State Papers Domestic, 15 April 1650

This short state-paper entry records the Council of State's response to Digger activity in Northamptonshire in April 1650. It is not a work by Gerrard Winstanley, but it belongs near the Wellingborough and Iver Digger materials because it shows how the Commonwealth government instructed local authorities to proceed against people it called "Levellers" in those parts.

The text below is taken from the public-domain Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, during the Commonwealth, vol. 2, 1650, edited from Public Record Office materials and published in London in 1875. The entry has been checked against the Internet Archive scan, source page 106.

Entry

April 15. Whitehall. Council of State to Mr. Pentlow, justice of peace for county Northampton. We approve your proceedings with the Levellers in those parts, and doubt not but you are sensible of the mischief those designs tend to, and of the necessity to proceed effectually against them. If the laws in force against those that intrude upon other men's properties, and that forbid and direct the punishing of all riotous assemblies and seditious and tumultuous meetings, be put in execution, there will not want means to preserve the public peace against the attempts of this sort of people. Let those men be effectually proceeded against at the next sessions, and if any that ought to be instrumental to bring them to punishment fail in their duty, signify the same to us.

Colophon

This text is a public-domain calendar entry from Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, during the Commonwealth, vol. 2, 1650, edited by Mary Anne Everett Green from Public Record Office materials and published in London by Longman & Co. in 1875. The entry appears on source page 106 and cites the state-paper register reference I. 95, p. 91. The local source check used the Internet Archive scan of University of Michigan's copy, identifier abd6186.0002.001.umich.edu, PDF page 157.

This item is included as related Digger movement context. It is not attributed to Gerrard Winstanley.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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