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| Gerrard Winstanley |
Gerrard Winstanley was born in Wigan, Lancashire, in October 1609. His father, Edward Winstanley, was a mercer, though no record of his mother's name has survived and no details of his early life are known. In 1630, Winstanley went to London to become an apprentice cloth merchant in the household of Sarah Gater, a widow who carried on her late husband's business. Winstanley was admitted a freeman of the Merchant Taylors' Company in 1638 and had established his own household in the parish of St Olave Jewry by May 1639. The following year, he married Susan King, daughter of William King, a barber-surgeon who owned property in Cobham, Surrey.
The outbreak of civil war in 1642 brought about the collapse of the Irish cloth trade, which ruined Winstanley's business. Heavily in debt by the autumn of 1643, he was obliged to divide his remaining stock among his creditors and to cease trading. He moved to Cobham where, supported by his father-in-law, he was able to sustain himself as a grazier by pasturing cattle and contracting to harvest winter fodder. During this period, Winstanley apparently lost faith in the established church and may have briefly joined a Baptist congregation.
