- ‘The Superiority of the New Patent Coke over the use of Coals in Family Concerns, displayed every Evening, at the Large Theatre, Lyceum, Strand, by the New Imperial Patent Light Stove (F. A. Winsor, patentee),’ [1806].
- ‘Analogy between Animal and Vegetable Life. Demonstrating the beneficial application of the Patent Light Stoves to all Green and Hot Houses,’ 1807. Winsor here calls himself ‘Inventor and patentee of the gas lights.’
- ‘National Deposit Bank; or the Bulwark of British Security, Credit, and Commerce, in all times of Difficulty, Changes, and Revolutions,’ 1807.
- ‘Mr. W. Nicholson's Attack in his “Philosophical Journal” on Mr. Winsor and the National Light and Heat Company, with Mr. Winsor's Defence; also a short History of some Piratical Attempts to infringe his Patent Right,’ 1807.
columns of English, French, and German, Brunswick, 1802, 4to; dedicated to Charles William Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick. This was reissued in English alone with some additions in 1804 as ‘Account of the most ingenious and important National Discovery for some Ages.’
Some further pamphlets of minor importance are enumerated in the Patent Office Library catalogue.
[Matthews's Historical Sketch of the Origin, Progress, and Present State of Gas-Lighting, 1827, chap. iv. and Appendix; Annual Biogr. and Obituary, 1831, p. 508; Gent. Mag. 1830, ii. 89; The Report of Jas. Lud. Grant and trustees of the fund for assisting Mr. Winsor in his experiments, May 1808; John Taylor's Memoirs of my Life, 1832, i. 41; Croft's Kensal Green Cemetery, p. 20; Smiles's Invention and Industry, pp. 142–3; A Letter to a Member of Parliament from Mr. William Murdock, 1809, ed. Prosser, 1892; Samuel Clegg's Coal Gas, 1841, introduction; Gas Journal, 1883, xlii. 489 sq.; Nicholson's Journal, 1 Jan. 1807, p. 73; Ann. Reg. 1804 p. 825, 1807 p. 855, 1808 ii. 134; Chambers's Book of Days, i. 178; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. x. 206, xii. 494, 8th ser. ii. 85; London Magazine, December 1827; All the Year Round, 5 Oct. 1867; New York Engineering Magazine, vi. 223; Rees's Cyclopædia, 1819, art. ‘Gas;’ Penny Cyclopedia, xi. 86; Grande Encyclopédie, art. ‘Éclairage;’ notes kindly furnished by R. B. Prosser, esq.]
WINSTANLEY, GERRARD (fl. 1648–1652), ‘digger’ or ‘leveller,’ was a Lancashire man, but his parentage and birthplace have not been identified. He came into notice in April 1649 as the leader, with William Everard, of a small party of men who began cultivating some waste land at St. George's Hill, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, asserting that it was ‘an undeniable equity that the common people ought to dig, plow, plant, and dwell upon the commons, without hiring them or paying rent to any.’ The diggers being removed by the authorities, Winstanley wrote ‘A Letter to the Lord Fairfax and his Councell of War, with divers Questions to the Lawyers and Ministers,’ 1649, 4to; reprinted in ‘Harleian Miscellany’ (ed. Park, viii. 586). Everard, in conjunction with Winstanley and others, wrote a pamphlet, ‘The True Levellers Standard,’ 1649, in defence of these proceedings, and was afterwards imprisoned at Kingston. Winstanley, along with John Barker and Thomas Star, was also arrested and he was sentenced to pay 9l. 11s. 1d. for fine and costs. The three men then addressed an ‘Appeal to the House of Commons, desiring their Answer: whether the Common People shall have the quiet enjoyment of the Commons and Waste Land, or whether they shall be under the will of Lords of the Mannor still,’ 1649.
Winstanley also published the following tracts on the same matter:
- ‘A Vindication of those whose Endeavours is only to make the Earth a Common Treasury, called Diggers,’ 1649.
- ‘A Watchword to the City of London and the Armie,’ 1649.
- ‘A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England,’ 1649.
- ‘A New Yeers Gift to the Parliament and Armie: shewing what the Kingly Power is, and that the Cause of those they call the Diggers is the Life and Marrow of that Cause the Parliament hath declared for and the Army fought for,’ 1650.
- ‘An Appeal to all Englishmen to judge between Bondage and Freedome,’ 1650.
- ‘The Law of Freedom in a Platform, or True Magistracy Restored. Humbly presented to Oliver Cromwell … wherein is declared, what is Kingly Government, and what is Commonwealth's Government,’ 1652.
An interesting memorial to the council of state was presented by Winstanley and John Palmer in vindication of the diggers in 1649 (wrongly dated in Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1653–4, p. 338). A stirring ‘Digger's Song,’ probably written by Winstanley, is printed in the ‘Clarke Papers’ (ii. 221). His writings mentioned above show him to have been an absolute socialist. In the scheme which he gravely put before Cromwell in the ‘Law of Freedom’ there were to be no lords of manor, lawyers, landlords, or tithe-supported clergy; nor was the use of money to be allowed. Mr. G. P. Gooch, in his ‘English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century’ (1898, pp. 206–26), shows that Winstanley was often a clear-headed teacher of communistic principles, then strange but now familiar.
