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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 by Lewis Henry Berens
page 190 of 360 (52%)
by, caused two or three poor men to pull down another House: and
divers things were stolen from them.

"15. The next day two Soldiers and two or three Countrymen, sent
by Parson Platt, pulled down another House, and turned a poor old
man and his wife out of doors to lie in the fields in a cold
night."

"And this is the last hitherto. And so you Priests, as you were the
last that had a hand in our persecution, so it may be that our
misery may rest in your hand. For assure yourselves God in Christ
will not be mocked by such Hypocrites that pretend to be His
nearest and dearest Servants, as you do, and yet will not suffer
His hungry and naked and houseless members to live quiet by you in
the Earth, by whose Blood and Monies in the Wars you are in peace.

"And now those Diggers that remain have made little Hutches to lie
in, like Calf-cribs, and are cheerful, taking the spoiling of their
Goods patiently, and rejoicing that they are counted worthy to
suffer persecution for Righteousness' sake. And they follow their
work close, and have planted divers acres of Wheat and Rye, which
is come up and promises a very plentiful crop, and have resolved to
preserve it by all the diligence they can. And nothing shall make
them slack but want of food, which is not much now, they being all
poor people, and having suffered so much in one expense or other
since they began. For Poverty is their greatest burthen; and if
anything do break them from the Work, it will be that."

After this confession of their weakness, and of the probable end of
their work, Winstanley again bursts out into verse as follows:
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