Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 53 



discontent in the North at the time of the Pilgrimage of 

 Grace and the rebellion under Somerset seems, so far as 

 it was due to enclosures at all, to be caused rather by 

 enclosing the waste. 



Thegeneral conclusion to which we have arrived is that, 

 the work of enclosure commenced in thp Smith and in the. 

 West and perhaps in some Eastern and North-Midland 



counties, where it was effected at vario^ 

 arousing much_dipp,nnffint : that at the close of the fifteenth 

 century it began to touch what was thgrj flip fh>f nnm. 

 growing district in the Midlands ^and yet counties many of 

 which, as later history shows, are peculiarly fitted for pasture) 

 and thence moved gradually northwards. It was in the 

 corn-growing counties of the Midlands that it caused mojt 

 disturbance^ The complamtsare mostly from natives of. 

 those districts and the great majority of leases brought 

 before the courts deaFwith the same counties. 1 And this 



is only what we should ex^ect^since the enclosures of those 

 days were mainly, though not exclusively, for the purpose of 

 using the common open field for pasture, 2 and were more 

 severely felt in the corn-growing districts, especially as the 

 number of small holders seems to have been larger there, and 

 because in many^f them thftrft *vn p 1''*+V ria fmnfa"tnri'ng 

 industry to employ those who were driven out. 



Lastly ilTwas i" tb pgA ir y "Midlimtl "nti>? thnti the 

 movement of enclosure was temporarily arrested, not so 

 much perhaps by the legislative enactments which, as 

 Laiimer and W. S. both complain, were inoperative ^as 

 by the agitation and discontent which they aroused. Of 

 this the rebellion under the Protector furnishes some proofis, 



1 Gay, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xvii. 590. 



3 As to the proportion of enclosure for pasture and for agriculture, 

 cf. Leadam, Domesday of Enclosures, pp. 41, 42 ; Pollard, Protector 

 Somerset, p. 209 ; Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xiv. 241. 



