The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth
The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth
As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer
Book Excerpt
general tendency, however, was for the individual
power of the lords to extend itself at the cost and to the detriment of
the rural communities, and for their claims steadily to increase and to
become more burdensome. During the fourteenth century many causes had
combined to improve the condition of the industrial classes; and during
the end of the fourteenth and the early part of the fifteenth century the
condition of the peasantry and artisans of Northern Europe was better
than it had ever been before or has ever been since: wages were
comparatively high, employment plentiful, food and other necessaries of
life both abundant and cheap.[7:1] At the beginning of the sixteenth
century, however, the prices of the necessaries of life had risen
enormously, and there had been no corresponding increase in the earnings
of the industrial classes. Moreover, the Feudal Magnates had commenced to
exercise their oppressive power in a hitherto unparalleled manner: old
rights of pasture, of gathering wood and cutting timbe
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