A HISTORY OF SURREY 



Socialism emerged in the time of general unrest, associated with extreme 

 forms of religious excitement. There were people known as Levellers 

 or Diggers, who combined the old cry against enclosures with meta- 

 phorically ' levelling ' political ideas. On April 1 7, 1 649, news came 

 to London that some of them, under two leaders, Everard and Winstanley, 

 were at work on the waste of Cobham Manor, near St. George's Hill in 

 Surrey, digging the ground and planting roots and beans. They were 

 only about thirty in number, but boasted that they would soon be 4,000. 

 Fairfax took them seriously enough to despatch two troops of horse after 

 them. The leaders were brought up before the general, when they 

 anticipated Quaker practices by refusing to uncover to their fellow 

 creature, while Everard delivered himself of a speech declaring his 

 mission. He had been instructed, he said, by a vision to dig and plough 

 the earth and to gather the fruits thereof. These were to be distributed 

 among the poor. At present enclosed property was to be let alone, but 

 not for long, for in the good time shortly coming all land and other 

 property was to be common. He moreover explained that he had a 

 mission to deliver his brother Israelites, who had been in captivity since 

 the coming of William the Conqueror, but who were now, as God's people, 

 to be restored to their rights in the promised land of England. White- 

 locke says that it was the first time in his age that attention had been 

 drawn to these doctrines ; it was assuredly not the first time in all ages, 

 nor by any means the last. Martial law was too familiar and Everard 

 too had been a soldier for the poor prophet to think of questioning the 

 right of the general and his troops of horse to nip in the bud these 

 schemes of land nationalization and Anglo-Israelitism. Indeed, before 

 Fairfax took further steps, the real commoners, whose land was being 

 invaded, attacked and scattered the Diggers, and pulled up their roots 

 and beans. 1 



We are apt to forget how much of the ordinary peaceful life of the 

 country went on through all troubles, foreign or domestic. Work less 

 noisy than civil war, but nearly as important in its after results, was 

 being done, though under difficulties. 



A more practical agriculturist than the Diggers was planting roots 

 in Surrey about the same time as they. This was Sir Richard Weston 

 of Sutton Place, a Catholic recusant, and of course a Royalist in sym- 

 pathy, though he took no active part in the war. He, harassed by law 

 and lawlessness, and with half his estate sequestrated, was nevertheless 

 working steadily to improve his property, and incidentally the whole 

 country too. In the Directions for the Improvement of Barren Lands, 

 published in 1645 and republished with additions by Milton's friend 

 Hartlib in 1651 and 1652, he recommended field crops of turnips, 

 anticipating by more than half a century Lord Townshend's Norfolk 

 improvements. He also introduced clover from Brabant and Flanders. 

 He was the author of another more striking innovation, also brought 

 from abroad, by causing the first real canal locks in England to be made. 



1 Whitelocke's Memorials, April, 1649. 

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