In 1649 to St George's Hill...

Amanda has an excellent post on why glorifying the middle ages is more than a bit creepy:

I will say that teaching kids the "virtues" of knighthood is a wicked past time, no matter how you slice it. That's basically like teaching kids the virtues of vampirism. Teaching kids the virtues of being in the mob would be more morally sound, because while the mob runs a protection racket just like the lords of feudal times, they don't lower themselves to telling everyone they were appointed by god and that their criminality is actually holy. That's got to count for something.

I think challenging idealised views of the past is really important, both because I value history, but also because I think the past is usually idealised in an attempt to say something about the present. The only past that can be useful to the present is the past that actually happened.

But my favourite bit was one of the comments who said:

I've always harbored a fantasy of getting a bunch of friends together to go to the Renaissance Faire in the character of Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers. We'd take our rude farming tools and start cultivating a reclaimed "commons" in front of the leather mug booth.

Now I want someone to do Rennaisance Faire in New Zealand, or some similar event, I would be so into being a digger.