Gerrard Winstanley, 1609-1676.

English Protestant merchant, divine and early proponent of Christian communism.  Winstanley was a leader of ultra-egalitarian "Diggers" movement that sprung up briefly in the anarchy of republican England in 1649-51. 

A merchant ruined by the Civil Wars, Gerrard Winstanley took to the pen in 1648 and authored a series of tracts, most notably the New Law of Righteousness, published in early 1649  Drawing extensively on the Bible, particularly the New Testament, Winstanley decried the enclosures, declared private property to be contrary to Christian teachings, or, at any rate, a "foreign" innovation introduced by Normans, contravening the ancient rights of Englishmen.  In 1649, Winstanley organized the Diggers movement - or, as they called themselves, the "True Levellers" (in contrast with John Lilburne's army-based Leveller movement). 

In April 1649, a group of Diggers led by Winstanley occupied common land on St. George's Hill in Weybridge, Surrey, which they proceeded to plant and distribute food freely, inviting others to join them (from which were issued the two Digger manifestoes). The Diggers envisioned tearing down social hierarchy and economic inequality by pursuing a rural idyll of agrarian communism, without property, prices, wages or commercial exchange. 

The commune was attacked by local landlords, hit with lawsuits and finally broken up by the army by August 1649.  Further occupations were attempted elsewhere. But the opposition of local landlords was stiff and by 1651, all the remaining Digger communes, never very large to begin with, had dissolved.  Winstanley's Law of Freedom, his final attempt to appeal to Oliver Cromwell to institute the Digger philosophy in the Commonwealth, gives the most extensive account of the utopian Digger vision.

Winstanley later briefly joined up with the Quakers and eventually resumed business in London.

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