In the following religious treatises he expressed his views against the old and then existing systems of Christian belief and ecclesiastical government. He was a universalist, and his works are perhaps the earliest in English in which that doctrine is enforced: 1. ‘The Breaking of the Day of God,’ 1648; some editions 1649. 2. ‘The Mysterie of God concerning the whole Creation, Mankinde,’ &c., 1648; another edit. 1649. 3. ‘The Saints Paradise, or the Fathers Teaching the only Satisfaction to Waiting Souls,’ 1649. 4. ‘Truth lifting up his Head above Scandals, wherein is declared what God, Christ, Father, Sonne, Holy Ghost, Scriptures, Gospel, Prayer, Ordinances of God, are,’ 1649 and 1650. 5. ‘The New Law of Righteousness Budding Forth, in restoring the whole Creation from the Bondage of the Curse,’ 1649. The above five tracts were collected and published together in December 1649. 6. ‘Fire in the Bush. The Spirit Burning, not Consuming, but Purging Mankinde,’ 1650. In the dedication, to his ‘Countrymen of the county of Lancaster,’ prefixed to the ‘Mysterie of God,’ he describes himself as not a learned man. Thomas Comber, afterwards dean of Durham, in his ‘Christianity no Enthusiasm,’ 1678, attempted to show that Winstanley and his associates were the real founders of the quaker sect.
[Article by W. A. Abram in Palatine Notebook, iii. 104, iv. 95; Whitelocke's Memorials, 1732, pp. 396–7, 448; Nath. Stephens's Plaine and Easie Calculation of the Name of the Beast, 1656, p. 267; Carlyle's Cromwell, pt. v., ‘The Levellers;’ Clarke Papers, ed. Firth (Camden Soc.), ii. 211, 217; Gardiner's Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1894–7, i. 47, ii. 5; Hazlitt's Collections and Notes, ii. 652, iii. 267; Russell Smith's Cat. of Topogr. Tracts, 1878, p. 376; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. xii. 185; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Co-operative News, 13 April 1895, p. 361; notes kindly supplied by the Rev. A. Gordon.]
WINSTANLEY, HAMLET (1698–1756), painter and engraver, the second son of William Winstanley, a reputable tradesman in Warrington, Lancashire, ‘who brought up all his children to good school learning,’ was born at Warrington in 1698. In 1707 he was placed under the tuition of Samuel Shaw, rector of the parish and master of the Boteler free grammar school of his native town. The remarkable talent shown by the young Hamlet in rough drawings which he made with crayons attracted the notice of John Finch, rector of Winwick and brother of the Earl of Nottingham. He gave the boy free access to his collection of paintings and every encouragement to pursue the career of an artist, finally smoothing the way for him to study in London at the academy of painting, founded in 1711, in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, under the auspices of Sir Godfrey Kneller. He remained in London three years, deriving great benefit, as he always fully acknowledged, from the personal supervision of Kneller, and returned to Warrington in 1721 upon an express commission to paint the portrait of Sir Edward Stanley. The success of this portrait led to his introduction to James Stanley, tenth earl of Derby, and the earl was so pleased with Winstanley's work that he ordered him to come and paint for him at his seat at Knowsley. During the next two years he painted several landscapes and portraits, including one of the earl, and, says a contemporary memoir written either by himself or by his brother, Peter Winstanley, ‘he merited esteem so much that his lordship advised him and gave him noble exceeding good encouragement to go to Rome in 1723, as he did, to compleat his study in painting, as perfect as possible to be attained. And in order thereto his lordship got letters of credit, and recommendation for Mr. Winstanley to a certain cardinal at Rome, to whom his lordship sent a present of a large whole piece of the very best black brad cloth that London could produce, with a prospect to introduce Mr. Winstanley into what favours he had occasion for, to view all the principal paintings, statues, and curiositys of Rome, and to copy some curious pictures (that could not be purchas'd for money) which Lord Derby had a desire of, and he employed him while he stayed at Rome and at Venice awhile, in all about two years, for he came home in 1725.’ While at Rome he heard of the death of Kneller, whom he referred to as ‘a particular friend, his great master.’ The sketches of Rome and studies of antique figures drawn by Winstanley, while bearing very distinctly the impress of the taste of the period, exhibit some masterly qualities. The British Museum purchased two fine examples of pen and wash drawings by Winstanley in 1870. He executed large copies of the ‘Graces,’ by Raphael, in the Farnesina Palace at Rome, and of the ‘Triumph of Bacchus,’ by Caracci, in the Farnese. His etchings from pictures by old masters (including Ribera, Rembrandt, Vandyck, Carlo Dolci, Tintoretto, Titian, Rubens, Snyders, and Salvator Rosa), in the possession of the Earl of Derby, fully entitle him to the high place assigned him in Walpole's ‘Catalogue’ of early engravers in England. These etchings, executed for the most part
