[592] Russell, Ket’s Rebellion in Norfolk, p. 48.
[593] Some doubt has been expressed as to the interpretation of these words. They should probably be read in the light of what was said above (Part I. chap. iv.) as to enclosures made by the tenants themselves. The rebels point out that a considerable number of people have spent capital on hedging and ditching their lands for the better cultivation of saffron, and therefore ask that, while other enclosures may be pulled down, a special exception may be made in favour of this particular kind of enclosure.
[594] Contrast the feeling in Protestant Norfolk with that of Cornwall and Devon in 1549, and of the North in 1536.
[595] The grammar is bad, but the sense is clear enough. Lords must stop shifting on to tenants burdens which lords ought to bear.
[596] Camden Society, Clarke Papers, vol. ii. p. 217. Letter addressed by the Diggers, December 8, 1649: “To my lord generall and his Councell of War.” The allusion to the usurping Normans occurs also (ibid., p. 215) in another letter in a statement of the reasons of the agitation: “Secondly by vertue of yours and our victory over the king, whereby the enslaved people of England have recovered themselves from under the Norman Conquest; though wee do not yet enjoy the benefit of our victories, nor cannot soe long as the use of the Common land is held from the younger brethren by the Lords of Mannours that yet sit in the Norman chair and uphold that tyranny as if the kingly power were in force still.”
[597] Winstanley: “The curse and blessing that is in mankind,” quoted Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century.
[598] A reference to the Levellers occurs in connection with the Midland Revolt of 1607, Lodge, Illustrations, iii. 320: “You cannot but have hearde what courses have been taken in Leicestershire and Warwickshire by the two Lord Lieutenants there, and by the gentlemen ... and lastlie howe Sir Anth. Mildmay and Sir Edward Montacute repaired to Newton ... where one thousand of these fellowes who term themselves levellers were busily digging, but weare furnished with many half-pikes, pyked staves, long bills, and bowes and arrows and stones ... there were slaine some 40 or 50 of them and a verie great number hurt" (January 11, 1607, the Earl of Shrewsbury to Sir John Manners, Sir Francis Leake, and Sir John Harper). The name Diggers seems to have cropped up about the same time, v. Wit and Wisdom, edited by Halliwell for New Shakespeare Society, pp. 140–141, for a petition from “the Diggers of Warwickshire to all other diggers,” and signed “poore Delvers and Day Labourers for ye good of ye commonwealth till death" (quoted by Gay, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., New Series, vol. xviii.)
[599] See below, pp. [367–368].
[600] Somers' Tracts, vol. i., pp. 164–168: “For their tenantries, this conceit I have thought upon ... that your Majesty, in every shire, should give instruction to some that are indeed trusty and religious gentlemen, that, whereas your Majesty is given to understand that divers popish landlords do hardly use some of your people and subjects, ... you do constitute and appoint them to deal both with entreaty and authority, that such tenants, paying as others do, be not thrust out of their living, nor otherwise molested. This would greatly bind the commons' hearts unto you, on whom indeed consisteth the power and strength of your realm, and it will make them less, or nothing at all, depend upon their landlords.”
[601] For the manner in which the British army is recruited by starvation, see Mr. Cyril Jackson’s Report on Boy Labour to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress, Cd. 4632, pp. 166–168.