were doing anything to set up this new constitution, Lilburne proceeded
to lay a remonstrance before parliament, and to follow this up by his
two pamphlets on “England’s New Chains.” He now urged that “committees
of short continuance” should supersede the Council of State, that the
Self-denying Ordinance should be put in force, “seeing how dangerous it
was for one and the same persons to be continued long in the highest
commands of a military power,”[118] that a new parliament should be
elected, and the “Agreement of the People” proceeded with heartily.
At the same time he called for army reform by a reconstruction of the
General Council and the election of agitators.
The expulsion of five troopers from the army for directly petitioning
parliament provoked another pamphlet--“The Hunting of the Foxes from
Newmarket to Whitehall by five small beagles late of the army.” The
argument here was that Cromwell, Ireton, and Harrison ruled the council
of officers, and that the council of officers ruled parliament and the
nation. “The old king’s person and the old lords are but removed, and a
new king and new lords with the commons are in one House, and so we are
under a more absolute arbitrary monarchy than before.”
There was only one answer to be made to Lilburne’s pen, and that was
to arrest the man who held it, for the commonwealth had no one on its
side who could reply to him. At the end of March Lilburne and three
of his supporters, Walwyn, Prince, and Richard Overton were arrested
as traitors, “England’s New Chains” having been voted by parliament
seditious and destructive of the government, and were committed to the
Tower to await trial.
At once a petition was got up and signed by 80,000 persons for
Lilburne’s release, and a fortnight later--April 18th--another petition
was taken to the bar of the House of Commons to the same effect.
Parliament promised that the prisoners should have a legal trial, but
declared the course of justice must not be interfered with. A large
deputation of women also appeared at Westminster on April 23rd with a
similar petition; but these were forbidden to enter the House, and,
admonished by members to “go home and wash their dishes,” answered they
would soon have no dishes to wash.[119]
Lilburne was not brought to trial till October, and in the six months’
interval, though the output of democratic pamphlets continued from
the Tower, the Leveller movement in the army ended in open mutiny and
defeat.
Carlyle tells the story accurately enough of the mutiny in Whalley’s
regiment in Bishopsgate, London, on April 25th:
They want this and that; they seize their colours from the
cornet, who is lodged at the “Bull” there; the general
(Fairfax) and lieutenant-general (Cromwell) have to hasten
thither, quell them, pack them forth on their march, seizing
fifteen of them first to be tried by court-martial. Tried by
instant court-martial, five of them are found guilty, doomed
to die, but pardoned; and one of them, Trooper Lockyer, is
doomed and not pardoned.[120] Trooper Lockyer is shot in
Paul’s Churchyard on the morrow. A very brave young man, they
say; though but three-and-twenty. “He has served seven years
in these wars,” ever since the wars began. “Religious,” too,
“of excellent parts and much beloved”; but with hot notions
as to human freedom, and the rate at which the milleniums are
attainable. Poor Lockyer! He falls shot in Paul’s Churchyard
on Friday, amid the tears of men and women. Lockyer’s corpse
is watched and wept over, not without prayer, in the eastern
regions of the city, till a new week come; and on Monday, this
is what we see advancing westward by way of funeral to him:
About one thousand went before the corpse, five or six in a
file; the corpse was then brought, with six trumpets sounding
a soldier’s knell, then the trooper’s horse came, clothed all
over in mourning, and led by a footman. The corpse was adorned
with bundles of rosemary, one half stained in blood, and the
sword of the deceased along with them. Some thousands followed
in ranks and files, all had sea-green and black ribbon tied on
their hats and to their breasts, and the women brought up the
rear.
At the new churchyard at Westminster some thousands more of the
better sort met them, who thought not fit to march through the
city. Many looked upon this funeral as an affront to parliament
and the army; others called these people “Levellers”; but they
took no notice of any of them.[121]
In May one Corporal William Thompson rallied a body of Levellers at
Banbury, published a manifesto called “England’s Standard Advanced,”
and inveighed against the tyranny of courts-martial. Overwhelmed by
force of numbers, Thompson escaped, and later died fighting alone near
Wellingborough. Some twenty of his followers joined the mutineers of
Scrope’s regiment at Salisbury. Numbering some 1,200, these Levellers
made their way by Marlborough and Wantage to Burford. Here Cromwell
came up with the mutineers, and surprised them at midnight. Resistance
was hopeless, and the majority at once surrendered. All were pardoned
except Cornet Thompson (brother to William), and two corporals--Church
and Perkins--who showed neither fear nor admitted any wrong on their
part. These three men were shot in Burford churchyard on May 15th,[122]
and with their deaths the Leveller movement was at an end.
But Lilburne was unsubdued. His new “Agreement of the Free People,”
published on May 1st, called for annual parliaments elected by manhood
suffrage--pensioners, militant royalists, and lawyers excluded--and
for the free election of unendowed church ministers in each parish.
At the same time he disclaimed all connection with Winstanley’s
“Diggers”--political reform was Lilburne’s demand.[123]
Released on bail in July, Lilburne issued in August an “Impeachment for
High Treason against Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law, James Ireton.”
In this his hatred of government by the army compels the admission that
monarchy is preferable to a military despotism: “If we must have a
king, I for my part would rather have the prince than any man in the
world.... For the present army to set up the pretended Saint Oliver or
any other as their elected king, there will be nothing thereby from the
beginning of the chapter to the end thereof but wars and the cutting
of throats year after year; yea, and the absolute keeping up of a
perpetual army under which the people are absolute and perfect slaves.”
Thereupon, instead of bringing him to trial, the government merely
issued a warrant for Lilburne’s arrest. The agitator met this by
a stronger manifesto, “An Outcry of the Young Men and Apprentices
of London,” calling on the army to rise in support of a democratic
parliament and to vindicate the men executed at Burford. Some response
came from the garrison at Oxford, who summoned their officers to join
in the demand for a free parliament, but no success attended this step.
At last in October Lilburne was brought to trial at the Guildhall,
not on the charge for which he had been first committed to the Tower
in March, but for the “treason” of his later pamphlets. The trial is
memorable for Lilburne’s demand that counsel should be assigned to
him in the event of legal technicalities arising, and for his bidding
the jury remember they were judges of law as well as of fact. His
real defence lay in the question he had put so often: Was England to
be governed by the sword and a mock parliament, or by duly elected
representatives of the People? The jury understood that Lilburne was on
trial for putting that question, and, agreeing with him, they acquitted
him. The verdict was received with tremendous applause, and “a loud and
unanimous shout” of triumph went up from the citizens of London in the
Guildhall.[124]
In December Lilburne was elected to the common council of the city,
but parliament promptly declared the election void. “Fiercely as
Lilburne attacked Cromwell, there was at times considerable liking
between the two men, and they met on friendly terms before Cromwell
went to Scotland in 1650. Cromwell assured Lilburne of his desire
to make England enjoy the real fruit of all the army’s promises and
declarations,” and friendly relations lasted till Cromwell’s return.
But, in Cromwell’s absence, Lilburne charged Hazlerigg with corruption
in the administration of justice concerning a disputed colliery lease
in Durham, and parliament took up the matter. In January, 1652, it
declared Lilburne’s petition for redress a libel, and imposed a fine of
£7,000 with a sentence of banishment for life.
This proceeding by parliament revived the methods of the Star Chamber
in imposing a conviction and a sentence without trial, but the House of
Commons was determined to stop Lilburne’s activities at all cost.
Cromwell made no effort to hinder the conviction, and Lilburne insisted
that Cromwell’s professions of friendship were hypocritical, and that
the general himself was responsible for the sentence.
For the time Lilburne retired to Holland, where he discussed favourably
the chances of a royalist restoration. But on the expulsion of the
Rump of the Long Parliament the agitator at once wrote off to Cromwell
for permission to return to England, and getting no answer crossed
to London in June, 1653, and settled in lodgings in Moorfields. He
petitioned Cromwell and the Council of State for leave to remain
unmolested, promising to live peacefully, but Cromwell, with the whole
government on his shoulders, had no willingness to incur the risk
Lilburne and his doctrine of popular rights involved to the safety of
the State.
Lilburne was promptly arrested by Cromwell’s order and brought to trial
at the Old Bailey on July 13th. The government case was that he had
returned to England knowing that a sentence of death was decreed by
parliament if he broke his exile.
Lilburne’s defence, in the main, was that the parliament which had
passed sentence was dead, and that if Cromwell had acted justly in
dissolving it, then its unjust actions ought not to be maintained; if
Cromwell had acted unjustly, why was he not punished?
Again the jury acquitted him, and again the people of London expressed
their satisfaction at the verdict, “the very soldiers sent to guard the
court joining in the shouts, and beating their drums and sounding their
trumpets as they passed along the streets to their quarters.”
But “for the peace of the nation” Cromwell would not let Lilburne be at
large. Back in the Tower, then at Guernsey, and then in Dover Castle
for more than two years Lilburne was a prisoner.
His health was broken in 1656, and consumption had set in. Death was
near, and for John Lilburne the days of “carnal sword-fighting and
fleshly hustlings and contests” were over. He wrote to Cromwell from
Dover Castle telling the Lord Protector of his conversion to Quakerism,
and Cromwell, assured that there was to be no more agitation from
“Free-Born John,” granted his release, and a pension of 40s. a week.
The battle was over for John Lilburne, liberty could not stay the
hand of death. The many imprisonments and close confinements had done
their work, and rapid consumption marked down the man who had stood up
against the whole might of Cromwell’s government.
John Lilburne died at Eltham in August, 1657, at the age of forty. A
year later, and his old antagonist, and older comrade-in-arms, Oliver
Cromwell, Lord Protector, was dead, and the Commonwealth government
which had contemned the agitation for democracy was doomed.
Winstanley the Digger
1649–1650
AUTHORITIES: Winstanley’s Pamphlets; Whitelocke--_Memorial of English
Affairs_; Clarke Papers; L. H. Berens--_Digger Movement in the days of
the Commonwealth_.
WINSTANLEY THE DIGGER
1649–1650.
In the spring of 1649, the “Digger” movement revealed a strange
and unexpected manifestation of the democratic spirit in England.
Free communism had been the creed of more than one Protestant sect
on the continent in the sixteenth century, and the Anabaptists had
been conspicuously identified with the proposal. But in England John
Lilburne and the Levellers were attacking the parliamentary government
in the name of political democracy, and social agitation had been
unknown since the Norfolk Rising of 1549, save for a riot against land
enclosures at the beginning of James I.’s reign.
Gerrard Winstanley was the leader at the sudden outbreak of social
discontent, and his “Digger” movement was to end this discontent and
all other miseries of the time by getting rid of enclosures of common
lands, and allowing people to plough these common lands and waste
spaces, “that all may feed upon the crops of the earth, and the burden
of poverty be removed.”
Little is known of Winstanley, and the movement is shortlived. The
“Diggers” never threatened the safety of the Commonwealth government
as Lilburne and the Levellers did, for Winstanley’s social doctrine
included the non-resistance principles that later found exponents
in the Society of Friends, and the agrarian revolution he preached
could hardly be accomplished without force of arms. What is notable
about Winstanley is his witness to the fact that a social question
existed--that he saw beyond the Civil War, and the strife for political
liberties, a great mass of poverty unheeded; and seeing the miseries of
his fellows resolutely thought out some cure for their distress, and
did his best, as it seemed to him, to get this cure adopted.
Neither the Council of State nor the republican army had time or
patience for Winstanley’s schemes, and the “Diggers” were dispersed
with little trouble; but Winstanley’s religious teaching was to
exercise considerable influence in the world when George Fox became its
preacher, and his social teaching on the land question has thousands of
disciples in Great Britain to-day.
Gerrard Winstanley was born in Lancashire in 1609.[125] He seems to
have settled in London as a small trader and to have lost what money he
had in business--cheated he says, “in the thieving art of buying and
selling, and by the burdens of and for the soldiery in the beginning
of the war”--so that he was obliged “to accept of the good-will of
friends to live a country life.” In the country Winstanley ponders the
source of the ills around him, and, having some considerable gift of
expression, gives utterance, in a number of pamphlets, to a cry for
reform, and gathers followers.
In December, 1648, Winstanley (or one of his friends) issued the
earliest of the Digger publications under the title of “Light Shining
in Buckinghamshire--A Discovery of the Main Ground, Original Cause
of all the Slavery of the World, but chiefly in England. Presented
by way of a Declaration of many of the Well-affected in that County,
to all their poor oppressed Countrymen in England. And also to the
consideration of the present army under the conduct of the Lord
Fairfax.”
A month later and Winstanley publishes his “New Law of Righteousness:
Budding forth to restore the whole Creation from the Bondage of the
Curse. Or a glimpse of the new Heaven and the new Earth, wherein dwells
Righteousness.” Here, with a good deal of mystical religious phrasing
(the author explains that when he was in a trance the message came
to him), Winstanley proclaims his calling and unfolds his agrarian
proposals:
And when the Lord doth show unto me the place and manner, how
He will have us that are called common people manure and work
upon the common lands, I will then go forth and declare it by
my action, to eat my bread by the sweat of my brow, without
either giving or taking hire, looking upon the land as freely
mine as another’s.
There is to be no forcible expropriation of landlords:
If the rich still hold fast to this propriety of Mine and
Thine, let them labour their own lands with their own hands.
And let the common people, that say the earth is _ours_, not
_mine_, let them labor together, and eat bread together upon
the commons, mountains, and hills.
For as the enclosures are called such a man’s land, and
such a man’s land, so the Commons and Heath are called the
common people’s. And let the world see who labor the earth in
righteousness, and those to whom the Lord gives the blessing,
let them be the people that shall inherit the earth.
None can say that their right is taken from them. For let the
rich work alone by themselves; and let the poor work together
by themselves. The rich in their enclosures, saying, _This is
mine_; and the poor upon the commons, saying, _This is ours,
the earth and its fruits are common_. And who can be offended
at the poor for doing this? None but covetous, proud, idle,
pampered flesh, that would have the poor work still for this
devil (particular interest) to maintain his greatness that he
may live at ease.
Was the earth made for to preserve a few covetous, proud men
to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures
of the earth from others, that these may beg or starve in a
fruitful land: or was it made to preserve all her children? Let
Reason and the Prophets’ and Apostles’ writings be judge....
For the earth is the Lord’s; that is the spreading Power of
Righteousness, not the inheritance of covetous proud flesh that
dies. If any man can say that he makes corn or cattle, he may
say, _That is mine_. But if the Lord made these for the use of
His creation, surely then the earth was made by the Lord to be
a Common Treasury for all, not a particular treasury for some.
Leave off dominion and lordship one over another; for the
whole bulk of mankind are but one living earth. Leave off
imprisoning, whipping, and killing, which are but the actings
of the curse. Let those that have hitherto had no land, and
have been forced to rob and steal through poverty; henceforth
let them quietly enjoy land to work upon, that everyone may
enjoy the benefit of his creation, and eat his own bread
with the sweat of his own brows. For surely this particular
propriety of mine and thine hath brought in all misery upon
people. First it hath occasioned people to steal from one
another. Secondly it hath made laws to hang those that did
steal. It tempts people to do an evil action, and then kills
them for doing of it. Let all judge whether this be not a great
evil.
In April, 1649, the time was ripe--so Winstanley and his friends
judged--for making a start to get rid of this evil.
The Council of State, but a few months old, and much occupied with
dangers in Scotland and Ireland, and with mutinous Levellers in
the army, was suddenly informed of the strange activities of “a
disorderly and tumultuous sort of people” by one Henry Sanders, of
Walton-upon-Thames.
Sanders’ testimony affirmed that “there was one Everard, once of the
army but was cashiered, who termeth himself a prophet, one Stewer and
Colten, and two more, all living at Cobham, came to St. George’s Hill
in Surrey, and began to dig on that side the hill next to Camp Close,
and sowed the ground with parsnips, carrots, and beans. On Monday
following they were there again, being increased in their number, and
on the next day they fired the heath, and burned at least forty rood of
heath, which is a very great prejudice to the town. On Friday last they
came again, between twenty and thirty, and wrought all day at digging.
They did then intend to have two or three ploughs at work, but they had
not furnished themselves with seed-corn, which they did on Saturday
at Kingston. They invite all to come in and help them, and promise
them meat, drink, and clothes. They do threaten to pull down and level
all park pales, and lay open, and intend to plant there very shortly.
They give out they will be four or five thousand within ten days, and
threaten the neighbouring people there, that they will make them all
come up to the hills and work: and forewarn them suffering their cattle
to come near the plantation; if they do, they will cut their legs off.
It is feared they have some design in hand.”[126]
The date of this information was April 16th, and Bradshaw, the
President of the Council, at once asked General Fairfax “to disperse
the people so met, and to prevent the like for the future, that a
malignant and disaffected party may not under colour of such ridiculous
people have any opportunity to rendezvous themselves in order to do a
greater mischief.”
Fairfax sent Captain John Gladman to attend to the matter, and Gladman
reports three days later that Mr. Winstanley and Mr. Everard are the
chief men responsible, that he “cannot hear that there have been above
twenty of them together since they first undertook the business,” and
that Mr. Winstanley and Mr. Everard will wait upon Lord Fairfax. He
adds; “I believe you will be glad to be rid of them again, especially
Everard, who is no other than a mad man. I intend to go with two or
three men to St. George’s Hill this day and persuade these people to
leave this employment if I can, and if then I see no more danger than
now I do I shall march back again to London to-morrow.” Gladman’s
opinion is that “the business is not worth the writing nor yet taking
notice of.”
The interview between Fairfax and Winstanley and Everard took place
on April 20, and Everard explained that the Diggers “did not intend
to meddle with any man’s property nor to break down any pales or
enclosures, but only to meddle with what was common and untilled, and
to make it fruitful for the use of man: that they will not defend
themselves by arms, but will submit unto authority; that as their
forefathers lived in tents, so it would be suitable to their condition
now to live in the same.”
Fairfax evidently decided that the movement was not so alarming as
the Council of State had represented, for Winstanley and his Diggers
resumed their work, and at the end of May, Fairfax, with the officers
of the army, paid a visit to St. George’s Hill. Winstanley returned
“sober answers” to the inquiries of Fairfax, “though they gave little
satisfaction (if any at all) in regard of the strangeness of their
action.” Winstanley’s argument, often enlarged in his pamphlets, was
that the people were dispossessed of their lands by the crown at the
Norman Conquest, and that “the king who possessed them by the Norman
Conquest being dead, they were returned again, being Crown Lands, to
the Common People of England.”
This was not conclusive to their visitors, and “some officers wished
they had no further plot in what they did, and that no more was
intended than what they did pretend.” To the objection that the ground
was too poor to repay cultivation, “the Diggers answered they would use
their endeavours and leave the success to God, who had promised to make
the barren ground fruitful.” Public opinion gave out that the Diggers
were “sober, honest men,” and that “the ground will probably in a short
time yield them some fruit of their labour, how contemptible soever
they do yet appear to be.”
Encouraged by Fairfax’s “kindness and moderation,” Winstanley appeals
to him in June against the interference of the local landowners, and
getting no response (for Fairfax had said that the Diggers were to
be left to “the Gentlemen of the County and the Law of the Land”),
publishes an appeal to the House of Commons against his arrest for
trespass by the Lords of Manors in Surrey. The House of Commons,
occupied with State matters, turned an indifferent ear to Winstanley’s
complaint, and the leader of the Diggers sent a “Watchword to the City
of London and the Army,” telling the wrongs the Diggers suffered at the
hands of the law for “digging upon the barren common”--how they were
mulcted in damages at £10 a man, with costs at twenty-nine shillings
and a penny, and taken in execution, and how their cows were seized by
the bailiffs. At the end of November the very huts they had built were
pulled down, and it was a hard winter for the little colony still left
on St. George’s Hill.
Winstanley does not merely relate his injuries in these publications,
he is all the time urging that his plan for setting people upon the
common lands is the needful thing in England, that a common ownership
of land is God’s will, and that the crown lands taken by the Normans
must revert to the people on the execution of the king.