86 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



trained men and scattered to their homes. The Council 

 of State seems to have sympathized to some extent 

 with the peasants, for the ringleaders, other than Ket, 

 were pardoned, and Ket himself was only executed on 

 his proudly refusing the reprieve offered him, alleging 

 that 'just men need no pardon/ This was the last time 

 that the English peasantry rose in sufficient force to 

 make an effective demonstration against the forces of 

 the king : (but local protests against enclosures con- 

 tinued, the most noticeable being the action of the 

 Diggers and the \Levellers during the first half of the 

 XVIIth century.) 



Contemporary authorities tell a great deal of the 

 appropriations for sheep farming and the other troubles 

 and difficulties which continued well into the XVIIth 

 century, but the worst evils must, in the main, have 

 been confined to those districts where enclosures on a 

 large scale and sheep farming marched hand in hand. 

 Enclosures and the changes that accompanied them 

 were certainly not universal, since, at the beginning 

 of the XVIIIth century, it is generally supposed that 

 more than half of the cultivated area of England was 

 still farmed on the old system of open arable fields and 

 commons. 



Rural life was greatly affected by the suppression 



of the monasteries and appropriation of their manors 



and other land by Henry VIII ;* he, whilst 



Suppression announcing his intention of disposing of 



asteries. these estates "to the honour of God and 



the wealth of the nation," proceeded to sell 



or to distribute them amongst his courtiers and others, 



who in their turn in many cases again sold the pro- 



1 See Appendix, p. 176. 



