Part 18

Little is known of Winstanley, and the movement is shortlived. The “Diggers” never threatened the safety of the Commonwealth government as Lilburne and the Levellers did, for Winstanley’s social doctrine included the non-resistance principles that later found exponents in the Society of Friends, and the agrarian revolution he preached could hardly be accomplished without force of arms. What is notable about Winstanley is his witness to the fact that a social question existed--that he saw beyond the Civil War, and the strife for political liberties, a great mass of poverty unheeded; and seeing the miseries of his fellows resolutely thought out some cure for their distress, and did his best, as it seemed to him, to get this cure adopted.

Neither the Council of State nor the republican army had time or patience for Winstanley’s schemes, and the “Diggers” were dispersed with little trouble; but Winstanley’s religious teaching was to exercise considerable influence in the world when George Fox became its preacher, and his social teaching on the land question has thousands of disciples in Great Britain to-day.

Gerrard Winstanley was born in Lancashire in 1609.[125] He seems to have settled in London as a small trader and to have lost what money he had in business--cheated he says, “in the thieving art of buying and selling, and by the burdens of and for the soldiery in the beginning of the war”--so that he was obliged “to accept of the good-will of friends to live a country life.” In the country Winstanley ponders the source of the ills around him, and, having some considerable gift of expression, gives utterance, in a number of pamphlets, to a cry for reform, and gathers followers.

In December, 1648, Winstanley (or one of his friends) issued the earliest of the Digger publications under the title of “Light Shining in Buckinghamshire--A Discovery of the Main Ground, Original Cause of all the Slavery of the World, but chiefly in England. Presented by way of a Declaration of many of the Well-affected in that County, to all their poor oppressed Countrymen in England. And also to the consideration of the present army under the conduct of the Lord Fairfax.”

A month later and Winstanley publishes his “New Law of Righteousness: Budding forth to restore the whole Creation from the Bondage of the Curse. Or a glimpse of the new Heaven and the new Earth, wherein dwells Righteousness.” Here, with a good deal of mystical religious phrasing (the author explains that when he was in a trance the message came to him), Winstanley proclaims his calling and unfolds his agrarian proposals:

And when the Lord doth show unto me the place and manner, how He will have us that are called common people manure and work upon the common lands, I will then go forth and declare it by my action, to eat my bread by the sweat of my brow, without either giving or taking hire, looking upon the land as freely mine as another’s.

There is to be no forcible expropriation of landlords:

If the rich still hold fast to this propriety of Mine and Thine, let them labour their own lands with their own hands. And let the common people, that say the earth is _ours_, not _mine_, let them labor together, and eat bread together upon the commons, mountains, and hills.

For as the enclosures are called such a man’s land, and such a man’s land, so the Commons and Heath are called the common people’s. And let the world see who labor the earth in righteousness, and those to whom the Lord gives the blessing, let them be the people that shall inherit the earth.

None can say that their right is taken from them. For let the rich work alone by themselves; and let the poor work together by themselves. The rich in their enclosures, saying, _This is mine_; and the poor upon the commons, saying, _This is ours, the earth and its fruits are common_. And who can be offended at the poor for doing this? None but covetous, proud, idle, pampered flesh, that would have the poor work still for this devil (particular interest) to maintain his greatness that he may live at ease.

Was the earth made for to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the earth from others, that these may beg or starve in a fruitful land: or was it made to preserve all her children? Let Reason and the Prophets’ and Apostles’ writings be judge.... For the earth is the Lord’s; that is the spreading Power of Righteousness, not the inheritance of covetous proud flesh that dies. If any man can say that he makes corn or cattle, he may say, _That is mine_. But if the Lord made these for the use of His creation, surely then the earth was made by the Lord to be a Common Treasury for all, not a particular treasury for some.

Leave off dominion and lordship one over another; for the whole bulk of mankind are but one living earth. Leave off imprisoning, whipping, and killing, which are but the actings of the curse. Let those that have hitherto had no land, and have been forced to rob and steal through poverty; henceforth let them quietly enjoy land to work upon, that everyone may enjoy the benefit of his creation, and eat his own bread with the sweat of his own brows. For surely this particular propriety of mine and thine hath brought in all misery upon people. First it hath occasioned people to steal from one another. Secondly it hath made laws to hang those that did steal. It tempts people to do an evil action, and then kills them for doing of it. Let all judge whether this be not a great evil.

In April, 1649, the time was ripe--so Winstanley and his friends judged--for making a start to get rid of this evil.

The Council of State, but a few months old, and much occupied with dangers in Scotland and Ireland, and with mutinous Levellers in the army, was suddenly informed of the strange activities of “a disorderly and tumultuous sort of people” by one Henry Sanders, of Walton-upon-Thames.

Sanders’ testimony affirmed that “there was one Everard, once of the army but was cashiered, who termeth himself a prophet, one Stewer and Colten, and two more, all living at Cobham, came to St. George’s Hill in Surrey, and began to dig on that side the hill next to Camp Close, and sowed the ground with parsnips, carrots, and beans. On Monday following they were there again, being increased in their number, and on the next day they fired the heath, and burned at least forty rood of heath, which is a very great prejudice to the town. On Friday last they came again, between twenty and thirty, and wrought all day at digging. They did then intend to have two or three ploughs at work, but they had not furnished themselves with seed-corn, which they did on Saturday at Kingston. They invite all to come in and help them, and promise them meat, drink, and clothes. They do threaten to pull down and level all park pales, and lay open, and intend to plant there very shortly. They give out they will be four or five thousand within ten days, and threaten the neighbouring people there, that they will make them all come up to the hills and work: and forewarn them suffering their cattle to come near the plantation; if they do, they will cut their legs off. It is feared they have some design in hand.”[126]

The date of this information was April 16th, and Bradshaw, the President of the Council, at once asked General Fairfax “to disperse the people so met, and to prevent the like for the future, that a malignant and disaffected party may not under colour of such ridiculous people have any opportunity to rendezvous themselves in order to do a greater mischief.”

Fairfax sent Captain John Gladman to attend to the matter, and Gladman reports three days later that Mr. Winstanley and Mr. Everard are the chief men responsible, that he “cannot hear that there have been above twenty of them together since they first undertook the business,” and that Mr. Winstanley and Mr. Everard will wait upon Lord Fairfax. He adds; “I believe you will be glad to be rid of them again, especially Everard, who is no other than a mad man. I intend to go with two or three men to St. George’s Hill this day and persuade these people to leave this employment if I can, and if then I see no more danger than now I do I shall march back again to London to-morrow.” Gladman’s opinion is that “the business is not worth the writing nor yet taking notice of.”

The interview between Fairfax and Winstanley and Everard took place on April 20, and Everard explained that the Diggers “did not intend to meddle with any man’s property nor to break down any pales or enclosures, but only to meddle with what was common and untilled, and to make it fruitful for the use of man: that they will not defend themselves by arms, but will submit unto authority; that as their forefathers lived in tents, so it would be suitable to their condition now to live in the same.”

Fairfax evidently decided that the movement was not so alarming as the Council of State had represented, for Winstanley and his Diggers resumed their work, and at the end of May, Fairfax, with the officers of the army, paid a visit to St. George’s Hill. Winstanley returned “sober answers” to the inquiries of Fairfax, “though they gave little satisfaction (if any at all) in regard of the strangeness of their action.” Winstanley’s argument, often enlarged in his pamphlets, was that the people were dispossessed of their lands by the crown at the Norman Conquest, and that “the king who possessed them by the Norman Conquest being dead, they were returned again, being Crown Lands, to the Common People of England.”

This was not conclusive to their visitors, and “some officers wished they had no further plot in what they did, and that no more was intended than what they did pretend.” To the objection that the ground was too poor to repay cultivation, “the Diggers answered they would use their endeavours and leave the success to God, who had promised to make the barren ground fruitful.” Public opinion gave out that the Diggers were “sober, honest men,” and that “the ground will probably in a short time yield them some fruit of their labour, how contemptible soever they do yet appear to be.”

Encouraged by Fairfax’s “kindness and moderation,” Winstanley appeals to him in June against the interference of the local landowners, and getting no response (for Fairfax had said that the Diggers were to be left to “the Gentlemen of the County and the Law of the Land”), publishes an appeal to the House of Commons against his arrest for trespass by the Lords of Manors in Surrey. The House of Commons, occupied with State matters, turned an indifferent ear to Winstanley’s complaint, and the leader of the Diggers sent a “Watchword to the City of London and the Army,” telling the wrongs the Diggers suffered at the hands of the law for “digging upon the barren common”--how they were mulcted in damages at £10 a man, with costs at twenty-nine shillings and a penny, and taken in execution, and how their cows were seized by the bailiffs. At the end of November the very huts they had built were pulled down, and it was a hard winter for the little colony still left on St. George’s Hill.

Winstanley does not merely relate his injuries in these publications, he is all the time urging that his plan for setting people upon the common lands is the needful thing in England, that a common ownership of land is God’s will, and that the crown lands taken by the Normans must revert to the people on the execution of the king.

In the spring of 1650 an attempt was made to extend the digging propaganda--for the planting of St. George’s Hill was doomed--and some of Winstanley’s disciples made a tour through the counties of Middlesex, Bedford, Hertford, Huntingdon, and Northampton, settling down at last on some waste ground near Wellingborough. Here they were very soon arrested by a local justice of the peace, the Council of State ordered their prosecution, and the movement was suppressed.

To the Council of State these Diggers were “Levellers,”[127] “intruders upon other men’s properties,” “seditious and tumultuous,” against whom the public peace must be preserved.

Of Winstanley’s future, when the days of the digging were over, nothing seems to be known. Only one pamphlet is issued by him after 1650--“The Law of Freedom in a Platform; or, True Magistracy Restored”--an open letter to Oliver Cromwell, February, 1652. With this final manifesto on the land question, and on the whole social question, as he saw it, Gerrard Winstanley disappears from history. In the multitude of prophets and preachers, visionaries and practical reformers of the Commonwealth, Winstanley is little heeded by his contemporaries. The importance of his mission is seen more clearly to-day, when statesmen, politicians, and philanthropists all urge agrarian changes and the excellence of land culture.

As to Winstanley’s claim on behalf of the people to the common lands, the advantage of possession of these lands was realized by the landowners in the eighteenth century, and from 1760 to 1830 more than a thousand acts of parliament were passed for enclosing these lands.[128]

In “The Diggers Song,” (of unknown authorship[129]), the outlook of Winstanley and his followers is expressed in popular form:

You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now, You noble Diggers all, stand up now, The waste land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name, Your digging do disdain; and persons all defame. Stand up now, stand up now.

Your houses they pull down, stand up now, stand up now, Your houses they pull down, stand up now; Your houses they pull down to fright poor men in town, But the Gentry must come down, and the poor shall wear the crown. Stand up now, Diggers all!

With spades, and hoes, and plowes, stand up now, stand up now, With spades, and hoes, and plowes, stand up now; Your freedom to uphold, seeing Cavaliers are bold To kill you if they could, and rights from you withhold. Stand up now, Diggers all!

Their self-will is their law, stand up now, stand up now, Their self-will is their law, stand up now; Since tyranny came in, they count it now no sin To make a gaol a gin, to starve poor men therein. Stand up now, stand up now.

The Gentry are all round, stand up now, stand up now, The Gentry are all round, stand up now; The Gentry are all round, on each side they are found, Their wisdoms so profound to cheat us of our ground. Stand up now, stand up now.

The Lawyers they conjoin, stand up now, stand up now, The Lawyers they conjoin, stand up now; To arrest you they advise, such fury they devise, The devil in them lies, and hath blinded both their eyes. Stand up now, stand up now.

The Clergy they come in, stand up now, stand up now, The Clergy they come in, stand up now; The Clergy they come in, and say it is a sin That we should now begin our freedom for to win. Stand up now, Diggers all!

The tithes they yet will have, stand up now, stand up now, The tithes they yet will have, stand up now; The tithes they yet will have, and Lawyers their fees crave, And this they say is brave, to make the poor their slave. Stand up now, Diggers all!

’Gainst Lawyers and ’gainst Priests, stand up now, stand up now, ’Gainst Lawyers and ’gainst Priests, stand up now; For tyrants they are both, even flat against their oath, To grant us they are loath, free meat, and drink and cloth. Stand up now, Diggers all!

The club is all their law, stand up now, stand up now, The club is all their law, stand up now; The club is all their law, to keep poor men in awe, But they no vision saw, to maintain such a law. Stand up now, Diggers all!

The Cavaliers are foes, stand up now, stand up now, The Cavaliers are foes, stand up now; The Cavaliers are foes, themselves they do disclose By verses, not in prose, to please the singing boys. Stand up now, Diggers all!

To conquer them by love, come in now, come in now, To conquer them by love, come in now; To conquer them by love, as it does you behove, For He is King above, no Power is like to Love. Glory here, Diggers all.

Major Cartwright

“The Father of Reform”

1775–1824

AUTHORITIES: _Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright_, edited by his Niece, 1826; _A Memoir of John Cartwright the Reformer_, 1831; _The Times_, September 25th, 1824; Graham Wallas--_Francis Place_.

MAJOR CARTWRIGHT “THE FATHER OF REFORM”

1775–1824.

The substance of Major Cartwright’s life is told on the pedestal beneath his statue in the dingy garden of Burton Crescent, to the south of Euston Road, in London.

JOHN CARTWRIGHT,

Born 28th September, 1740. Died 23rd September, 1824.

The Firm, Consistent and Persevering Advocate of _Universal Suffrage_, Equal Representation, Vote by Ballot and Annual Parliaments.

He was the first English Writer who openly maintained the Independence of the United States of America, and although his distinguished merits as a Naval Officer in 1776 presented the most flattering Prospects of Professional Advancement, yet he nobly refused to draw his Sword against the Rising Liberties of an oppressed and struggling People.

In Grateful Commemoration of his inflexible integrity, exalted Patriotism, “profound Constitutional Knowledge,” and in sincere admiration of the unblemished Virtues of his Private Life,

THIS STATUE

was erected by Public Subscription near the spot where he closed his useful and meritorious career.

There is nothing false or exaggerated in this epitaph. Fox, in the House of Commons, testified to Cartwright’s “profound constitutional knowledge.” Hazlitt, who never met Cartwright, classed him with the men of one idea (and lingered over the subject), but the charge is ill-founded. It is true that for nearly fifty years, in season and out of season, Cartwright, a pupil of Locke in politics, contended publicly for annual parliaments and manhood suffrage, claiming personality and not property as the ground for enfranchisement, and insisting that while the right of the rich and the poor to the vote was equal, the need of the latter was far greater. But this agitation was by no means the limit either of his ideas or his activities.

Entering the navy at eighteen, John Cartwright, who came of an old Nottingham family, devised improvements in the gun service, and, made a lieutenant, was marked for high promotion. The revolt of the American colonies cut short his professional career. An innate love of liberty compelled the young naval officer to side with the colonists, and he writes in 1776 that it is a mistaken notion that the planting of colonies and the extending of empire are necessarily the same things. Self-governing colonies, he declares, bound to England only by “the ties of blood and mutual interests, by sincere love and friendship, which abhors dependence, and by every other cementing principle which hath power to take hold of the human heart,” are to be desired.

Lord Howe put Cartwright’s principles to the test by inviting him to join the expedition against the Americans, and Cartwright, who was “passionately attached to the navy,” and had an immense admiration for Howe, could only answer that he was unable to take part in a war he thought unjust. With this refusal his naval services were ended, in spite of Howe’s quiet and dignified reply that “opinions in politics are to be treated like opinions in religion.” (No word of reproach came from Howe, no taunt of want of courage or lack of patriotism.)

Cartwright never condemned all war. He urged in a letter to a nephew in the army that the answer to the question of the justice or injustice of a war decided whether justifiable homicide or wilful murder was committed by those engaged in battle. He hated standing armies and barracks and barrack life, and all the pomp and glory of militarism, as heartily as he hated the attempt to coerce the colonists. But no sooner was he out of the navy than, with a major’s commission, he at once set to work to train the Nottinghamshire militia, only retiring from this post in 1791 when the government cancelled his appointment for attending a meeting called to celebrate the fall of the Bastille.

The militia in Cartwright’s view was strictly a citizen army for home defence. “The militia,” he wrote, “by its institution is not intended to spread the dominion or to vindicate in war the honour of the crown, but it is to preserve our laws and liberties, and therein to secure the existence of the State.” Thirteen years before the fall of the Bastille Major Cartwright had the cap of liberty displayed on the banners and engraved on the buttons of the Nottinghamshire Militia. A greater service than providing symbols of liberty was rendered to the army by Cartwright in the matter of better clothing for the men. The misery endured by ill-clad sentries aroused his compassion and indignation, and Cartwright worried the government until it provided great-coats for all private soldiers.

The humaner courage is as conspicuous in John Cartwright’s long life as his political enthusiasm.

Four times he risked his life to save others from drowning, rescuing two men from the Trent, a naval officer at sea, and, in late middle-life, a small boy who had fallen into the New River, near London. In the year 1800, hearing of a riot planned at Sheffield, Cartwright made his way alone to the barn where the conspirators were assembled, and stayed all night, reasoning with them against their project. In the morning the confederates, dissuaded from violence, quietly dispersed, and the riot was prevented.

An untiring advocacy of democratic politics earned for Cartwright, justly, the title of “The Father of Reform.” He was the real founder of that movement for political reform, which in the nineteenth century swept away rotten boroughs, gave representation to all towns of importance, and extended the franchise to the great bulk of male householders in town and country; which to-day presses towards a general suffrage for men and women.

Major Cartwright began his speeches and pamphlets on behalf of political reform in 1776, just after his retirement from the navy, and his acceptance of the commission in the militia.

The ideas of the French Encyclopædists, the writings of Rousseau, and the revolt of the American colonists, had aroused a belief in social equality, and the “natural” rights of man, and this belief Cartwright championed till his death. His early pamphlets, beginning with “Legislative Rights of the Commonalty Vindicated,” (1777) are heavy reading to-day, but in them Cartwright argued for all the famous “six points” of the People’s Charter of fifty years later--Universal Manhood Suffrage, Annual Parliaments, Vote by Ballot, Abolition of Property Qualification for Parliamentary Candidates, Payment of Members, and Equal Electoral Districts. He even uses the modern phrase in urging “one man one vote.”