"Yet notwithstanding, there be three men (called by the people Lords of Manors), viz., Thomas Lord Wenman, Ralph Verney Knight, and Richard Winwood Esq., have arrested us for a trespass in digging upon the Commons, and upon the arrest we made our appearance in Kingstone Court, where we understood we were arrested for meddling with other men's rights; and, secondly, they were encouraged to arrest us upon your Act of Parliament (as they tell us) to maintain the old laws. We desired to plead our own cause, the Court denied us, and to fee a lawyer we cannot, for divers reasons, as we may show hereafter. "Now, Sirs, our case is this, for we appeal to you, for you are the only men that we are to deal withal in this business: Whether the common people, after all their taxes, free-quarter and loss of blood to recover England from under the Norman yoke, shall have the freedom to improve the Commons and Waste Lands free to themselves, as freely their own as the Enclosures are the propriety of the elder brothers? Or whether the Lords of Manors shall have them, according to their old custom, from the King's will and grant, and so remain Task Masters still over us, which was the people's slavery under conquest? "We have made our appeal to you to settle this matter in the Equity and Reason of it, and to pass the sentence of freedom to us, you being the men with whom we have to do in this business, in whose hands there is power to settle it, for no Court can end this controversy but your Court of Parliament, as the case of this Nation now stands." After emphasising his fundamental contention that in Equity and by the Law of Righteousness all should have the freedom of the Earth granted unto them, he summarises the causes that have conspired to place the Members of the House of Commons in power, as follows: