Lewis H. Berens - The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth

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Transcriber's notes:

All material added by the transcriber is surrounded by
braces {}.

The original has a number of inconsistent spellings and
punctuation. A few corrections have been made for obvious
typographical errors; they have been noted individually.
A list of specific items will be found at the end of the
file.

Text in italics in the original is shown between
_underlines_, and text in bold between =equal signs=.

THE DIGGER MOVEMENT IN THE DAYS OF THE COMMONWEALTH

As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger
_Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer_

by

LEWIS H. BERENS
Author of "Towards the Light"
Etc. Etc.

"Was glaenzt ist fuer den Augenblick geboren;
Das Echte bleibt der{1} Nachwelt unverloren."
GOETHE.

London
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co. Ltd.
1906

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

TO

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
(THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT)

TO WHOM THE WORLD OWES MORE THAN IT YET RECOGNISES
AND
WHOSE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES
THE AUTHOR
HAS LEARNED TO LOVE AND ADMIRE
WHILST WRITING THIS BOOK

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY 1

II. THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 12

III. THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 23

IV. THE DIGGERS 34

V. GERRARD WINSTANLEY 41

VI. WINSTANLEY'S EXPOSITION OF THE QUAKER DOCTRINES 52

VII. THE NEW LAW OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 68

VIII. LIGHT SHINING IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 79

IX. THE DIGGERS' MANIFESTOES 90

X. A LETTER TO LORD FAIRFAX, ETC. 100

XI. A WATCHWORD TO THE CITY OF LONDON, ETC. 112

XII. A NEW YEAR'S GIFT FOR THE PARLIAMENT AND ARMY 132

XIII. A VINDICATION; A DECLARATION; AND AN APPEAL 146

XIV. GERRARD WINSTANLEY'S UTOPIA: THE LAW OF FREEDOM 162

XV. THE SAME CONTINUED 179

XVI. THE SAME CONTINUED 206

XVII. CONCLUDING REMARKS 228

APPENDIX A. THE TWELVE ARTICLES OF THE GERMAN
PEASANTRY, 1525 235

" B. CROMWELL ON TOLERATION 241

" C. WINSTANLEY'S LAWS FOR A FREE COMMONWEALTH 244

BIBLIOGRAPHY 255

INDEX 257

THE DIGGER MOVEMENT

CHAPTER I

THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY

"Whatever the prejudices of some may suggest, it will be admitted
by all unbiassed judges, that the Protestant Reformation was
neither more nor less than an open rebellion. Indeed, the mere
mention of private judgment, on which it was avowedly based, is
enough to substantiate this fact. To establish the right of private
judgment, was to appeal from the Church to individuals; it was to
increase the play of each man's intellect; it was to test the
opinion of the priesthood by the opinions of laymen; it was, in
fact, a rising of the scholars against their teachers, of the ruled
against their rulers."--BUCKLE.

What is known in history as the Reformation is one of those monuments in
the history of the development of the human mind betokening its entry
into new territory. Fundamental conceptions and beliefs, cosmological,
physical, ethical or political, once firmly established, change but
slowly; the universal tendency is tenaciously to cling to them despite
all evidence to the contrary. Still men's views do change with their
intellectual development, as newly discovered facts and newly accepted
ideas come into conflict with old opinions, and force them to reconsider
the evidence on which these latter were based. Prior to the Reformation,
many such conceptions and beliefs, at one time holding undisputed
dominion over the human mind, had been called into question, their
authority challenged, undermined, and weakened, and they had commenced
to yield pride of place to others more in accordance with increased
knowledge of nature and of life. The revival of classical learning,
geographical and astronomical discoveries, and more especially, perhaps,
the invention and rapid spread of the art of printing, had all conspired
to give an unparalleled impetus to intellectual development,--and the
Reformation was, in truth, the outward manifestation in the religious
world of this development.

Prior to the Reformation, wherever a man might turn his steps in Western
Europe, he found himself confronted with what was proudly termed the
Universal Church: one hierarchy, one faith, one form of worship, in
which the officiating priests were assumed to be the indispensable
mediators between God and man, everywhere confronted him. Religion was
then much more intimately blended with the life of man than it is now;
and on all matters of religion, Western Europe seemed to present a
united front and to be impervious to change. Appearances, however, are
proverbially deceitful. Beneath this apparent uniformity and general
conformity, there lurked countless forces, spiritual, intellectual,
social and political, making for change. Dissent and dissatisfaction,
with myriads of tiny teeth, had undermined and weakened the stately
columns that upheld the imposing structure of the Universal Church. Even
within the Church itself there was seething inquietude, and thousands of
its purest souls longed, prayed and struggled for its practical
amendment. To emancipate the Church from the clutches of the autocracy
of Rome; to remove the abuses that, in the course of centuries, had
grown round and sullied its primitive purity; to lighten the fiscal
oppression of the Papacy and to check the rapacity of the Cardinals; to
reform and discipline the priesthood; even to modify certain doctrines
and dogmas: such were the aspirations of some of the most devout,
eminent and cultured sons of the Church. Outside its communion there
were many forms of heresy, which, though generally regarded as
disreputable and often treated as criminal, the apparently all-powerful
Church had never been able entirely to eradicate. And, at first at
least, both these forces favoured the efforts of the early Lutheran
Reformers.

The influence of the Reformation, of "the New Learning," on
theological, ethical, social and political thought can scarcely be
overestimated. Under the supremacy of the Church of Rome, men, educated
and uneducated, had come to rely almost entirely on authority and
precedent, and had lost the habit of self-reliance, of unswerving
dependence on the dictates of reason, which was one of the
distinguishing characteristics of the classical philosophers and their
disciples, as it is of the modern scientific school of thought. In
short, concerning matters spiritual and temporal, Faith had usurped the
function of Reason. Hence any innovations, whatever their abstract
merit, were regarded not only with justifiable suspicion and caution,
but as entirely unworthy of consideration, unless, of course, they could
be shown to be in accordance with accepted traditions and doctrines, or
had received the sanction of the Church. But even the Church itself was
popularly regarded as bound by tradition and precedent; and when the
Papacy sanctioned any departure from established custom, it was
understood to do so in its capacity of infallible expounder of
unalterable doctrines.

The habits of centuries still enthralled the early Reformers.
Circumstances compelled them to attack some of the doctrines and customs
of their Mother Church, of which at first they were inclined to regard
themselves as dutiful though sorrowful sons. The logic of facts,
however, soon forced them outside the Church. Then, but then only, for
the authority of the Church, they substituted the authority of the
Scriptures. To apply to them Luther's own words, "they had saved others,
themselves they could not save." In their eyes Reason and Faith were
still mortal enemies,--as unfortunately they are to this day in the eyes
of a steadily diminishing number of their followers,--and they did not
hesitate to demand the sacrifice of reason when it conflicted, or
appeared to conflict, with the demands of faith: and that, indeed, as
"the all-acceptablest sacrifice and service that can be offered to God."
In a sermon in 1546, the last he delivered at Wittenberg, Luther gave
vent, in language that even one of his modern admirers finds too gross
for quotation, to his bitter hatred and contempt for reason, at all
events when it conflicted with his own interpretation of the Scriptures,
or with any of the fundamental dogmas and doctrines he had himself
formulated or accepted. While even in milder moments he did not hesitate
to teach that[4:1]--

"It is a quality of faith that it wrings the neck of reason and
strangles the beast, which else the whole world, with all
creatures, could not strangle. But how? It holds to God's word:
lets it be right and true, no matter how foolish and impossible it
sounds. So did Abraham take his reason captive and slay it....
There is no doubt faith and reason mightily fell out in Abraham's
heart, yet at last did faith get the better, and overcame and
strangled reason, the all-cruelest and most fatal enemy to God. So,
too, do all other faithful men who enter with Abraham the gloom and
hidden darkness of faith; they strangle reason ... and thereby
offer to God the all-acceptablest sacrifice and service that can
ever be brought to Him."

However, whatever may have been the personal desires and tendencies of
those associated with its earlier manifestations, the forces of which
the Reformation was the outcome were not to be controlled by them. The
spirit of which they were the product was not to be controlled by any
fetters they could forge. The Reformation emancipated the intellect of
Europe from the yoke of tradition and blind obedience to authority; it
let loose the illuming flood of thought which had been accumulating
behind the more rigid barriers of the Church, and swept away as things
of straw the feebler barriers the early Reformers would have erected to
confine the thoughts of future generations. The futility of all such
efforts we can gauge, they could not. Blind obedience to authority, in
matters spiritual and temporal, had been the watchword and animating
principle of the power against which they had rebelled; liberty and
reason were the watchwords and animating principles of the movement of
which they, owing to their rebellion, had temporarily become the
recognised leaders. The right of private judgement, in other words, the
supremacy of reason as sole judge and arbiter of all matters, spiritual
as well as secular, was the essential element of the movement of which
the Reformation was the outcome; how, then, could they, the children of
this movement, hope to change its course?

When considering the forces and circumstances that made the Reformation
possible, when so many equally earnest previous attempts in the same
direction had failed, we should not lose sight of the favourable
political situation. Under cover of its religious authority, by means of
its unrivalled organisation, as well as by its temporal control of large
areas of the richest and most fertile land in Europe, the Church of Rome
annually drained into Italy a large part of the surplus wealth of every
country that recognised its spiritual authority. Such countries were
impoverished to support not only the resident but an absentee
priesthood, and to enable the Princes of the Church to maintain a more
than princely state at Rome. This was a standing grievance even in the
eyes of many sincerely devout Churchmen, and one which was prone to make
statesmen and politicians look with a favourable eye on any movement
which promised to lessen or to abolish it. Germany in this respect had
special reasons for discontent; as has been well said, "It was the milch
cow of the Papacy, which at once despised and drained it dry." And, as
everybody knows, it was in Germany that the standard of revolt against
the authority of Rome was first successfully raised. The political
constitution of that country was also peculiarly favourable to the
protection of the Reformation and of the persons of the early Reformers.
Although owing a nominal allegiance to the Emperor, or rather to the
will of the Diet which met annually under the presidency of the Emperor,
the head of each of the little States into which Germany was divided
claimed to be independent lord of the territory over which he ruled.
Hence, when the Ernestine line of Saxon princes took the Reformation and
the early Reformers under their protection, there was no power ready
and willing to compel them to relinquish their design. The democratic
independence of the Free Cities also made them fitting strongholds of
the new teachings.

Students of history would do well never to lose sight of the fact that
every religion which attempts to bind or to guide the reason, to direct
the lives and to determine the conscience of mankind, necessarily has an
ethical as well as a theological, a social as well as an individual
side. It concerns itself, not only with the relation of the individual
to God or the gods, but also with the relations and duties of man to
man. Hence the close relation and inter-relation of religion and
politics. Politics is the art or act of regulating the social relations
of mankind, of determining social or civic rights and duties. It is
neither more nor less than the practical application of accepted
abstract ethical, or religious, principles in the domain of social life.
Hence we cannot be surprised that almost every wide-spread religious
revival, every renewed application of reason to religion, which almost
necessarily gives prominence to its ethical or social side, has been
followed by an uprising of the masses against what they had come to
regard as the irreligious tyranny and oppression of the ruling
privileged classes. The teachings of Wyclif in England, in the
fourteenth century, were followed by the insurrection associated with
the name of Wat Tyler; the teachings of Luther and his associates, in
the sixteenth century, by the Peasants' Revolt.

To the economic causes of the unrest of the peasantry and labouring
classes during the fifteenth and sixteenth century, we can refer only
very briefly. At the time of the great migration of the fifth century,
the free barbarian nations were organised on a tribal or village basis.
By the end of the tenth century, however, what is known as the Feudal
System had been established all over Europe. "No land without a lord" was
the underlying principle of the whole Feudal System. Either by conquest
or usurpation, or by more or less compulsory voluntary agreement, even
the free primitive communities (_die Markgenossenshaften_) of the
Teutonic races had been brought under the dominion of the lords,
spiritual or temporal, claiming suzerainty over the territory in which
they were situated. The claims of the Feudal Magnates seem ever to have
been somewhat vague and arbitrary. At first they were comparatively
light, and may well have been regarded and excused as a return for
services rendered. The general tendency, however, was for the individual
power of the lords to extend itself at the cost and to the detriment of
the rural communities, and for their claims steadily to increase and to
become more burdensome. During the fourteenth century many causes had
combined to improve the condition of the industrial classes; and during
the end of the fourteenth and the early part of the fifteenth century the
condition of the peasantry and artisans of Northern Europe was better
than it had ever been before or has ever been since: wages were
comparatively high, employment plentiful, food and other necessaries of
life both abundant and cheap.[7:1] At the beginning of the sixteenth
century, however, the prices of the necessaries of life had risen
enormously, and there had been no corresponding increase in the earnings
of the industrial classes. Moreover, the Feudal Magnates had commenced to
exercise their oppressive power in a hitherto unparalleled manner: old
rights of pasture, of gathering wood and cutting timber, of hunting and
fishing, and so on, had been greatly curtailed, in many cases entirely
abolished, tithes and other manorial dues had been doubled and trebled,
and many new and onerous burdens, some of them entirely opposed to
ancient use and wont, had been imposed. In short, the peasantry and
labouring classes generally were oppressed and impoverished in countless
different ways.

In Germany, as indeed in most other parts of Feudal Europe, the
peasantry of the period were of three different kinds. Serfs
(_Leibeigener_), who were little better than slaves, and who were bought
and sold with the land they cultivated; villeins (_Hoeriger_), whose
services were assumed to be fixed and limited; and the free peasant
(_die Freier_), whose counterpart in England was the mediaeval
copyholder, who either held his land from some feudal lord, to whom he
paid a quit-rent in kind or in money, or who paid such a rent for
permission to retain his holding in the rural community under the
protection of the lord. To appreciate the state of mind of such folk in
the times of which we are writing, we should remember that "the good old
times" of the fifteenth century were still green in their minds, from
which, indeed, the memory of ancient freedom and primitive communism,
though little more than a tradition, had never been entirely banished:
which sufficiently accounts, not only for their impatience of their new
burdens, but also for their tendency to regard all feudal dues as direct
infringements of their ancient rights and privileges.

"We will that you free us for ever, us and our lands; and that we be
never named and held as serfs!" was the demand of the revolting English
peasant in 1381; and the same words practically summarise the demands of
the German peasantry in 1525. The famous Twelve Articles in which they
summarised their wrongs and formulated their demands, forcibly
illustrate the direct influence of the prevailing religious revival on
the current social and political thought.[8:1] Briefly, they demanded
that the gospel should be preached to them pure and undefiled by any
mere man-made additions. That the rural communities, not the Feudal
Magnates, should have the power to choose and to dismiss their
ministers. That the tithes should be regulated in accordance with
scriptural injunctions, and devoted to the maintenance of ministers and
to the relief of the poor and distressed, "as we are commanded in the
Holy Scriptures." That serfdom should be abolished, "since Christ
redeemed us all with His precious blood, the shepherd as well as the
noble, the lowest as well as the highest, none being excepted." That the
claims of the rich to the game, to the fish in the running waters, to
the woods and forests and other lands, once the common property of the
community, should be investigated, and their ancient rights restored to
them, where they had been purchased, with adequate compensation, but
without compensation where they had been usurped. That arbitrary
compulsory service should cease, and the use and enjoyment of their
lands be granted to them in accordance with ancient customs and the
agreements between lords and peasants. That arbitrary punishments should
be abolished, as also certain new and oppressive customs. And, finally,
they desired that all their demands should be tested by Scripture, and
such as cannot stand this test to be summarily rejected.

That the demands of the peasants, as formulated in the Twelve Articles,
were reasonable, just and moderate, few to-day would care to deny. That
they appealed to such of their religious teachers as had some regard for
the material, as well as for the spiritual, well-being of their fellows,
may safely be inferred from the leading position taken by some of these
both prior to and during the uprising. Nor can there be any doubt but
that at first the peasants looked to Wittenberg for aid, support and
guidance. Those who had proclaimed the Bible as the sole authority,
must, they thought, unreservedly support every movement to give
practical effect to its teachings. Those who had revolted against the
abuses of the spiritual powers at Rome, must, they thought, sympathise
with their revolt against far worse abuses at home. They were bitterly
to be disappointed. From Luther and the band of scholastic Reformers
that had gathered round him, they were to receive neither aid, guidance
nor sympathy. The learned and cultured Melanchthon, Luther's right hand,
denounced their demand that serfdom should be abolished as an insolent
and violent outrage (_ein Frevel und Gewalt_), and preached passive
obedience to any and every established authority. "Even if all the
demands of the peasants were Christian," he said, "the uprising of the
peasants would not be justified; and that because God commands obedience
to the authorities." Luther's attitude was much the same. Though a son
of a peasant, and evidently realising that the demands of the peasants
were just and moderate, and "not stretched to their advantage," he at
first assumed a somewhat neutral attitude, which, however, he soon
relinquished; and in a pamphlet to which his greatest admirers must wish
he had never put his name, and which shocked even his own times and
many of his own immediate followers, he proclaimed that to put down the
revolt all "who can shall destroy, strangle, and stab, secretly or
openly, remembering that nothing is more poisonous, hurtful and devilish
than a rebellious man."

The rulers did not fail to better his instruction. In defence of their
privileges, the German princes, spiritual and temporal, catholic and
evangelical, united their forces, and the uprising was put down in a sea
of blood. The peasants, comparatively unarmed, were slaughtered by
thousands, and the yoke of serfdom was firmly re-fastened on the necks
of the people, until, some three hundred years later, in 1807, the
Napoleonic invasion compelled the ruling classes voluntarily to
relinquish some of their most cherished privileges. From a popular and
religious, the Reformation in Germany degenerated into a mere political
movement, and fell almost entirely into the hands of princes and
politicians to be exploited for their own purposes. The reorganisation
of the Churches, which the Reformation rendered necessary in those
States where it was maintained, was for the most part undertaken by the
secular authorities in accordance with the views of the temporal rulers,
whose religious belief their unfortunate subjects were assumed to have
adopted. The activities of the Lutheran Reformers were soon engrossed
weaving the web of a Protestant scholasticism, strengthening and
defending their favourite dogma of justification by faith, abusing and
persecuting such as differed from them on some all-important question of
dogma or doctrine, framing propositions of passive obedience, and other
such congenial pursuits.

Of the moral effect of the Reformation, of its effect on the general
character of the people who came under its influence, which is the one
test by which every such movement can be judged, we need say but little.
To put it as mildly as possible, it must be admitted, to use the words
of one of its modern admirers,[10:1] that "the Reformation did not at
first carry with it much cleansing force of moral enthusiasm." In the
hands of men more logical or of a less healthy moral fibre, Luther's
favourite dogma, of justification by faith alone, led to conclusions
subversive of all morality. However this may be, enemies and friends
alike have to admit that the immediate effects of the Reformation were a
dissolution of morals, a careless neglect of education and learning, and
a general relaxation of the restraints of religion. In passage after
passage, Luther himself declared that the last state of things was worse
than the first; that vice of every kind had increased since the
Reformation; that the nobles were more greedy, the burghers more
avaricious, the peasants more brutal; that Christian charity and
liberality had almost ceased to flow; and that the authorised preachers
of religion were neither heeded, respected nor supported by the people:
all of which he characteristically attributed to the workings of the
devil, a personage who plays a most important part in Luther's theology
and view of life.

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