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.Chambers and Mingay. Agricultural Revolution. p. 104 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.E. J. Hobsbawm & G Rudé, Captain Swing (1969), appendix 1 Since the late 20th century, those contentions have been challenged by a new class of recent historians.J.M. Neeson. Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure: and Social Change in England, 1700-1820. p. 223 Enclosure has been seen by some as causing the destruction of the traditional peasant way of life, however miserable:
