ABSTRACT
An interpretation of the revolts of 1548 –1552 in southern, eastern and east Midland England as a defence against a seigneurial reaction is also supported by the geography of the protests. To understand more clearly the geography of land protests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, therefore, it is necessary to compare those regions that did see rioting with areas that did not, but which experienced similar agrarian transformations. The history of lord-tenant relations and of protests over land arising out of that relationship in upland England diverged from that of the lowlands during this period primarily because much of the region before 1603 was Border country, subject to Scottish raids and intermittently the scene of national conflict. The prominence of the disturbances on the periphery of Britain was partly a reflection of the demise of collective protests in those areas of lowland England that had been the scene of such determined resistance before 1710: the forests and fens.
