Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger movement in Walton and Cobham

Abstract

ABSTRACTThere has been disagreement among historians about the nature of the local response to the Diggers in Surrey, and about the relative importance of popular hostility and gentry-led opposition in the defeat of the Digger movement. It is argued here that a distinction must be made between the Diggers' reception in Walton and their treatment in Cobham: popular opposition was much in evidence in Walton, where the Diggers were treated as outsiders, but the response of Cobham's inhabitants was more ambivalent: some of Winstanley's most active fellow Diggers were Cobham inhabitants, and in this parish it was the local gentry who took the lead in the campaign against them. It is argued that the existence of a degree of local support for Winstanley was in part a reflection of Cobham's long tradition of landlord/tenant conflict, of the absence of a settled minister during the 1640s, and of the hardships experienced in the area in the aftermath of civil war.