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By Root 1022 0

men, had a long tradition of defending their rights at law and in demonstrations, and this sturdy individualism is usually seen as a basis for support for Parliament, as opposed to a more deferential support for Charles. But this calculating response to a specific question was just as much a product of the history and political culture of the Derbyshire tin miners as enlistment in the parliamentarian army would have been.67

In the early 1640s a large number of agrarian and industrial grievances found expression in collective action and it is always possible, of course, that they were motivated mainly, or solely, by agrarian and industrial discontents. It is tempting to see in these and other agrarian or industrial protests elements of class hostility. Clearly, however, these economic grievances could be coloured by other concerns: in the Stour Valley the politics of cloth and class intersected with godliness in the popular parliamentarianism that was so decisive. At various points throughout the 1640s it is possible to see that ‘bread and butter’ issues caused discontent, and that these discontents were not being addressed by the war: there was a potential for radical social change which was sidelined by the politicians, in other words.68

Enclosure rioters in Lincolnshire, for example, had good reason to be hostile to the crown, which had sponsored large-scale drainage and enclosure projects during the 1630s, but little subsequent reason to be grateful to Parliament, which came to support further drainage schemes. Fenlanders had enjoyed extensive common rights to benefit from the riches of the fens, but these resources disappeared with drainage and those who lost rights did not always feel adequately compensated. Drainage schemes had been an issue in elections both to the Short and Long Parliaments and hopes for redress of grievances seem to have prompted direct action. In April 1640 commoners forcibly entered drained lands, and this was a prelude to two years of disturbances. Hopes were raised when the Commons established a Committee for the Fens, but frustration with its slow progress led to direct action in the winter of 1641–2. Another wave of disturbances started in late 1641, running through the summer of 1642, by which time the local agencies of law and order seemed powerless to stop it. This seems to have galvanized gentry solidarity in these areas – a desire to limit the political damage of the incipient conflict in the interests of social order. Subsequently the commoners and their opponents took advantage of political circumstances to push their case, adjusting their language to meet the expectations of their rulers, or to call them to account. Drainers complaining about disorder identified it as a seditious conspiracy against the King in the 1620s, in the 1640s as a benighted rabble careless of the benefits to the commonwealth of agricultural improvement, then as Levellers seeking a violent change of government in the 1650s. The fenmen, for their part, shifted the emphasis of their addresses away from humble supplication for the protection of their governors towards their fundamental rights, particularly in property.69

Between 1640 and 1642 the House of Lords heard many such complaints, as its legal jurisdiction opened up new possibilities of redress. The resulting flood of petitions is a goldmine for social historians and the peak of disputes over economic and social grievances has been interpreted as evidence of an actual peak in a rising trend in economic conflict.70 Perhaps, though, these things reflect the legal awareness of people whose interests were closely entwined with the law. When enclosure rioters in Waltham Forest in May 1642 claimed that there was ‘no law settled’ and that killing deer was therefore outside sanction, they may have been making a claim more limited than that anarchy was engulfing the country. Rights of access to the forest, or rights to build fences there, were regulated by courts whose jurisdiction had now been thrown into doubt. During the 1630s Waltham had seen the revival