Note 596 — Chapter I · THE AGRARIAN PROBLEM AND THE STATE

Camden Society, Clarke Papers, vol. ii. p. 217. Letter addressed by the Diggers, December 8, 1649: “To my lord generall and his Councell of War.” The allusion to the usurping Normans occurs also (ibid., p. 215) in another letter in a statement of the reasons of the agitation: “Secondly by vertue of yours and our victory over the king, whereby the enslaved people of England have recovered themselves from under the Norman Conquest; though wee do not yet enjoy the benefit of our victories, nor cannot soe long as the use of the Common land is held from the younger brethren by the Lords of Mannours that yet sit in the Norman chair and uphold that tyranny as if the kingly power were in force still.”