The weavers and carders were severely affected by enclosure laws, and Steer, although he claimed upon his arrest that he was free and not in any want, lived in the midst of a great deal of suffering.
The goal of the uprising Steer organized was to tear down the fences and then to attack the landlords who maintained the enclosures, the law officers who enforced the enclosure act, and then to march with the people down to London, where the disaffected apprentices would join with them to demand change.
They were soon arrested, and Steer was put in Newgate Prison, where he was interrogated by Sir Edward Coke.
The Elizabethan government also recognised the cause of the rebels' grievance and determined that "order should be taken about inclosures...that the poor may be able to live".
Historians have since gravitated toward his account as an illustration of populist resentment against enclosure and material conditions in late feudalism.