[85:1] About this time, or a little later, there appeared in London an interesting manifesto from some of the disbanded soldiers, the copy of which in the British Museum (Press Mark, 4152. b.b. 109) bears no date, but is addressed as follows:  “To the Generals and Captains, Officers and Soldiers of this present Army.  The Just and Equal Appeal, and the state of the Innocent Cause of us, who have been turned out of your Army for the exercise of our pure Consciences, who are now persecuted amongst our Brethren under the name of Quakers.”  Wherein they declare that “The first cause and ground of our engagement in the late wars against the Bishops and Prelates, and against Kings and Lords, and the whole body of oppressors:  our first engagement, we say, against these was justly and truly upon that account of purchasing and obtaining Liberties in Civil Rights, and also in matters of Conscience in the exercise of the worship of God....  And we can safely say that the Liberty of Conscience and the True Freedom of the Nations from all their oppressions was the mark at which we aimed, and the harbour for which we hoped and the rest proposed in our minds as the absolute end of our long and weary travel.”

[87:1] History of the Protectorate, vol. i. pp. 50, 51.

[89:1] Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 398.

[89:2] Socialism and Land. Essay in a Quarterly Review, Subjects of the Day, part ii. p. 52.

CHAPTER IX

THE DIGGERS’ MANIFESTOES

“Take notice, That England is not a Free People till the Poor that have no land have a free allowance to dig and labor the Commons, and so live as comfortably as the Land Lords that live in their Inclosures.  For the people have not laid out their monies and shed their blood that their Land Lords, the Norman Power, should still have its liberty and freedom to rule in tyranny, but that the Oppressed might be set free, prison doors opened, and the Poor People’s heart comforted by an universal consent of making the Earth a Common Treasury, that they may live together united by brotherly love into one spirit, and having a comfortable livelihood in the Community of one Earth their Mother.”—­WINSTANLEY, The True Levellers Standard Advanced.

By the publication of his earlier pamphlets, Winstanley seems to have attracted a small band of earnest disciples, eager by their actions to declare their adherence to the principles he had so fearlessly and eloquently proclaimed.  However, before taking the steps they had decided on, they deemed it necessary openly and frankly to declare their intentions to the world, more especially to those whose individual or class interests would be likely to be affected thereby.  Hence early in 1649, probably in the last days of March or the beginning of April, they issued a pamphlet, signed by some 46 of them, which seems mainly from Winstanley’s pen, entitled: