ABSTRACT
The historiography of the risings was driven by rival memories of the Civil Wars well into the nineteenth century. Among the rebels' first objectives, it further highlights the importance of place and memory in uprisings. The region was the most densely populated in Yorkshire; Leeds and Halifax's garri sons formerly provided the Fairfaxes with 1,700 foot at Adwalton Moor. The trials and executions of the Farnley Wood rebels took place at York, a locality with a very different memory of the Civil War from that of the clothing districts west of Leeds. Although there has been much disagreement over defining boundaries of the middling sort, comparative work based on Yorkshire hearth tax returns estimates the West Riding middling sort as 18 per cent of the population, compared to only 13 and 10.5 per cent in the East and North Ridings.
