“Se è vero secondo Galileo che il mondo ha suo moto quotidiano, non è da maravigliarsi della instabilità d’ogni cosa in esso…”. Charles Longland: un “rivoluzionario” inglese nella Livorno del ’600

Charles Longland (1603-1688) was an affluent merchant of the British Factory of Leghorn and during the 1650s was the English agent for the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. An informer of John Thurloe, Longland after the Restoration remained in Leghorn and showed his nonconformist sympathies by refusing to contribute in 1668 for the salary of a chaplain of the Church of England for the Factory. In 1672 Longland was denounced to the Inquisition as a protestant preacher who gathered conventicles in the house of Origen Merchant, a French Huguenot, who converted to Catholicism and was known to own “an entire library of forbidden books.” Longland’s biography, which is here reconstructed analytically for the first time, helps to show the channels of information and intelligence for Oliver Cromwell and highlights the importance that they had for the merchants.