The Anabaptists' leaders were not, as in the case of the Peasants' War, in the main drawn from the class of the "man that wields the hoe" (to paraphrase the phraseology of the time); they were tailors, smiths, bakers, shoemakers, or carpenters.

They belonged, in short, to the class of the organized handicraftsmen and journeymen who worked within city walls.

A prominent figure in both movements was, however, the ex-priest or teacher.

The ideal, or, if you will, the Utopian, element in the movement of Melchior Hoffmann, Jan Matthys, and Jan Bockelson--the element which expressed the social discontent of the time in the guise of its prevalent theological conceptions--now occupied the first place, while in the earlier movement it was merely sporadic.
After the close of the sixteenth century Anabaptism lost all political importance on the continent of Europe.

It had, however, a certain afterglow in this country during the following century, which lasted over the times of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, and may be traced in the movements of the "Levellers," the "Fifth Monarchy men," and even among the earlier Quakers.
FOOTNOTES: [23] Those interested will find the events briefly sketched in the present chapter exhaustively treated, with full elaboration of detail, in the two previous volumes of mine, _The Peasant's War in Germany_ and _The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists_ (Messrs.