continued.
The landowners tried legal measures. Members of the community were arrested and charged with trespassing. Following a court case, in which the Diggers were forbidden to speak in their own defence, they were found guilty of being Ranters, an eccentric sect associated with free love. In fact Gerard Winstanley had reprimanded the Ranters' leader for his sexual practices.
'If, as I have heard, the Ranters run out into the streets naked to proclaim their visions, then to call us Ranters is madness,' Anne joked to her new comrades. 'Nobody would stand in the middle of a frozen field tending parsnips without clothes!'
This was not received with the humour she had enjoyed among the Jukes family. Her first pang of homesickness struck.
Once they lost the court case, the army could have been used to evict them, so the Diggers abandoned St George's Hill in August and set up again nearby at Cobham. There they repeated their efforts: tilling, planting and building shelters. Their reception was no better. In October, the local authorities tried to have them removed. In November, soldiers were dispatched to assist the local justices of peace. Members clung on, but their situation was worrying.
Despite this, Anne lived at Cobham for over six months, in one of the communal houses. Most of the other members were couples or families, although some were very elderly. Anne felt out of place. Forty years of age was a bad time to take up farming. Some male members naturally assumed that women members would be held in common — these were men who would have attempted liberties whatever society they lived in, Anne reckoned. Meanwhile, female members were suspicious of the motives of an unaccompanied woman. Married female members were certain Anne Jukes was after their husbands. Saying what she really thought of those husbands would only have caused friction.
There were disadvantages to communal life. Bursting with people, the houses were noisy. Occupants stayed up late, banging about while others were longing for rest after hard work in the fields. Idealistic principles made little impression on human nature. Food and belongings were shared, but bitterness sometimes festered over perceived hoarding, with dark suspicions about exactly how equal the sharing-out was.
Division of labour was fraught too. Some people were so overwhelmed and exhausted by their need to expound ecstatic visions, they left all the hard work to others. There had never in the world been a rota for wood- chopping that satisfied everyone named on it. Ideas varied widely on how full a fetched water-bucket should be. Born organisers do have to comment frankly on the deficiencies of lesser mortals, whereas, having taken courageous decisions on their way of life, some mortals are resistant to listening. Who, thought Anne Jukes irritably, having thrown off the Norman yoke of tyranny, then wants to be given instructions about chicken-feathers by a prissy confectioner who has clearly never plucked a fowl or stitched up a seam in linen in her life? A woman who does not even know the difference between a pillow-and a bolster-case?
Human endurance has limits. The Diggers were testing them.
That winter was bitter. Water froze in the pail. None the less, with the spring their crops flourished on Cobham Heath. Their hard-working community had eleven acres under cultivation and had built six or seven shelters. But local pressure against them continued relentlessly, and their situation became desperate. There was encouraging news that other Digger communities had developed and were doing well elsewhere, but they needed funds. A letter was sent out from Surrey requesting financial assistance from the other Diggers. Winstanley then discovered that impostors were going about soliciting donations with a forged letter which purportedly bore his signature.
The movement declined in early 1650. In March remnants were driven off St George's Hill. The government was becoming increasingly concerned. Throughout the spring the Diggers continued their work, despite harassment. Then, in April, the movement collapsed. The lord of the manor at Cobham was a Parson Platt. With several others he destroyed the Diggers' houses, burned their furniture and scattered their belongings. Platt threatened the Diggers with death if they continued their activity and hired guards to prevent their return.
With legal actions pending and dwindling financial resources, the Surrey Diggers quietly disbanded their community. Some were now in such reduced circumstances, they left their children to be cared for by parish welfare, which attracted much righteous criticism. By July, everything was over. It had been a brave experiment, but it had failed.
Anne Jukes had to find somewhere else to go. After three-quarters of a year away, she acknowledged to herself just how reluctant she was to slink back humbly to her no-doubt crowing husband.
Chapter Sixty-Two — Lewisham: 1650
One evening, Juliana Lovell opened her door at dusk and was startled by another visitor. Standing on the step with a bundle of possessions at her feet, which appeared to include large pieces of a demountable truckle bed, was Mistress Anne Jukes. Under a decent brown cloak and safeguard overskirt she wore a plain dress in a demure shade of grey, buttoned to her neat white collar, a coif over her hair and a broad-brimmed, high-crowned hat topping everything. She looked lean, fit and suntanned, yet quite exhausted. She tottered inside and kicked off her iron-soled country pattens. When she said she had tramped on foot all around the south of London to get here, the reason for her weariness was clear. It must be over twenty miles from Cobham in Surrey to Lewisham in Kent.
'Was there no kind person with a cart to give you a lift some of the way?'
Anne massaged her feet through extremely worn stockings. 'Would you take up a woman with her bed on her back and a sow on leading reins?'
'Oh! Where is the pig?' snapped Juliana, too poor to be polite.
'She collapsed by your gate. Your boys are cajoling her into a shelter.'
Juliana took in this runaway without question. Apart from their existing friendship, a result of war was that one woman without money or support instantly recognised the plight of another and opened her arms. They would struggle together. Moreover, Anne had brought a pig.
They shared what they had for several weeks, in an easy, companionable relationship. Once she had settled down and felt secure in this refuge, Anne decided she must write to tell Lambert where she was. She mentioned in passing that it would soon be her birthday.
In the Jukeses' house in London, the brothers were bereft. They had run through a period of complete anarchy, when nothing was cleaned or tidied up, but had grown tired of that, neither being a lad any more. Living on baker's pies and muffins had given Lambert indigestion on a monumental scale. They were now just about managing with a new hired cook and maid, though both women despised them, stole from the store cupboard, and let dishes and beakers slip through their clumsy fingers to shatter on the floor. The Jukes were subjected to a cuisine of boiled mutton and veal, with the scum never skimmed off even though Parthenope's graded set of brass skimmers hung right by the fire. Every day's grey and greasy dinner made the pair more despondent, especially since they were both aware how much their meticulous mother would have grieved over their sufferings.
This was not Lambert's only misery, however. He and Anne had married for true affection; they had been married for fifteen years, which was a long time in an age when death lurked at every wainscot corner. Though Lambert nostalgically remembered himself as a practised ladies' man, running through the sprightly Cheapside wenches with dash and just a hint of dishonour, Gideon suspected Anne was the only woman he had known — or ever wanted. She was good-looking, even-tempered, able to manage Lambert so he never minded being bossed; Lambert had genuinely admired her spirit when she began to take part in extreme religion and politics. His gratitude for the way she had run the grocery business for him was heartfelt. If he had known matters would come to this, he would have worked with her. He would have allowed her anything she wanted. He was accustomed to her being always there, and felt lost without her daily presence. If this was not love, it was as close to love as anything could be.
He would not say so. Lambert never denied his feelings, but he rarely mentioned them. Fortunately, his brother knew. Gideon was truly moved by Lambert's misery.
Their army experiences had left them with a bond, a greater tenderness for each other in time of trouble. When Anne wrote from her new home in Lewisham, Lambert let Gideon read the letter. It was couched in neutral language and could pass merely for what it said: information of her whereabouts. Nonetheless, Gideon suggested
