Declaration and Standard of the Levellers

This is the title page of the Declaration and Standard of the Levellers of England, a pamphlet describing the interrogation of two activists, William Everard and Gerrard Winstanley, at the palace of Whitehall. Everard and Winstanley were representing a group—later known as the Diggers—who had begun to plant produce on common land. Winstanley and Everard called their group the True Levellers, an offshoot of the contemporary Leveller political movement. The Levellers opposed monarchy, supported suffrage, and advocated freedom in religion. The True Levellers, or Diggers, put more emphasis on cultivating common land to, in their own words, help “the poor and Needy, to feed the hungry, and to cloath the naked.” The Levellers disappeared as a political party after the execution of Charles I in 1649, and the Diggers dissolved as an organized group in 1650.