The Diggers ‘nickname’ came from their belief that the land should be available to every person to dig and sow, so that everyone, rich or poor, could live, grow and eat by the sweat of their own brows, as according to them “The earth was made to be a common treasury for all”.
Regarding the earth as a "common treasury", the Diggers took direct action to put their ideals into practice. Communities were established in various parts of southern and central England to cultivate waste and common land, in the hope that this would begin the process of restoring the land to its rightful owners, the common people, rather than the king, nobility and gentry who had usurped it.
