The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth Part 15

"At this very day poor people are forced to work, in some places for 4, 5, and 6 pence a day, in other places for 8, 10, and 12 pence a day, for such small prices that now, corn being dear, their earnings cannot find them bread for their families. Yet if they steal for maintenance, the murdering Law will hang them.... Well this shows that if this be Law, it is not the Law of Righteousness.

It is a murderer; it is the Law of Covetousness and Self Love. And this Law that frights people and forces people to obey it by prisons, whips and gallows, is the very Kingdom of the Devil and Darkness, which the Creation groans under at this day."

After this characteristic outburst, he gives them the following equally characteristic advice:

"Come, make peace with the Cavaliers, your enemies, and let the oppressed go free, and let them have a livelihood. Love your enemies, and do to them as you would have had them do to you, if they had conquered you. Well, let them go in peace, and let Love wear the Crown. For I tell you and your Preachers, that Scripture which saith 'The Poor shall inherit the Earth,' is really and materially to be fulfilled. For the Earth is to be restored from the bondage of Sword-propriety, and is to become a Common Treasury in reality to the whole of mankind. For this is the work for the true Saviour to do, who is the true and faithful Leveller, even the Spirit and Power of Universal Love, that is now rising to spread itself in the whole Creation, who is the Blessing, who will spread as far as the Curse has spread, to take it off and cast it out, and who will set the Creation in peace."

The pamphlet then concludes with the following words:

"The time is very near when the people generally shall loathe and be ashamed of your Kingly Power, in your preaching, in your Laws, in your Councils, as now you are ashamed of the Levellers. I tell you Jesus Christ, who is that powerful Spirit of Love, is the Head Leveller: and as He is lifted up, He will draw all men after Him, and leave you naked and bare.... This Great Leveller, Christ our King of Righteousness in us, shall cause men to beat their swords into plough-shares, their spears into pruning-hooks, and Nations shall learn war no more. Everyone shall delight to let each other enjoy the pleasures of the Earth, and shall hold each other no more in bondage. Then what will become of your power? Truly he must be cast out as a murderer. I pity you for the torment your spirit must go through, if you be not fore-armed as you are abundantly fore-warned from all places. But I look on you as part of the Creation that must be restored; and the Spirit may give you wisdom to fore-see a danger, as he hath admonished divers of your rank already to leave those high places and to lie quiet and wait for the breaking forth of the powerful day of the Lord. Farewell, once more, Let Israel go free."

As a sort of appendix to this pamphlet there appears the following interesting doc.u.ment:

"A BILL OF ACCOUNT OF THE MOST REMARKABLE SUFFERINGS THAT THE DIGGERS HAVE MET WITH SINCE APRIL 1ST, 1649, which was the first day they began to dig and to take possession of the Commons for the Poor on George Hill in Surrey.

"1. The first time divers of the Diggers were carried prisoners into Walton Church, where some of them were struck in the Church by the bitter Professors and rude mult.i.tude; but after some time they were freed by a Justice.

"2. They were fetched by above a hundred rude people, whereof John Taylor was the leader, who took away their spades, and some of them they never had again: and carried them first to prison in Walton, and then to a Justice in Kingston, who presently dismissed them.

"3. The enemy pulled down a house which the Diggers had built upon George Hill, and cut their spades and hoes to pieces.

"4. Two Troops of Horse were sent from the General to fetch us before the Council of War, to give account of our Digging.

"5. We had another House pulled down, and our Spades cut to pieces.

"6. One of the Diggers had his head sore wounded, and a Boy beaten, and his clothes taken from him: divers being by.

"7. We had a Cart and Wheels cut in pieces, and a Mare cut over the back with a Bill when we went to fetch a load of wood from Stoak Common, to build a house upon George Hill.

"8. Divers of the Diggers were beaten upon the Hill, by William Star and John Taylor, and by men in women's apparel, and so sore wounded that some of them were fetched home in a Cart.

"9. We had another House pulled down, and the Wood they carried to Walton in a Cart.

"10. They arrested some of us, and some they cast into Prison, and from others they went about to take away their Goods, but that the Goods proved another man's, which one of the Diggers was servant to.

"11. And indeed at divers times besides, we had all our corn spoiled. For the enemy were so mad that they tumbled the earth up and down, and would suffer no Corn to grow.

"12. Another Cart and Wheels were cut to pieces, and some of our Tools taken by force from us, which we never had again.

"13. Some of the Diggers were beaten by the Gentlemen, the Sheriff looking on, and afterwards five of them were carried to White Lion Prison, and kept there about five weeks, and then let out.

"14. The Sheriff, with the Lords of Manors and Soldiers standing by, caused two or three poor men to pull down another House: and divers things were stolen from them.

"15. The next day two Soldiers and two or three Countrymen, sent by Parson Platt, pulled down another House, and turned a poor old man and his wife out of doors to lie in the fields in a cold night."

"And this is the last hitherto. And so you Priests, as you were the last that had a hand in our persecution, so it may be that our misery may rest in your hand. For a.s.sure yourselves G.o.d in Christ will not be mocked by such Hypocrites that pretend to be His nearest and dearest Servants, as you do, and yet will not suffer His hungry and naked and houseless members to live quiet by you in the Earth, by whose Blood and Monies in the Wars you are in peace.

"And now those Diggers that remain have made little Hutches to lie in, like Calf-cribs, and are cheerful, taking the spoiling of their Goods patiently, and rejoicing that they are counted worthy to suffer persecution for Righteousness' sake. And they follow their work close, and have planted divers acres of Wheat and Rye, which is come up and promises a very plentiful crop, and have resolved to preserve it by all the diligence they can. And nothing shall make them slack but want of food, which is not much now, they being all poor people, and having suffered so much in one expense or other since they began. For Poverty is their greatest burthen; and if anything do break them from the Work, it will be that."

After this confession of their weakness, and of the probable end of their work, Winstanley again bursts out into verse as follows:

"You Lordly Foes, you will rejoice this news to hear and see.

Do so, go on; but we'll rejoice much more the Truth to see.

For by our hands Truth is declared, and nothing is kept back; Our faithfulness much joy doth bring, though victuals we may lack, This trial may our G.o.d see good, to try, not us, but you; That your profession of the Truth may prove either false or true."

And after another and much worse specimen of his poetry, which we will spare our readers, he concludes as follows:

"And here I end, having put my Arm as far as my strength will go to advance Righteousness. I have writ; I have acted; I have Peace.

And now I must wait to see the Spirit do His own work in the hearts of others; and whether England shall be the first Land, or some other, wherein Truth shall sit down in triumph.

"But, O England, England, would G.o.d thou didst know the things that belong to thy peace before they be hid from thine eyes. The Spirit of Righteousness hath striven with thee, and doth yet strive with thee, and yet there is hope. Come in thou England, submit to righteousness before the voice go out, my Spirit shall strive no longer with flesh, and let not Covetousness make thee oppress the poor....

"Gentlemen of the Army, we have spoken to you; we have appealed to the Parliament; we have declared our Cause with all humility to you all; and we are Englishmen, your friends that stuck to you in your miseries, when those Lords of Manors that oppose us were wavering on both sides. Yet you have heard them, and answered their request to beat us off; and yet you would not afford us an answer.

"Yet Love and Patience shall lie down and suffer; let Pride and Covetousness stretch themselves upon their beds of ease, and forget the afflictions of Joseph, and persecute us for Righteousness'

sake, yet we will wait to see the issue. The Power of Righteousness is our G.o.d; the Globe runs round; the longest suns.h.i.+ne day ends in a dark night. Therefore to Thee, O Thou King of Righteousness, we do commit our cause. Judge Thou between us and them that strive against us, and those that deal treacherously with Thee and us; and do Thine own work, and help weak flesh in whom the Spirit is willing."

"To thee, O thou King of Righteousness, we do commit our cause. Judge Thou, and help weak flesh in whom the Spirit is willing." At this very hour the same prayer, the same cry for Justice, is still ascending to the throne of the King of Righteousness from the disinherited ma.s.ses, on whose shoulders the weight of our civilisation rests, and whom it presses down to helpless poverty, misery, and wretchedness, and who are still suffering from the same fundamental injustice against which, as we have seen, Gerrard Winstanley protested so eloquently over two hundred and fifty years ago.

FOOTNOTES:

[132:1] King's Pamphlets. British Museum, Press Mark, E. 587.

[133:1] In deference to prevailing conventionalities, we have ventured to alter this line.

[137:1] In the next chapter we shall learn something of those "Diggers that have caused scandal," and whose actions and views Winstanley found it necessary to disown.

CHAPTER XIII

A VINDICATION; A DECLARATION; AND AN APPEAL

"There is but one way to remove an evil--and that is to remove its cause. Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages are forced down while productive power grows, because land, which is the source of all wealth and the field of all labour, is monopolised.

To extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice demands they should be, the full earnings of the labourer, we must therefore subst.i.tute for the individual owners.h.i.+p of land a common owners.h.i.+p.

Nothing else will go to the cause of the evil--in nothing else is there the slightest hope."--HENRY GEORGE, 1877-1878.

In the pamphlet we have considered in the previous chapter we heard that "there have some come among the Diggers that have caused scandal," and whose ways were disowned by Winstanley and his a.s.sociates. A few weeks subsequent to its publication, Winstanley judged it necessary publicly and formally to dissociate himself and his companions from them, which he did, in a manner quite in accordance with his own principles, in a small pamphlet of some eight pages, which was published under the t.i.tle:

"A VINDICATION OF THOSE WHOSE ENDEAVOURS IS ONLY TO MAKE THE EARTH A COMMON TREASURY, CALLED DIGGERS: Or Some Reasons given by them against the immoderate use of creatures, or the excessive community of women, called Ranting or rather Renting,"[146:1]

which, after a long condemnation of "the Ranting Practice," runs as follows:

"There are only two things I must speak as an advice in Love.

"First, Let everyone that intends to live in peace set themselves with diligent labour to till, dig and plow the common and barren land, to get them bread with righteous, moderate working, among a moderate-minded people; this prevents the evil of idleness, and the danger of the Ranting power.