quite, forgotten.