Gerrard Winstanley and his followers began cultivating common land at St George's Hill in Surrey in April 1649. Calling themselves True Levellers, they argued that the earth should become a common treasury rather than remain dominated by landlords. Local hostility and legal pressure destroyed the settlement.

Winstanley's pamphlets joined biblical prophecy to radical social criticism in some of the revolution's most original prose. Digger writing extended Civil War arguments beyond political representation to poverty, land and economic justice.