peasantry. The Enclosure Acts of rural England contributed to the plight of rural farmworkers. Between 1770 and 1830, about of common land were enclosed. The common land had been used for centuries by the poor of the countryside to graze their animals and grow their own produce. The land was now divided up among the large local landowners, leaving the landless farmworkers solely dependent upon working for their richer neighbours for a cash wage. That may have offered a tolerable living during the boom years of the Napoleonic Era, when labour had been in short supply and corn prices high, the return of peace in 1815 resulted in plummeting grain prices and an oversupply of labour. According to the social historians John and Barbara Hammond, enclosure was fatal to three classes: the small farmer, the cottager and the squatter. Before enclosure, the cottager was a labourer with land; after enclosure, he was a labourer without land. In contrast to the Hammonds' 1911 analysis of the events, the historian G. E. Mingay noted in his 1997 book that when the Swing Riots broke out in 1830, the heavily-enclosed Midlands remained almost entirely quiet, but the riots were concentrated in the southern and south-eastern counties, which were little affected by enclosure. Some historians have posited that the reason was that in the West Midlands, for example, the rapid expansion of the Potteries and the coal and iron industries provided an alternative range of employment to agricultural workers. Critically, J. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay suggested that the Hammonds exaggerated the costs of change, but enclosure really meant more food for the growing population; more land under cultivation and, on the balance, more employment in the countryside. The modern historians of the riots, Eric Hobsbawm and George Rudé, cited only three of a total of 1,475 incidents as being directly caused by enclosure. Since the late 20th century, those contentions have been challenged by a new class of recent historians. Enclosure has been seen by some as causing the destruction of the traditional peasant way of life, however miserable: Landless peasants could no longer maintain an economic independence and so had to become labourers. Surplus peasant labour moved into the towns to become industrial workers. In the 1780s, workers would be employed at annual hiring fairs, or ‘mops’, to serve for the whole year. During that period, the worker would receive payment