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Diggers

The Diggers were a small radical collective active in England in 1649, led by Gerrard Winstanley, who initiated the cultivation of common land at St. George's Hill in Surrey to demonstrate principles of communal ownership and reject enclosures that concentrated land in private hands.^[1] Drawing on religious convictions that the earth served as a "common treasury" for all humanity, they aimed to provide sustenance through collective labor without buying or selling, positioning their actions as a restoration of pre-Fall equity.^[2] Their experiment involved around 20-30 participants planting vegetables and parsnips, but it provoked immediate resistance from local proprietors who viewed it as trespass, resulting in harassment, livestock destruction of crops, and legal actions that forced dispersal by early 1650.^[1] Winstanley, a former cloth merchant turned pamphleteer, articulated the Diggers' ideology in tracts such as The New Law of Righteousness (January 1649), interpreting the Commonwealth's establishment under Oliver Cromwell as a divine cue to abolish bondage to landlords and implement agrarian communism grounded in Scriptural precedent.^[3] The group's defining manifesto, The True Levellers Standard Advanced (April 1649), proclaimed their intent to work the wastes for public benefit, free from tithes or rents, while emphasizing non-violence despite threats.^[2] Though numerically insignificant and swiftly suppressed—owing to lacking broader military or popular support amid post-Civil War exhaustion—the Diggers exemplified causal pressures from enclosures and poverty driving proto-egalitarian resistance, with their emphasis on land as causal basis for freedom anticipating critiques of property accumulation.^[1] No enduring communes succeeded, yet Winstanley's writings persisted, influencing 19th-century reformers through recovered manuscripts.^[3]

Historical Context

English Civil War Aftermath

The First English Civil War concluded in June 1646 with the decisive defeat of Royalist forces and the surrender of King Charles I to Parliamentary forces at Newark, leaving the monarchy in custody and exposing deep divisions within the victorious Parliamentarian coalition.^[4] A brief Second Civil War erupted in 1648, involving renewed Royalist uprisings allied with Scottish Engagers, but was swiftly crushed by Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax's New Model Army, culminating in the Pride's Purge of Parliament in December 1648 to remove moderate Presbyterians.^[5] This purge enabled the Rump Parliament to orchestrate Charles I's trial for high treason; he was convicted and beheaded on January 30, 1649, outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, an act that abolished the monarchy and House of Lords by March and established the Commonwealth of England as a republic in May.^[6]^[7]^[5] The regicide ushered in a period of acute political instability, as the Commonwealth lacked a clear constitutional framework and faced challenges from royalist sympathizers, religious sects, and internal army factions, with Cromwell emerging as a dominant military figure but not yet formal head of state.^[5] This vacuum fostered the rise of radical groups like the Levellers, who, active since the mid-1640s within the New Model Army, demanded extended male suffrage, equality before the law, and religious tolerance beyond Parliament's conservative reforms, publishing agitprop like The Agreement of the People to rally soldiers and civilians against perceived betrayals of the war's egalitarian promises.^[8] Their mutinies, such as at Burford in May 1649, were brutally suppressed by Cromwell, highlighting the limits of radical influence and opening space for even more fringe agrarian experiments amid the republic's fragile authority.^[8] Widespread disillusionment gripped commoners and veterans, as the Rump Parliament prioritized consolidating elite power and military conquests—such as Cromwell's Irish campaign starting August 1649—over alleviating war-induced socioeconomic woes, including devastated agriculture, heavy taxation, and ongoing enclosures that privatized common lands without compensating displaced copyholders or addressing post-harvest dearth from 1647-1650.^[9]^[10] This failure to enact land reforms or poverty relief, despite radical petitions, stemmed from Parliament's alignment with property interests and fear of mass unrest, breeding resentment that radicalized rural laborers toward direct action against enclosures as a causal driver of inequality predating but exacerbated by the wars.^[10]

Socioeconomic Conditions in 1649

The process of enclosure, which had accelerated since the Tudor period, progressively converted open fields and common lands into privately held pastures and arable plots, thereby restricting smallholders' and laborers' access to shared resources essential for subsistence farming and grazing. By the early 17th century, this trend had contributed to rural depopulation in affected areas, as evicted tenants turned to wage labor or migration, intensifying unemployment among the landless poor.^[11]^[12] The English Civil Wars (1642–1651) compounded these structural issues through direct disruption of agriculture, including crop destruction, displacement of populations, and demobilization of soldiers into a strained labor market, leading to heightened vagrancy in southern counties like Surrey. Harvest failures from 1647 to 1650, attributed to adverse weather during the Little Ice Age, resulted in grain shortages and elevated food prices, with wheat prices rising sharply in 1648–1649 amid reduced yields.^[9]^[13] Contemporary records document increased petitions from rural parishes complaining of idle poor and vagabonds overwhelming local relief systems, as war taxes and quartering had depleted communal stocks, forcing reliance on the Elizabethan Poor Laws ill-equipped for postwar scale. In Surrey, where marginal lands predominated, these pressures manifested in disputes over underutilized "waste" areas—legally manorial or crown holdings rather than unclaimed commons—whose ambiguous status under common law invited claims of neglect by absentee owners but affirmed proprietary rights against unauthorized occupation.^[14]^[15]^[11]

Key Figures and Formation

Gerrard Winstanley and Leadership

Gerrard Winstanley (c. 1609–1676), originally a cloth merchant in London, faced financial ruin due to the economic depression and disruptions from the English Civil War in the early 1640s.^[16] By 1643, his textile business had collapsed amid wartime trade collapse, prompting relocation to Cobham, Surrey, where he shifted from commerce to religious and prophetic writing around 1648.^[17] This transition reflected a first-principles reevaluation of societal structures, grounded in empirical observation of poverty's causes and scriptural interpretation emphasizing universal access to creation's bounty over artificial enclosures.^[18] In January 1649, Winstanley published The New Law of Righteousness, his first major pamphlet, which critiqued external religious and civil authorities in favor of the "inward light" of Christ present in all humanity as the true guide to righteousness.^[19] Drawing from rational exegesis of biblical texts like Acts 4:32–35 on communal sharing, he argued that true freedom emerges when individuals recognize this internal divine reason over coercive institutions, laying intellectual groundwork for collective action against property norms.^[20] This work marked his evolution from abstract prophecy to advocating practical steps, such as the poor reclaiming uncultivated land to demonstrate God's law through labor, without reliance on hierarchical enforcement.^[19] Winstanley's leadership manifested not through personal charisma or cultish devotion but via persuasive writings that coalesced a small group of 15–20 like-minded individuals, primarily local laborers affected by enclosures, into organized effort by April 1649.^[21] He positioned himself as intellectual convener, emphasizing shared rational conviction in egalitarian principles derived from observable natural rights and causal links between land monopoly and destitution, rather than authoritarian command.^[22] This approach fostered voluntary unity focused on demonstrable action to validate ideas empirically, bridging theoretical critique to communal initiative without elevating Winstanley as infallible figurehead.^[23]

Recruitment and Initial Organization

The Diggers assembled their initial members through voluntary appeals disseminated via pamphlets and public manifestos, targeting the economically dispossessed and those aggrieved by enclosures and post-Civil War hardships. The seminal document, The True Levellers Standard Advanced, issued in late April 1649 and signed by 15 individuals including Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, explicitly invited the poor to participate in collective labor, declaring that "Work together, Eate Bread together" without wages, property titles, or compulsion, while urging broader dissemination of the call.^[24]^[1] This rhetorical outreach, framed as a divine imperative to reclaim the earth as a common treasury, aimed to attract widespread consent but yielded only modest response, as evidenced by the limited signatories and participants. Organization emerged in early April 1649 as an informal, egalitarian collective starting with roughly five to six poor men, expanding to about 20 within weeks through personal networks among the disaffected rather than structured campaigns.^[1] Lacking formal hierarchy, the group operated on principles of equal access to labor's fruits, with leadership nominally shared among figures like Winstanley, a former cloth merchant whose modest remaining resources may have supported rudimentary needs absent external funding.^[1] Pacifism permeated their approach, as manifestos abjured "force of Arms" and emphasized non-violent persuasion, aligning with Winstanley's consistent rejection of coercion despite internal alignments toward communal equity.^[24] Historical accounts underscore the movement's constrained scale, with membership never surpassing dozens despite appeals to potential thousands, attributable to the radicalism of their property-abolishing vision clashing against entrenched interests and the absence of coercive or institutional mechanisms for expansion.^[1] Primary records, including Diggers' own declarations and contemporary reports to authorities, confirm no reliance on violence, paid enlistment, or mass agitation, highlighting a grassroots, ideologically driven formation that prioritized moral suasion over numerical strength.^[24]^[1]

Ideological Foundations

Biblical and Theological Justifications

The Diggers, under Gerrard Winstanley's leadership, grounded their advocacy for communal land use in a millenarian interpretation of Christian scripture, viewing the restoration of common ownership as a divine mandate to reverse the corruption introduced after the biblical Fall. In works such as The New Law of Righteousness (1649), Winstanley argued that Genesis depicts the earth as originally a "common treasury" created by God for all humanity's sustenance, with Adam's labor intended as redemptive stewardship rather than exploitative dominion; private enclosure and buying-selling marked the entry of sin, not an inherent human depravity but a causal deviation from God's equitable order. This perspective rejected traditional Augustinian doctrines of original sin that justified social hierarchies as inevitable, positing instead that true redemption involved collective action to reclaim pre-Fall harmony through shared tillage.^[25] Winstanley further drew on Acts 2:44–45 and 4:32–35 to portray the early apostolic church as a model of communal goods distribution, where believers held "all things common" without private claims, serving as scriptural precedent for the Diggers' refusal of usury and inequality as antithetical to Christ's kingdom.^[26] He emphasized that this was not mere allegory but a prophetic restoration in the last days, with the Diggers' digging symbolizing obedience to divine law over Norman Conquest-era enclosures that perpetuated bondage.^[27] Unlike doctrines upholding kingly or clerical authority as ordained by providence, Winstanley favored inward revelation—the "Spirit of Reason" implanted by God in every person—as the authentic guide, dismissing external scriptures, priests, or universities as corrupted mediators that obscured this universal light. While influenced by Familist notions of mystical union and Ranter antinomianism that prioritized inner experience over ritual, the Diggers diverged by insisting that genuine faith manifested in outward, verifiable communal labor rather than private enlightenment or libertine excess; Winstanley critiqued Ranter "ranting" for lacking this practical proof, framing the Diggers' colonies as empirical testimony to theological truth amid eschatological urgency.^[25] This synthesis privileged causal realism in redemption: sin's chain—covetousness leading to property hoarding and tyranny—could be broken only through collective restitution, aligning human action with God's creational intent without reliance on hierarchical intermediaries.

Critiques of Private Property and Enclosure

The Diggers, led by Gerrard Winstanley, asserted that the earth existed as a common treasury for all humanity by natural creation, prior to the introduction of private ownership through buying and selling, which they viewed as a corrupting innovation enabling inequality and poverty.^[25] In Winstanley's 1649 pamphlet The True Levellers Standard Advanced, he argued that this original communal right to land had been usurped, particularly through historical enclosures that privatized formerly open commons, thereby denying the poor access to subsistence and fostering dependency on wage labor for the landed elite.^[2] This perspective framed private property not as a productive incentive but as a mechanism of enclosure that concentrated control in the hands of idle proprietors who extracted unearned rents from tillers' labor, reducing commoners to servitude.^[25] Winstanley specifically condemned enclosures as a primary cause of the vagrancy and destitution rampant in the 1640s, linking them to broader socioeconomic distress following the English Civil War, where displaced laborers wandered without means amid parliamentary reports of swelling idle poor.^[28] The Diggers proposed communal digging on enclosed wastelands as a direct restoration of this prelapsarian natural right, bypassing landlords to reclaim productive use of soil through collective labor, thereby dismantling the exploitative chain where "the rich feed upon the poor" without personal toil.^[2] However, the Diggers' theoretical assault overlooked mounting empirical evidence from the period that enclosures, even informal ones prevalent between 1450 and 1650, facilitated agricultural improvements by consolidating fragmented holdings and enabling investments in drainage, fencing, and crop rotation, contributing to observed productivity gains such as wheat yields roughly doubling from around 11 bushels per acre in 1600 to 22 by 1800.^[12]^[29] Studies of later parliamentary enclosures confirm associations with yield increases of up to 45 percent by 1830 in affected areas, suggesting a causal pattern of enhanced output per acre that predated full-scale acts but aligned with 17th-century trends toward higher overall agricultural efficiency amid population pressures.^[30]^[31] This counter-evidence indicates that while enclosures displaced some smallholders—exacerbating short-term vagrancy—their restructuring of land use supported sustained output growth, challenging the Diggers' causal attribution of poverty solely to privatization rather than to factors like wartime disruption or stagnant open-field practices.^[32]

Communal Practices

Establishment at St George's Hill

In April 1649, the Diggers, led by Gerrard Winstanley, occupied St George's Hill near Weybridge in Surrey, targeting approximately 10 acres of uncultivated waste land that formed part of local commons rather than private enclosures.^[33]^[24] This site was chosen for its practical availability as untilled ground suitable for immediate cultivation and its symbolic position as unenclosed terrain accessible to the poor, located within a day's travel from London.^[34] On 1 April, a group of around 30-40 men and women initiated the settlement by digging the soil and sowing crops such as parsnips, carrots, and beans, aiming to demonstrate self-sustaining agriculture on neglected land.^[33]^[35] They promptly erected rudimentary huts from local materials to provide basic shelter, establishing a communal camp that drew initial local observation without immediate organized resistance.^[36] To articulate their legal basis for the occupation, the group issued and distributed The True Levellers Standard Advanced on or around the same date, presenting the action as a restoration of common rights to waste lands through labor rather than conquest or purchase.^[24]^[25] The pamphlet, signed by Winstanley and associates including William Everard, emphasized sowing corn and other produce collectively "by the sweat of our brows," framing the setup as a practical experiment in shared tillage.^[24]

Operations at Other Locations

Following the dispersal from St George's Hill in early 1650, a core group of Diggers, including Gerrard Winstanley, relocated to Little Heath near Cobham in Surrey, where they commenced digging on approximately four acres of common land.^[37] This secondary operation involved planting crops such as parsnips and beans, constructing rudimentary shelters, and maintaining communal labor, but on a reduced scale compared to the initial site, with participation limited to fewer than 20 individuals amid ongoing local opposition.^[37] By July 1650, landlords orchestrated arson attacks that destroyed their dwellings and prevented crop maturation, forcing abandonment without any recorded harvest yields. Parallel efforts emerged elsewhere as splinter or inspired groups adopted similar practices. In Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, a small collective initiated digging on waste lands in late 1649, focusing on vegetable cultivation to support communal subsistence, but disbanded within months due to landowner interventions and internal discord, yielding no sustained agricultural output.^[23] Likewise, at Iver in Buckinghamshire during 1649–1650, participants numbering around a dozen attempted to establish a farmstead by breaking soil for root crops, yet faced rapid eviction by proprietors enforcing enclosure rights, resulting in failure by mid-1650 and negligible productivity.^[23] These peripheral ventures, varying in group size from 10 to 20 and crop selections akin to Surrey's but adapted to local soils, uniformly collapsed under legal pressures and lacked documentation of viable yields, underscoring the Diggers' broader operational fragility beyond the original locale.^[23]

Daily Labor, Subsistence, and Internal Governance

The Diggers organized their labor collectively, with participants engaging in daily digging, sowing, and planting on common lands to achieve self-sufficiency through shared effort. Beginning in April 1649, groups of 12 to 30 individuals, including families, worked to cultivate waste ground by hand, initially planting parsnips, carrots, and beans before progressing to wheat, rye, and corn; tools were basic spades and hoes, and produce was stored in communal storehouses for distribution based on need rather than purchase.^[2] Overseers monitored activities to prevent idleness, assigning tasks such as field work for non-compliant members, while children received training in trades like sewing and spinning to contribute to the common stock.^[2] This routine rejected monetary exchange entirely, with laborers eating bread "with the sweat of our brows" in communal settings, promising food, clothing, and shelter to all who joined without hire or profit.^[2] Internal governance emphasized voluntary consensus and egalitarian principles, with decisions guided by "one law of reason and equity" and collective agreement, as evidenced by signed declarations from participants.^[2] Annual elections selected rotating officers—such as peacemakers, overseers, and judges—from among "men fearing God and hating covetousness," chosen by the community to enforce laws and maintain order, with public consent required for new rules within a month; men over 20 voted, but women participated equally in labor and communal life, free to marry without restriction.^[2] This structure aimed to eliminate hierarchy and coercion, fostering mutual aid, though records indicate occasional disputes resolved by overseers reallocating labor to fields for the idle or contentious.^[2] Subsistence proved challenging due to initial shortages of seeds and tools, barren soil, and adverse weather, compelling reliance on external charity for basic provisions despite the goal of a self-sustaining "Common Treasury."^[2] The prohibition on hiring labor or private trade limited flexibility, while strict communal sharing and consensus-based allocation slowed responses to practical needs, contributing to resource depletion and inefficiencies that undermined long-term viability; small group sizes further constrained output, as equitable distribution without incentives for specialized roles reduced overall productivity.^[2]

Opposition and Failures

Conflicts with Local Proprietors

Local inhabitants and neighboring landowners regarded the Diggers' occupation of St. George's Hill common land as an unlawful trespass that undermined established enclosures and risked encouraging vagrancy among the poor.^[38] From the outset in April 1649, assaults occurred, with reports of locals beating Diggers and destroying early plantings to deter further activity.^[39] These actions stemmed from a defense of proprietary interests, as the Diggers' communal cultivation challenged the exclusionary rights held by freeholders who had invested in enclosing and improving the land for private gain.^[40] Escalation peaked in June and July 1649, when groups led by local figures such as William Everard and others, including hired men under Captain Stravie, attacked the settlement, wounding participants and spoiling crops of parsnips, carrots, and beans.^[41] On June 11, William Starr and John Taylor, with accomplices, beat four Diggers, leaving one near death, while subsequent raids burned huts and displaced families, disregarding the welfare of children present.^[38] Surrey gentry, including tenants of larger proprietors, mobilized against the group, citing fears that unchecked squatting would spread disorder and diminish incentives for individual husbandry by treating all land as a shared resource without regard for prior claims or labor investments.^[42] The Diggers maintained non-violence, issuing appeals to local freeholders and petitions to Parliament emphasizing mutual benefit and biblical precedents, but these failed to sway opponents who prioritized safeguarding their enclosures against what they saw as a direct assault on the causal link between private ownership and productive use.^[43] By late July 1649, repeated demolitions of structures and ruin of plantings rendered the site untenable, forcing relocation to nearby Cobham heath, where similar local resistance persisted.^[44] This grassroots enforcement of property boundaries, rather than centralized intervention, proved decisive in evicting the Diggers from their initial outpost.^[39]

Government and Legal Suppression

The Council of State, the executive authority of the Commonwealth government, received a formal complaint on April 16, 1649, regarding the Diggers' occupation of common waste land on St George's Hill, prompting an immediate investigation.^[45] In response, the Council dispatched troops, including cavalry under military command, to the site, where soldiers dispersed the group by warning participants of eviction and destroying rudimentary structures and crops, enforcing the legal rights of local proprietors who claimed the land through prior enclosure practices.^[45] This intervention rested on established property statutes under English common law, which protected enclosure and private claims to waste lands, viewing the Diggers' communal cultivation as unauthorized trespass rather than a seditious act warranting treason proceedings.^[46] Subsequent Digger attempts to relocate, such as to nearby Cobham in late 1649, elicited further official action, with the Council of State authorizing military detachments to disband these efforts and prevent the spread of similar occupations that threatened post-Civil War social stability.^[37] No parliamentary committees were convened for formal trials, reflecting the government's assessment that the disturbances prioritized restoration of settled agrarian order over ideological confrontation, as the Diggers posed no armed challenge to authority.^[45] By the end of 1649, these measures had effectively terminated the communal experiments, though Winstanley persisted in pamphleteering without facing capital charges.^[45]

Practical Shortcomings and Dissolution

The Diggers' communal experiments encountered significant logistical challenges stemming from the poor quality of the lands they occupied, including the dry, rocky, and sandy soil at St George's Hill, which proved unsuitable for sustained agriculture despite initial plantings of vegetables such as parsnips, carrots, and beans in April 1649.^[47] Many participants lacked prior farming experience, as the group primarily consisted of around 20-40 urban artisans, laborers, and displaced poor rather than skilled agrarians, leading to inefficient cultivation practices and inadequate yields even before full harvest seasons.^[48]^[49] No contemporary records document any surplus production from these efforts, with the colonies relying instead on foraging wild herbs, appealing for charitable donations of food and tools, and intermittent begging to subsist through the harsh conditions of 1649-1650.^[2] Internal divisions exacerbated these material shortcomings, as the rigid enforcement of communal ownership—prohibiting personal possessions and requiring all labor and output to be shared equally—fostered discontent among members unaccustomed to such austerity.^[45] Reports indicate desertions occurred as individuals prioritized individual survival over collective ideals, with key figures like William Everard departing early amid disagreements over pacifism and resource allocation, reducing group cohesion and manpower for fieldwork.^[45] This erosion of participation underscored the difficulties of maintaining motivation without private incentives, as extra effort yielded no personal gain, contributing to a pattern of transient membership and ineffective internal governance by early 1650.^[47] By March 1650, the primary colony at St George's Hill and subsequent sites like Cobham and Little Heath had collapsed, with remaining Diggers scattering to integrate into other dissenting groups or return to wage labor, marking the effective end of organized communal operations by mid-1650.^[48] The absence of viable self-sufficiency highlighted the experiment's impracticality, as logistical failures and motivational deficits prevented the establishment of a model beyond short-term occupation, despite ideological commitments to egalitarian land use.^[2]^[47]

Writings and Primary Sources

Winstanley's Pamphlets

Gerrard Winstanley's pamphlets articulated the Diggers' rationale for communal land use through bold declarations that combined prophetic invocation with assertions of natural and historical rights. The True Levellers Standard Advanced; or, The State of Community Opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men, published in April 1649, served as the movement's inaugural manifesto, announcing the occupation of St George's Hill on 1 April and framing the act of collective digging and planting as an advancement of a divine "standard" to reclaim the earth for all humanity's sustenance.^[25] Signed by Winstanley and 14 others, the text declared enclosures and private property as post-Fall corruptions, urging the "powers of England" to recognize communal labor as fulfillment of scriptural promises and pre-Conquest customs.^[50] Its declarative tone—proclaiming "We have begun to dig upon George Hill in Surrey"—blended apocalyptic prophecy, such as references to the Creation's original commons, with legal challenges to manorial titles derived from William the Conqueror's seizure.^[23] In response to early hostilities from local proprietors, Winstanley issued A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England, dated 1 June 1649, directed explicitly at "Lords of Manors" and defending the Diggers against charges of trespass and disorder.^[51] Signed by Winstanley and 44 supporters, it reiterated the hill's occupation as a non-violent reclamation of waste lands for the impoverished, arguing that such commons had sustained the poor before enclosures and conquest-era enclosures violated equity under God.^[52] The pamphlet's style remained assertively declarative, calling for the dissolution of proprietary claims rooted in "sword-law" and prophesying that failure to heed would invite divine judgment, while invoking natural law to justify free access without purchase or rent.^[53] These pamphlets, produced amid the unlicensed printing surge of the late 1640s, circulated in small runs suited to radical advocacy rather than mass dissemination, with copies likely numbering in the low hundreds and spread via personal delivery, site-based readings, and submissions to parliamentary or military figures.^[42] Distribution emphasized targeted appeals—to authorities for protection and locals for participation—over commercial sale, reflecting the Diggers' resource constraints and focus on immediate persuasion amid suppression threats.^[45] Surviving Thomason Tracts indicate their entry into contemporary collections, underscoring a niche but documented reach among Interregnum readers interested in agrarian reform.^[54]

Other Diggers' Declarations

In addition to Winstanley's individual pamphlets, the Diggers produced several collective declarations and petitions co-signed by multiple participants, which framed their land occupations as a rightful reclamation of common lands enclosed by private interests. These documents, originating from the Surrey colony and inspired groups elsewhere, invoked biblical mandates, natural law, and the English Civil Wars' sacrifices to argue against manorial privileges and for equitable access to the earth as a "common treasury." Signatories typically included laborers and smallholders from the local communities, reflecting grassroots but ideologically aligned efforts across sites. A key example is the "An Appeal to the House of Commons" issued in July 1649 by Gerrard Winstanley alongside fellow Diggers at St. George's Hill, Surrey, which petitioned Parliament to authorize the poor's cultivation of commons, decrying Norman Conquest-era enclosures as theft from the native population and demanding reform based on pre-Conquest customs.^[25] Similarly, letters dispatched in December 1649 to Lord Fairfax, the Council of War, and the Council of State—signed collectively by the True Levellers—defended ongoing digging at Little Heath and other Surrey wastes, asserting that conquest by Parliament invalidated prior titles and obligated the state to redistribute land for public use.^[25] Declarations from peripheral colonies further evidenced this pattern. The Iver Diggers in Buckinghamshire published "A Declaration of the Grounds and Reasons" on May 1, 1650, endorsed by John Beecher, Richard Spicer, and fourteen coparceners, who justified breaking up local commons as fulfillment of God's command to labor the earth freely, while protesting the prior arrest and imprisonment of nine Wellingborough Diggers in Northamptonshire for analogous actions against enclosures.^[55] The Wellingborough group itself had promulgated a declaration earlier in 1650, mirroring core Digger tenets by condemning exclusive landholding as contrary to divine equity and prompting legal suppression after their camp's establishment on enclosed fields.^[56] These joint outputs, with signatories numbering 15–20 per document from dispersed locations like Surrey, Buckinghamshire, and Northamptonshire, underscore the movement's limited doctrinal innovation beyond initial Surrey formulations, as subsequent statements largely reiterated arguments on commons restoration without novel individual authorship.

Evaluations and Legacy

Contemporaneous Assessments

The Diggers elicited sparse support from fellow radicals, including some early Quakers and Seekers who shared their millenarian critique of hierarchical authority and enclosures, yet this alignment remained theoretical and did not extend to endorsement of their practical communalism on common lands.^[57] Their extremism on property—advocating collective use over individual ownership—isolated them from the Levellers, whose leaders distanced themselves by upholding private property as compatible with legal equality and franchise reforms, viewing Digger ideas as disruptive to these principles.^[58] Critics in contemporary pamphlets and newsbooks lambasted the Diggers as idlers who undermined labor incentives by seizing commons without consent, portraying their activities as fostering vagrancy and social chaos rather than productive work.^[59] Reports emphasized fears that such experiments encouraged "furious divells" to challenge enclosures and tithes, threatening the economic order reliant on private initiative and deterring investment in land improvement.^[60] Official assessments treated the Diggers as a localized nuisance rather than a strategic threat, with suppression occurring through local justices' warrants, mob actions, and assize indictments for disorderly assembly—such as the 1649 charge against Gerrard Winstanley and fourteen others—while Parliament focused on royalist remnants and mutinies, granting no significant national resources to their dispersal by April 1650.^[1] This muted response reflected causal priorities: amid post-civil war instability, authorities prioritized stability in property relations to prevent broader agrarian unrest that could erode incentives for cultivation and taxation.^[42]

Long-Term Impact and Scholarly Interpretations

The Diggers' ideas had limited direct influence on 18th- and 19th-century radicalism, with their tracts remaining unreprinted and rarely referenced by figures such as Thomas Paine or William Cobbett, indicating no evident causal transmission to agrarian reforms or early socialist organizations.^[61] Historical records show the movement faded into obscurity after 1650, resurfacing only through Lewis H. Berens' 1906 study The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth, which first portrayed them as precursors to revolutionary thought without establishing substantive links to contemporary radicals.^[62] In the 20th century, Marxist-leaning historians like Christopher Hill revived interest, framing the Diggers in The World Turned Upside Down (1972) as embryonic socialists whose communal experiments anticipated class-based critiques of property, though this interpretation has been faulted for retrofitting secular materialism onto a theologically driven initiative.^[63] Hill's emphasis on their anti-enclosure stance as proto-proletarian action overlooked the absence of sustained ideological continuity, a tendency critiqued as reflective of leftist historiographical efforts to construct long narratives of inevitable progress toward socialism despite empirical gaps in influence.^[64] Scholarly interpretations debate whether the Diggers align more closely with anarchism, due to their decentralized communes and rejection of coercive authority, or communism, given collective labor and resource sharing; however, primary evidence from Winstanley's pamphlets, which invoke biblical precedents like Acts 4:32–35 for a "common treasury," substantiates their identity as religious utopians seeking eschatological fulfillment rather than a blueprint for secular political economy.^[64] This religious foundation, rooted in millenarian expectations of Christ's return to abolish private dominion over land, distinguishes them from modern ideologies, rendering claims of direct proto-ideological descent empirically tenuous absent documented chains of transmission.^[65]

Criticisms of Communal Ideals in Practice

The Diggers' communal experiments demonstrated the practical limitations of abolishing private property, as settlements rapidly collapsed under insufficient productivity and motivational deficits. The initial colony at St. George's Hill, established on April 1, 1649, by Gerrard Winstanley and roughly 15 to 30 participants, yielded negligible crops despite communal digging and planting efforts, forcing dispersal by January 1650 amid hunger and internal discord over work shares. ^[21] ^[23] Subsequent outposts, such as at Cobbe Place in Surrey starting April 1650, similarly disbanded within months, with participants abandoning the sites due to failed harvests and inability to sustain even basic self-provisioning for groups numbering under 50. ^[66] These outcomes stemmed from core incentive misalignments in communal systems, where shared ownership diluted individual accountability, fostering minimal effort as personal gains from labor were absent while costs were borne collectively. Without mechanisms to enforce property claims or reward diligence, participants exhibited reduced investment in soil preparation or crop maintenance, contrasting with property-holding farmers who maintained higher yields through targeted improvements. ^[66] This dynamic perpetuated poverty by rejecting market-driven specialization and exchange, isolating the Diggers from tools, seeds, and labor efficiencies available via trade, and mirroring broader historical patterns where communal rejection of markets stifled output in agrarian contexts. ^[67] In causal terms, the Diggers' overriding religious convictions—envisioning divine harmony supplanting economic necessities—eclipsed pragmatic adaptations, rendering the model unscalable as anticipated spontaneous cooperation failed against human tendencies toward self-preservation over collective toil. ^[23] This differed markedly from contemporaneous enclosure practices, which, even in their 17th-century precursors, consolidated fragmented holdings to enable individualized decision-making, laying groundwork for productivity surges; by the 18th century, such reforms had increased arable efficiency through innovations like convertible husbandry, achieving output growth rates of 0.5 to 1 percent annually in enclosed regions versus stagnation in open-field commons. ^[68] Economic critiques, both historical and contemporary, thus underscore how the Diggers' ideals, unmoored from property-based incentives, entrenched subsistence vulnerabilities rather than alleviating them. ^[69]

References

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[PDF] THE W"ORK.S OF GERRARD W"INSTANLEY - The Digger Archives
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HIST 251 - Constitutional Revolution and Civil War, 1640-1646
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[7]
Charles I (r. 1625-1649) | The Royal Family
The King was sentenced to death on 27 January. Three days later, Charles was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London.
[8]
The Levellers - Historic UK
May 17, 2020 · A political movement during the English Civil War, the Levellers campaigned for equality, religious tolerance, suffrage and sovereignty.
[9]
[PDF] Dearth and the English revolution: the harvest crisis of 1647–50
surveys drawn up in earlier harvest failures under the terms of the dearth orders. See the tabulated returns in. Gray, ed., Harvest failure, esp. pp. 11–12, 51– ...Missing: post | Show results with:post<|separator|>
[10]
https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.7765/9781847793973.00013/html
[11]
A Short History of Enclosure in Britain | The Land Magazine
Simon Fairlie describes how the progressive enclosure of commons over several centuries has deprived most of the British people of access to agricultural land.Missing: unemployment data
[12]
[PDF] The Enclosures in England: An Economic Reconstruction
The protests against depopulating enclosure continue, and government reports and surveys show that enclosure for pasture was proceeding at as rapid a rate as in ...
[13]
17th Century Almanac for August - Climate Change & Conflict
Harvests across the Northern Hemisphere in the 1630s, 1640s and 1650s were devastated by the Little Ice Age. Four in ten harvests in England were bad. These ...
[14]
English Poor Laws – EH.net - Economic History Association
The Poor Law constituted “a welfare state in miniature,” relieving the elderly, widows, children, the sick, the disabled, and the unemployed and underemployed.Missing: 16th | Show results with:16th
[15]
British History in depth: Poverty in Elizabethan England - BBC
Feb 17, 2011 · Poverty in Elizabethan England was caused by population growth, rising prices, poor harvests, and land enclosure, leading to increased vagrancy.
[16]
Gerrard Winstanley and the Failed Digger Revolution (Classroom ...
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 ...
[17]
The Diggers - by Andy Ciccone - The Poor Prole's Almanac
Jul 4, 2025 · Gerrard Winstanley, a Digger who settled in Cobham in 1643 after his textile business went bankrupt in London during the civil war, would later ...<|separator|>
[18]
Forerunners: Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers by Jason Landsel
May 7, 2018 · Before the English Civil War, Winstanley had been comfortably established in London's cloth trade. But the war destroyed the industry, throwing ...Missing: background economic 1640s
[19]
A common treasury for all: Gerrard Winstanley's vision of utopia
Apr 5, 2017 · The New Law of Righteousness (January 1649) was Winstanley's first full length polemic. His biographer John Gurney argues that it was a ...
[20]
Gerrard Winstanley on Power – Real and Imagined
Sep 12, 2021 · ... The New Law of Righteousness (excerpted in Volume One of Anarchism ... Winstanley's anarchist writings of 1649 – 1650 remain a remarkable ...
[21]
The Diggers - Spartacus Educational
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 ...
[22]
Gerrard Winstanley, the man who got the Diggers digging - Aeon
May 26, 2025 · Winstanley's experience of being ground to near-ruin in the churn of the global cloth trade inflected his writings. All this left a bitter ...Missing: 1640s | Show results with:1640s
[23]
Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers - Oxford Academic
... Diggers, Gerrard Winstanley (1609–76) was one of the most original radical ... In the summer of 1649, while the Digger experiment was under way, Winstanley ...Missing: formation | Show results with:formation<|separator|>
[24]
The True Levellers Standard Advanced by Gerrard Winstanley
A Declaration to the Powers of England, and to all the Powers of the World, shewing the Cause why the Common People of England have begun.Missing: recruitment appeal
[25]
The English Digger Writings
Winstanley argues that divine truth resides not in external scriptures or priestly authority, but within each person as "Reason"—a living, spiritual force that ...
[26]
https://www.diggers.org/diggers-ENGLISH-1649/Law-of-Freedom_ORIG.pdf
[27]
https://www.diggers.org/diggers-ENGLISH-1649/True-Levellers-Standard-Advanced_ORIG.pdf
[28]
[PDF] Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical ...
1 Individuals merely need to exhibit the characteristics or stereotypes of vagrants for authorities to make an arrest.2 Thus,vagrancy can mean and be many ...
[29]
[PDF] a new explanation of the english agricultural productivity in the 18
All three concluded that between 1600 and 1800 wheat yields more or less doubled: from 11 bushels per acre around. 1600, production expanded to 22 bushels two ...<|separator|>
[30]
Enclosure of Rural England Boosted Productivity and Inequality
Apr 1, 2022 · The analysis finds that by 1830, enclosures were associated, on average, with a 45 percent increase in agricultural yields. Inequality in land ...Missing: poverty | Show results with:poverty
[31]
The Economic Effects of the English Parliamentary Enclosures
Mar 1, 2023 · Because the recommendation of the committee was usually followed, a leading reason that an enclosure bill failed was failure to comply in detail ...
[32]
[PDF] WHEN DID GROWTH BEGIN? NEW ESTIMATES OF ...
We estimate productivity growth of 2% per decade between 1600 and 1800, increas- ing to 5% per decade between 1810 and 1860. Much of the increase in output.
[33]
[PDF] the Diggers' Digging in the English Civil War, 1648-1650
On 1 April 1649, after 7 years of the English Civil War and a few months after the execution of King Charles I, a small group of people appeared on the Commons ...Missing: distress | Show results with:distress
[34]
[PDF] True-Levellers-Standard-Advanced-1649.pdf
The Work we are going about is this,To dig up Georges-Hill and the wafte Ground thereabouts, and to Sow Corn, and to eat our bread together by the fweat of ...Missing: text | Show results with:text
[35]
https://www.libcom.org/library/the_diggers
[36]
3. Seventeenth century squatters? The Diggers and the occupation ...
Mar 23, 2022 · The most remembered and mysticised event related to Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers was the occupation of St. George's Hill in April 1649.
[37]
Winstanley's Ecology: The English Diggers Today - Monthly Review
The True Levellers have appealed to anarchists as well as socialists, and the Digger legacy has been claimed by both traditions.2 The Diggers rejected ...
[38]
https://www.diggers.org/diggers-ENGLISH-1649/Humble-Request_ORIG.pdf
[39]
The Diggers and the local community - Manchester Hive
Apr 19, 2025 · attack on the St George's Hill Diggers in 1649. It is however ... of the Digger houses and crops, and the measures taken to disperse the Diggers.Missing: huts | Show results with:huts
[40]
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A82125.0001.001?view=toc
[41]
Today in radical history, 1649: the 'Diggers' take over common land ...
Apr 1, 2019 · In early June, the 'Digger' community was attacked by soldiers hired by the local landowners, commanded by a Captain Stravie, who wounded a man ...
[42]
Levellers, Diggers, and Ranters - Oxford Academic
... Diggers' problems with the Surrey gentry. Each represents the struggle against 'Kingly power', for just as Charles was heir to the conquest of William I, so ...
[43]
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A96695.0001.001
[44]
https://www.diggers.org/diggers-ENGLISH-1649/Appeal-to-the-House-of-Commons_ORIG.pdf
[45]
10. Winstanley, The Diggers - Libcom.org
In June the Diggers announced that they intended to cut and sell the wood on the common, and at this point the landlords sued for damages and trespass. The ...
[46]
Brave community: The Digger Movement in the English Revolution
It provides a detailed account of the Surrey Digger settlements and of local reactions to the Diggers, and it explores the spread of Digger activities beyond ...
[47]
[PDF] This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the ...
However it is presented, the Diggers' immediate mission failed, and yet in our own time their ... failure, such as the poor choice of dry, rocky, sandy land for ...
[48]
[PDF] THE DIGGERS - Chivalry & War
They were led by. Gerrard Winstanley, originally from Lancashire, and they were known as the. Diggers. Startling though this development was, it proved to be ...Missing: primary | Show results with:primary
[49]
Diggers - Search results provided by BiblicalTraining
Diggers. English communistic movement. Led by Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, a group of about twenty men began in 1649-50 to cultivate common ...
[50]
The True Levellers Standard Advanced - Libcom.org
Jul 13, 2006 · The True Levellers Standard Advanced. Diggers evicted from St George's Hill, Surrey - 1649. A printable pamphlet version of The True Levellers ...Missing: text | Show results with:text
[51]
The Diggers - by Ariel Hessayon - Historical essays
Apr 3, 2022 · England was a ravaged land in 1649. The harvests of the two preceding years had been poor. The early winter months, always difficult, had been ...
[52]
A Declaration from the Poor oppressed People of England
Gerrard Winstanley A Declaration from the Poor oppressed People of England To all that call themselves, or are called Lords of Manors, through this Nation;.
[53]
A Declaration from the Poor oppressed People of England
Feb 1, 2010 · A DECLARATION FROM THE Poor oppressed People of England. We whose names are subscribed do in the name of all the poor oppressed people in ...
[54]
4. Identity matters: the story of how the diggers became the Diggers
May 16, 2022 · The Diggers and the occupation of St. George's Hill Learn about the motivations behind the Diggers' occupation of St. George's Hill in 1649 ...Missing: organization allocation
[55]
A Declaration of the Grounds and Reasons (Iver) - Ex-Classics
Source: Digger Tracts, 1649-50, published by John the Red Nose, Seattle?, 1996 (Copy provided by Mikke Sennekke and Richard Schneider). A Declaration of the ...
[56]
The English Diggers (1649-1650)
The name "Winstanley" was graffittied onto the door of the first Digger Free Store, and a stanza from "The Diggers Song" was excerpted in one of the Free City ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[57]
[PDF] From Radicalism to Quakerism: Gerrard - SAS Open Journals
Levellers and Diggers on the Quaker movement.* The striking similarities ... of Gerrard Winstanley, with an Appendix of Documents Relating to the Digger.
[58]
The Levellers: Libertarian Revolutionaries
May 1, 1989 · They distanced themselves from the “Diggers” or “True Levellers ... Although the Levellers denounced the Instrument, their ideas had a clear ...<|separator|>
[59]
The Story of the Surrey Diggers as Told by Contemporary Newsbooks
This paper is a survey of newspaper articles published in 1649 concerning an apparently trivial event – the colonisation of common land in Surrey in April 1649 ...
[60]
5. The aftermath of the St George's Hill occupation: The Diggers and ...
Jun 8, 2022 · The Digger Movement in the English Revolution. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gurney, J. (2000). "Furious divells?" The Diggers and ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[61]
Radical voices, Radical ways - Manchester Hive
Diggers were made during the Price–Burke–Paine controversy, as. Paine was ... was no reprinting of the Digger's writings in the eighteenth century. 59 ...Missing: 19th | Show results with:19th
[62]
7. The Diggers from the 19th Century Onwards: History, Memory ...
Jan 25, 2024 · As we have seen on the previous blog posts, Winstanley and the Diggers did, indeed, advocate for changes regarding the use of land in England, ...
[63]
The world turned upside down: radical ideas during the English ...
In 'The World Turned Upside Down' Christopher Hill studies the beliefs of such radical groups as the Diggers, the Ranters, the Levellers and others.Missing: socialist criticism
[64]
What Did the Diggers Really Believe? - JSTOR Daily
Nov 10, 2020 · Most famously, the first Diggers have been claimed as early communists. Although the word “communism” wasn't coined until around 1840, the ...Missing: influence | Show results with:influence
[65]
The Earth as a Common Treasury: Thoughts on Gerrard Winstanley
May 24, 2023 · Winstanley's proclamation from The New Law of Righteousness that “No man shall have any more land, then he can labour himself, or have others to ...Missing: summary | Show results with:summary
[66]
[PDF] Digging for the Future - The Young Foundation
The transition towns are heirs to the. Digger ideal of local people working together and eating together. The. Diggers' politics was born close to the earth.<|separator|>
[67]
None
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[68]
Enclosing the land - UK Parliament
But during the 17th century the practice developed of obtaining authorisation by an Act of Parliament. Initiatives to enclose came either from landowners ...
[69]
John Gurney. Brave Community: The Digger Movement in the ...
The fifth and sixth chapters treat the Diggers as a group, and offer a reassessment of the chronology of the Digger experiment ... The failure of the first ...