of England, who might improve them if they would take the pains;
that for those who would come dig with them, they should have the
benefit equal with them, and eat of their bread; but they would not
force any, applying to all the golden rule, to do to others as we
would be done unto. Some Officers wished they had no further plot
in what they did, and that no more was intended than what they did
pretend.

"As to the barrenness of the ground, which was objected as a
discouragement, the Diggers answered they would use their
endeavours, and leave the success to God, who had promised to make
the barren ground fruitful. They carry themselves civilly and
fairly in the country, and have the report of sober, honest men.
Some barley is already come up, and other fruits formerly; but was
pulled up by some of the envious inhabitants thereabouts, who are
not so far convinced as to promise not to injure them for the
future. The ground will probably in a short time yield them some
fruit of their labour, how contemptible soever they do yet appear
to be."

Before following the further adventures of the Diggers, as revealed in
the numerous pamphlets they left us, from which alone they can now be
gathered, we deem it best to lay before our readers what we have been
able to ascertain of Gerrard Winstanley's previous life's history and
writings. Behind every movement that has ever influenced the thoughts of
mankind, there is always some master-mind, a Lautze, a Gautama, a Jesus
of Nazareth, a Wiclif, a John Wesley, a Darwin, a Tolstoy, or a Henry
George; and it is in the comparatively unknown Gerrard Winstanley that
we shall find the master-mind, the inspirer and director, of the Digger
Movement. As Gardiner well says, "It is not only by the immediate
accomplishment of its aim that the value of honest endeavour is to be
tested." And the reader's interest in our work may be quickened if we so
far forestall the pages that are to follow as to indicate that not only
were Winstanley's earlier theological writings the source whence the
early Quakers, or the Children of Light, as they at first called
themselves, drew many of their most characteristic tenets and doctrines,
but that the fundamental principles which inspired and animated his
political writings were in all respects identical with those that during
the past quarter of a century have been so honourab