 During the sixteenth century A.D. a lot of common grazing land east of Upperton was illegally enclosed to make a deer park for Petworth House, causing impoverishment of the farmers of Upperton.This resulted in a long running legal case against the Earl of Northumberland, owner of Petworth, described by Peter Jerrome in his book "Cloakbag and Common Purse".The "common purse" was a fighting fund raised by the tenants to fund legal action in the Chancery court; the "clokebagge well fraught with money" was a large bribe to the tenants' leader to drop the case, after first having had him press ganged into the army and sent to fight "beyond seas" which probably meant in Ireland, which he survived.