In January, 1649, Gerrard
Winstanley published
the The New Law of Righteousness.
In the pamphlet he wrote: "In the beginning of time God made
the earth. Not one word was spoken at the beginning that one branch
of mankind should rule over another, but selfish imaginations did
set up one man to teach and rule over another."
Soon after publishing The
New Law of Righteousness he established a group called
the Diggers. In April 1649 Winstanley, William Everard, a former soldier
in the New Model Army and about thirty
followers took over some common land on St George's Hill in Surrey
and "sowed the ground with parsnips, carrots and beans."
Digger groups also took
over land in Kent (Cox Hill), Surrey (Cobham), Buckinghamshire (Iver)
and Northamptonshire (Wellingborough). Local
landowners were very disturbed by these developments.
In July 1649 the government gave instructions for Winstanley to be
arrested and for General Thomas Fairfax
to "disperse the people by force" in case this is the "beginning
to whence things of a greater and more dangerous consequence may grow".
Oliver
Cromwell is reported to have said: "What is the purport of
the levelling principle but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune
as the landlord. I was by birth a gentleman. You must cut these people
in pieces or they will cut you in pieces." Instructions were
given for the Diggers to be beaten up and for their houses, crops
and tools to be destroyed. These tactics were successful and within
a year all the Digger communities in England had been wiped out.
(1)
Gerrard
Winstanley, statement (April, 1649)
The work we are going about
is this, To dig up George's Hill and the waste grounds thereabouts,
and sow corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows.
And the first reason is
this, that we may work in righteousness, and lay the foundation of
making the earth a common treasury for all, both rich and poor, that
everyone that is born in the land may be fed by the earth his mother
that brought him forth, according to the reason that rules in the
creation.
(2)
Gerrard
Winstanley,
letter to General Thomas
Fairfax (June,
1649)
We understand, that our
digging upon that Common, is the talk of the whole land; some approving,
some disowning. Some are friends, filled with love, and sees the work
intends good to the Nation, the peace whereof is that which we seek
after. Others are enemies filled with fury, and falsely report of
us, that we have intent to fortify ourselves, and afterwards to fight
against others, and take away their goods from them, which is a thing
we abhor. And many other slanders we rejoice over, because we know
ourselves clear, our endeavour being no otherwise, but to improve
the Commons, and to cast off that oppression and outward bondage which
the Creation groans under, as much as in us lies, and to lift up and
preserve the purity thereof.
And the truth is, experience
shows us, that in this work of Community in the earth, and in the
fruits of the earth, is seen plainly a pitched battle between the
Lamb and the Dragon, between the Spirit of love, humility and righteousness
... and the power of envy, pride, and unrighteousness ... the latter
power striving to hold the Creation under slavery, and to lock and
hide the glory thereof from man: the former power labouring
to deliver Creation from slavery, to unfold the secrets of it to the
sons of man, and so to manifest himself to be the great restorer of
all things.
(3)
Gerrard
Winstanley, The True Levellers (1649)
In the beginning of time
God made the earth... Not one word was spoken at the beginning that
one branch of mankind should rule over another, but selfish imaginations
did set up one man to teach and rule over another... Landowners either
got their land by murder or theft... And thereby man was brought into
bondage, and became a greater slave than the beasts of the field were
to him.
(4)
Gerrard
Winstanley, The New Law of Righteouness (1649)
And let all men say what
they will, so long as such are rulers as call the land theirs, upholding
this particular propriety of mine and thine, the common people shall
never have their liberty, nor the land be ever freed from troubles,
oppressions, and complainings, by reason whereof the Creator of all
things is continually provoked.
The man of the flesh judges
it a righteous thing that some men who are cloathed with the objects
of the earth, and so called rich men, whether it be got by right or
wrong, should be magistrates to rule over the poor; and that the poor
should be servants, nay, rather slaves, to the rich. But the spiritual
man, which is Christ, doth judge according to the light of equity
and reason, that all mankind ought to have a quiet subsistence and
freedom to live upon earth; and that there should be no bondman nor
beggar in all his holy mountain.
No man shall have any more
land than he can labor himself or have others to labor with him in
love, working together, and eating bread together, as one of the tribes
or families of Israel neither giving nor taking hire.
(5)
Oliver
Cromwell commenting on the activities
of the Levellers
and the Diggers
(1649)
What is the purport of
the levelling principle but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune
as the landlord. I was by birth a gentleman. You must cut these people
in pieces or they will cut you in pieces.
(6)
J. F. C. Harrison, The Common People (1984)
On 1 April 1649 a small
group of about thirty or forty people began to dig and plant the common
land on St George's Hill in Surrey. They were mainly labouring men
and their families, and they confidently hoped that five thousand
others would join them. Their leaders were William Everard, a soldier
who had been cashiered from the New Model army on account of his radicalism,
and Gerrard Winstanley, a small cloth merchant from London who had
been ruined by the economic depression of the early 1640s and who
was then living at nearby Cobham. The intention was to cultivate the
land communally, to make the earth (in Winstanley's favourite phrase)
'a common treasury', which God had intended it to be.
(7)
A.
L. Morton, A People's History
of England (1938)
The Diggers were a small
group who preached
and attempted to practise a primitive communism based on the claim
that the land belonged to the whole people of England. This claim
was supported by the interesting historical argument that William
the Conqueror had 'turned the English out of their birthrights; and
compelled them for necessity to be servants to him and to his Norman
soldiers'. The civil war was thus regarded as the reconquest of England
by the English people. In the theological language of the time Winstanley
urged that this political reconquest needed a social revolution to
complete it and that otherwise the essential quality of monarchy remained.
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