William Everard (Digger)

William Everard (bap. 1602?, d. in or after 1651) was an early leader of the Diggers.

William Everard was apprenticed on 14 August 1616 to Robert Miller of the Merchant Taylors' Company, London. He was the son of William Everad, a yeoman of Reading and had been baptized on 9 May 1602 in the parish of St Giles, Reading, as William Evered. This Evered took the Protestation Oath in the parish of St Lawrence, Reading on 20 February 1642. Less than a year later a William Everard was serving as a Parliamentary scout for Sir Samuel Luke in the Berkshire and Oxfordshire area. Hessayon speculates that he may have been captured by the Royalists as he there is no record of him until May 1647 when an ensign by the name of William Everard signed a petition voicing the grievances of the army under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax. He was cashiered out of the army in late 1647 or early 1648 for plotting to kill Charles I.

In 1648 he was briefly imprisoned in Kingston, Surrey, for causing a disturbance, and Gerrard Winstanley wrote Truth Lifting up its Head above Scandals in his defence. In March 1649 he appeared before a Justice of the Peace for causing a disturbance in Staines Church.

Early the next month (April 1649) Everard went to St. George's Hill Weybridge, Surrey with four others and started the Diggers commune. By the end of the week they had been joined by about thirty others. The group called themselves True Levellers, before the month was out complaints had been made to the Council of State over their behaviour. A troop of cavalry was sent to disperse the group and escorted Everard and Winstanley the acknowledged leaders to London to see General Fairfax. They appeared before him on 20 April and famously refused to remove their hats in his presence (an act that, at that time, was seen as showing a lack of respect for his authority). They justified their commune's actions to him using the same arguments as they presented in the Diggers first manifesto, The True Levellers Standard Advanced, which was published around the same date. Everard's name appeared as one of the subscribers on the first manifesto, but that was his last involvement with the group.

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