, the digging began: a band of a few in a Platform (1652) lays out in systematic fashi dozen established themselves on the deserted commons of tution of a communistic society in which all land w St. George's Hill in Surrey and began to...
more, the digging began: a band of a few in a Platform (1652) lays out in systematic fashi dozen established themselves on the deserted commons of tution of a communistic society in which all land w St. George's Hill in Surrey and began to dig and plant, common, all buying and selling was abolished through symbolic action staking a claim to the land-or, were educated by the state, and all people we more precisely, the claim of all people to it. As William Ever-the rotating offices of magistracy, ard and Gerrard Winstanley told General Fairfax when brought in for questioning, their intent "was to restore the Winstanley thus preceded Proudhon by Creation to its former condition" (Whitelocke 384). That centuries in declaring all property to be theft, condition was made clear in Winstanley's pamphlet "The lated the principle of "from each according to True Leveller Standard Advanced" (1649): "In the beginning each according to his needs" long before Mar of time the great creator, Reason, made the earth to be a But, for two and a half centuries after the d common treasury" (Sabine 390). To restore that common Diggers, Winstanley would remain a marginal f treasury was the goal of the group variously called the Dig-fish histories. The Diggers' stand on St. George's gers (after thfeir action) or the True Levellers (to differenti-occasionally as a brief interlude in accounts of ate them from the Levellers against whom Cromwell struggles with the Levellers, but Law of Freedom struggled in these same years, and who for the most part ley's other tracts were neglected entirely. It was on aimed for little more than universal sulfrage [Aylmer 38-54; 1890s, in the context of the proliferation of soc Hill, World Turned Upside Down 107-113]). and writings that characterized the last decades of teenth century, and with the need of English socialists to fin Winstanley offered a double explanation for the advent domestic progenitors for their movement, that W of private property: a consequence on the one hand of the works were dug up again, fall of man, and on the other a legacy of the Norman Con quest (the theme of the Norman Yoke drawing on a wide-It was Thomas Carlyle who first recognize spread current in seventeenth-century radical thought, as tial for Winstanley and the Diggers to stand as pro Christopher Hill has shown [Puritanism and Revolution, 73-later popular radicalism. In Carlyle's discussion of 92]). With the beheading of the King and the establishment lers in Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeche of the Commonwealth, the time was ripe for a reversal of that troduces a short account of the digging on St dual legacy, if only the potential was recognized. As Winstan-by noting that "a deep republican leaven.. .brea ley wrote to Fairfax: "We know that England cannot be a free again into very formidable development," and d Commonwealth , unless all the poor Commoners have a free readers to "discern, with amazement, a who use and benefit of the land.. .. [N] either can the kingly world of Calvinistic Sansculottism, Five-point Chart power be removed so long as this kingly power in the hands Rights of Man, threatening to emerge almost tw of Lords of Manors rules over us" (Clarke Papers 2:217). The before its time!" (427). But, he concludes, su digging at St. George's Hill was a first step in the reclamation tism.. .has to lie submerged for almost two cen of the English lands, and to those who joined them they Levelling, in the practical or military provin promised: "And for all such as will come in and work with things, is forbidden to be" (434). Suppressed them, they shall have meat, drink, and clothes, which is all for social and economic transformation, the enth that is necessary to the life of man" (Whitelocke 384). the period were rerouted, Carlyle argued, int ideas: "It ceases dibbling beans on St. George's Hill nea Although Christopher Hill suggests that Winstanley's Cobham; ceases galloping in mutiny across t arguments had a broad popular appeal at the advent of the ford;-takes into Quakerism, and kingdoms which Commonwealth, sparking other Digger communities in the this world" (434). And for Carlyle, too, such years 1649-50 (World Turned Upside Down 124-128), the move-digression from his principle story, ment was shortlived. The colony on St. George's Hill was first harassed by adjacent landlords and then dispersed by In most histories of the period, the Digge Fairfax's soldiers, and other colonies were also suppressed. less well. In Bulstrode Whitelocke's Memoria (Hill counts the Diggers, too, among the "first losers" of the lyle's source-the Diggers stand not as exemplar English revolution in The Experience of Defeat [37-42].) Win-ing: "I have set down this the more largely.. .th Stanley produced a steady flow of pamphlet defenses of the the better understand and avoid these weak Diggers through the years 1649-50, but it was in the wake of (397). For David Hume, similarly, the Diggers fi defeat that he produced his masterwork: The Law of Freedom lesson in the dangers of political revolution: "Th