Introduction

One of the great ironies about the Diggers’ attempt in 1649 to re-make the Earth as a “common treasury” is that the site they chose to begin this task is now as enclosed a piece of land as it is possible to conceive. The home of rock stars, TV presenters and other assorted millionaires, St George’s Hill, Weybridge, is one of the most exclusive private estates in England, a sort of British counterpart to Los Angeles’ Beverly Hills. Those who delighted in the Diggers’ downfall, in their failure to stop the rich from “bagging and barning up the treasures of the Earth”, could scarce have imagined how total that failure would ultimately turn out to be.