CHAPTER XVI.—THE DIGGERS
MISERY was not confined to particular counties. It was universal. The Moderate Intelligencer says that "hundreds of thousands" in England have a livelihood which gives them food in the summer but little or none in the winter ; that a third part of the people in most of the parishes stand in need of relief ; that thousands of families have no work, and those who have can earn bread only. "There are many thousands near to this City [London] who have no other sustenance through the week but beer-meals — neither roots, flesh, drink, or other necessaries are they able to buy, and of meal not sufficient." The Impartial Intelligencer speaks of the extraordinary price of provisions (taken into consideration by the House). "Labour is cheaper and food twice dearer than formerly." So acute was the misery that some people began to look into the causes. They were called "Levellers," this time because it was said they wished to "level men's estates." But they did not—nor were they Jesuits, as others averred. The best known of them is Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne—the only man of that age who understood representative government. He was thought a madman, a fanatic, a man so captious, that, were he the last man left in the world, Lilburne would quarrel with John and John with Lilburne. Colonel Rainborow, another of the levellers, told his fellow-officers in Council: "The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he." The levellers said : "The most necessary work of mankind is to provide for the poor. The rich can help themselves … the wealth and strength of all countries are in the poor, for they do all the great necessary works, and they make up the main body of the strength of armies." And Winstanley the Digger wrote: "England is not a free people till the poor that have no land have a free allowance to dig and labour the commons, and so live as comfortably as the landlords that live in their enclosures."
The Digger movement has been misunderstood. In its main features, it was neither anarchical nor Utopian. It was an attempt to recover the commons. The diggers are often called "levellers," but though all levellers were in sympathy with the diggers, the diggers were more con-
