Diggers

The Diggers were a group of Protestant English agrarian communists, begun by Gerrard Winstanley as True Levellers in 1649, who became known as Diggers due to their activities.

Their original name came from their belief in economic equality based upon a specific passage in the Book of Acts. The Diggers tried (by "levelling" real property) to reform the existing social order with an agrarian lifestyle based on their ideas for the creation of small egalitarian rural communities. They were one of a number of nonconformist dissenting groups that emerged around this time.