The Digger (English Dissenters) movement had its antecedents in earlier times of hunger and unrest. The Diggers movement began in Surrey in April 1649, two months after the execution of King Charles I. Grandees ban petitions to Parliament by soldiers. According to the newspaper 'A Perfect Diurnall' the emissaries had travelled a circuit through the counties of Surrey, Middlesex, Herfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire before being apprehended. Though puritan in religion, the Levellers opposed the intolerance of most puritans and especially of Presbyterians, against whom they allied with the Independents (or Congregationalists). Parliamentarians believed that the king's policies threatened both religion and liberty. |  |
The New Model Army and its soldiers did suffer considerably in the campaign. After victories with few Parliamentary casualties at Drogheda and Wexford in 1649, their casualties began to mount. Thousands more died of disease, particularly in the long sieges of Limerick, Waterford and Galway. The Siege of Clonmel took place in April - May 1650 during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland when the town of Clonmel in County Tipperary, Ireland was besieged by Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army. Cromwell's 8,000 men eventually took the town from its 1,000 Irish defenders, but not before they suffered heavy losses. The town was defended by Hugh Dubh ("Black Hugh") Ó Neill, a veteran of siege warfare in the Thirty Years' War and experienced soldiers from the Irish Ulster army. soldiers sold these land grants to other Protestant settlers, but about 7,500 of them settled in Ireland in lieu of the Commonwealth. Taken together with the Merchant Adventurers, probably over 10,000 Parliamentarians settled in Ireland after the civil wars. In addition to the Parliamentarians, thousands of Scottish Covenanter soldiers, who had been stationed in Ulster during the war settled there permanently after its end. Some Parliamentarians had argued that all the Irish should be deported to west of the Shannon and replaced with English settlers.
Hugh Dubh was born in Brussels in 1611 and grew up in the Irish military community there, becoming a professional soldier and serving in the Irish regiment of the Spanish army in Flanders during the Eighty Years' War against the United Provinces of the Netherlands. In 1642, his uncle, Owen Roe Ó Neill, organised the return of 300 Irish officers in the Spanish service to Ireland to support the Irish Rebellion of 1641. ONeill's men became the nucleus of the Ulster army of Confederate Ireland - a de facto independent Irish state. Hugh Dubh Ó Neill was captured early in the war by Scottish enemies, but was exchanged back to his own side after the Confederate victory at the battle of Benburb in 1646. He subsequently rose to prominence after the death of his commander Owen Roe Ó Neill in 1649. Ó Neill distinguished himself at the siege of Clonmel in May 1650, inflicting the worst casualties ever experienced by the New Model Army. He was then made commander of the defenders of Limerick, fighting off the Parliamentarian's first attempt to take the city in late 1650. In 1650, while the campaign in Ireland was still ongoing, part of the New Model Army was transferred to Scotland to fight Scottish Covenanters at the start of the Third English Civil War. The Covenanters, who had been allied to the Parliament in the First English Civil War, had now crowned Charles II as King.
Another
colony of Diggers connected to the Surrey and Wellingborough colony was set up
in Iver, Buckinghamshire about 14 miles from the Surrey Diggers colony at St George's
Hill . The Digger colonies, consisting in all of only about 100-200 people throughout
England, were finished by 1651; this was no doubt largely due to the concerted
efforts of local landowners backed by the Council of State to crush the Digger
colonies whenever they arose. There is good evidence to support the establishment
of Digger communities at: Dunstable (Bedfordshire), Iver (Buckinhhamshire), Barnet
(Hamptonshire), Cox Hill (Kent?), Bosworth (Leicestershire), Entfield (Middlesex),
Wellingborough (Northhamptonshire). And there is good reason to also suspects
communities in Gloucestershire and Nottinghamshire.