“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.
“2. If the Lords of Manors and other Gentlemen who covet after so much land, could not let it out by parcels, but must be constrained to keep it in their own hands, then would they want those great bags of money (which do maintain pride, idleness and fullness of bread) which are carried in to them by the Tenants, who go in as slavish a posture as well may be, namely, with cap in hand and bended knee, crouching and creeping from corner to corner, while his Lord (rather Tyrant) walks up and down the room with his proud looks, and with great swelling words questions him about his holding.
“3. If the Lords of Manors and other Gentlemen had not those great bags of money brought to them, then down would fall the lordliness of their spirits, and then poor men might speak to them, and there might be an acknowledging of one another to be Fellow-Creatures.