A Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria

A Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria is a work of utopian fiction, published in England in 1641. It carried the name of Samuel Hartlib, who published it, but is now attributed to Gabriel Plattes. A short text of fifteen pages, it reads, according to Amy Boesky, like a political address, and it was explicitly framed as an address to Parliament.^[1]

It is written as a dialogue, and is in the tradition of the Utopia of Thomas More — Macaria is an island mentioned in Utopia — and the New Atlantis of Francis Bacon.^[2] Hugh Trevor-Roper takes it to be an important formulation of the ultimate political ambitions of Hartlib and his followers (and in particular John Dury), in the form of a reformed Christian society and welfare state. It covers the issues of economic development, taxation and education.^[3] Much of the content drew on Henry Robinson's Englands Safety from earlier in the same year.^[4]

Notes

1. ^ Amy Boesky, Founding fictions: Utopias in early modern England (1996), p. 91.
2. ^ Bronwen Price (editor), Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (2002), p. 14, p. 57, p. 61.
3. ^ Three Foreigners: The Philosophers of the Puritan Revolution
4. ^ Robert Zaller, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, article Robinson, Henry (bap. 1605, d. 1673).