1607-1650: Midland Revolt, Levellers & Diggers

Christopher Hill in his book the World Turned Upside Down asked whether society would have ended up more communitarian had the Diggers and such like gained the ascendancy of ideas in the dying years of the Civil War. As it happened, the revolution consolidated the grip of the bourgeois revolution and the rise of the middle class.

On the Midland Revolt, from wikipedia -

In 1607, beginning on May Eve in Haselbech, Northamptonshire and spreading to Warwickshire and Leicestershire throughout May, riots took place as a protest against the enclosure of common land. Known as the Midland Revolt, the riots drew considerable support and were led by Captain Pouch, otherwise known as John Reynolds, a tinker said to be of Desborough, Northamptonshire. He told the protestors he had authority from the King and the Lord of Heaven to destroy enclosures and promised to protect protesters by the contents of his pouch, which he carried by his side, which he said would keep them from all harm. Thousands of people were recorded at Hillmorton, Warwickshire and at Cotesbach, Leicestershire. A curfew was imposed in the city of Leicester, as it was feared citizens would stream out of the city to join the riots. A gibbet was erected in Leicester as a warning, and was pulled down by the citizens.

Newton Rebellion: 8 June 1607Things came to a head in early June. James I issued a Proclamation and ordered his Deputy Lieutenants in Northamptonshire – where over a thousand had gathered at Newton, near Kettering, to protest against the enclosures of Thomas Tresham, pulling down hedges and filling ditches – to put down the riots. It is recorded that women and children were part of the protest.

The Treshams – both the family at Newton and their more well-known Roman Catholic cousins at nearby Rushton, the family of Francis, who had been involved two years earlier in the Gunpowder Plot and had apparently died in The Tower – were unpopular for their voracious enclosing of land. Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton was known as “the most odious man in the county”. The old Roman Catholic gentry family of the Treshams had long argued with the emerging Puritan gentry family the Montagus of Boughton about territory. Now Tresham of Newton was enclosing common land – The Brand – that had been part of Rockingham Forest.

Edward Montagu, one of the Deputy Lieutenants, had stood up against enclosure in Parliament some years earlier, but was now placed by the King in the position effectively of defending the Treshams. The local armed bands and militia refused the call-up, so the landowners were forced to use their own servants to suppress the rioters on 8 June 1607. The Royal Proclamation was read twice. The rioters continued in their actions and the gentry and their forces charged. A pitched battle ensued. 40-50 were killed and the ringleaders were hanged and quartered.

No memorial to the event or to those killed exists. Parish and Assize records have disappeared. The Tresham family declined soon after. The Montagu family went on through marriage to become the Dukes of Buccleuch, one of the biggest landowners in Britain.[1]

The Newton Rebellion was one of the last times that the peasantry of England and the gentry were in open conflict.

John Reynold’s pouch was found after he was captured. It was opened – all that was in it was a piece of green cheese. Captain Pouch was hanged.

On the Levellers, from wikipedia -

The Levellers were members of a mid 17th century English political movement, who came to prominence during the English Civil Wars. They were not a political party in the modern sense of the word, so people whom historians have labeled Levellers did not subscribe to a specific party manifesto; nevertheless, many Levellers agreed with the view expressed in the Agreement of the People. Leveller views and support were to be found in the populace of the City of London and in some regiments in the New Model Army. The Levellers came to prominence at the end of the First English Civil War and were most influential before the start of the Second Civil War. After Pride’s Purge and the execution of Charles I, power lay in the hands of the Grandees in the Army, (and to a lesser extent with the Rump Parliament). The Levellers, along with all other opposition groups, were marginalized by those in power and their influence waned. By 1650 they were no longer a serious threat to the established order.

Brief history

Origin of nameThe term ‘leveller’ had been used in seventeenth century England as a term of abuse for rural rebels. In the Midland Revolt of 1607 the name was used to refer to those who ‘levelled’ hedges in enclosure riots. The name Leveller first appears in a letter of 1 November 1647, although the 19th century historian S.R. Gardiner suggested that it was in existence as a nickname before this date (Gardiner, Great Civil War, iii. 380). However, Blair Worden, the most recent historian to publish on the subject, concluded that the 1 November date was the first recorded use of the term (see Worden, ‘The Levellers in History and Memory c.1660-1960′ in Michael Mendle, The Putney Debates of 1647 (Cambridge 2001) pp.280-282). The 1 November letter referred to extremists amongst the Army agitators: “They have given themselves a new name, viz. Levellers, for they intend to sett all things straight, and rayse a parity and community in the kingdom”.^[1] As Worden shows, the name first appeared in print in a book written by Charles I called ‘His Majesties Most Gracious Declaration’. This tract was a printing of a letter that had been read in the House of Lords on 11 November 1647. Although George Thomason did not date this tract, the last date internal to the document was Saturday 13 November 1647, suggesting a publication date of 15 November 1647 (see British Library Thomason Collection E413(15)).

At first the use of the term leveller did not refer to John Lilburne, Richard Overton and William Walwyn per se but referred to a faction of New Model Army agitators and their London supporters who were allegedly plotting to assassinate the king. The books published during 1647-1648 often repeat this terminological uncertainty, but gradually, the term ‘Leveller’ attached to Lilburne, Overton, Walwyn and their ‘faction’. This public ‘identification’ was largely due to the aspersions cast by Marchamont Nedham, the author of the newspaper Mercurius Pragmaticus. Lilburne, along with John Wildman later thought that the name was invented by Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton during the Putney Debates of late October and early November 1647 (see Worden op.cit, p.282). The charge of levelling was a charge that they vehemently denied, but ironically after their arrest and imprisonment in 1649 four of the ‘Leveller’ leaders- Thomas Prince, William Walwyn, Richard Overton and John Lilburne signed a manifesto which called themselves Levellers.

[edit] Political ambitions

The Levellers had no coherent agenda^{[citation needed]}. Before 1649, there is no record of their having sat down together to develop a manifesto. However, they were committed broadly to the abolition of corruption within the Parliamentary and judicial process, toleration of religious differences, the translation of law into the common tongue, and some kind of expansion of the suffrage. These aims fluctuated. Some Levellers, like John Lilburne, argued that the English Common law, particularly Magna Carta, were the foundation of English rights and liberties, but others, like William Walwyn, compared Magna Carta to a ‘mess of potage’.

Foundation

Levellers tended to hold fast to a notion of “natural rights” that had been violated by the king’s side in the Civil Wars. At the Putney Debates in 1647, Colonel Rainborough defended natural rights as coming from the law of God expressed in the Bible. Richard Overton considered that liberty was an innate property of every person. Michael Mendle has demonstrated the development of Leveller ideas from elements of early Parliamentarian thought as expressed by men such as Henry Parker.

Timeline

In July 1645, John Lilburne was imprisoned for denouncing Members of Parliament who lived in comfort while the common soldiers fought and died for the Parliamentary cause. His offence was slandering William Lenthall, the Speaker of the House of Commons, whom he accused of corresponding with Royalists. He was freed in October after a petition requesting his release, and signed by over two thousand leading London citizens, was presented to the House of Commons.

In July 1646, Lilburne was imprisoned again, this time in the Tower of London, for denouncing his former army commander the Earl of Manchester as a Royalist sympathiser, because he had protected an officer who had been charged with treason. It was the campaigns to free Lilburne from prison which spawned the movement known as the Levellers. Richard Overton was arrested in August 1646 for publishing a pamphlet attacking the House of Lords. During his imprisonment he wrote an influential Leveller Manifesto, An Arrow Against All Tyrants and Tyranny.^[2]

The soldiers in the New Model Army elected Agitators from each regiment to represent them: these were recognised by the Army’s commanders and had a seat on the General Council. However, by September 1647 at least five regiments of Cavalry had elected new unofficial agitators and produce a pamphlet called The Case of the Army truly stated. This was present to the commander-in-chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax, on 18 October 1647. In this they demanded a dissolution of Parliament within a year and substantial changes to the constitution of future parliaments, which were to be regulated by an unalterable “law paramount”.^[1]

The senior officers in the Army (nicknamed “Grandees“) were incensed by the Case of the Army and ordered the unofficial Agitators to give an account of their principles before the General Council. These debates are known as the Putney Debates, and they were held in St. Mary’s Church, Putney, in the county of Surrey, between October 28 and November 11, 1647. The Agitators were assisted by some civilians, notably John Wildman and Maximillian Petty, who had been connected to the Army as civilian advisers since July 1647. On 28 October the Agitator Robert Everard presented a document entitled An Agreement of the People^[3]. This manifesto, which was inherently republican and democratic, appeared to conflict with the terms of settlement that had already been endorsed by the General Council of the Army in July entitled The Heads of the Proposals^[4]. The Heads of Proposals contained many demands that looked towards social justice but relied on the King agreeing to them and bringing those proposals into law through acts of Parliament. The new Agitators, who were inherently distrustful of the King, demanded that England be settled from ‘the bottom up’ rather than the ‘top down’ by giving the vote to most adult males. The debates help to throw light on the areas on which supporters of the Parliamentarian side agreed and those on which they differed. For example, Ireton asked whether the phrase in the Agreement “according to the number of the inhabitants” gave a foreigner just arrived in England and resident in a property the right to vote? He extends this argument to say that a person must have a “permanent interest of this kingdom” to be entitled to vote. He then argued that “permanent interest” means owning property, which is where he and the Levellers disagreed. To modern eyes the debates seem to draw heavily on the Bible to lay out certain basic principles, but this is to be expected in an age still racked by religious upheavals in the aftermath of the reformation, and particularly in an army where soldiers were, in part, selected for their religious zeal. It is notable that John Wildman, resisted religious language arguing that the Bible produced no model for civil government and that reason should be the basis of any future settlement.

The Corkbush Field rendezvous on November 17, 1647, was the first of three rendezvous to take place as agreed in the Putney Debates. The Army commanders Thomas Fairfax and Cromwell were worried at the strength of support that the Levellers had in the Army, so they decided to impose The Heads of the Proposals as the army’s manifesto instead of the Levellers’ Agreement of the People. When some refused to accept this, because they wanted the army to adopt the Levellers’ document, they were arrested, and one of the ringleaders, Private Richard Arnold, was executed. At the other two rendezvous, the troops who were summoned agreed to the manifesto without further protest.

The Levellers’ largest petition, entitled To The Right Honovrable The Commons Of England, was presented to Parliament on September 11, 1648 after amassing signatories including about a third of all Londoners.^[5][6]

On October 30, 1648, Thomas Rainsborough was killed. He was a Member of Parliament and also a Leveller leader who had spoken at the Putney Debates. His funeral was the occasion for a large Leveller-led demonstration in London, with thousands of mourners wearing the Levellers’ ribbons of sea-green and bunches of rosemary for remembrance in their hats.

On January 20, 1649 a version of the Agreement of the People that had been drawn up in October 1647 for the Army Council and subsequently modified, was presented to the House of Commons.^[7]

At the end of January 1649, Charles I of England was tried and executed for treason against the people. In February, the Grandees banned petitions to Parliament by soldiers. In March, eight Leveller troopers went to the Commander-in-Chief of the New Model Army, Thomas Fairfax, and demanded the restoration of the right to petition. Five of them were cashiered out of the army.

In April three hundred infantrymen of Colonel John Hewson‘s regiment, who declared that they would not serve in Ireland until the Levellers’ programme had been realised, were cashiered without arrears of pay, which was the threat that had been used to quell the mutiny at the Corkbush Field rendezvous. Later the same month, in the Bishopsgate mutiny, soldiers of the regiment of Colonel Edward Whalley stationed in Bishopsgate London made demands similar to those of Hewson’s regiment; they were ordered out of London. When they refused to go, fifteen soldiers were arrested and court martialled, of whom six were sentenced to death. Of this six, five were subsequently pardoned while Robert Lockyer (or Lockier), a former Levellers agitator, was hanged April 27, 1649. “At his burial a thousand men, in files, preceded the corpse, which was adorned with bunches of rosemary dipped in blood; on each side rode three trumpeters, and behind was led the trooper’s horse, covered with mourning; some thousands of men and women followed with black and green ribbons on their heads and breasts, and were received at the grave by a numerous crowd of the inhabitants of London and Westminster.” ^[8]

In 1649, Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne, William Walwyn, Thomas Prince, and Richard Overton were imprisoned in the Tower of London by the Council of State (see above). It was while the leaders of the Levellers were being held in the Tower that they wrote an outline of the reforms the Levellers wanted, in a pamphlet entitled An Agreement Of The Free People Of England (written on May 1, 1649). It includes reforms that have since been made law in England such as the right to silence, and others, such as an elected judiciary, that have not.^[9]

Commemoration plaque for two Levellers in Gloucester Green, Oxford.

Shortly afterwards Cromwell attacked the “Banbury mutineers“, 400 troopers who supported the Levellers and who were commanded by Captain William Thompson.^[10][11] Several mutineers were killed in the skirmish, Captain Thompson escaped only to be killed a few days later in another skirmish near the Diggers community at Wellingborough. The three other leaders – William Thompson’s brother, Corporal Perkins, and John Church – were shot May 17, 1649. This destroyed the Leveller’s support base in the New Model Army, which by this time was the major power in the land. Although Walwyn and Overton were released from the Tower, and Lilburne was tried and acquitted, the Leveller cause had effectively been crushed.

[edit] Other usage

In 1724 there was a rising against enclosures in Galloway, and a number of men who took part in it were called “Levellers” or “Dykebreakers” (A. Lang, History of Scotland, vol. iv). The word was also used in Ireland during the eighteenth century to describe a secret revolutionary society similar to the Whiteboys.

See also

• Good Old Cause
• Edward Sexby (1616-1658); English Puritan, soldier and Leveller; he turned against Cromwell and plotted his assassination
• 17th century denominations in England
• Kett’s Rebellion (1549)
• Contributions to liberal theory
• United States Bill of Rights
• Hugo Black, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States who cited John Lilburne in his opinions beginning in 1949

[edit] Further reading

• Annis, Ben; Have Historians Exaggerated the Significance of Radical Movements in the English Revolution?
• Anderson, Angela; Cromwell and the Levellers interviewed as part of the preparation for Cromwell: New Model Englishman by Channel 4
• Selected works of the Levellers
• John Lilburne and the Levellers
• BBC: The Levellers (17th century)
• 1642-52: Levellers and Diggers in the English Revolution
• A Time-line for the Levellers
• The Levellers: Overton, Walwyn and Lilburne Note 1 in this link includes an explanation of the origins of the word Levellers.
• Hoile, David; The Levellers: Libertarian Radicalism and the English Civil War

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ ^{a b} “Levellers” article in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition [1]
2. ^ An arrow against all tyrants Richard Overton, 12 October 1646
3. ^ The Agreement of the People as presented to the Council of the Army October 1647
4. ^ The Heads of the Proposals offered by the Army
5. ^ To The Right Honovrable The Commons Of England in Parliament assembled. The humble Petition of Thousands wel-affected persons inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark Hamblets, and places adjacent.
6. ^ To the right honovrable, the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament (search page for library locations containing the document).
7. ^ Agreement of the People and the places therewith incorporated, for a secure and present peace, upon grounds of common right, freedom and safety, as presented to Parliament in January 1649
8. ^ The History of England: Chapter IV: The Commonwealth by John Lingard
9. ^ Agreement of the Free People, extended version from the imprisonment of the Leveller leaders, May 1649
10. ^ The testimony of the Burford Levellers
11. ^ THE Levellers (Falsely so called) Vindicated, OR THE CASE Of the twelve Troops (which by Treachery in a Treaty) was lately surprised, and defeated at Burford

According to Schama (episode IX dvd history), many protested against the imprisoning of the Levellers, especially wives of Levellers: women who, according to Puritanism, were meant to be silent. E.g. wife of Lilburne, or Catherine Chidley(?). So much for Cromwell’s New Jerusalem.

This about the Diggers, or ‘True Levellers’, from wikipedia –

The Diggers were an English group, begun by Gerrard Winstanley as True Levellers in 1649, who became known as “Diggers” due to their activities.
Their original name came from their belief in economic equality based upon a specific passage in the Book of Acts.[1] The Diggers attempted to reform (by “levelling” real property) the existing social order with an agrarian lifestyle based upon their ideas for the creation of small egalitarian rural communities. They were one of a number of nonconformist dissenting groups that emerged around this time.

The year 1649 was a time of great social unrest in England. The Parliamentary victors of the First English Civil War failed to negotiate a constitutional settlement with the defeated King Charles I. When members of Parliament and the Grandees in the New Model Army were faced with Charles’ perceived duplicity, they reluctantly tried and executed him.
Government through the King’s Privy Council was replaced with a new body called the Council of State, which due to fundamental disagreements within a weakened Parliament was dominated by the Army. Many people were active in politics, suggesting alternative forms of government to replace the old order. These ranged from Royalists, who wished to place King Charles II on the throne; men like Oliver Cromwell, who wished to govern with a Parliament voted in by an electorate based on property, similar to that which was enfranchised before the civil war; agitators called Levellers, influenced by the writings of John Lilburne, who wanted parliamentary government based on an electorate of every male head of a household; Fifth Monarchy Men, who advocated a theocracy; and the Diggers and led by Winstanley, who advocated a more radical solution.
[edit]Theory

Winstanley and fourteen others published a pamphlet[2] in which they called themselves the True Levellers to distinguish their ideas from the Levellers. Once they put their idea into practice and started to cultivate common land, they became known as “Diggers” by both opponents and supporters. The Diggers’ beliefs were informed by Gerrard Winstanley’s writings, which encompassed a worldview that envisioned an ecological interrelationship between humans and nature, acknowledging the inherent connections between people and their surroundings.
An undercurrent of political thought which has run through English society for many generations and resurfaced from time to time (for example, during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381) was present in some of the political factions of the 1600s, including those who formed the Diggers, and held the common belief that England had become subjugated by the “Norman Yoke.” This legend offered an explanation that at one time a golden Era had existed in England before the Norman Conquest in 1066. From the conquest on, the Diggers argued, the “common people of England” had been robbed of their birthrights and exploited by a foreign ruling class.
More important was the democratic, even anarchist aspect of the Diggers’ beliefs. They contended that if only the common people of England would form themselves into self-supporting communes, there would be no place in such a society for the ruling classes. The ruling elite would be forced to join the communes or starve, as there would no longer be anyone left to hire to work their fields or pay rent to them for use of their property.
[edit]Practice

[edit]St. George’s Hill, Weybridge, Surrey
The Council of State received a letter in April 1649 reporting that several individuals had begun to plant vegetables in common land on Saint George’s Hill, Weybridge near Cobham, Surrey at a time when food prices reached an all-time high. Sanders reported that they had invited “all to come in and help them, and promise them meat, drink, and clothes.” Their intentions were to pull down all enclosures and cause the local populace to come and work with them. They claimed that their number would be several thousand within ten days. “It is feared they have some design in hand.” In the same month, the Diggers issued their most famous pamphlet and manifesto, called “The True Levellers Standard Advanced.”[2]
At the behest of the local landowners, the commander of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax, duly arrived with his troops and interviewed Winstanley and another prominent member of the Diggers, William Everard. Everard was astute enough to see that the Diggers were in serious trouble and soon left the group. Having concluded that they were doing no harm, Fairfax advised the local landowners to use the courts.
Winstanley, however, true to his convictions, remained and complained about the treatment they received. The harassment from the Lord of the Manor, Francis Drake (not Francis Drake; c. 1540 – 1596), was both deliberate and systematic: he organised gangs in an attack on the Diggers, including numerous beatings and an arsonous attack on one of the communal houses. Following a court case, in which the Diggers were forbidden to speak in their own defence, they were found guilty of being Ranters, a radical sect associated with liberal sexuality (though in fact Winstanley had reprimanded Ranter Laurence Clarkson for his sexual practices).[3][4] Having lost the court case, if they had not left the land, then the army could have been used to enforce the law and evict them; so they abandoned St George’s Hill in August 1649, much to the relief of the local freeholders.
[edit]Little Heath near Cobham, Surrey
Some of the evicted Diggers moved a short distance to Little Heath. Eleven acres (45,000 m²) were cultivated, six houses built, winter crops harvested, and several pamphlets published. After initially expressing some sympathy for them, the local lord of the manor of Cobham, Parson John Platt, became their chief enemy. He used his power to stop local people helping them and he organised attacks on the Diggers and their property. By April 1650, Platt and other local landowners succeeded in driving the Diggers from Little Heath.
[edit]Wellingborough, Northamptonshire
There was another community of Diggers close to Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. In 1650, the community published a declaration which started:
“A Declaration of the Grounds and Reasons why we the Poor Inhabitants of the Town of Wellingborrow, in the County of Northampton, have begun and give consent to dig up, manure and sow Corn upon the Common, and waste ground, called Bareshanke belonging to the Inhabitants of Wellinborrow, by those that have Subscribed and hundreds more that give Consent….”[5].
This colony was probably founded as a result of contact with the Surrey Diggers. In late March 1650 four emissaries from the Surrey colony were arrested in Buckinghamshire bearing a letter signed by the Surrey Diggers including Gerrard Winstanley and Robert Coster inciting people to start Digger colonies and to provide money for the Surrey Diggers. According to the newspaper ‘A Perfect Diurnall’ the emissaries had travelled a circuit through the counties of Surrey, Middlesex, Herfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire before being apprehended (see Keith Thomas, ‘Another Digger Broadside’ Past and Present No.42, (1969) pp.57-68).
On April 15 1650 the Council of State ordered Mr Pentlow, a justice of the peace for Northamptonshire to proceed against ‘the Levellers in those parts’ and to have them tried at the next Quarter Session (see Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1650 (London, 1876) p.106). The Iver Diggers recorded that, nine of the Wellingborough Diggers were arrested and imprisoned in Northampton jail and although no charges could be proved against them the justice refused to release them.
Captain William Thompson, the leader of the failed “Banbury mutiny,” was killed in a skirmish close to the community by soldiers loyal to Oliver Cromwell in May 1649.
[edit]Iver, Buckinghamshire
Another colony of Diggers connected to the Surrey and Wellingborough colony was set up in Iver, Buckinghamshire about 14 miles from the Surrey Diggers colony at St George’s Hill (see Keith Thomas, ‘Another Digger Broadside’ Past and Present No.42, (1969) pp.57-68). The Iver Diggers “Declaration of the grounds and Reasons, why we the poor Inhabitants of the Parrish of Iver in Buckinghamshire …”[6] revealed that there were further Digger colonies in Barnet in Hertfordshire, Enfield in Middlesex, Dunstable in Bedfordshire, Bosworth in Gloucestershire and a further colony in Nottinghamshire. It also revealed that after the failure of the Surrey colony the Diggers had left their children to be cared for by parish funds.
[edit]End of the Movement
The Digger colonies, consisting in all of only about 100-200 people throughout England, were finished by 1651. Reasons for the fall of the movement may have been due to the efforts of local landowners backed by the Council of State to crush the Digger colonies whenever they arose.
[edit]Writings

The Mysterie of God concerning the whole Creation, Mankind Gerrard Winstanley (1648)
The Breaking of the Day of God (May 20, 1648)
The Saints Paradise (Ca. 1648)
Truth Lifting up its Head above Scandals (1649, Dedication dated October 16, 1648)
The New Law Of Righteousness (January 26, 1649)
The True Levellers Standard A D V A N C E D: or, The State of Community opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men William Everard, John Palmer, John South, John Courton. William Taylor, Christopher Clifford, John Barker. Gerrard Winstanley, Richard Goodgroome, Thomas Starre, William Hoggrill, Robert Sawyer, Thomas Eder, Henry Bickerstaffe, John Taylor, &c. (April 20, 1649)
A DECLARATION FROM THE Poor oppressed People OF ENGLAND, DIRECTED To all that call themselves, or are called Lords of Manors, through this NATION… Gerrard Winstanley, John Coulton, John Palmer, Thomas Star ,Samuel Webb, John Hayman, Thomas Edcer, William Hogrill, Daniel Weeden, Richard Wheeler, Nathaniel Yates, William Clifford, John Harrison, Thomas Hayden, James Hall. James Manley, Thomas Barnard, John South, Robert Sayer, Christopher Clifford, John Beechee, William Coomes, Christopher Boncher, Richard Taylor, Urian Worthington, Nathaniel Holcombe, Giles Childe (senior), John Webb, Thomas Yarwel, William Bonnington. John Ash, Ralph Ayer, John Pra, John Wilkinson, Anthony Spire, Thomas East, Allen Brown, Edward Parret, Richard Gray, John Mordy, John Bachilor, William Childe, William Hatham, Edward Wicher, William Tench.(June 1, 1649).
, A LETTER TO The Lord Fairfax, AND His Councell of War, WITH Divers Questions to the Lawyers, and Ministers: Proving it an undeniable Equity, That the common People ought to dig, plow, plant and dwell upon the Commons, with-out hiring them, or paying Rent to any. On the behalf of those who have begun to dig upon George-Hill in Surrey. Gerrard Winstanly (June 9, 1649)
A Declaration of The bloudie and unchristian acting of William Star and John Taylor of Walton (June 22, 1649)
An Appeal To the House of Commons (July 11, 1649)
A Watch-Word to the City of London, and the Armie (August 26, 1649)
To His Excellency the Lord Fairfax and the Counsell of Warre (December 1649)
To My Lord Generall and his Councell of Warr (December 8, 1649)
The Decleration and Standard Of the Levellers of EnglandWilliam Everard
Several Pieces gathered into one volume (1650, Preface dated December 20, 1649)
A New-yeers Gift FOR THE PARLIAMENT AND ARMIE: SHEWING, What the KINGLY Power is; And that the CAUSE of those They call DIGGERS Gerrard Winstanley (January 1, 1650)
Englands Spirit Unfoulded (Ca. February or March, 1650)
A Vindication of those … called Diggers (March 4, 1650)
Fire in the Bush (March 19, 1650)
An Appeale to all Englishmen (March 26, 1650)
A Letter taken at Wellingborough (March, 1650)
An Humble Request, to the Ministers of both Universities, and to all Lawyers in every Inns-a-court (April 9, 1650)
Letter to Lady Eleanor Davies (December 4, 1650)
The Law Of Freedom in a Platform, or True Magistracy Restored (1652)
[edit]Diggers influence on literature and popular culture

“The World Turned Upside Down”, by Rosselson, Leon – 1975. (A song about the Diggers and their activities on St. George’s Hill in 1649) – performed by: Bragg, Billy, Between The Wars EP, 1985; Chumbawamba on English Rebel Songs 1381-1984 (although this is not the same song, but merely shares the title), 1988; Dick Gaughan on Handful of Earth, 1981; Attila the Stockbroker with Barnstormer on The Siege of Shoreham, 1996; Seattle Celt-rock band Coventry on the album Red Hair and Black Leather, 2005; Clandestine (band), a Houston based Celtic group on their To Anybody At All album, 1999; and The Fagans, an Australian folk group, on their album, Turning Fine, 2002.
Winstanley, a fictionalized movie portrait of the Diggers, directed by Brownlow, Kevin. 1975. (Based upon the novel Comrade Jacob by Caute, David.)
Rev Hammer’s Freeborn John (The Story of John Lilburne – The Leader of the Levellers), by Rev Hammer (and company). – Cooking Vinyl CD. London. 1997. (This production is a recent example of the confusion that has been created between the Levellers and True Levellers.)
Ringolevio (A life played for keeps) by Grogan, Emmett. – Little Brown & Company, 1972. Library of Congress No.78-186970. (The story of the revival of the Diggers in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, California and New York during the mid-1960s. Grogan was one of the leaders of this revival. He sang backup with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on “Mr. Tambourine Man”, written by Bob Dylan.)
Truth lifting up its head above scandals – title track of a CD by the noise duo Coin Gutter. Vanity Records, 2001.
As Meat Loves Salt by McCann, Maria, Harcourt, 2001 (ISBN 0-15-601226-X) deals in part with the founding and destruction of a fictional Digger colony at Page Common near London.
[edit]References

Laurence, Ann, “Two Ranter Poems” (The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 31, No. 121. [February, 1980], 56-59), 57.
Vann, Richard T., “The Later Life of Gerrard Winstanley” (Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 26, No. 1. (January – March, 1965), 133-136), 133.
[edit]Further reading

Books
Berens, Lewis Henry. The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth, available at Project Gutenberg.
Hill, Christopher (1972). “Levellers and True Levellers”, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Temple Smith. ISBN 0-85117-025-0.
Petegorsky, David W. [1940] (1995). Left-wing Democracy in the English Civil War: Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger Movement. Stroud: Alan Sutton. ISBN 0-7509-1053-4.
Articles
Bernstein, Eduard. Chapter IX: The “True” Levellers and Their Practical Communism from Cromwell and Communism
Fox, Jim. 1642-52: Levellers and Diggers in the English Revolution, website libcom.org, from Revolutions Per Minute
Staff at Elmbridge Museum. Surrey Diggers Trail, facsimile at The Diggers Heritage Project
Staff. The English Diggers (1649-50), Digger Archives
Staff. English Dissenters: Diggers, ExLibris
Staff. An index page: Diggers, Ranters and other radical Puritans at Street Corner Society
[edit]Footnotes

^ The “The True Levellers Standard A D V A N C E D” specifically mentions Act. 4.32
^ a b The True Levellers Standard A D V A N C E D: or, The State of Community opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men
^ Laurence, Ann, “Two Ranter Poems” (The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 31, No. 121. [February, 1980], 56-59), 57.
^ Vann, Richard T., “The Later Life of Gerrard Winstanley” (Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 26, No. 1. (January – March, 1965), 133-136), 133.
^ A Declaration by the Diggers of Wellingborough – 1650
^ A Declaration of the Grounds and Reasons (Iver) from Hopton, Andrew, ed. Digger Tracts, 1649-50. London: Aporia, 1989. (transcribed by Clifford Stetner)