<P> The Tresham family declined soon after 1607 . The Montagu family went on through marriage to become the Dukes of Buccleuch, one of the largest landowners in Britain . </P> <P> Although Royal forests were not technically commons, they were used as such from at least the 1500s onwards . By the 1600s, when Stuart Kings examined their estates in order to find new revenues, it had become necessary to offer compensation to at least some of those using the lands as commons when the forests were divided and enclosed . The majority of the disafforestation took place between 1629--40, during Charles I of England's Personal Rule . Most of the beneficiaries were Royal courtiers, who paid large sums in order to enclose and sublet the forests . Those dispossessed of the commons, especially recent cottagers and those who were outside of tenanted lands belonging to manors, were granted little or no compensation, and rioted in response . </P> <P> During the 18th and 19th centuries, enclosures were by means of local acts of Parliament, called the Inclosure Acts . These parliamentary enclosures consolidated strips in the open fields into more compact units, and enclosed much of the remaining pasture commons or wastes . Parliamentary enclosures usually provided commoners with some other land in compensation for the loss of common rights, although often of poor quality and limited extent . Enclosure consisted of exchange in land, and an extinguishing of common rights . This allowed farmers consolidated and fenced off plots of land, in contrast to multiple small strips spread out and separated . </P> <P> Parliamentary enclosure was also used for the division and privatisation of common "wastes" (in the original sense of uninhabited places), such as fens, marshes, heathland, downland, moors . Voluntary enclosure was also frequent at that time . </P>

How did the enclosure movement affect the poor peasants of britain