Free The Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O’Brian Page B

Knipperdollings?'
    'Oh, Knipperdollings in general: I do not mean anything personal.'
    'Well, sir, historically they were the followers of Bernhard Knipperdolling, one of those Miinster Anabaptists who went to such very ill-considered 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 name and eventually they were put down, leaving only a few scattered communities. I believe the Levellers as a body did not have a religious as opposed to a social or political unity, though I cannot think that any of them belonged to the Established Church; yet some of these remaining communities formed a sect with strange notions of the Trinity and a dislike of infant baptism; and to avoid the odium attached to the name of Levellers and indeed the persecution they called themselves Knipperdollings, thinking that more respectable or at least more obscure. I imagine they knew very little of the Knipperdollings' religious teaching but had retained a traditional knowledge of their notions of social justice, which made them think the name appropriate.'
    'It is remarkable,' observed Stephen after a pause, 'that the Surprise, with her many sects, should be such a peaceful ship. To be sure, there was that slight want of harmony between the Sethians and the Knipperdollings at Botany Bay - and in passing I may once more point out, sir, that if this vessel supplied her people with round rather than square plates, these differences would be slighter still; for you are to consider that a square plate has four corners, each one of which makes it more than a mere contunding instrument.' He perceived from the civil inclinations of Captain Aubrey's head and the reserved expression on his face that the square plates issued to the Surprise when she was captured from the French in 1796 would retain their lethal corners as long as he or any other right-minded sea-officer commanded her: the Royal Navy's traditions were not to be changed for the sake of a few broken heads. Stephen continued '... but generally speaking there is no discord at all; whereas very often the least difference of opinion leads to downright hatred.'
    'That may be because they tend to leave their particular observances on shore,' said Martin. 'The Thraskites are a Judaizing body and they would recoil from a ham at Shelmerston, but here they eat up their salt pork, aye, and fresh too when they can get it. And then when we rig church on Sundays they and all the others sing the Anglican psalms and hymns with great good will.'
    'For my own part,' said Captain Aubrey, 'I have no notion of disliking a man for his beliefs, above all if he was born with them. I find I can get along very well with Jews or even...' The P of Papists was already formed, and the word was obliged to come out as Pindoos.
    Yet it had hardly fallen upon Stephen's ear before a shriek and the crash of glass expelled embarrassment: young Arthur Wedell, a ransomer of Reade's age, who lived and messed in the midshipmen's berth, fell through the skylight into the cabin.
    Reade had been deprived of youthful company for a great while, and although he was often invited to the gunroom and the cabin he missed it sorely: at first Norton, though a great big fellow for his age, had been too bashful to be much