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Berens, Lewis Henry

"The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer"

... As soon as you have freed
the Earth from one entanglement of Kingly Power, will you entangle
it more? I pray you consider what you do, and do righteously. We
that are the Poor Commons, that paid our money and gave you
free-quarter, have as much right in those Crown Lands and Lands of
the spoil as you. Therefore we give no consent that you should buy
and sell our Crown Lands and Waste Lands; for it is our purchased
inheritance from under oppression! it is our own, even the poor
Common People's of England.... We paid you your wages to help us
recover it, but not to take it yourselves and turn us out, and to
buy and sell it among yourselves.... If you do so, you uphold the
Kingly Power, and so disobey both Acts of Parliament, and break
your Oath; and you will live in the breach of these two
commandments, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, by denying
us the Earth which is our livelihood, and thereby killing us by a
lingering death."
Winstanley then summarises his contentions, as follows:
"Well, the end of all my speech is to point out the Kingly Power
where I spy it out. And you see it remains strongly in the hands of
Lords of Manors, who have dealt so discourteously with some who are
sincere in heart, though there have some come among the Diggers
that have caused scandal, but we disown their ways.


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