ber you are Servants to the Commons of
England, and you were volunteers in the Wars, and the Common People
have paid you for your pains largely.... As soon as you have freed
the Earth from one entanglement of Kingly Power, will you entangle
it more? I pray you consider what you do, and do righteously. We
that are the Poor Commons, that paid our money and gave you
free-quarter, have as much right in those Crown Lands and Lands of
the spoil as you. Therefore we give no consent that you should buy
and sell our Crown Lands and Waste Lands; for it is our purchased
inheritance from under oppression! it is our own, even the poor
Common People's of England.... We paid you your wages to help us
recover it, but not to take it yourselves and turn us out, and to
buy and sell it among yourselves.... If you do so, you uphold the
Kingly Power, and so disobey both Acts of Parliament, and break
your Oath; and you will live in the breach of these two
commandments, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, by denying
us the Earth which is our livelihood, and thereby killing us by a
lingering death."

Winstanley then summarises his contentions, as follows:

"Well, the end of all my speech is to point out the Kingly Power
where I spy it out. And you see it remains strongly in the hands of
Lords of Manors, who have dealt so discourteously with some who are
sincere in heart, though there have some come among the Diggers
that have caused scandal, but we disown their ways.[137:1]

"The Lords of Manors have sent to beat us, to pull down our houses,
spoil our labours; yet we are patient, and never offered any
violence to them again these forty weeks past, but wait upon God
with love till their hearts thereby be softened. All that we
desire is but to live quietly in the Land of our Nativity by our
righteous labour upon the Common Land, which is our own; but as yet
the Lords of the Manors, so formerly called, will not suffer us,
but abuse us. Is not that part of the Kingly Power? In that which
follows I shall clearly prove it is; for it appears so clear that
the understanding of a child does say, 'It is tyranny; it is the
Kingly Power of Darkness.' Therefore we expect that you will grant
us the benefit of your Act of Parliament, so that we may say--Truly
England is a Common