Puritan ethic: E.P. Thompson is referring here to a Puritan work ethic. The work ethic, according to Max Weber (see below), developed as a logical corollary to Puritan beliefs and especially the doctrines of John Calvin and his idea of predestination. This religious world view, according to Weber, helped to promote certain forms work discipline and living in the world that enabled believers to manage some of the anxieties surrounding their final fate. For Weber, these forms of work and discipline became socially general (i.e. they became adopted by most within European society even if they were not Calvinists).

John Wesley (1703-1791: An Anglican minister who became one of the co-founders of Methodism.

Hannah More (1745-1833): An eighteenth century English religious writer, philanthropist, and abolitionist.  She is well known for her later writings, which described the merits of hard work, frugal living, and thrift.

Benjamin Franklin (1705-1790): A Founding Father of the United States, Franklin was also known for his inventions and writing, mostly notably Poor Richard’s Almanack. In that work, Franklin offers practical advice about money, work, and theft that some, like Max Weber, have seen as the aphorisms of a emerging bourgeoisie concerned with instilling new work habits, savings, and time thrift within a working population used to a far more leisurely approach to work.  You can find the full text of the Almanack here.

Max Weber (1864-1920): A German sociologists, Thompson is deeply indebted to Weber’s work in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which Weber traces some of the labor practices and habits that define modern industrial capitalism to the emergence of a Protestant work ethic.