Riots, as a protest against the enclosure…

Riots, as a protest against the enclosure of common land, had begun in late April in Haselbech, Pytchley and Rushton in Northamptonshire, and spread to Warwickshire and Leicestershire throughout May.

Things come to a head in early June, when over a thousand protesters gather at Newton, near Kettering, Northamptonshire, to protest against the enclosures of Thomas Tresham, pulling down hedges and filling ditches.

King James issues a Proclamation and orders his Deputy Lieutenants in Northamptonshire to put down the riots.

It is recorded that women and children were part of the protest.

In this so-called Midland Revolt, the term 'leveller', a term of abuse for local rebels, is used to refer to those who have 'levelled' hedges in enclosure riots.

The Treshams—both the family at Newton and their more well-known Roman Catholic cousins at nearby Rushton, the family of Francis Tresham, who had been involved two years earlier in the Gunpowder Plot and had apparently died in the Tower of London—are unpopular for their voracious enclosing of land.

The old Roman Catholic gentry family of the Treshams had long argued with the emerging Puritan gentry family the Montagus of Boughton about territory.

Now Tresham of Newton is enclosing common land—The Brand—that had been part of Rockingham Forest.

Edward Montagu, one of the Deputy Lieutenants, had stood up against enclosure in Parliament some years earlier, but is now placed by the King in the position effectively of defending the Treshams.

The local armed bands and militia refuse the call-up, so the landowners on June 8, 1607, are forced to use their own servants to suppress the rioters.

The Royal Proclamation is read twice.

The rioters continue in their actions and the gentry and their forces charge.

A pitched battle ensues.

Forty to fifty are killed and the ringleaders are hanged and quartered.

The Newton Rebellion is one of the last times that the peasantry of England and the gentry are in open conflict.

The Tresham family will decline soon after.

The Montagu family will go on through marriage to become the Dukes of Buccleuch, one of the biggest landowners in Britain.