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-
Tyranny whatsoever and by whomsoever intended against us."
At the foot of this pamphlet we find the following notice: "Reader, You
may expect in the Third Part to have an Anatomising of all Powers that
now are, etc. And in the Fourth Part, the Grounds and Rules that all men
are to go by. Farewell." Whether these notices refer to some of
Winstanley's pamphlets, the second seems to point to _The New Law of
Righteousness_, or not, we have no means of knowing. Nor, indeed,
whether the above pamphlets were from his pen, though we strongly
believe them to have been so. In any case they seem to us to have
sufficient bearing on the Digger Movement to justify our noticing them
here.
Some six weeks later, on May 10th, yet another pamphlet appeared from
the same part of the country, entitled:
"A DECLARATION OF THE WELL-AFFECTED IN THE COUNTY OF
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE:[84:1]
Being a Representation of the Middle Sort of Men within the three
Chilterne Hundreds of Disborough, Burnum and Stoke, and part of
Ailsbury Hundred, whereby they declare their Resolution and
Intentions, with a Removal of their Grievances."
This is a very short pamphlet, of some seven pages, in which these
"Middle Sort of Men" state that they had waited for eight years for
redress of their grievances, but finding them still continue, and
expecting little good from the Parliament and the Grandees of the Army,
"finding the Grandees of the Army to be the men that hinder both the
honest soldiery that stand for absolute freedom, and doth imprison and
put them to death that are for Just Principles of Common Right and
Equity, so that those honest men are by those proud Commanders
persecuted by the name of Levellers...."[85:1]
"Therefore we declare our intentions that the World may take notice
of our principles, which are for Common Right and Freedom. And
therefore--
"1. We do protest against all Arbitrary Courts, Terms, Lawyers,
Impropriators, Lords of Manors, Patents, Privileges, Customs,
Tolls, Monopolisers, Incroachers, Enhancers, etc., or any other
interest-parties, whose powers are arbitrary, etc., as not to allow
or suffer ourselves to be inslaved by any of those parties, but
shall resist, as far as lawfully we can, all their Arbitrary
Proceedings.
"2. We protest against the whole Norman Power, as being too
intolerable a burden any longer to bear.
"3. We protest against paying Tythes, Tolls, Customs, etc.
"4 We protest against any coming to Westminster Terms, or to give
any money to the Lawyers, but will endeavour to have all our
Controversies ended by 2, 3 or 12 men of our own neighborhood, as
before the Norman Conquest.
"5. We protest against any trial by a Martial Court as arbitrary,
tyrannical and wicked, and not for a Free People to suffer in times
of peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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