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.[108]
‘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 Providence was also a strong incentive: ‘God did not create the earth to lie waste for feeding a few geese, but to be cultivated by man, in the sweat of his brow.’[109]
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 Beckley (with Horton and Studley), Noke, Oddington, and Charlton (with Fencott and Moorcott). This petition was referred to a Committee, to consider amongst other things, whether the Standing Orders with reference to Drainage Bills had been duly complied with. The Committee reported in favour of allowing the introduction of the Bill, but made this remarkable admission, that though the Standing Orders with respect to the affixing of notices on church doors had been complied with on Sunday, 3rd August, ‘it appeared to the Committee that on the following Sunday, the 10th of August, the Person employed to affix the like Notices was prevented from so doing at Beckley, Oddington and Charlton, by a Mob at each Place, but that he read the Notices to the Persons assembled, and afterwards threw them amongst them into the Church Yards of those Parishes.’ Notice was duly affixed that Sunday at Noke. The next Sunday matters were even worse, for no notices were allowed to be fixed in any parish.
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 Mackarness, Esq., who stated that as proprietors in the parish of Beckley, their interests had not been sufficiently considered.
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 purpose 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.’[110] 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,[111] 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 imperilled 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,[112] 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.’[113]
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, whilst 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.’[114]