[68:1] The full title reads—­“The New Law of Righteousness:  Budding forth to restore the whole Creation from the Bondage or the Curse.  Or a glympse of the new Heaven and the new Earth, wherein dwells Righteousness.  Giving an Alarm to silence all that preach or speak from hearsay or imagination.”  This pamphlet is very scarce.  There is no copy in the British Museum or in any other of the London Public Libraries, nor in the Bodleian.  The Jesus College Library, Oxford, however, is fortunate enough to possess a copy, which, to judge from its marginal notes, was once in the possession of one of Winstanley’s followers or admirers, and which was courteously placed at our disposal by the librarian, Mr. Hazell, to whom we here desire to convey our grateful acknowledgement.

[71:1] See his chapter “Of Property” in his classical work on Civil Government, a chapter which, as the conservative Hallam observes, “would be sufficient, if all Locke’s other writings had perished, to leave him a high name in philosophy.”

[71:2] For a short account of the writings of Thomas Spence and Patrick Edward Dove, see J. Morrison Davidson’s Four Precursors of Henry George. (Publisher, F. Henderson, London.)

[71:3] See his Agrarian Justice.

[74:1] “As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property.”—­JOHN LOCKE, Civil Government. (Of Property.)

[78:1] “Fire in the Bush:  The Spirit burning, not consuming, but purging mankind.”  Published by Giles Calvert.  This pamphlet, too, is very scarce.  There is no copy in the British Museum, but a copy is to be found in the Bodleian Library.

CHAPTER VIII

LIGHT SHINING IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

“O England, England! wouldst thou have thy government sound and healthful?  Then cast about and see and search diligently to find out all those burthens that came in by Kings, and remove them; and then will thy Commonwealth’s Government arise from under the clods under which as yet it is buried and covered with deformity.”—­WINSTANLEY, The Law of Freedom.

The place in the country to which our hero had retired was, we believe, the little town of Colnbrook, in the extreme southern end of the county of Buckinghamshire, on the borders of Middlesex, and within seven miles of St. George’s Hill in Surrey.  On December 5th, 1648, about a month prior to the date attached to the opening epistle of The New Law of Righteousness, there issued from the press a short pamphlet,[79:1] which, seeing that a second edition was printed the following March, appears to have had a considerable sale, and the title-page of which ran as follows: 

“LIGHT SHINING IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: 

OR