From:
The
Village Labourer
1760-1832: A Study in the Government of
by J.L. and Barbara Hammond
Originally published 1911
New Edition, 1920.
Otmoor is described in Dunkin's History of Oxfordshire, as a 'dreary and
extensive common.' Tradition said that the tract of land was the gift of some
mysterious lady 'who gave as much ground as she could ride round while an
oat-sheaf was burning, to the inhabitants of its vicinity for a public common,'
and hence came its name of Oatmoor, corrupted into
Otmoor. Whatever the real origin of the name, which more prosaic persons
connected with 'Oc,' a Celtic word for 'water,' this
tract of land had been used as a 'public common without stint... from remote
antiquity.' Lord Abingdon, indeed, as Lord of the Manor of Beckley, claimed and
exercised the right of appointing a moor-driver, who at certain seasons drove
all the cattle into Beckley, where those which were unidentified became Lord
Abingdon's property. Lord Abingdon also claimed rights of soil and of sport:
these, like his other claim, were founded on prescription only, as there was no
trace of any grant from the Crown.
The use to which Otmoor, in its original state, was
put, is thus described by Dunkin. 'Whilst this extensive piece of land remained
unenclosed, the farmers of the several adjoining townships estimated the
profits of a summer's pasturage at 20s. per head, subject
to the occasional loss of a beast by a peculiar distemper called the moor-evil.
But the greatest benefit was reaped by the cottagers, many of whom turned out
large numbers of geese, to which the coarse aquatic sward was well suited, and
thereby brought up their families in comparative plenty.
'Of late years, however, this dreary waste was surveyed with longing eyes by
the surrounding landowners, most of whom wished to annex a portion of it to
their estates, and in consequence spared no pains to recommend the enclosure as
a measure beneficial to the country.'
The promoters of the enclosure credited themselves with far loftier motives:
prominent among them being a desire to improve the morals of the poor. An
advocate of the enclosure afterwards described the pitiable state of the poor
in pre-enclosure days in these words: 'In looking after a brood of goslings, a
few rotten sheep, a skeleton of a cow or a mangy horse, they lost more than
they might have gained by their day's work, and acquired habits of idleness and
dissipation and a dislike to honest labour, which has rendered them the riotous
and lawless set of men which they have now shown themselves to be.' A pious
wish to second the intention of
The first proposal for enclosure came to Parliament from George, Duke of
Marlborough, and others on 11th March, 1801. The duke petitioned for the
drainage and the allotment of the 4000 acres of Otmoor among the parishes
concerned, namely
The Bill that was introduced in spite of this local protest,
was shipwrecked during its Committee stage by a petition from Alexander Croke, LL.D., Lord of the Manor of Studley with Whitecross Green, and from John Mackaness,
Esq., who stated that as proprietors in the parish of
The next application to Parliament was not made till 1814. In the interval
various plans were propounded, and Arthur Young, in his Survey of Oxfordshire
for the Board of Agriculture, published in 1809 (a work which Dunkin describes
as supported by the farmers and their landlords and as having caught their
strain), lamented the wretched state of the land. 'I made various inquiries
into the present value of it by rights of commonage; but could ascertain no
more than the general fact, of its being to a very beggarly amount.... Upon the
whole, the present produce must be quite contemptible, when compared with the
benefit which would result from enclosing it. And I cannot but remark, that
such a tract of waste land in summer, and covered the winter through with
water, to remain in such a state, within five miles of Oxford and the Thames,
in a kingdom that regularly imports to the amount of a million sterling in
corn, and is almost periodically visited with apprehensions of want -- is a
scandal to the national policy.... If drained and enclosed, it is said that no
difficulty would occur in letting it at 30s. per acre,
and some assert even 40s.' (p. 228).
When the new application was made in November 1814, it was again referred to
a Committee, who again had to report turbulent behaviour in the district
concerned. Notices had been fixed on all the church doors on 7th August, and on
three doors on 14th August, 'but it was found impracticable to affix the
Notices on the Church doors of the other two Parishes on that day, owing to
large Mobs, armed with every description of offensive weapons, having assembled
for the prose of obstructing the persons who went to affix the Notices, and who
were prevented by violence, and threats of immediate death, from approaching
the Churches.'(24*) From the same cause no notices could be affixed on these
two church doors on 21st or 28th August.
These local disturbances were not allowed to check the career of the Bill.
It was read a first time on 21st February, and a second time on 7th March. But
meanwhile some serious flaws had been discovered. The Duke of Marlborough and
the Earl of Abingdon both petitioned against it. The Committee, however, were
able to introduce amendments that satisfied both these powerful personages, and
on 1st May Mr. Fane reported from the Committee that no persons had appeared
for the said petitions, and that the parties concerned had consented to the
satisfaction of the Committee, and had also consented 'to the changing the
Commissioners therein named.' Before the Report had been passed, however, a
petition was received on behalf of Alexander Croke,(25*)
Esq., who was now in Nova Scotia, which made further amendments necessary, and
the Committee was empowered to send for persons, papers and records. Meanwhile
the humbler individuals whose future was imperiled were also bestirring
themselves. They applied to the Keeper of the Records in the Augmentation
Office for a report on the history of Otmoor. This Report, which is published
at length by Dunkin,(26*) states that in spite of laborious research no mention
of Otmoor could be found in any single record from the time of William the
Conqueror to the present day. Even Doomsday Book contained no reference to it.
Nowhere did it appear in what manor Otmoor was comprehended,
nor was there any record that any of the lords of neighbouring manors had ever
been made capable of enjoying any rights of common upon it. The custom of usage
without stint, in fact, pointed to some grant before the memory of man, and
made it unlikely that any lord of the manor had ever had absolute right of
soil. Armed, no doubt, with this learned report, some 'Freeholders,
Landholders, Cottagers and Persons' residing in four parishes sent up a
petition asking to be heard against the Bill. But they were too late: their
petition was ordered to lie on the Table, and the Bill passed the Commons the
same day (26th June) and received the Royal Assent on 12th July.
The Act directed that one-sixteenth of the whole (which was stated to be
over 4000 acres) should be given to the Lord of the Manor of Beckley, Lord
Abingdon, in compensation of his rights of soil, and one-eighth as composition
for all tithes. Thus Lord Abingdon received, to start with, about 750 acres.
The residue was to be allotted among the various parishes, townships and
hamlets, each allotment to be held as a common pasture for the township. So
far, beyond the fact that Lord Abingdon had taken off more than a sixth part of
their common pasture, and that the pasture was now divided up into different
parts, it did not seem that the ordinary inhabitants were much affected. The
sting lay in the arrangements for the future of these divided common pastures.
'And if at any future time the major part in value of the several persons
interested in such plot or parcels of land, should require a separate division
of the said land, he (the commissioner) is directed to divide and allot the
same among the several proprietors, in proportion to their individual rights
and interests therein.'
We have, fortunately, a very clear statement of the way in which the 'rights
and interests' of the poorer inhabitants of the Otmoor towns were regarded in
the enclosure. These inhabitants, it must be remembered, had enjoyed rights of
common without any stint from time immemorial, simply by virtue of living in
the district. In a letter from 'An Otmoor Proprietor' to the Oxford papers in
1830, the writer (Sir Alexander Croke himself?), who
was evidently a man of some local importance, explains that by the general rule
of law a commoner is not entitled to turn on to the common more cattle than are
sufficient to manure and stock the land to which the right of common is
annexed. Accordingly, houses without land attached to them cannot, strictly
speaking, claim a right of common. How then explain the state of affairs at
Otmoor, where all the inhabitants, landed or landless, enjoyed the same rights?
By prescription, he answers, mere houses do in point of fact sometimes acquire
a right of common, but this right, though it may be said to be without stint,
is in reality always liable to be stinted by law. Hence, when a common like Otmoor
is enclosed, the allotments are made as elsewhere in proportion to the amount
of land possessed by each commoner, whist a 'proportionable
share' is thrown in to those who own mere houses. But even this share, he
points out, does not necessarily belong to the person who has been exercising
the right of common, unless he happens to own his own house. It belongs to his
landlord, who alone is entitled to compensation. A superficial observer might
perhaps think this a hardship, but in point of fact it is quite just. The
tenants, occupying the houses, must have been paying a higher rent in
consideration of the right attached to the houses, and they have always been
liable to be turned out by the landlord at will. 'They had no permanent
interest, and it has been decided by the law that no man can have any right in
any common, as belonging to a house, wherein he has no interest but only
habitation: so that the poor, as such, had no right to the common whatever.'
The results of the Act, framed and administered on these lines, were
described by Dunkin, writing in 1823, as follows: 'It now only remains to
notice the effect of the operation of this act. On the division of the land
allotted to the respective townships, a certain portion was assigned to each cottager
in lieu of his accustomed commonage, but the delivery of the allotment did not
take place, unless the party to whom it was assigned paid his share of the
expenses incurred in draining and dividing the waste: and he was also further
directed to enclose the same with a fence. The poverty of the cottager in
general prevented his compliance with these conditions, and he was necessitated
to sell his share for any paltry sum that was offered. In the spring of 1819,
several persons at Charlton and elsewhere made profitable speculations by
purchasing these commons for £5 each, and afterwards prevailing on the
commissioners to throw them into one lot; thus forming a valuable estate. In
this way was Otmoor lost to the poor man, and awarded to the rich, under the
specious idea of benefitting the public.' The
expenses of the Act, it may be mentioned, came to something between £20,000 and
£30,000, or more than the fee-simple of the soil.
'Enclosed Otmoor did not fulfil Arthur Young's
hopes:... instead of the expected improvement in the
quality of the soil, it has been rendered almost totally worthless; a great
proportion being at this moment over-rated at 5s. an
acre yearly rent, few crops yielding any more than barely sufficient to pay for
labour and seed.'(31*) This excess of expenses over profits was adduced by the
'Otmoor proprietor,' to whom we have already referred, as an frustration of the
public-spirited self-sacrifice of the enclosers, who
were paying out of their own pockets for a national benefit, and by making
some, at any rate, of the land capable of cultivation, were enabling the poor
to have 'an honest employment, instead of losing their time in idleness and waste.'
But fifteen years of this 'honest employment' failed to reconcile the poor to
their new position, and in 1830 they were able to express their feelings in a
striking manner.
In the course of his drainage operations, the commissioner had made a new
channel for the river Ray, at a higher level, with the disastrous result that
the Ray overflowed into a valuable tract of low land above Otmoor. For two
years the farmers of this tract suffered severe losses (one farmer was said to
have lost £400 in that time), then they took the law into their own hands, and
in June 1829 cut the embankments, so that the waters of the Ray again flowed
over Otmoor and left their valuable land unharmed. Twenty-two farmers were
indicted for felony for this act, but they were acquitted at the Assizes, under
the direction of Mr. Justice Parke, on the grounds that the farmers had a right
to abate the nuisance, and that the commissioner had exceeded his powers in
making this new channel and embankment.
This judgment produced a profound impression on the Otmoor farmers and
cottagers. They misread it to mean that all proceedings under the Enclosure Act
were illegal and therefore null and void, and they determined to regain their
lost privileges. Disturbances began at the end of August (28th August). For
about a week, straggling parties of enthusiasts paraded the moor, cutting down
fences here and there. A son of Sir Alexander Croke
came out to one of these parties and ordered them to desist. He had a loaded
pistol with him, and the moor-men, thinking, rightly or wrongly, that he was
going to fire, wrested it from him and gave him a severe thrashing. Matters
began to look serious: local sympathy with the rioters was so strong that
special constables refused to be sworn in; the High Sheriff accordingly
summoned the Oxfordshire Militia, and Lord Churchill's troop of Yeomanry
Cavalry was sent to
By the time the destruction of fences was complete, Lord Churchill's troop
of yeomanry came up to the destroying band: the Riot Act was read, but the moormen refused to disperse. Sixty or seventy of them were
thereupon seized and examined, with the result that forty-four were sent off to
Oxford Gaol in wagons, under an escort of yeomanry.
Now it happened to be the day of St. Giles' Fair, and the street of St. Giles,
along which the yeomanry brought their prisoners, was crowded with countryfolk and townsfolk, most of whom held strong views
on the Otmoor question. The men in the wagons raised the cry 'Otmoor for ever,'
the crowd took it up, and attacked the yeomen with great violence, hurling
brickbats, stones and stick at them from every side. The yeomen managed to get
their prisoners as far as the turning down
Meanwhile the authorities who had lost their prisoners once, sent down a stronger force to take them next time, and although at the Oxford City Sessions a bill of indictment against William Price and others for riot in St. Giles and rescue of the prisoners was thrown out, at the County Sessions the Grand Jury found a true Bill against the same William Price and others for the same offence, and also against Cooper and others for riot at Otmoor. The prisoners were tried at the Oxford Assizes next month, before Mr. Justice Bosanquet and Sir John Patteson. The jury returned a verdict which shows the strength of public opinion. 'We find the defendants guilty of having been present at an unlawful assembly on the 6th September at Otmoor, but it is the unanimous wish of the Jury to recommend all the parties to the merciful consideration of the Court.' The judges responded to this appeal and the longest sentence inflicted was for months' imprisonment
The original enclosure was now fifteen years old, but Otmoor was still in
rebellion, and the Home Office Papers of the next two years contain frequent
applications for troops from Lord Macclesfield,
Lord-Lieutenant, Sir Alexander Croke and other
magistrates. Whenever there was a full moon, the patriots of the moor turned
out and pulled down the fences. How strong was the local resentment of the
overriding of all the rights and traditions of the commoners may be seen not
only from the language of one magistrate writing to Lord Melbourne in January
1832: 'all the towns in the neighborhood of Otmoor are more or less infected
with the feelings of the most violent, and cannot at all be depended on:' but
also from a resolution passed by the magistrates at Oxford in February of that
year, declaring that no constabulary force that the magistrates could raise
would be equal to suppressing the Otmoor outrages, and asking for soldiers. The
appeal ended with this significant warning: 'Any force which Government may
send down should not remain for a length of time together, but that to avoid
the possibility of an undue connexion
between the people and the Military, a succession of troops should be
observed.' So long and so bitter was the civil war roused by an enclosure which
Parliament had sanctioned in absolute disregard of the opinions or the
traditions or the circumstances of the mass of the people it affected.