16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
of Bernhard Knipperdolling, one of those Miinster
Anabaptists who went to such very illconsidered
lengths, enforcing equality and the
community of goods and then going on to polygamy
– John of Leiden had four wives at a
time, one of them being Knipperdolling's
daughter – and I am afraid that even worse
disorders followed. Yet I think they left little in
the way of doctrinal posterity, unless they can
be said to live on in the Socinians and Mennonites,
which few would accept. Those who
use the name at present are descendants of
the Levellers. The Levellers, as you will recall,
sir, were a party with strong republican views
in the Civil War; they wished to level all differences
of rank, reducing the nation to an
equality; and some of them wanted land to be
held in common – no private ownership of
land. They were very troublesome in the army
and the state; they earned a thoroughly bad