The monopolising of commons by manorial authorities who wished to form a large sheep-run can be traced through several stages, of which actual enclosure is only one, and the climax rather than the beginning. It usually begins with the overstocking of the common pasture by the owner of great flocks and herds, and the consequent edging out of the small man, though, of course, when the area is a large one, and when, as in Wiltshire, there are great downs which are suitable for sheep, it may be a long time before the latter feels the pinch severely. But the mere overriding by a capitalist of the customary allotment of pasture rights is usually only the first step. As long as matters are left in this transition stage there is endless friction and disturbance, because each party tries to oust the other, the great man swamping the pasture with his beasts, and the peasants defiantly insisting that the recognised stint shall be observed--a guerilla warfare in which the farmer's servants are matched against the township's cowherd and the common pound. Enclosing follows as a way of regularising the new arrangements, by substituting a tangible and prickly boundary for an ideal limit. Sometimes enclosure is demanded by the peasants and resented by the well-to-do, who think that in the general squabble they will come off best. More often it is carried out with a high hand by the farmer and the lord, who, once they take seriously to cattle-breeding or sheep-farming, have naturally no desire to have a limit set to their investment in stock. Occasionally compensation[429] is given to the dispossessed commoners in the shape of an abatement in their rents, or of a fresh pasture in another quarter. In most of our documents, however, there is little trace of any deliberate re-adjustment of rights. We are simply told that "he holds the whole of the hilly pasture," or that he has "a heath enclosed with a hedge," or that grounds have been "enclosed contrary to the custom of the manor." We can trace the effect in the small number of beasts which other tenants keep, but we are left to conjecture how this state of things was reached. Our impression is that in most cases the enclosing of commons was carried out in the simplest and most arbitrary way, by the lord or the farmer erecting a hedge round such part of the common pasture as he cared to appropriate, and leaving the tenants to make good their demand that it should be removed, if they could.