The results of the Act, framed and administered on these lines, were described by Dunkin,[115] 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.[116]

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.’[117] This excess of expenses over profits was adduced by the ‘Otmoor proprietor,’ to whom we have already referred, as an illustration 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.’[118] 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.[119]

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 Islip. But the inhabitants were not overawed. They determined to perambulate the bounds of Otmoor in full force, in accordance with the old custom. On Monday, 6th September, five hundred men, women and children assembled from the Otmoor towns, and they were joined by five hundred more from elsewhere. Armed with reap-hooks, hatchets, bill-hooks and duckets, they marched in order round the seven-mile-long boundary of Otmoor, destroying all the fences on their way. By noon their work of destruction was finished. ‘A farmer in the neighbourhood who witnessed the scene gives a ludicrous description of the zeal and perseverance of the women and children as well as the men, and the ease and composure with which they waded through depths of mud and water and overcame every obstacle in their march. He adds that he did not hear any threatening expressions against any person or his property, and he does not believe any individuals present entertained any feeling or wish beyond the assertion of what they conceived (whether correctly or erroneously) to be their prescriptive and inalienable right, and of which they speak precisely as the freemen of Oxford would describe their right to Port Meadow.’[120]

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 sticks at them from every side. The yeomen managed to get their prisoners as far as the turning down Beaumont Street, but there they were overpowered, and all forty-four prisoners escaped. At Otmoor itself peace now reigned. Through the broken fences cattle were turned in to graze on all the enclosures, and the villagers even appointed a herdsman to look after them. The inhabitants of the seven Otmoor towns formed an association called ‘the Otmoor Association,’ which boldly declared that ‘the Right of Common on Otmoor was always in the inhabitants, and that a non-resident proprietor had no Right of Common thereon,’ and determined to raise subscriptions for legal expenses in defence of their right, calling upon ‘the pecuniary aid of a liberal and benevolent public ... to assist them in attempting to restore Otmoor once more to its original state.’[121]

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 four months’ imprisonment.[122]

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 neighbourhood 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.

CHAPTER V
THE VILLAGE AFTER ENCLOSURE

THE governing class continued its policy of extinguishing the old village life and all the relationships and interests attached to it, with unsparing and unhesitating hand; and as its policy progressed there were displayed all the consequences predicted by its critics. Agriculture was revolutionised: rents leapt up: England seemed to be triumphing over the difficulties of a war with half the world. But it had one great permanent result which the rulers of England ignored. The anchorage of the poor was gone.

For enclosure was fatal to three classes: the small farmer, the cottager, and the squatter. To all of these classes their common rights were worth more than anything they received in return. Their position was just the opposite of that of the lord of the manor. The lord of the manor was given a certain quantity of land (the conventional proportion was one-sixteenth[123]) in lieu of his surface rights, and that compact allotment was infinitely more valuable than the rights so compensated. Similarly the tithe-owner stood to gain with the increased rent. The large farmer’s interests were also in enclosure, which gave him a wider field for his capital and enterprise. The other classes stood to lose.