This book is an intensive exploration of the hidden and mysterious world of the 'Family of Love' in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The Familists, devoted followers of a Messianic Dutch mystic named 'H.N.', were passionately denounced by many literate contemporaries, and an association with extremism, subversion and hypocrisy has endured.

The author tracks the English Familists into their houses, fields and places of work. The imaginative and highly detailed methodology makes possible an especially fruitful interaction with the past, and ensures that no single social context dominates the emerging picture. For instance, although the full extent of Familism at the court of Elizabeth I is revealed for the first time, the members there are discussed side by side with their 'loving friends' in the fields and fens of eastern England.

This study is, however, most significant for what it reveals about the nature of wider society. The processes by which the Family of Love came to be represented to posterity are examined carefully and placed alongside less accessible evidence.

This approach brings into play a compelling and hitherto unsuspected dialogue between the forces of hostility and the lesser-known forces of tolerance: one surprising conclusion is that most English men and women seem to have possessed an impressive capacity to tolerate known 'heretics' in their midst.