The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth: As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social ReformerBerens, Lewis Henry
History
The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth: As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer
Berens, Lewis Henry
Communism; Land use; Winstanley, Gerrard, 1609-
From that time events had marched quickly. Those who had played the most
prominent parts in that momentous scene, including Holles, Selden, and
Eliot, had been thrown into prison, the last-named to die there, the
first martyr to the growing cause of civil freedom and religious
liberty. In 1637, the year of the publication of Chillingworth's work,
the whole question of the right to levy taxation was revived by the
demand on the inland counties for ship-money, and the attention of the
whole country attracted to it by the trial of Hampden on his refusal to
pay same. Later in the year, Charles' attempt to alter the
ecclesiastical constitution and form of public worship in Scotland led,
first to discontent, then to riot, and finally to open rebellion. As a
direct consequence, the King, in April 1640, was compelled to call what
from its brief duration is known as the Short Parliament, in which,
thanks to the Parliamentary tactics of Hampden, the design of the Court
Party, to obtain supplies without redressing grievances, was
constitutionally thwarted. On the manifestation of its determination to
redress wrongs and to vindicate the laws, this Parliament was at once
dissolved. The end of the tyranny, however, was fast approaching. In
August of the same year the King marched northward; the Scotch crossed
the border to meet him; on their approach the disaffected English army
was well pleased to fly rather than to fight those whom they were
inclined to regard as deliverers rather than as enemies; a truce was
patched up, and to meet the critical situation the King, in November
1640, found himself compelled to summon his last and most famous
Parliament, known in history as the Long Parliament.
The temper of the new Parliament, in which Pym and Hampden at first
exercised a paramount influence, was very different from that of any of
its predecessors. Recent events had convinced its leading members that
half measures would be worse than useless. During its first session,
Strafford and Laud, the two main supporters of absolute government and
religious tyranny, were impeached and imprisoned; those whom the King
had employed as instruments of oppression were called to account for
their conduct; the Star Chamber, the Court of High Commission and the
Council of York, were abolished; ship-money was declared illegal, and
the judgement in Hampden's case was annulled; the victims of the recent
religious persecutions were set at liberty, and conducted through London
in triumph; old oppressive feudal powers still appertaining to the Crown
were swept away; the King was made to give the judges patents for life
or during good behaviour; the Forest and Stannary Courts were reformed;
Triennial Parliaments were established; and, finally, it was provided
that the Parliament then sitting should not be prorogued or dissolved
save by its own consent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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