r unlawful. And it is the
cause of all oppressions, whereby many thousands are deprived of their
rights which God hath invested them withal, whereby they are forced to
beg or steal for want." It then details the various means taken to this
end, and declares them, as well as the kingly power which its author
holds, to be their source and origin, to be opposed to the direct
command of God as expressed in the Holy Scriptures. Hence it denounces
the oppressing privileged classes as "rebels against God's commands,"
and as "traitors against God's Annointed, Jesus Christ, who alone is
Lord and King over men, and all men are equal." The writer contends that
with the fall of the King, all the special privileges, grants, patents,
monopolies, etc., created by him, should have fallen also. But since "it
is apparent that the Grandees of the Parliament intend still to uphold
them, and to take a large share thereof unto themselves," he finds
himself forced to appeal "to all our dear Brethren in England and to the
Soldiers in the Army to stand everyone in his place to oppose all
Tyranny whatsoever and by whomsoever intended against us."
At the foot of this pamphlet we find the following notice: "Reader, You
may expect in the Third Part to have an Anatomising of all Powers that
now are, etc. And in the Fourth Part, the Grounds and Rules that all men
are to go by. Farewell." Whether these notices refer to some of
Winstanley's pamphlets, the second seems to point to _The New Law of
Righteousness_, or not, we have no means of knowing. Nor, indeed,
whether the above pamphlets were from his pen, though we strongly
believe them to have been so. In any case they seem to us to have
sufficient bearing on the Digger Movement to justify our noticing them
here.
Some six weeks later, on May 10th, yet another pamphlet appeared from
the same part of the country, entitled:
"A DECLARATION OF THE WELL-AFFECTED IN THE COUNTY OF
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE:[84:1]
Being a Representation of the Middle Sort of Men within the three
Chilterne Hundreds of Disborough, Burnum and Stoke, and part of
Ailsbury Hundred, whereby they declare their Resolution and
Intentions, with a Removal of their Grievances."
This is a very short pamphlet, of some seven pages, in which these
"Middle Sort of Men" state that they had waited for eight years for
redress of their grievances, but finding them still continue, and
expecting little
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