The Alderbank Wade by Alan Morrison

Young Roundhead Jared Amory relays the story of his childhood friend, Gideon Wade, who early in the English Revolution deserts the Royalist cause, which he had felt obliged by his father to enlist in against his personal conscience, for the Parliamentarian side. He rises through the ranks to Captain, and near the end of hostilities captures the Royalist stronghold of Alderbank. Now a convert to Levelling, Gideon founds a ‘True’ Leveller community there, the Alderbank Diggers, where Jared, also a Leveller convert, joins him as his secretary. But by 1649, the numerous Digger communities are rapidly being suppressed by the Cromwellian militia, and Alderbank’s days are numbered…