lands, then there would be a supply to answer everyone’s inquire, and the murmurings of the people against you and the Parliament would cease, and within a few years we should have no beggars nor idle persons in the land.

“Secondly, Hereby England would be enriched with all commodities within itself which they each would afford.  And truly this is a stain to Christian religion in England [a stain not yet removed] that we have so much land lie waste and so many starve for want.  Further, if this freedom be granted, the whole Land will be united in love and strength, that if a foreign enemy, like an army of rats and mice, come to take our inheritance from us, we shall all rise as one man to defend it.

“Then, lastly, if you will grant the poor commoners this quiet freedom to improve the common land for our livelihood, we shall rejoice in you and the Army in protecting our work, and we and our work will be ready to secure that, and we hope that there will not be any kingly power over us, to rule at will and we to be slaves, as the power has been, but that you will rule in love as Moses and Joshua did the children of Israel before any kingly power came in, and that the Parliament will be as the elders of Israel, chosen freely by the people to advise for and to assist both you and us.

“And thus in the name of the rest of those called Diggers and Commoners through the land, I have in short declared our mind and cause to you in the light of righteousness, which will prove all these reports made against us to be false and destructive to the uniting of England into peace.

     “Per me Gerrard Winstanley, for myself and in the behalf of my
     fellow commoners.

     “December the 8th, 1649.”

Amongst Winstanley’s disciples was one Robert Coster, who appears to have been the poet of the Digger Movement, and the next pamphlet which issued from their camp, on December 18th, some ten days after the date affixed to the above vigorous letter, was from his pen.  It is entitled: 

     “A Mite cast into the Common Treasury:[126:1] Or Queries
     propounded (for all Men to consider of) by him who desireth to
     advance the work of Public Community.  By Robert Coster.”

In it Coster first recapitulates Winstanley’s main arguments and contentions, and then shows that he for one fully realised their far-reaching scope, by indicating their probable effects in the following words: 

“As, 1.  If men would do as aforesaid rather than to go with cap in hand and bended knee to Gentlemen and Farmers, begging and entreating to work with them for 8d. or 10d. a day, which doth give them an occasion to tyrannise over poor people, who are their fellow-creatures; if poor men would not go in such a slavish posture, but do as aforesaid, the rich Farmers would be weary of renting so much land of the Lords of Manors.