Undisciplined commoners actively resisted enclosure of shared woodland.

Evidence

In 1569, new enclosures in the Forest of Westwood were pulled down in an uprising by 300–400 poor laborers and servants who needed the forest for grazing their animals and who, by combining earnings, sharing crops, and using the forest, had been able to make a scant living. They were quickly brought to trial, however, and the enclosures replaced. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 321

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Parallels the fen-drainage riots already in the tree article’s archive: commons users in both marsh and forest violently defended their subsistence ecologies against enclosure.