SOURCE: "Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger Movement in Walton and Cobham," The Historical Journal, Vol, 37, No. 4, December, 1994, pp. 775-802.

[In the following essay, Gurney refers to Winstanley's pamphlets and other contemporary documents to discuss the levels of general societal acceptance received by the Digger communities Winstanley established in Surrey.]

Although much has been written in recent years about the life of Gerrard Winstanley,¹ our knowledge of those who joined him in the Digger venture of 1649-50 remains extremely limited. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the Digger movement in recent studies of popular protest, and there has been a tendency to emphasize the Diggers' lack of popular appeal and their apparent failure to gain the support of the local tenantry. In the absence of detailed studies of the Surrey Diggers and their opponents, it has proved difficult to test the validity of the widely-held view that Winstanley and his followers were, unlike the Diggers of Iver in Buckinghamshire, outsiders who met with considerable hostility from the inhabitants of the communities in which they tried to organize, and were defeated as much by popular opposition as by the campaigns waged against them by local landowners.² The suggestion that the Diggers were unwelcome intruders has important implications, not only for the study of the Digger movement itself, but also for what it tells us about the links between social conflict and popular radicalism, and about the receptiveness of rural communities to the spread of radical ideas during the English revolution. It can be argued that there was in fact not one, but two responses to the Diggers in Surrey, and that historians have failed to distinguish adequately between the Diggers' contrasting experiences in the two parishes of Walton and Cobham. Although there was determined local opposition to the Diggers in Walton, a parish with a long tradition of hostility towards outsiders, it would seem that Winstanley was able to draw on Cobham's very different traditions in order to gain a degree of support for his venture from among the inhabitants of the latter parish.

I

Evidence of intense local hostility is certainly to be found in early newsbook reports of the digging on St George's Hill. Frequent references were made in newsbooks published in April and May 1649 to the assaults carried out by 'the Country people' in their repeated attempts to drive the Diggers off the hill.³ These reports must of course be treated with caution, and it is clear that the interest shown by the London press reflected the high levels of political uncertainty in the spring of 1649, and the widespread fears of Leveller and royalist conspiracy against the newly-installed republican regime.⁴ The Diggers, having chosen to call themselves 'True Levellers', were easily, and no doubt conveniently, confused by their opponents with the mainstream Leveller movement, and it is not surprising that hostile observers should seek to emphasize the local opposition to their activities in Walton.⁵ Press reports about the Diggers' activities became much less frequent with the decline of the Leveller challenge in the summer of 1649.⁶

The newsbook accounts of popular opposition did, however, receive corroboration from Winstanley himself in the pamphlets issued by the Diggers while they remained on St George's Hill. Winstanley's readiness to acknowledge the deep hostility aroused by the Diggers is indeed striking, given that these pamphlets were designed primarily to advance the Diggers' cause. Winstanley did not attempt to deny the early hostility shown by 'the rude multitude', and, although he tried to persuade Fairfax in May that the country people 'that were offended at first, begin now to be moderate, and to see the righteousnesse in our work',⁷ he was soon complaining about further attacks on the Diggers, including the ritualized protest of 11 June, when four Diggers were beaten by 'men in womens apparell … with every one a staffe or club'.⁸

St George's Hill lay in the parish of Walton-upon-Thames, and it would seem that the attacks and petty harassment experienced there were organized predominantly by members of Walton's yeoman elite rather than leading local landowners.⁹ The Diggers were said to have been released by justices of the peace on the first two occasions they were attacked by local inhabitants;¹⁰ direct gentry involvement in the campaign against them did not become evident until prosecutions were initiated on behalf of Francis Drake in Kingston's court of Record in June 1649, after the Diggers had challenged the landlords' right to take wood from the commons and had declared their intention of selling wood to provide funds for the colony.¹¹ The resort to legal action may have served to reduce the risk of coninued rioting by the people of Walton as well as to rid the parish of the Diggers.

It was a Walton yeoman, the county committee official Henry Sanders, who first alerted the council of state to the Diggers' activities on St George's Hill.¹² John Taylor and William Starr, who were accused by Winstanley of organizing attacks on the Diggers, including the assault of 11 June, were also members of Walton's middling sorts.¹³ William Starr was a prosperous free-holder and resident of Painshill, which lay close to St George's Hill on the borders of Walton and Cobham.¹⁴ He was of sufficient social standing to serve as high constable of Elmbridge hundred in 1648.¹⁵ Two John Taylors were resident in the parish in 1649, both of them sons of Robert Taylor of Walton.¹⁶ The Taylors appear to have been committed supporters of parliament during the Civil War; members of the family contributed generously on the propositions,¹⁷ and some served in the parliamentary forces.¹⁸ John Taylor senior was active in the implementation of parliament's assessment ordinances in Walton. He was appointed as one of the assessors for the weekly assessment in the parish in May 1643,¹⁹ and later served as an assessor for the monthly assessment.²⁰

II

Winstanley's recognition of middling sorts involvement in the organization of anti-Digger protests is evident in the Walton Digger pamphlets. While consistent emphasis was placed in these pamphlets on the fundamental antagonism in society between the landowning gentry and the poor, and on the pressing need for the earth to 'be set free from intanglements of Lords and Landlords', Winstanley voiced an added concern about the 'violent bitter people that are Free-holders'.²¹ He had paid scant attention to the middling sorts in general, or to freeholders in particular, in The new law of righteousnes, when he denounced those who continued to exploit and oppress the poor. In The true levellers standard advanced, which was published after the Diggers had experienced the first attacks on their colony, freeholders were cast as the Norman Bastard's common soldiers;²² when Fairfax visited the colony in May, Winstanley complained to the lord general about the continuing opposition of 'covetous Free-holders, that would have all the Commons to themselves, and that would uphold the Norman Tyranny over us'.²³ In the second Digger tract, landlords and freeholders were addressed together as those who 'make the most profit of the Commons, by your overstocking of them with Sheep and Cattle', while 'the poor that have the name to own the Commons have the least share therein'.²⁴ 'This fury in the free-holders', Winstanley complained after the attack led by Starr and Taylor, 'declares plainly, that they got their Lands, both they and their Fathers, by murder, violence, and theft, and they keep it by the same power'.²⁵

Winstanley's insistence that the Diggers had no intention of invading or expropriating private property has often been noted,²⁶ and it is probable that his frequent reiteration of this principle in the Walton pamphlets reflected his desire to appease those 'elder brothers and Free-holders' who were responsible for the harassment on St George's Hill.²⁷ The Diggers, Winstanley maintained, 'will neither meddle with Corn, Cattell, nor inclosure Land, but only in the Commons'.²⁸ Winstanley and Everard had assured the lord general of their peaceable intentions when they were summoned before him on 20 April, and Winstanley repeated these assurances during Fairfax's visit in May.²⁹ Winstanley's earlier, confident prediction of the imminent and complete destruction of private property was much less visible in such pamphlets as A letter to the lord Fairfax and his councell of war, when he complained of the continuing hostility of the Walton yeomanry, and expressed his hope that

these our angry neighbours, whom we never wronged, nor will not wrong, will in time see their furious rashnesse to be their folly, and become moderate, to speak and carry themselves like men rationally, and leave off pushing with their homes like beasts.³⁰

In The new law of righteousnes and, to a lesser extent in The true levellers standard advanced, Winstanley appears to have anticipated, as Christopher Hill has argued, a speedy transition to a system of communal cultivation, with only a temporary survival of private property; the power of Reason and the withdrawal of wage labour would soon bring about the surrender of estates which could not adequately be worked by family labour.³¹ In the later St George's Hill pamphlets, Winstanley was clearly aware of the need to reassure his local opponents that their lands and enclosures were safe, and that two systems of landholding could exist in relative harmony, the poor cultivating the commons and the gentry and freeholders their enclosed lands, 'not burthening one another in this land of our Nativity'.³² Although Winstanley continued to hope that his opponents would eventually be induced to give up their lands, it is apparent that this became less important to him in the short term than the need to ensure the survival of the Digger colony.³³ The desire to achieve some form of compromise is also evident in the absence from the Digger pamphlets published in June, July and August 1649, of the demand that labourers should refuse to work for hire. This demand, which had been such an important part of the Digger programme in April, would have seemed at least as threatening to the middling sorts of the locality as it was to the gentry.³⁴

III

Henry Sanders's report to the council of state, with its emphasis on the 'very great prejudice to the Towne' caused by the digging, provided a clear expression of local concerns about the Diggers' activities.³⁵ The inhabitants of Walton had for several years been involved in struggles to prevent incursions on to their commons by outsiders. Pressure on the commons had grown during the late sixteenth century, as local farmers took advantage of the absence of any stint to engage in large-scale stock rearing for the profitable London market.³⁶ Walton's commons had also attracted squatters and cottagers, and during the 1580s it was claimed that 'dyvers cottages' had recently been built on Walton Heath by people who were not tenants of the manor, but who had access to the waste 'without stynt yf they have any thing to putt uppon yt'.³⁷ Piecemeal enclosure of the waste and common fields in Walton also took place during the sixteenth century, as when William Hammond of Apps Court enclosed a large part of the common arable fields to the north-east of the village of Walton,³⁸ and when owners of cattle pastured in Lakefield near St George's Hill divided up and enclosed the field to prevent 'quarrelles and bralles' breaking out among the servants employed to graze the cattle.³⁹

The potential for conflict was increased by the tradition of intercommoning with neighbouring manors and parishes, and by Walton Heath's lack of precise boundaries.⁴⁰ In 1650, the parliamentary surveyors of Walton Leigh found it impossible to trace the boundaries of the commons and wastes belonging to the two manors of Walton and Walton Leigh, they having been 'never severed or divided'.⁴¹ Earlier surveyors had noted that in the case of the commons shared by the parishes of Walton and Weybridge, the liberties 'cannot be sett downe directly by neyther of the parishes'.⁴² Tenants of the manor of Walton entered into legal actions in 1587 and 1590 against Robert Benne, the occupier of Apps Court, who had taken advantage of the ill-defined common rights to pasture his cattle on Walton Heath.⁴³ Incursions of this kind were to continue during the seventeenth century; as late as 1664, the astrologer William Lilly was involved in a lawsuit with the lord of the manor of Esher, whose sheep Lilly had impounded on Walton common in his capacity as churchwarden of 'that distracted parish'.⁴⁴

IV

In Walton-upon-Thames the Diggers were treated as outsiders by inhabitants who had considerable experience of dealing with threats to their commons, and who lost no time before organizing to drive them off St George's Hill. The Diggers probably were genuine outsiders here; few Walton residents appear to have joined in the digging. Attempts to identify individual Diggers are of course extremely hazardous, and only tentative conclusions can be drawn. The names of at least seventy Surrey Diggers are known; many had common surnames,⁴⁵ and it would be too risky to claim, for instance, that the Smiths and Taylors who are known to have lived in Walton in 1649 were necessarily those who signed Digger manifestoes. Winstanley sought to appeal especially to the landless poor, whose names are least likely to feature in surviving records, and the digging no doubt attracted people who had no connection with the locality.⁴⁶ Many of these may have spent only a short time with the Diggers: 43 Diggers signed no more than one pamphlet, including 32 of those who put their names to A declaration of the poor oppressed people of England, the pamphlet containing the largest collection of Digger names.⁴⁷

Only two Diggers can be said with any degree of certainty to have come from Walton. One was Richard Maidley or Medley, whose son was buried in Walton in December 1640, and who had two children baptized there in 1642 and 1643.⁴⁸ In October 1649 he was prosecuted in Kingston court by two Walton gentlemen, William Tucker and Augustine Phillips, and in November by Sir Gregory Norton, the regicide MP for Midhurst in Sussex.⁴⁹ Norton was at this time the state's tenant at Oatlands park,⁵⁰ and had been appointed to the Surrey Bench in September 1649, perhaps in an attempt to make up for the lack of experienced JPs in an area where the Diggers were active.⁵¹ Both Sir Anthony Vincent of Stoke d'Abernon and Francis Drake of Walton, two prominent local landowners who had direct contact with the Diggers, had been removed from the Bench when it was remodelled at the beginning of the year.⁵² Richard Maidley was one of the Diggers indicted at the Lent assizes of 1650, and he remained with the colony until it was destroyed in mid-April.⁵³

The other Walton Digger was Henry Bickerstaffe, who stood surety for Winstanley in Kingston court in June 1649, and was the one Digger imprisoned by the court.⁵⁴ He had become acquainted with Winstanley before the start of the Digger venture, and had acted with him in February 1649 as arbitrator for the Kingston separatist John Fielder, in an action for false imprisonment brought by Fielder against two former Kingston bailiffs, Richard Lidgold and John Childe.⁵⁵ Bickerstaffe is perhaps the best documented Digger besides Winstanley, and their careers have much in common. He was, like Winstanley, a freeman of a major City livery company; he appears to have been unable to establish himself successfully in business, and he moved from London to Walton a few years before the start of the digging.⁵⁶

Henry Bickerstaffe was a younger son of Robert Bickerstaffe of Walton, who died in 1640.⁵⁷ The Bickerstaffes possessed freehold and copyhold lands in both Walton and Cobham, their chief holding being the ninety-eight acre crown estate of Painshill farm and Cobham Bridge on the borders of the two parishes.⁵⁸ Robert Bickerstaffe is known to have refused to lend on the privy seal loans of 1625, and he was later listed as a knighthood defaulter in Surrey.⁵⁹ He was for several years involved in a protracted and sometimes violent land dispute with his neighbour James Starr, the father of the Diggers' assailant William Starr. James Starr was said in 1621 to have been 'much ympoverished' by the numerous suits brought against him by Bickerstaffe; the latter was also alleged to have assaulted Starr when he was barred from taking wood from the disputed lands.⁶⁰

Robert Bickerstaffe's estates were inherited in 1640 by his son Anthony, a liveryman in the Skinners' company and a resident of the parish of Christchurch Newgate Street.⁶¹ He was a friend of the presbyterian minister William Jenkyn, and during the Civil War became an active supporter of the presbyterian party in City politics.⁶² He put his name to the City petition of 18 November 1645 in favour of increasing the prospective powers of London's presbyterian elders,⁶³ and in June 1647 he was one of the treasurers appointed to disburse £10,000 due to be paid to private soldiers as part of parliament's programme for disbanding the army.⁶⁴

Henry Bickerstaffe served a seven-year apprenticeship to his brother Anthony from 20 February 1626, being admitted to the freedom of the Skinners' company on 11 April 1633.⁶⁵ It is unlikely that he succeeded in setting up in business on his own, since the company registers do not record the names of any apprentices bound by him during the 1630s.⁶⁶ His address was unknown to the company when in 1641 he was listed as a poll tax defaulter.⁶⁷ He was almost certainly living in Walton by the end of 1639, when his son Edward was born.⁶⁸ After the death of his father, Henry Bickerstaffe remained in Walton, and appears to have taken over the management of the lands inherited by his brother Anthony, who continued to reside in London.⁶⁹ There are no references to Anthony Bickerstaffe in surviving Walton and Cobham parish records of the 1640s, nor in civil war accounts and assessments for Surrey. Although Anthony Bickerstaffe was listed as the farmer of the Painshill estate in 1643, it was Henry who paid the Bickerstaffes' wartime assessments in Walton.⁷⁰

Henry Bickerstaffe was a member of the jury which found in January 1642 that the whole of Surrey lay outside the boundaries of Windsor forest and was no longer subject to forest law.⁷¹ He contributed 10s towards the relief of Irish protestants in 1642, and lent silver plate valued at £514s.8d. on the propositions.⁷² He was appointed an assessor for the first three months' weekly assessment in Walton, and in August 1643 he paid £3 for his fifth and twentieth part to the earl of Essex's commissioners in Kingston;⁷³ in October he contributed £1 towards the raising of horses for Sir William Waller in Surrey's middle division.⁷⁴ During the following summer he shared with his neighbour William Starr the cost of listing a soldier, John Tinsley, for service against Basing house.⁷⁵

Bickerstaffe signed only the first Digger pamphlet, and may therefore have left the colony soon after his arrest and trial in June 1649.⁷⁶ He had become a Kingston resident by December 1650,⁷⁷ but he did not sever his links with Walton: during the 1650s he continued to collect rents in Walton and Cobham, both for Anthony Bickerstaffe and for the latter's son James.⁷⁸ In September 1661, twelve years after his imprisonruent in the town, Henry Bickerstaffe of Kingston entered a bond with the corporation to become keeper of the town gaol.⁷⁹

V

It would be wrong to judge the Diggers' relations with the local community solely on the evidence of their treatment in Walton. The nature of their local reception can only properly be understood if the differences between their experiences in Walton and Cobham are fully recognized. The Diggers had arrived in Cobham by 24 August 1649, and were to remain in the parish until the following April; it is possible, therefore, that they spent roughly twice as long on Cobham's Little Heath as they did on St George's Hill.⁸⁰ The move to Cobham did not lead to any immediate resumption of newsbook reports of attacks on the colony, and Winstanley made no new complaints about popular opposition or protests. In spite of the meetings of 'Knights, Gentlemen and rich Freeholders' at the White Lion, and the installation of a lecturer in Cobham's parish church 'to drive off the Diggers',⁸¹ it seems that the Diggers were able to enjoy a relatively peaceful stay on Little Heath until October, when the council of state was encouraged to renew the appeal to Fairfax and the Surrey justices to disperse Winstanely and his followers.⁸²

The campaign against the digging was revived in earnest in the autumn and winter of 1649; with arrests being made in mid-October and further prosecutions initiated in Kingston's Court of Record in October, November and December.⁸³ Two Digger houses were pulled down by soldiers at the end of November, and plans were made to indict fifteen Diggers at the assizes.⁸⁴ It is now clear that presentments were also drawn up against four Diggers—John Hayman, Anthony Wrenn, Daniel Freeland and Henry Barton—for having erected cottages in Cobham with less than four acres of land attached, contrary to the statute of 1589.⁸⁵

The tone of the pamphlets issued by the Diggers after the resumption of the attacks in Cobham was markedly different from that of the later St George's Hill tracts. The Diggers' hostility towards landlords was intensified in the Cobham pamphlets, with much less emphasis being placed on the oppressive role of freeholders.⁸⁶ Particularly striking was the direct challenge issued to landlords in An appeale to all Englishmen and Englands spirit unfoulded, in which support for the commonwealth was linked by Winstanley to the demand that copyhold tenants should renounce their obedience to lords of manors.⁸⁷ With the declared opposition of the army and parliament to 'all Kingly and Lordly entanglements', landlords could no longer legally

compell their Tenants of Copy-holds, to come to their Court-Barons, nor to be of their Juries, nor take an Oath to be true to them, nor to pay fines, heriots, quit-rent, nor any homage, as formerly, while the King and Lords were in their power.

Tenants would be indemnified against their landlords, and be 'protected by the Laws and Engagement of the Land'.⁸⁸

The change of emphasis in the Digger writings must in part have reflected Winstanley's belief that the renewed attacks were organized by the local gentry, rather than the middling sorts, and were carried out by 'their fearfull tenants'; 'the poor tenants … durst do no other, because their Land-lords and Lords looked on, for fear they should be turned out of service, or their livings'.⁸⁹ By appealing to copyholders to throw off their obligations to landlords, Winstanley could hope to undermine the power of his chief opponents and persuade their tenants that they were free to resist pressure to attack the colony. His appeal to tenants also contained an unmistakable threat: although Winstanley had declared in June 1649 that the Diggers were ready to 'answer to all the Laws of the Land as Defendents, but not as Plaintiffs', he was now prepared to warn that charges could be brought against those who conspired with the gentry to 'uphold or bring in the Kingly and Lordly Power again'.⁹⁰ Such people were guilty of breaking the engagement; they would forfeit all legal protection and stand 'Iyable to answer for this offence, to their great charge and trouble if any will prosecute against them'.⁹¹

The Diggers' most active opponent in Cobham was undoubtedly John Platt, the rector of West Horsley, who had only recently come into possession of the manor of Cobham through his marriage to Margaret Gavell.⁹² 'The fury of Parson Plat', Winstanley complained, 'exceedes the fury of any other Lord of Mannor'.⁹³ Platt has often been portrayed as a persistent opponent of the Diggers in both Walton and Cobham, but there is no evidence that he took an active part in the campaign against them before they moved to Little Heath; no mention was made of him by Winstanley in the St George's Hill pamphlets.⁹⁴ Platt was accused by Winstanley of being responsible for the destruction of Digger houses in November, of making false allegations against the Diggers to the lord general and council of state, and of persuading the latter to send soldiers to Cobham.⁹⁵ He was also accused of taking the leading role in the final attack in April 1650.⁹⁶

The other major landowner identified by Winstanley as being active in the campaign against the Diggers in Cobham was Sir Anthony Vincent, lord of the neighbouring manor of Stoke d'Abernon.⁹⁷ Both Vincent and Platt appear to have been particularly concerned about the threat posed by the Diggers to their timber rights; the Diggers are known to have taken wood from Stoke common, and Winstanley claimed in April 1650 that Platt had promised to leave their houses alone if they 'would not cut the wood upon the Common'.⁹⁸ It is likely that Winstanley was referring to Vincent when he suggested that some of the Diggers' opponents 'were alwayes Cavaleers, and had a hand in the Kentish riseing, and were cheife promoters of the offensive Surry petition'.⁹⁹ Vincent had lent £100 on the propositions in 1642,¹⁰⁰ but he withdrew from involvement in Surrey's parliamentarian administration after the summer of 1643, and was to come under suspicion due to his wife's royalism.¹⁰¹ His son and heir, Sir Francis Vincent, was involved in the earl of Holland's rising in 1648, and was faced with a composition fine of £800, the highest charged in Surrey.¹⁰²

Also active in the campaign was Thomas Sutton, the impropriator of the Cobham living, who belonged to a minor; Cobham gentry family.¹⁰³ He had already clashed with Winstanley and Henry Bickerstaffe, having joined John Downe of Cobham in February 1649 as an arbitrator for Richard Lidgold and John Childe in their dispute with John Fielder.¹⁰⁴ Sutton was a member of Surrey's assize grand jury, and was, in the 1640s, one of the wealthier inhabitants of the parish.¹⁰⁵

VI

The most detailed description of the final assault on the Digger colony, in which six Digger homes were destroyed, was provided by Winstanley in his pamphlet An humble request.¹⁰⁶ John Platt was said to have been accompanied by fifty men, including several hired men and 'most of Sir Anthony Vincent's tenants and servants, as well as Thomas Sutton and William Starr.¹⁰⁷ The landlords' coercion of their tenants was again emphasized by Winstanley:

many of those that came were threatened by Vincent his chief men, to be turned out of their Livings, if they came not, so that this is not an act of the tenants by free consent, but the Gentlemen hired others to do it.¹⁰⁸

An humble request has long been our sole source of information about the final assault, but it is now possible to check Winstanley's account against other surviving evidence. It is clear that a group of Diggers sought to carry out the threat to prosecute their opponents, by trying to bring an indictment at the assizes against those responsible for the destruction of the Digger houses.¹⁰⁹ Their draft bills, which were rejected by the grand jury at the Croydon assizes in July 1650, are important in that they confirm the date of the colony's destruction, provide us with further possible Digger names, and list twenty of those accused of participating in the attack. The date of the dedicatory address of An humble address, 9 April 1650, has led to some confusion when attempts have been made to identify the precise date of the assault. The draft indictments confirm that the attack took place on 19 April, which suggests that Winstanley had begun An humble address some days before the attack, and added his narrative of the incident to the pamphlet after the completion of the dedicatory address and eleven pages of the text.¹¹⁰

The twenty men named in the draft bills were said to have destroyed the houses of Thomas Adams, Henry Barton, Daniel Freeland and Robert Sawyer, all known Diggers.¹¹¹ Barton and Freeland were among the group of Diggers presented for having built cottages with less than four acres of land, and this may have provided their opponents with the pretext for destroying their homes.¹¹² The witnesses to the attack were the Diggers Richard Maidley and John Palmer, and also Elizabeth Barton, Jane Edsarr, Matthew Mills and one Lowry; Winstanley's name is absent from the documents.¹¹³

John Platt's name headed the list of accused, which also included the familiar names of Thomas Sutton, Edward Sutton and William Starr. At least seven of the accused were from Stoke d'Abernon, including William Davey senior and junior, Henry and Edward Bird, Thomas Shore, Thomas Lee and John Poore.¹¹⁴ Davey was described in An humble request as 'Sir Anthony Vincents Servant', and Poore may have been the servant John Power to whom Vincent left £10 in his will.¹¹⁵ Thomas Lee was described as a poor man in 1644, when his name was included in a list of defaulters on the two-month weekly assessment.¹¹⁶ John Goose, Thomas Parrish, Robert Melsham and William Honyard can all be identified as Cobham residents.¹¹⁷ It is likely that more than one John Goose was living in Cobham in 1650, but one at least had fought for the king during the Civil War: he petitioned successfully for a pension in 1663, claiming that he had been wounded in the service of Charles I and was 'att present very sicke and weake haveinge a wife and six Children and like to perish for want of reliefe'.¹¹⁸

By no means all those who joined Platt and the Suttons could be described as 'poor enslaved Tenants' or hired men. Thomas Parrish, for instance, was to serve as high constable of Elmbridge hundred in 1651, as William Starr had done in 1648.¹¹⁹ Robert Melsham was to become constable of Cobham in 1665.¹²⁰ Parrish was appointed as an assessor for the weekly assessment in 1643, and both he and Thomas Shore of Stoke were later involved in the collection of the monthly assessment.¹²¹ Parrish was described in contemporary documents as a yeoman, and lent £1 on the propositions; he was a juror at Cobham's manor court in 1647 and 1648.¹²²

Some members of Cobham's parish elite were, therefore, involved in the final assault on the Digger colony. This evidence may provide a corrective to Winstanley's description of the attack, but it should not detract from the overriding impression that it was the local gentry who took the initiative in organizing opposition to the Diggers in Cobham. The middling sorts of Cobham were much more divided in their response to the Diggers than Walton's inhabitants had been, and there is no evidence here of a community united in its determination to resist an external threat. Most importantly, several locals joined the digging and would appear to have been among Winstanley's most active supporters.

Henry Sanders claimed in April 1649 that the Diggers who set to work on St George's Hill were 'all living att Cobham'.¹²³ It has been known for several years that Winstanley was resident in Cobham in 1649, having moved there from London after the collapse of his business in 1643.¹²⁴ He was still living in the parish of St Olave Jewry when he took the covenant on 8 October 1643,¹²⁵ but he had presumably settled in Cobham by 20 December, when the committee at Kingston ordered the high constables of Elmbridge hundred to warn parochial assessors to set rates for the two months' weekly assessment, on which Winstanley was charged as a Cobham inhabitant.¹²⁶ Winstanley's home was in the tithing of Church Cobham, and, despite his severe financial difficulties, he was still being described as a gentleman in Cobham's court rolls in 1648.¹²⁷

Sanders also mentioned 'one Stewer and Colten' in his report to the council of state.¹²⁸ Thomas Starr, who signed four Digger manifestoes, and was prosecuted in Kingston court in June 1649 and indicted at the Southwark assizes of April 1650, was a shoemaker and resident of Church Cobham.¹²⁹ He was baptized in Cobham in December 1615, the fourth son of Edmund Starr, a clothworker who died in May 1638.¹³⁰ Thomas Starr was listed in 1647 and 1648 as a defaulter at the manorial court.¹³¹ Winstanley described him in 1649 as 'a poore man not worth ten pounds', but by 1663 he was rated as having six hearths.¹³² Two years later, in 1665, he was to be presented at the Guildford quarter sessions for refusing to assist Cobham's constable in breaking up a quaker meeting at the house of Ephraim Carter, a Cobham butcher.¹³³

John Coulton was another Cobham inhabitant who put his name to four Digger pamphlets in 1649 and 1650.¹³⁴ He was a yeoman who came from a long-established Cobham family, and was a prominent member of the village community.¹³⁵ He lent £2 on the propositions, was appointed an assessor for the weekly assessment in May 1643, and collected taxes in Cobham during the Civil War for the garrison at Farnham.¹³⁶ He appears to have served with the county forces at the siege of Basing in 1644, and in the following year he joined with Thomas Sutton, John Downe and John Goldwire in compiling Cobham's parish accounts.¹³⁷ Coulton was a juror at the manorial court in 1647 and 1648.¹³⁸ When he died in 1652, he left legacies worth £117 to his children and grandchildren. His will was witnessed by his 'freind Jerrard Winstanly', who was also nominated as one of the overseers.¹³⁹

Henry Barton, John Hayman, Daniel Freeland and Samuel Webb were, like Gerrard Winstanley and Thomas Starr, listed as defaulters at Cobham's manorial court in 1648.¹⁴⁰ Henry Barton lived in Street Cobham, and two of his sons were baptized in the parish in 1640 and 1643.¹⁴¹ John Hayman, also of Street Cobham, married Constance Jackson in Cobham in June 1642; three of their children were baptized in 1643, 1660 and 1663.¹⁴² In 1658 Hayman witnessed the signing of the will of Francis Stint the elder, a Cobham husbandman.¹⁴³ He had three hearths in 1663, and died in 1675.¹⁴⁴ Barton signed three Digger pamphlets and Hayman put his name to four.¹⁴⁵ The names Barton and Hayman were both Cobham quaker surnames: in 1674, for instance, the birth of Constance Hayman of Cobham was recorded in the registers of the Kingston quaker meeting, and a widow Barton of Cobham was buried as a quaker in 1672.¹⁴⁶

Mary and Daniel, the children of Daniel Freeland of Church Cobham, were baptized in 1642 and 1643.¹⁴⁷ In 1657 Daniel son of widow Freeland was bound by the parish as an apprentice to Lawrence Johnson, a Cobham victualler who had been presented at the assizes in 1653 for keeping a disorderly alehouse.¹⁴⁸ Johnson was to join John Hayman in 1658 as a witness to Francis Stint's will.¹⁴⁹ Widow Freeland was in receipt of parish relief in 1662, and in the hearth tax assessments of 1664 she was listed as possessing only one hearth; she died in December 1664.¹⁵⁰ Samuel Webb had a son baptized in Cobham in November 1642, and in 1648 was living in Cobham Downside.¹⁵¹

It is important to emphasize again the problems involved in trying to identify individual Diggers; no complete run of court rolls has survived for the manor of Cobham, and the parish registers exist only in eighteenth-century transcripts. The lack of any settled minister during the 1640s led to there being gaps in the original registers, and these gaps were only partially filled by later incumbents. The churchwardens' records are also incomplete.¹⁵² Winstanley's accounts of the Digger movement provide few references to the place of origin of the Diggers; on only one occasion did he refer explicitly to the local origin of some of them, when he described the evictions of Digger families in April 1650:

Thereupon at the Command of this Parson Plat, they set fire to six houses, and burned them down, and burned likewise some of their housholdstuffe, and wearing Clothes, throwing their beds, stooles, and housholdstuffe, up and down the Common, not pittying the cries of many little Children, and their frighted Mothers, which are Parishioners borne in the Parish.¹⁵³

It is, however, possible that a provisional list of Diggers with Cobham connections should also include the names of John Palmer,¹⁵⁴ John South, John South junior,¹⁵⁵ Thomas South¹⁵⁶ and Anthony Wrenn.¹⁵⁷ John Palmer the Digger signed five of the Digger pamphlets; he was one of those indicted, at the Southwark assizes, and was a witness to the destruction of the colony.¹⁵⁸ John South put his name to four pamphlets and was, like Palmer, a member of the Digger colony in both Walton and Cobham; John South junior, Thomas South and Anthony Wrenn appear to have joined the colony only after the move to Cobham.¹⁵⁹ Thomas Edcer or Edsaw, who signed four Digger pamphlets, may also have been a local inhabitant, and have come from a family long-settled in Stoke d'Abernon. Children of Thomas Edsaw of Stoke were baptized in 1656 and 1663. In 1664 he had one hearth and was exempted from the hearth tax.¹⁶⁰

If some at least of these identifications are correct, it does show that an important core group of local people was involved in the digging in Cobham, as is known to have been the case in the Iver Digger community in Buckinghamshire. This may help to explain the absence in Cobham of the levels of popular opposition seen in Walton, where attacks took place as soon as the Diggers started their work on St George's Hill; it may also account for the apparent reluctance of some tenants to carry out their landlords' orders to pull down Digger homes. The Cobham Diggers included not only landless labourers and cottagers but also at least one member of the middling sorts; again, the pattern is similar to that of Iver.¹⁶¹ It is evident that many of the local Diggers were able to return to the neighbourhood after the collapse of the digging, and after the Diggers' brief stay at Lady Eleanor Davies's estate at Pirton in Hertfordshire.¹⁶² Although fifteen of them were indicted for riot and trespass at the Southwark assizes in 1650, they seem to have escaped effective prosecution even after their return to their homes.¹⁶³ Warrants were issued regularly at subsequent assizes for the production of the Diggers before the courts; these warrants were still being issued in 1652, and as late as 1653 in the case of Winstanley.¹⁶⁴ Winstanley had presumably returned to Cobham by June 1652, when he witnessed John Coulton's will in the company of William Remnant and John Fuller, two members of Cobham's village establishment who had not been involved in the digging.¹⁶⁵

VII

There can of course be no single explanation for the existence of some local support for Winstanley's digging venture, but it may be significant that Cobham lacked a regular minister after William King left to become rector of Ashtead in 1644.¹⁶⁶ John Goldwire, an ordained minister and schoolmaster who lent £20 on the propositions in Cobham, was described as minister when in 1645 he helped to compile the parish accounts, but by March 1646 he had moved to the rectory of Millbrook in Hampshire.¹⁶⁷ The small size of the Cobham living, worth only £9 13s. 4d. per annum, would have made it difficult to find a permanent successor to King; the living was, as John Aubrey later complained, only a 'poor mean pittance'.¹⁶⁸ The possibility that Winstanley was able, during the later 1640s, to develop his revolutionary ideas and build up a local following without hindrance from a settled minister, should therefore not be discounted. The decision to appoint a lecturer in Cobham when the Diggers moved to little Heath certainly suggests that their opponents feared Winstanley's local influence, and believed that it would be unwise to allow the Diggers' propaganda to go unchallenged in the parish.¹⁶⁹

It is not known when Winstanley first emerged as a radical thinker; attempts to trace Winstanley's intellectual development are invariably hampered by the fact that he published nothing before 1648. It is clear, however, that he had already gained some experience of political activity by the time he moved to Cobham, having attended meetings of the St Olave Jewry vestry on at least eight occasions.¹⁷⁰ At a meeting held on 4 January 1642, he had shown his support for the reform movement in the City by opposing the decision of the majority to resist moves to restore to general assemblies of the wardmote the power to choose members of common council; these moves would have led to a significant increase in popular participation in the common council elections.¹⁷¹ Winstanley may also have come into contact with radical ideas before he left London. Anti-episcopal riots are known to have taken place in the parish church in May 1642, and there is a distinct possibility that Christopher Feake, the future fifth monarchist, was employed as a lecturer in St Olave's while Winstanley was still resident in the parish and active as a member of the vestry.¹⁷²

Radical religious views were certainly being expressed openly in Kingston by the summer of 1644, within a year of Winstanley's move to Cobham. The Kingston chamberlains' accounts for 1643-4 record that 25s. was spent by the town on 'carrying … Anabaptists to the parliament two sevrall tymes'; in August 1644 further payments were made by the county committee for sending an 'Anabaptist' to London.¹⁷³ When Richard Byfield, minister of Long Ditton and friend of Kingston's presbyterian vicar Edmund Staunton, sought to expose the 'evils and pernicious Errours … that infest our Church', in sermons preached at the town's lecture in February 1645, he made particular reference to the 'diseasednesse of the Congregation of Kingston'. Among Byfield's principal targets were the 'Sensuall Separatists … that walke after their lusts; Mockers, that jugling with the Scriptures broach bruitishdamnable Tenets'. Mortalist and pacifist views were, he claimed, being circulated, and he complained of those who tried to bring their listeners 'into astonishment, and a trance upon the conceit of the great power of God in them, and some inspirations of the Holy Ghost'; 'they conceive they have a great light, and a new light'. Such people hoped to 'alleviate the threats of Gods word with vain words, and to promise liberty; and turn Gods grace into wantonnesse'. The 'new disturbers' disgraced 'the publique and solemn Assemblies, … troubling them by barbarous confusion' with their revelations and false doctrines, 'and if they may not have liberty to speak in the Publick Assemblies … they will deny their Presence to the Publick, and fling dishonour upon them all they can'. ¹⁷⁴

It is likely that Byfield's anger was directed in part against the radical separatist group that had been founded in 1644 by the Kingston miller John Fielder. Members of the group were arrested at meetings in the town in January and March 1645; their activities aroused much popular hostility, and 'uproars and tumults' were said to have taken place when they were attacked by crowds of apprentices, soldiers and watermen.¹⁷⁵ Winstanley had met Fielder by February 1649 at the latest, but in view of the close links between Cobham and Kingston, and Winstanley's own disputes with the Kingston authorities, it is indeed possible that he had links with the town's separatists before he acted on Fielder's behalf at the 1649 Lent assizes; Kingston's radical milieu may well have provided an important setting for the development of his ideas.¹⁷⁶ The town's first quaker meeting, which later developed out of Fielder's group, certainly drew adherents from the rural parishes of Kingston and Elmbridge hundreds, including Cobham and Walton.¹⁷⁷

Winstanley and Henry Bickerstaffe were not the only Surrey Diggers to have links with John Fielder, and it is evident that contacts between the Diggers and Kingston's separatists were maintained after the start of the digging in April 1649. Urian Worthington, a member of Fielder's circle who was arrested at one of their prayer meetings in 1645, became a Digger and put his name to A declaration from the poor oppressed people of England.¹⁷⁸ He was the son of John Worthington, a husbandman of Thorpe,¹⁷⁹ and he was later to become a convert to quakerism.¹⁸⁰ Peter Gosse, a Kingston heelmaker who had been imprisoned with Fielder and Worthington in 1645, and whose house had been used for the group's meetings, stood surety for Richard Maidley when the latter was prosecuted by Sir Gregory Norton in Kingston court in November 1649.¹⁸¹

VIII

Local support for the Diggers may also have been connected with Cobham's marked traditions of social conflict. The manor of Cobham, a former possession of Chertsey abbey, had passed into the hands of Robert Gavell in 1566 and was to remain with his family until 1708.¹⁸² During the later sixteenth century the Gavell family became involved in a long and protracted series of disputes with their tenants. In a case brought in the court of Requests by William Wrenn, a Cobham husbandman, Robert Gavell was accused of overturning manorial customs and of infringing his tenants' rights, by seeking to extract more rent than was customarily paid, and by spoiling the timber on Wrenn's copyhold. He was also charged with attempting to escape the payment of tax by shifting the burden on to his tenants, laying 'a hevy burden uppon the poorer tennants contrarye to the Ancient usage, equitie and Consciens'.¹⁸³

Actions against Robert Gavell and his son Francis were resumed in the court of Chancery during the 1590s by tenants seeking to halt the continued assault on manorial custom.¹⁸⁴ The Gavells were certainly in need of tapping the increasing wealth of the peasantry; Francis Gavell's debts, for instance, were estimated at £3,000 when he died in 1610.¹⁸⁵ Cobham's tenants claimed that the Gavells were attempting to abandon the custom of fixed entry fines of not more than two years' rent, in favour of arbitrary fines, and were exacting uncertain fines for licence to demise copyholds. The tenants also sought to uphold their right to take timber growing on their copyhold lands, not only for repairing but also for new-building their tenements.¹⁸⁶

Some of Cobham's most substantial tenants, including Anthony Bickerstaffe and James Sutton, were involved in these attempts to defend the copyholders' rights, but one tenant in particular was singled out by the Gavells as a leading instigator of the actions. William King was accused of having 'espetially contrived' the tenants' 'surmised and new found customes', and of having caused his landlords 'diverse iniuryes' by keeping unlicensed rabbit warrens on his holdings.¹⁸⁷ An attempt to evict him in 1593 was thwarted when he succeeded in obtaining a court order for the Gavells to allow him quiet possession of his copyhold until the dispute was settled.¹⁸⁸ King was the son-in-law of the Gavells' opponent William Wrenn, and had succeeded to his disputed copyhold lands; he was also the grandfather of Susan King, who was to marry Gerrard Winstanley in 1640.¹⁸⁹ Cobham's tenants had, therefore, long experience of conflict with the lords of the manor, and the family into which Winstanley married had played a leading role in the tenants' campaigns to defend their customary rights.

Further exploitation of Cobham's manorial resources evidently took place during the 1630s, after the death in 1633 of Francis Gavell. His kinsmen the Vincents of Stoke d'Abernon held courts in Cobham until Vincent Gavell came of age, and in 1638 Sir Francis and Sir Anthony Vincent had to be ordered by the court of Wards to stop felling timber and fishing in the ponds belonging to the manor of Cobham.¹⁹⁰

IX

The Digger movement emerged in 1649 against a background of hardship and scarcity in the aftermath of civil war.¹⁹¹ Cobham's parish accounts, which were drawn up in 1645 on the orders of Surrey's sub-committee of accounts, give a vivid impression of the high costs sustained by the parishioners during the war. It was claimed in these accounts that up to £2,208 10s. Id. had been spent in the parish in taxes, free quarter and voluntary contributions between November 1640 and Michaelmas 1645, including £138 3s. 6d. in taxes in lieu of provisions for Waller's army, and £1,079 3s. 8d. in free quarter. In addition to the 14 horses listed by Cobham residents for the service of parliament, 29 horses, worth an estimated £139 5s. 4d., were said to have been seized by parliament's soldiers during the war.¹⁹² Parish accounts must of course be used with caution, but it would appear that Cobham's free quarter expenses were among the highest recorded in Surrey: they were only slightly lower than the estimated £1,125 spent by the inhabitants of the populous and heavily-charged parish of Egham by the spring of 1645, and were certainly higher than the costs incurred by most east and mid-Surrey parishes.¹⁹³ The inhabitants of many Surrey parishes complained in their accounts of the burdens of free quarter, and of the 'most extravagant abusiveness of Souldiers',¹⁹⁴ but Cobham's accounts are unique in their reference to parishioners who were forced to 'forsake there habitations' as a result of these pressures."¹⁹⁵

Cobham's parish accounts are unusually detailed, but they fail to provide a complete picture of wartime burdens; there is no mention, for instance, of royalist plunder, which took place in the vicinity of Cobham in November 1642 and was still seen as a daily threat in the area as late as November 1643.¹⁹⁶ In addition, parish accounts could not take notice of the increase in free quartering that followed the army's march on London in 1647. In parts of the county the costs of free quarter were said in December 1647 to have doubled, and in some cases trebled, since the army's arrival, and tenants were again said to be abandoning their holdings.¹⁹⁷

The resilience of local communities during the Civil War and revolution has been emphasized in recent studies, and historians have rightly been warned against exaggerating the breakdown of order.¹⁹⁸ It is apparent, however, that in many areas the pressures of war and high taxation contributed to a noticeable exacerbation of social conflict and to the accentuation of divisions within the community.¹⁹⁹ Conflict between landlords and tenants over the payment of rent and abatements for tax, and over disputed manorial customs and timber use-rights, certainly took place in Surrey during the 1640s, as did disputes between taxpayers and local officials.²⁰⁰ The belief that poorer inhabitants had been left with a disproportionate share of the costs of war was to be voiced frequently by Winstanley and his fellow Diggers.²⁰¹ Winstanley's appreciation of the unfair distribution of burdens at a local level was expressed most clearly when he complained that in 'many parishes, two or three of the great ones bears all the sway, in making Assessments, over-awing Constables, and other Officers':

And when time was to quarter Souldiers, they would have a hand in that, to ease themselves, and over-burden the weaker sort; and many times make large sums of money over and above the Justices Warrant in Assessments, and would give no accompt why, neither durst the inferior people demand an accompt, for he that spake should be sure to be crushed the next opportunity. we see one great man favored another, and the poor oppressed have no relief.²⁰²

It is possible that he was writing from experience. The inclusion of Winstanley's name on a list of taxpayers in Kingston and Elmbridge hundreds who had failed to pay their share of the two-month weekly assessment in 1644 may, as has recently been suggested, indicate that he could not afford to pay the 5s. 4d. he was said to owe.²⁰³ It may be more likely, however, that he was a victim of the inefficiency of Surrey's county committee, which was notorious for its breaking spectacle of seeing so many hanged every Sessions as they are'; 'all poor People by their righteous labours shall be relieved, and freed from Poverty and Straits'.²¹⁹

In drawing on traditional arguments of popular protest, Winstanley went well beyond the limitations of this tradition. In the Digger pamphlets, traditional themes became subsumed within new currents of political and religious radicalism: the demand for compensation for wartime sufferings merged with the demand for freedom, and there was a new emphasis on the contractual obligations of the victorious parliament. The common people had bought their freedom with their 'Money, in Taxes, Free-Quarter, and Bloudshed'; they had made a 'firme bargan and contract' with parliament. 'We that are the common People are brought almost to a morsell of bread, therefore we demand our bargain, which is freedom, with you in this Land of our Nativity.'²²⁰ Winstanley's ability to attract a measure of support in Cobham for the Digger venture owed much to his successful appropriation of the traditional language of popular protest for radical ends; it also demonstrated most clearly how far—given the right local conditions—the radical ideas which circulated during the later 1640s could find a receptive audience in rural communities as well as in urban areas and the army.

Notes

¹ R. T. Vann, 'The later life of Gerrard Winstanley', Journal of the History of Ideas, XXVI (1965); 'From radicalism to quakerism: Gerrard Winstanley and Friends', Journal of the Friends' Historical Society, XLIX (1959); J. S. Alsop, 'Gerrard Winstanley's later life', Past and Present, LXXXII (1979); 'Gerrard Winstanley: religion and respectability', Historical Journal, XXVIII, 3 (1985); 'Ethics in the marketplace: Gerrard Winstanley's London bankruptcy, 1643', Journal of British Studies, XXVIII (1989); R. J. Dalton, 'Gerrard Winstanley: the experience of fraud 1641', Historical Journal, XXXIV, 4 (1991).

² See, for example, H. E. Malden (ed.), The Victoria county history of Surrey (V. C. H. Surrey), I (London, 1902), 422; Malden, A history of Surrey (London, 1900), pp. 252-4, based largely on Whitelocke's account of local opposition: Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of the English affairs (Oxford, 1853), III, 23. Local opposition is emphasized in J. S. Morrill and J. D. Walter, 'Order and disorder in the English revolution', in Order and disorder in early modern England, 1500-1714, ed. Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson (Cambridge, 1985), p. 160. See also Buchanan Sharpe, 'Popular protest in seventeenth-century England', in Popular culture in seventeenth-century England, ed. Barry Reay (London, 1985), pp. 299-300, for the suggestion that the Digger programme conflicted with the interests of rural cottagers, and Brian Manning, 'The peasantry and the English revolution', Journal of Peasant Studies, II (1975), 155, for the view that the overwhelming mass of peasants would be antagonized by such schemes; cf. Manning, The English people and the English revolution (Harmondsworth, 1978), pp. 315-16; Ronald Hutton, The British Republic (London, 1990), pp. 31-2. For the Iver Diggers, see Keith Thomas, 'Another Digger broadside', Past and Present, XLII (1969), 57-68.

³ British Library (B.L.), E 529(18): A perfect diurnall of some passages in parliament (16-23 April 1649), pp. 2448, 2450; E 529(22): The kingdomes faithfull and impartiall scout (20-7 April); E 529(24) A perfect summary of an exact dyarie (23-30 April); E 552(7): A modest narrative of intelligence (21-8 April); E 556(29): Mercurius republicus (22-9 May), p. 5. Whitelocke's account was, of course, drawn from these reports.

⁴ D. W. Petegorsky, Left-wing democracy in the English Civil War (London, 1940), pp. 162-8.

⁵ Ibid. pp. 165-7; Olivier Lutaud, Winstanley: socialisme et christianisme sous Cromwell (Paris, 1976), pp. 177-8; Christopher Hill, The world turned upside down (Harmondsworth, 1975), p. 118; cf. B.L. E 551(15): Mercurius pragmaticus (for Charles II) (17-24 April 1649). Whitelocke referred to the Diggers as Levellers: Add. MS 37,344 (Bulstrode Whitelocke's annals), fos. 283, 286. Aubrey later assumed that the 'great Meeting of Levellers' on St George's Hill had been 'headed and encourag'd by John Lilburn': John Aubrey, The natural history and antiquities of the county of Surrey (London, 1718-19), III, 95.

⁶ Lutaud, Winstanley, p. 178. For later reports during the summer, see for example B.L. E 532(4): The moderate messenger (23-30 July 1649); E 566(4): Moderate intelligencer (19-26 July).

⁷ G. H. Sabine (ed.), The works of Gerrard Winstanley (Ithaca, 1941), pp. 282, 392; B.L. E 530(24): The speeches of the lord generall Fairfax … to the Diggers (1649).

⁸ Sabine, Works, pp. 295-8.

⁹ Ibid. pp. 295, 392; cf. Clive Holmes, 'Drainers and fenmen', in Fletcher and Stevenson, Order and disorder, pp. 166-95 for middling-sort leadership of riots in the fens.

¹⁰ Sabine, Works, pp. 14, 392.

¹¹ Surrey County Record Office (S.R.O.), Royal Borough of Kingston archives, KEI/1/14 (Kingston court of Record book 1645-54), 23 June 1649; Sabine, Works, pp. 18, 272-4, 301, 319-35.

¹²The Clarke papers, ed. C. H. Firth, II (London, Camden Society, 1894), 210-11.

¹³ Sabine, Works, pp. 295-6, 331, 392.

¹⁴ For Starr, see P.R.O., E317/41/44 (parliamentary survey of Painshill and Cobham Bridge, March 1650) and 55 (survey of Walton Leigh, March 1650); E134/19 Jas I/T2 (James Starr vs. Robert Bickerstaffe); SP28/180 (unfol.), Walton-upon-Thames parish accounts (abstracts); Greater London Record Office (G.L.R.O.), DW/PA/7/14 (will of William Starr of Walton, 1661); Guildford Muniment Room (G.M.R.), PSH/COB/1/1 (Cobham parish registers), pp. 24, 47, 52.

¹⁵ P.R.O., ASSI 35/89/5 (Assizes, home circuit, indictments and other documents: Kingston, Sep. 1648).

¹⁶ P.R.O., Prob. 11/118, fo. 264 (will of Richard Taylor of Walton, carpenter, 1 Oct. 1611). The two John Taylors are described in the will as his second and third sons. The elder son was a carpenter and the younger a bricklayer: Prob. 11/272, fo. 346v (will of John Taylor of Walton, carpenter, 6 Feb. 1657); Guildhall Library, London (G.L.), 9051/6, fo. 143v (will of Richard Taylor, citizen and carpenter of London, 9 Sep. 1624); S.R.O., 2381/1/1 (Walton parish registers, 1639-53), p. 5; Kingston-upon-Thames register of apprentices 1563-1713, ed. Anne Daly (Kingston: Surrey Record Society, 1974), p. 23.

¹⁷ John Taylor's brother Samuel left £10 to parliament in his will 'for the good of the Kingdome': G.L.R.O., DW/PA/7/13, fo. 308 (will of Samuel Taylor son of Richard Taylor, 14 Sep. 1643); P.R.O., SP28/180, Walton parish accounts (abstracts); S.R.O., 2381/1/1, p. 4.

¹⁸ G.L.R.O., DW/PA/7/13, fo. 308, for John Taylor the bricklayer, 'now a souldier'; P.R.O., SP28/35, fo. 356 (schedule of soldiers at Basing and owners of arms, Elmbridge hundred, June 1644), for William and Mark Taylor of Walton (the latter served on behalf of Thomas Knight, Samuel Taylor's father-in-law).

¹⁹ P.R.O. SP28/35, fo. 359 (list of parochial assessors appointed in Kingston and Elmbridge hundreds, May 1643).

²⁰ SP28/291 (unfol.), certificate of Walton assessors 11 March 1650.

²¹ Sabine, Works, pp. 259, 315-16.

²² Ibid. p. 259.

²³ Ibid. p. 282; cf. p. 506.

²⁴ Ibid. p. 273.

²⁵ Ibid. pp. 296, 330.

²⁶ Christopher Hill, Religion and politics in seventeenth century England (Brighton, 1986), p. 206; Hill, Winstanley: the law of freedom and other writings (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 39-40; Thomas, 'Another Digger broadside', p. 64; J. C. Davis, 'Gerrard Winstanley and the restoration of true magistracy', Past and Present, LXX (1976), 79.

²⁷ Sabine, Works, pp. 272, 282-6, 296, 301, 305-7, 326.

²⁸ Ibid. p. 296.

²⁹ B.L. E 551(9): A modest narrative of intelligence (14-21 April 1649), p. 23; Sabine, Works, pp. 266, 282-3.

³⁰ Ibid. p. 282; cf. Hill, Religion and politics, p. 219.

³¹ Sabine, Works, pp. 191-2, 194, 196-7, 199-200, 205-6, 208, 258, 262-6; Hill, Religion and politics, pp. 204, 218-19, 220.

³² Sabine, Works, pp. 305, 326.

³³ Ibid. pp. 285-6, for example.

³⁴ Ibid. pp. 190-1, 194, 262; cf. Timothy Kenyon, Utopian communism and political thought in early modern England (London, 1989), pp. 165-6, 176, 178; Davis, 'Restoration of true magistracy', pp. 81-3; Hill, Religion and politics, pp. 206, 220.

³⁵Clarke papers, II, 210.

³⁶ P.R.O., E134/29,30 Eliz/M17 (Henry Dogwell et al. vs. Robert Benne), deposition of John Greentree of Walton; E134/32 Eliz/E14 (Robert Alexander et al. vs. Robert Benne), deposition of Thomas Downes of Cobham.

³⁷ P.R.O., E134/29,30 Eliz/M17, depositions of Robert Dally of Walton and William Greentree of Hersham in Walton; E134/32 Eliz/E14, deposition of William Taylor of Walton. The right of all inhabitants to use the commons was already being questioned by at least one tenant in 1587: E134/29,30 Eliz/M17, deposition of John Hellys of Walton; cf. S.R.O., 442 (abstracts of court rolls, nine manors, 1606-16), fo. 42v, for later attempts to curb the influx of migrants and cottagers in Walton.

³⁸ P.R.O., E134/32 Eliz/E14, depositions of John Frye of Apps in Walton and Robert Stackford of West Molesey.

³⁹ P.R.O., E134/9 Jas I/H7 (Robert Bickerstaffe et al. vs. James Starr). By 1650, much of Lakefield had been turned over to arable: E317/41/44, p. 6.

⁴⁰ P.R.O., LR2/197, fos. 6-9 (survey of Oatlands and Weybridge, 2 Jas I); LR2/197, fos. 192-5v (survey of Walton Leigh, 2 Jas I); E317/40/38 (parliamentary survey of East Molesey, Feb. 1651); E134/29,30 Eliz/M17, depositions of William Greentree and Robert Dally.

⁴¹ P.R.O., E317/41/55, pp. 10, 12.

⁴² P.R.O., LR2/197, fo. 8v.

⁴³ P.R.O., E134/29,30 Eliz/M17; E134/32 Eliz/E14.

⁴⁴ William Lilly, History of his life and times (ed. E. Ashmole, London, 1715), p. 94.

⁴⁵ R. T. Vann, 'Diggers and quakers - a further note', Journal of the Friends' Historical Society, L (1962), 65.

⁴⁶ Sabine, Works, pp. 260-1; Clarke papers, II, 211. St George's Hill lay close to the busy London to Portsmouth road.

⁴⁷ Sabine, Works, p. 277. 29 of these 32 are not mentioned in other Digger related documents.

⁴⁸ S.R.O., 2381/1/1, pp. 2, 3, 4.

⁴⁹ S.R.O., Kingston archives, KEI/1/14, 27 Oct., 17 Nov. 1649.

⁵⁰ P.R.O., SP18/16/140 (certificate of parliamentary surveyors, Surrey, 1651).

⁵¹ P.R.O., C231/6 (crown office docquet book 1642-60), p. 166. Oatlands palace lay in the parish of Weybridge, but much of the park lay in Walton, and bordered Walton Heath close to St George's Hill: LR2/197, fos. 6-9; LR2/297, fos. 105-12, 113-18 (parliamentary surveys of Oatlands house and park, June 1650).

⁵² P.R.O., C231/6, p. 141.

⁵³ P.R.O., ASSI 35/91/4 (home circuit: gen., Lent 1650), m. 40.

⁵⁴ S.R.O., Kingston archives, KEI/1/14, 23 June 1649; Sabine, Works, pp. 319, 327.

⁵⁵ B.L. E 787(34): John Fielder, The humble petition and appeal of John Fielder of Kingston miller, to the parliament of the common-wealth of England (London, 1651), p. 5; cf. L. F. Solt, 'Winstanley, Lilburne, and the case of John Fielder', Huntington Library Quarterly, XLV, 2 (1982), for a detailed description of the case.

⁵⁶ For Winstanley's career before 1649, see especially Alsop, 'Ethics in the marketplace'; Dalton, 'Experience of fraud'.

⁵⁷ G.L.R.O., DW/PA/7/13, fo. 95 (will of Robert Bickerstaffe of Walton, gentleman, 8 Sep. 1640); G.M.R., PSH/COB/1/1, p. 42. (Robert Bickerstaffe is mistakenly referred to as Henry in the 18th century transcripts of the parish register.)

⁵⁸ P.R.O., E317/41/44; LR2/197, fo. 193v; SC12/15/43 (Walton, Weybridge, Esher and Oatlands rental [22 Jas I]); C10/468/162 (John Povey vs. James and William Bickerstaffe, John and Margaret Platt, Robert Gavell, and Henry Baldwin, 1661); C5/592/2 (Rebecca Bickerstaffe vs. William Bickerstaffe, 1662); C2/CHAS I/B170/46 (Rebecca vs. William Bickerstaffe).

⁵⁹ P.R.O., SP16/11/21 (Sir George More to the privy council, 5 Dec 1625); E401/2586 (loan assessment, Surrey); E178/7284 (schedule of knighthood defaulters).

⁶⁰ P.R.O., E134/19 Jas I/T2, depositions of George Gyldon of Kingston and Elizabeth Dalton Weybridge; E134/9 Jas I/H7.

⁶¹ Skinners' Hall, London, Skinners' company register of apprenticeships and freedoms 1601-94, fos. 48, 83, 194 (I am grateful to the clerk of the Skinners' company for permission to consult records held at Skinners' Hall); P.R.O., E179/251/22 (poll tax assessments, by company, 1641), fo. 261v; G.L.R.O., DW/P A/7/13, fo. 95.

⁶² P.R.O., Prob. 11/248, fos. 393v-5 (will of Antony Bickerstaffe of Christ Church parish London, citizen and Skinner, 19 May 1654); Jenkyn was an executor of the will and was left 20s. for preaching a sermon.

⁶³ Corporation of London Record Office (C.L.R.O.), Journal of the court of common council, 40, fo. 153v; Michael Mahony, 'Presbyterianism in the City of London, 1645-1647', Historical Journal, XXII, 1 (1979), 105, III; Tai Liu, Puritan London (Newark, New Jersey, 1986), p. 95.

⁶⁴Commons Journal (C.J.), v, 216; B.L. 669 fo. 11 (30); Five orders and ordinances of parliament for payment of soldiers (London, 1647). The Walton Bickerstaffes were closely related to the royalist Hayward Bickerstaffe of Godstone, for whom see P.R.O., SP23/186/890-900 (composition papers, Hayward Bickerstaffe); SP28/218 (unfol.), breviate of Surrey sequestrations; Prob. 11/207, fo. 101 (will of Hayward Bickerstaffe of Godstone, 15 May 1647); E317/41/44, pp. 7-8; Lords Journal (L.J.), v, 686; vi, 53.

⁶⁵ Skinners' Hall, register 1601-94, ff. 87, 108v; C.L.R.O., CFI/25/131v (Henry Bickerstaffe, certificate of freedom, 11 April 1633).

⁶⁶ For apprentices taken on by Anthony Bickerstaffe in the years 1635-46, see Skinners' Hall, register 1601-94, fos. 117, 124, 145v, 154, 155.

⁶⁷ P.R.O., E179/251/22, fo. 222v; T. C. Dale (ed.), The members of the City companies in 1641 (London, 1935), p. 18. (I am grateful to Robert Dalton for this reference.)

⁶⁸ G.M.R., PSH/COB/1/1, p. 39. His son was baptized at Cobham on I Jan. 1640; as residents of Painshill, the Bickerstaffes attended Cobham church rather than the more distant church of Walton: pp. 10, 15, 36, 42, 45.

⁶⁹ Anthony Bickerstaffe's home was in Newgate market: P.R.O., E317/41/44, p. 9.

⁷⁰ P.R.O., SP28/177 (unfol.), answers of farmers, fee-farmers and others, Kingston, 21 Nov. 1643.

⁷¹Forresta de Windsor in com. Surrey. The meers, meets, limits and bounds of the forrest of Windsor, in the county of Surrey London, 1646), p. 13.

⁷² P.R.O., SP28/179 (unfol.), accounts of John Redferne; SP28/180 (unfol.), Walton parish accounts (abstracts), in which the sum of £4 12s6d. is given; Surrey contributors to the relief of protestant refugees from Ireland, 1642, ed. C. Webb (London: East Surrey Family History Society, 1981).

⁷³ P.R.O., SP28/35, fo. 359; SP28/180 (unfol.), Walton parish accounts (abstracts). He collected taxes in Walton for the Farnham garrison in 1645; SP28/177 (unfol.), accounts of Sackford Gunson.

⁷⁴ P.R.O., SP28/179 (unfol.), accounts of Sir John Dingley; SP28/180 (unfol.), Walton parish accounts (abstracts).

⁷⁵ P.R.O., SP28/35, fo. 357; SP28/180 (unfol.), Walton parish accounts (abstracts). Starr had witnessed Robert Bickerstaffe's will: G.L.R.O., DW/P A/7/13, fo. 95; the dispute between the two families may therefore have been settled by 1640.

⁷⁶ Sabine, Works, p. 266.

⁷⁷ S.R.O., Kingston parish registers (typescripts), p. 205.

⁷⁸ P.R.O., C9/243/14 (James Bickerstaffe vs. Henry Bickerstaffe et al., 1659), complaint of James Bickerstaffe, answers of Henry Bickerstaffe, Robert and Winifred Trolliffe and John Fleming; cf. C33/211, fos. 40v, 128, 550. Anthony Bickerstaffe bought Painshill of the state in April 1650; E121/4/8 (certificates of the sale of crown lands, Surrey).

⁷⁹ S.R.O., Kingston archives, KB/13/3/4 (Kingston gaolers' bonds). Another gaoler was appointed less than 6 months later: KB/13/3/5.

⁸⁰ Sabine, Works, pp. 18, 317, 331, 337. The Diggers were still present on St George's Hill when a petition was presented to parliament on 24 July: B.L. E 532(4): The moderate messenger (23-30 July 1649); E 566(4): Moderate intelligencer (19-26 July).

⁸¹ Sabine, Works, pp. 326, 331, 336.

⁸² B. L. Egerton MS, 2618, fo. 38 (council of state to Fairfax, 10 Oct. 1649); P.R.O., SP25/94, pp. 477-8 (council of state to Surrey justices, 10 Oct.).

⁸³ S.R.O., Kingston archives, KEI/1/14, 29 Oct., 17 Nov., 1 Dec. 1649; B.L. E 575(22): A brief relation (16 Oct. 1649); E 575(27): Mercurius elenticus (15-22 Oct.); Sabine, Works, pp. 19, 360.

⁸⁴ P.R.O., ASSI 35/91/4, m. 40; Clarke papers, II, 216; Sabine, Works, pp. 365-7.

⁸⁵ P.R.O., ASSI 35/91/10 (home circuit; gen., summer 1650), mm. 149, 151. The date given on the presentments was I March.

⁸⁶ Sabine, Works, pp. 385, 387, for later references to freeholders.

⁸⁷ Ibid. pp. 407-15; Englands spirit unfoulded, or an incouragement to take the Engagement (1650), ed. G. E. Aylmer, Past and Present, XL (1968), 9-15; Hill, Law of freedom, pp. 38-9; Hill, Religion and politics, p. 218.

⁸⁸ Sabine, Works, pp. 407, 412; Hill, Religion and politics, pp. 205-6.

⁸⁹ Sabine, Works, pp. 367-8; cf. pp. 434-5.

⁹⁰ Ibid. pp. 296, 412.

⁹¹ Ibid. p. 412; Aylmer (ed.), Englands spirit unfoulded, p. 13.

⁹² T. E. C. Walker, 'Cobham's manorial history', Surrey Archaeological Collections (S.A.C.), LVIII (1961), 41. Platt was not resident in Cobham; the manor house was leased to Captain John Inwood of Walton.

⁹³ Sabine, Works, p. 435.

⁹⁴ P.R.O. SP18/42/144 (Jerrard Winstanley and John Palmer to the council of state, n.d. [Dec. 1649]); Clarke papers, II 217, for the Diggers' first mention of Platt.

⁹⁵ Ibid. p. 217; Sabine, Works, pp. 362, 365-6, 393.

⁹⁶ Ibid. pp. 433-7.

⁹⁷ Ibid. pp. 434-6. Sabine's suggestion that this was in fact Sir Francis Vincent is based on an error in 0. Manning and W. Bray, History and antiquities of the county of Surrey (1804-14; reprint Wakefield, 1970), II, 724-5, in which the date of Sir Anthony's death is given as 1642. The error was repeated in Sabine's source, V.C.H. Surrey, III (London, 1911), 286. Vincent did not die until 1656: P.R.O., Prob. 11/260, fo. 379 (will of Sir Anthony Vincent of Stoke d'Abernon, 29 May 1654); W. Bruce Bannerman (ed.), The parish registers of Stoke d' Abernon (London, 1911), p. 34.

⁹⁸ Sabine, Works, pp. 392, 433; Hill, World turned upside down, p. 131; Walker, 'Cobham', p. 49.

⁹⁹Clarke papers, II, 216, 218.

¹⁰⁰ P.R.O., SP28/177 (unfol.), accounts of Henry Hastings.

¹⁰¹ P.R.O., SP28/214 (unfol.), accounts of Henry Wilcock; cf. SP28/244 (unfol.), warrants of JPs to high constables of Elmbridge hundred, 21 April, 1 May, 6 May 1643; SP16/497/85 (assessment commissioners' warrant to high constables of Elmbridge hundred, 16 May 1643). He remained active as a JP: ASSI 35/88/6 (home circuit, gen., autumn 1647); ASSI 35/89/5.

¹⁰² P.R.O., SP19/86/57 (Surrey compositions, Holland's rising).

¹⁰³ Sabine, Works, pp. 433, 435. For the Sutton family, see Walker, 'Manorial history', pp. 48, 71, 75; Alsop, 'Religion and respectability', pp. 707-8.

¹⁰⁴ Fielder, Petition and appeal, p. 5.

¹⁰⁵ P.R.O., Prob. 11/227, fo. 134v (will of Thomas Sutton of Cobham, gent, 2 Sep. 1650); SP28/179 (unfol.), Cobham parish accounts; SP28/244 (unfol.), county committee warrant to Sackford Gunson, 7 Nov. 1644; ASSI 35/92/8 (Kingston, July 1651); ASSI 35/93/5 (Southwark, March 1652); ASSI 35/93/7 (Kingston, July 1652); ASSI 35/94/7 (Southwark, March 1653).

¹⁰⁶ Sabine, Works, pp. 419-47.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid. pp. 433-5.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid. pp. 435-6.

¹⁰⁹ P.R.O., ASSI 35/91/10, mm. 119-22.

¹¹⁰ Sabine, Works, pp. 420-1, 433-7. Easter day was 14 April; Winstanley claimed that the attack took place on 'Fryday in Easter week', i.e. the 19th.

¹¹¹ Ibid. pp. 266, 277, 413-14, 440; Clarke papers, II, 217; P.R.O., ASSI 35/91/4, m. 40; S.R.O., Kingston archives, KE1/1/14, 23 June 1649.

¹¹² Above, note 85.

¹¹³ Barton, Edsarr, Mills and Lowry are not mentioned elsewhere as Diggers or Digger sympathisers; only male Diggers signed Digger manifestoes.

¹¹⁴ P.R.O., SP28/244 (unfol.), county committee warrant to high constables of Elmbridge hundred, 29 Nov. 1643; Bannerman, Stoke parish registers, pp. 3, 33, 46; Surrey hearth tax 1664 (ed. C. A. F. Meekings, Kingston, Surrey Record Society, 1940), pp. 27, 46, 135. In the draft indictments, the accused were all said to be of Cobham, the scene of the alleged offence.

¹¹⁵ Sabine, Works, p. 434; P.R.O., Prob. 11/260, fo. 378v.

¹¹⁶ P.R.O., SP28/245 (unfol.), accounts of Augustine Phillips.

¹¹⁷ S.R.O., Acc. 317/566/IX (Cobham court rolls, 1647 and 1648); Acc. 2610/11/8/33 (Cobham manor court book, 1624-31), pp. 35, 39, 53; G.M.R., PSH/COB/1/1, pp. 10, 18, 19, 25-6, 45, 48-9, 92-3; P.R.O., SC12/22/34 (schedule of quit-rents, Cobham, 1626); G.L.R.O., DW/PA/7/10, fo. 144 (will of John Melsham the elder of Cobham, yeoman, 6 Nov. 1620).

¹¹⁸Surrey quarter sessions records: order book and sessions rolls 1663-1666 (ed. D. L. Powell and H. Jenkinson, Kingston, Surrey Record Society, 1938), p. 3; cf. G.M.R., PSH/COB/5/1 (Cobham church book 1588-1839), accounts for 1662, 1663, 1667, 1669, 1670, for receipts by Goose of parish relief.

¹¹⁹ P.R.O., ASSI 35/92/8; above, note 15.

¹²⁰Quarter sessions records 1663-6, p. 72.

¹²¹ P.R.O., SP28/35, fo. 359; SP28/159 (unfol.), schedule of assessments, Surrey, middle division, 1645-6; SP28/177 (unfol.), Stoke d'Abernon parish accounts; SP28/178 (unfol.), accounts of Sackford Gunson; SP28/179 (unfol.), Cobham parish accounts.

¹²² P.R.O., SP28/179 (unfol.), accounts of Henry Hastings and John Redfeme; S.R.O., Acc. 317/566/IX.

¹²³Clarke Papers, 11, 210.

¹²⁴ Petegorsky, Left-wing democracy, p. 124; Alsop, 'Later life', pp. 73-5. The most detailed accounts of his business failure are Alsop, 'Ethics in the marketplace' and Dalton, 'Experience of fraud'.

¹²⁵ G.L., MS 4415/1 (St Olave Jewry vestry minutes), fo. 118.

¹²⁶ P.R.O., SP28/178 (unfol.), county committee warrant to high constables of Elmbridge hundred, 20 Dec. 1643; SP28/245 (unfol.), accounts of Augustine Phillips.

¹²⁷ S.R.O., Acc. 317/566/IX; Sabine, Works, pp. 328-34; Walker, 'Manorial history', p. 70.

¹²⁸Clarke papers, 11, 210.

¹²⁹ S.R.O., Acc. 317/566/IX; ASSI 35/91/4, m. 40; S.R.O., Kingston archives, KE1/1/14, 23 June 1649; Sabine, Works, pp. 266, 277, 414, 440.

¹³⁰ G.L.R.O., DW/PA/7/12, fo. 495 (will of Edmund Starr of Cobham, clothworker, 26 May 1638); G.M.R., PSH/COB/1/1, pp. 5, 7, 11, 16, 39.

¹³¹ S.R.O., Acc. 317/566/IX.

¹³² Sabine, Works, p. 328.

¹³³Quarter sessions records 1663-6, p. 241.

¹³⁴ Sabine, Works, pp. 266, 277, 414; Clarke papers, 11, 217.

¹³⁵ For Coulton and his family, see S.R.O., Acc. 2610/11/8/33, pp. 35, 39, 53; Acc. 317/566/VIII (Cobham court rolls, 1613-23); Acc. 317/566/IX; G.M.R., PSH/COB/I/i, pp. 5, 7, 16, 17, 19, 26, 28, 31, 35, 44, 52, 55; PSH/COB/5/1, accounts for 1629-30; P.R.O., SC2/204/43 (Cobham court rolls, 5 Eliz. 12 Jas I); SC12/22/34; Daly (ed.), Kingston apprentices, p. 48.

¹³⁶ P.R.O. SP28/35, fo. 359; SP28/177 (unfol.), accounts of Sackford Gunson; SP28/179 (unfol.), accounts of Henry Hastings and John Redferne.

¹³⁷ P.R.O., SP28/35, fo. 356; SP28/179 (unfol.), Cobham parish accounts.

¹³⁸ S.R.O., Acc. 317/566/IX.

¹³⁹ P.R.O., Prob. 11/224, fo. 307v (will of John Coulton of Cobham, yeoman, 15 June 1652). The will was proved 14 Sep. 1652.

¹⁴⁰ S.R.O., Acc. 317/566/IX.

¹⁴¹ G.M.R., PSH/COB/l/1, pp. 41, 45; S.R.O., Acc. 3171566/IX.

¹⁴² G.M.R., PSH/COB/l/1, pp. 44, 54, 57.

¹⁴³ P.R.O., Prob. 11/298, fo. 300 (will of Francis Stint the elder of Cobham, husbandman, 24 April 1658). Nathaniel Coulton, John Coulton's nephew, was one of the overseers.

¹⁴⁴ P.R.O., E179/257/30 (Surrey hearth tax returns, 1663); G.M.R., PSH/COB/I/I, p. 75.

¹⁴⁵ Sabine, Works, pp. 277, 413-4, 440; Clarke papers, 11, 217.

¹⁴⁶ P.R.O., RG6/956 (Kingston quaker registers, 1658-1779), p. 7; RG6/1240 (registers, 1649-73), p. 3.

¹⁴⁷ G.M.R., PSH/COB/l/I, pp. 44, 45.

¹⁴⁸ G.M.R., PSH/COB/5/1, accounts for 1657; P.R.O., ASSI 35/94/12 (home circuit; gen., summer 1653), m. 121; ASSI 35/99/7 (Southwark, March 1658). Also charged with Johnson was Thomas Ward of Cobham. A Thomas Ward stood surety for Henry Bickerstaffe in Kingston court in June 1649 (S.R.O., KEI/1/14). On 12 April 1650, at the height of the campaign against the Diggers, Thomas Ward of Cobham was informed against for having fought for the king in the Civil War: P.R.O., SP19/22, p. 37. Thomas Ward of Kingston was awarded a royalist pension in 1663: Surrey quarter sessions records: order book and sessions rolls 1661-3, ed. D. L. Powell and H. Jenkinson (Kingston: Surrey Record Society, 1935), p. 70.

¹⁴⁹ P.R.O., Prob. 11/298, fo. 300.

¹⁵⁰ G.M.R., PSH/COB/I/1, p. 60; PSH/COB/5/1, accounts for 1662; Meekings, Surrey hearth tax, p. 60; G.L.R.O., DW/PC/1/1, fo. 53v (will of Mary Freeland of Cobham, Feb. 1665).

¹⁵¹ G.M.R., PSH/COB/1/1, p. 44; S.R.O., Acc. 317/566/IX.

¹⁵² Details of baptisms from 1644 were not registered until 1656; records of marriages and burials were not collected; G.M.R., PSH/COB/1/1, pp. 1, 47.

¹⁵³ Sabine, Works, p. 434 (my italics).

¹⁵⁴ Possibly the illegitimate son of Julian Palmer, baptized in Cobham Nov. 1611 (G.M.R., PSH/COB/1/1, p. 5), or the son of John Palmer of Cobham, blacksmith, apprenticed in 1626 to William Stedwell of Kingston, baker: Daly (ed.), Kingston apprentices, p. 36. A Cobham resident was fined in 1630 for receiving a John Palmer as an inmate in his cottage: S.R.O., Acc. 2610/11/8/33, p. 37. John Palmer of Cobham had two hearths in 1664, and was exempted from the hearth tax: Meekings, Surrey hearth tax, p. 116.

¹⁵⁵ In 1664 'Ould South' of Cobham had one hearth (exempt). He was in receipt of parish relief in 1668 (Old South), and in 1669 and 1670 (John South): G.M.R., PSH/COB/5/1. John South was buried in 1672: PSH/COB/1/1, p. 71.

¹⁵⁶ He married Phoebe Coulton, whose grandfather Robert was the brother of John Coulton the Digger, in 1658. Their children were baptized in 1659, 1663, 1666, 1669 and 1674: G.M.R., PSH/COB/1/1, pp. 53-4, 58, 61, 66, 74; G.L.R.O., DW/PC/5/1665/Coulton, Robert (will of Robert Coulton of Burwood in Walton, husbandman, 24 Feb. 1665); DW/PC/5/1665/Coulton, Joseph (will of Joseph Coulton of Cobham the elder, 23 Jan. 1665). Thomas South had 2 hearths in 1663 and was in receipt of relief in 1674: P.R.O., E179/257/30; G.M.R., PSH/COB/5/1.

¹⁵⁷ Anthony Wrenn was, until 1649, occupier of a warren house leased from George Evelyn of Wotton: Walker, 'Cobham's manorial history', p. 76; D. C. Taylor, 'Old Mistral, Cobham: a sixteenth-century warrener's house identified', S.A.C. LXXIX (1989), 119. David Taylor also identifies Wrenn as a Digger.

¹⁵⁸ Sabine, Works, pp. 266, 277, 413, 440; Clarke papers, II, 217; P.R.O., SP18/42/144; ASSI 35/91/4, m. 40; ASSI 35/91/10, mm. 119-22.

¹⁵⁹ Sabine, Works, pp. 266, 277, 413, 440; Clarke papers, II, 217.

¹⁶⁰ Bannerman, Stoke parish registers, pp. 4, 6, 7; Meekings, Surrey hearth tax, p. 52.

¹⁶¹ Thomas, 'Another Digger broadside', pp. 649-50.

¹⁶² For which, see P. H. Hardacre, 'Gerrard Winstanley in 1650', Huntington Library Quarterly, XXII, 4 (1959).

¹⁶³ P.R.O., ASSI 35/91/4, m. 40. These included Winstanley, Barton, Starr, Palmer, Edsaw, Bickerstaffe and Maidley.

¹⁶⁴ P.R.O., ASSI 35/91/5 (Croydon, July 1650); ASSI 35/92/7 (Southwark, March 1651); ASSI 35/92/8; ASSI 35/93/5; ASSI 35/94/8 (Croydon, July 1653).

¹⁶⁵ P.R.O., Prob. 11/224, fo. 307v; S.R.O., Acc. 317/566/IX.

¹⁶⁶ G.M.R., PSH/COB/1/1, p. 47; T. E. C. Walker, 'Cobham incumbents and curates'; S.A.C. LXXI (1977), 209; A. G. Matthews, Walker revised (Oxford, 1948), p. 310.

¹⁶⁷ P.R.O., SP28/179 (unfol.), accounts of Henry Hastings and John Redferne; Cobham parish accounts; Webb, Ireland, A. G. Matthews, Calamy revised (Oxford, 1934), p. 226; cf. Dalton. 'Experience of fraud', p. 977. It is not clear whether he was ever formally instituted as vicar of Cobham.

¹⁶⁸ Aubrey, History of Surrey, III, 126; Manning and Bray, History, I, CXIX.

¹⁶⁹ Sabine, Works, p. 326.

¹⁷⁰ G.L., MS 4415/1, fos. 101-5v, 109v. Winstanley first attended on 30 Apr. 1641, and the last occasion was 19 Jan. 1643; 14 meetings are known to have taken place during this period.

¹⁷¹ G.L., MS 4415/1, fo. 104; cf V. Pearl, London and the outbreak of the puritan revolution (Oxford, 1961), pp. 54-6.

¹⁷² Tai Liu, Puritan London, p. 108; G.L., MS 4415/1, fo. 101v, for Feake; Keith Lindley, 'London and popular freedom in the 1640s', in Freedom and the English revolution, ed R. C. Richardson and G. M. Ridden (Manchester, 1986), p. 139.

¹⁷³ S.R.O., Kingston archives, KD5/1/2 (Kingston chamberlains' accounts, 1638-1710), p. 63; P.R.O., SP28/244 (unfol.), county committee warrant to Sackford Gunson, 15 Aug. 1644.

¹⁷⁴ B.L. E 278(20): Richard Byfield, Temple-defilers defiled (1645), passim; cf. Richard Mayo, The life and death of Edmund Staunton (London, 1673), pp. 11-12, for Staunton's problems with 'wrangling persons' in Kingston.

¹⁷⁵ Fielder, Petition and appeal, pp. 1-5, 13-17, 20-3; P.R.O., SP24/61 (unfol.), Lidgold vs. Fielder, petition of Richard Lidgold and John Childe to committee of indemnity, 3 May 1650; Solt, 'Winstanley, Lilbume, Fielder', pp. 120, 127.

¹⁷⁶ Sabine, Works, p. 99.

¹⁷⁷ S.R.O., Kingston archives, KE2/7/3; KE2/7/4/; KE2/7/12 (papers relating to the arrest and conviction of sectaries, 1664 and 1670); P.R.O., RG6/956; RG6/1240; Joseph Besse, A collection of the sufferings of the people called quakers (London, 1753), 1, 698, 707.

¹⁷⁸ Fielder, Petition and appeal, p. 2; Sabine, Works, p. 277.

¹⁷⁹ G.L.R.O., DW/PA/7/9, fo. 265v (will of Urian Worthington of New Windsor, Berks, yeoman, 20 April 1615); DW/PA/7/10, fo. 94 (will of John Worthington of Thorpe, husbandman, n.d., proved Nov. 1619).

¹⁸⁰Quarter sessions records 1663—6, p. 176; Besse, Sufferings, 1, 699; Van, 'Diggers and quakers', p. 66.

¹⁸¹ S.R.O., Kingston archives, KEI/1/14, 17 Nov. 1649. Gosse also later became a quaker.

¹⁸²VC.H. Surrey, III, 443-4; Walker, 'Manorial history', pp. 48-50.

¹⁸³ P.R.O., REQ 2/34/23 (William Wrenn vs. Robert Gavell); REQ 2/157/503 (Wrenn vs. Gavell, papers 1579-94); REQ 2/159/192 (Wrenn vs. Gavell, depositions 1577).

¹⁸⁴ P.R.O., REQ 2/159/13 (Anthony Bickerstaffe et al. vs. Robert and Francis Gavell, Chancery depositions 1594); SP15/33/74 (William King et al. vs. Robert and Francis Gavell, Chancery bill and related documents). (Anthony Bickerstaffe was the father of Robert Bickerstaffe of Walton.)

¹⁸⁵ P.R.O., SP15/40/48(1) (note of Francis Gavell's debts and legacies).

¹⁸⁶ P.R.O., REQ 2/159/13; SP15/33/74.

¹⁸⁷ P.R.O., SP15/33/74, answer of Robert and Francis Gavell.

¹⁸⁸ P.R.O., SP46/19/212 (draft order, court of Kings Bench, 21 Nov. 1593).

¹⁸⁹ P.R.O., REQ 2/159/13, depositions of James Smyth and James Hypkin of Cobham, labourers, 1594; Prob. 11/320, fo. 103 (will of William King, 6 June 1664); Alsop, 'Religion and respectability', p. 707.

¹⁹⁰ S.R.O., 2610/1/38/22 (court of Wards order, 1638); Walker, Manorial history', p. 49.

¹⁹¹ For the economic and social background, see especially Hill, World turned upside down, pp. 107-8; Hill, Law of freedom, pp. 22-6; cf Thomas, 'Another Digger broadside', p. 58; Sabine, Works, pp. 263, 265, 414-15, 431-2, 650.

¹⁹² P.R.O., SP28/179 (unfol.), Cobham parish accounts. Taxes paid before the outbreak of war amounted to £96 1Is. 10d. wartime assessments to £464 17s. 8d. (including the second moiety of the £400,000 tax, which was not raised in Surrey until 1643), and the excise to £142 8d.

¹⁹³ P.R.O., SP28/178 (unfol.), Egham parish accounts (n.d., April or May 1645). Tooting's inhabitants had spent only £120 13s. 3d. in free quarter by Feb. 1645; Woodmansterne's bill was just over £40: SP28/178, Tooting parish accounts; SP28/180 (unfol.), Woodmansteme parish accounts (abstracts).

¹⁹⁴ The quote is form John Platt and his West Horsley parishioners: P.R.O., SP28/177 (unfol.), West Horsley parish accounts (Nov. 1645).

¹⁹⁵ P.R.O., SP28/179 (unfol.), Cobham parish accounts; Dalton, 'Experience of fraud', p. 976. These were inhabitants of Street Cobham, which lay on the Portsmouth road.

¹⁹⁶ P.R.O., SP19/98/90A (certif. of committee for the safety of Surrey on behalf of Capt. John Inwood of Walton, 6 May 1645); SP28/11, fo. 170 (petition of [Elizabeth Hammond] of Chertsey, n.d.); SP28/177 (unfol.), answers of farmers, fee-farmers and others, 21 Nov. 1643; Byfleet parish accounts; Chertsey parish accounts; SP28/178 (unfol.), Egham parish accounts; SP28/180 (unfol.), Walton parish accounts (abstracts); Calendar of the proceedings of the committee for advance of money 1642-56, ed. M. A. E. Green (London, 1888), p. 40. Francis Drake's house in Walton was plundered: B. L. Harl. MS 164 (Parliamentary diary of Sir Simonds D'Ewes), fos. 290-290v.

¹⁹⁷ House of Lords Record Office (H.L.R.O.), main papers 1647, 20 Nov., petition of John Tumer; 19 Nov., Sir Thomas Fairfax to Robert Scawen; P.R.O., SP24/47 (unfol.), petition of 'the farmers of Surrey' to Fairfax; V.C.H. Surrey, 1, 413-14.

¹⁹⁸ Morrill and Walter, 'Order and disorder', passim.

¹⁹⁹ cf. A. Hughes, Politics, society and civil war in Warwickshire, 1620-1660 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 265-6, for the exacerbation of social tensions in Warwicks.

²⁰⁰ Examples of conflict in Surrey during the 1640s are discussed in J. R. Gurney, 'The county of Surrey and the English revolution' (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Sussex, 1991), pp. 238-45.

²⁰¹ For example, Sabine, Works, pp. 256, 259, 260, 263-4, 282, 286, 303, 305, 667, 672; Clarke papers, II, 215; Aylmer (ed.), Englands spirit unfoulded, p. 12; cf. B.L. E 252(30): A perfect diurnall of some passages in parliament (22-9 April 1644); E 518(18): A perfect diurnall 9-16 Aug. 1647); E 518(20); Perfect occurrences of every day iournall in parliament (Aug. 1647); J. Rushworth, Historical collections (London, 1721), VII, 77, for the expression of similar complaints by others.

²⁰² Sabine, Works, p. 506.

²⁰³ Dalton, 'Experience of fraud', p. 975; Gurney, 'County of Surrey', p. 245. The list is in P.R.O., SP28/245 (unfol.).

²¹⁹ Sabine, Works, pp. 263, 414-15; cf. pp. 263, 431-2.

²²⁰ Ibid. pp. 256, 286; P.R.O., SP18/42/144; cf. Aylmer (ed.), Englands spirit unfoulded, p. 13; Sabine, Works, pp. 285, 415.